My startup banking story (2023)

https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-startup-banking-story

by dvrp • 11 months ago

337 159 11 months ago

I also don't understand banking. "Do you need help?" when I'm making a deposit, or when my investments are set a certain way?

Here's a better idea, guys. Tell me your value proposition. How can I get access to your luxury box? Will you lend me money at ultra-low rates? How about a free toaster? Anything?

dang• 11 months ago

Discussed at the time:

My startup banking story - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157959 - March 2023 (257 comments)

heyflyguy• 11 months ago

Chase sucks so bad, I would spend a lifetime encouraging anyone to bank elsewhere. I know Mitch is nice enough to say Chase wasn't the problem, but their "controls" are so archaic it makes doing business with them a chore and not a pleasure.

toast02• 11 months ago

I'm not a fan of Chase, and I don't think I'd bank with them again, but they are a 'large national bank'. If you value having local branches mostly where ever you go, they're part of that group. That comes with all the usual exciting attractions like negligible interest on balances, and miscellaneous fees. But if you want a large national bank, eh, I guess they're fine?

My California based credit union doesn't even offer business accounts. And using the co-op network to do in-branch business at other credit unions is not as easy as the marketing lead me to believe, so I had to get a local credit union account where I moved as well. My Washington credit union does do business accounts, so that's a nice option if I need one. Plus, it's fun being a member of two aerospace/defense employee credit unions when I only worked in tech :P

TZubiri7• 11 months ago

Lots of local branches sounds great for personal banking, but for businesses? Unless you have a nation wide franchise business or a logistics business, doesn't seem as important.

On the contrary, a highly concentrated bank might be better, everyone is on the same building, there are no encapsulated branches, you get assigned a banker that is the best fit, rather than the one who was born closest to you.

bobmcnamara• 11 months ago

One man run on the bank!

joelesler• 11 months ago

So let's say a startup was funded through a Chase bank account and now everyone on this thread is saying "yeah don't do that"...

Let's say that a friend of mine has a startup funded account at Chase, and where should they go?

greyb• 11 months ago

Let's say that a friend of mine has a startup funded account at Chase, and where should they go?

Silicon Valley Bank... oh wait. In all seriousness, the approachability and flexibility of SVB bankers was really unparalleled at the time. Not like Alex in this story, that made really half-baked attempts to engage with a client model he was entirely unfamiliar with (but got all the credit for). This being said, Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank continues to exist.

I see a lot of Fintech players on the scene now. Brex, Mercury and Rho are common ones, through Brex has taken steps to distance itself from true, seed-stage startups as of late. Given what happened with Synapse's failure [1], I have doubts that they have the same protections and regulations of a brick and mortar FDIC bank.

Diversification is key too - so having multiple accounts. Some non-fintech banks I've seen floating around, ironically, JP Morgan Startup Banking, Wells Fargo Technology Banking Group, Citigroup Commercial Bank, PNC Technology Finance. All big banks, just not their retail banking divisions (as the author was experienced using).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse_Financial_Technologies

mitchellh3• 11 months ago

Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behaviors. I'll use this as a chance to share. :)

My company had an exit, I did well financially. This is not a secret. I'm extremely privileged and thankful for it. But as a result of this, I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast majority of my financial assets (over 99.99% of all assets, I just did the math). An unfortunate property of private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors: depositing a quick check, pulling cash from an ATM, but ironically most importantly Zelle.

As such, I've kept my Chase personal accounts and use them as my retail bank: there are Chase branches everywhere, its easy to get to an ATM, and they give me easy access to Zelle! I didn't choose Chase specifically, I've just always used Chase for personal banking since I was in high school so I just kept using them for this.

Anyways, I tend to use my Chase account to pay a bunch of bills, just because it's more convenient (Zelle!). I have 3 active home construction projects, plus pay my CC, plus pretty much all other typical expenses (utilities, car payments, insurance, etc.). But I float the money in/out of the account as necessary to cover these. We do accounting of all these expenses at the private bank side, so its all tracked, but it settles within the last 24-48 hours via Chase.

Otherwise, I keep my Chase balance no more than a few thousand dollars.

This really wigs out automated systems at Chase. I get phone calls all the time (like, literally multiple times per week) saying "we noticed a large transfer into your account, we can help!" And I cheekily respond "refresh, it's back to zero!" And they're just confused. To be fair, I've explained the situation in detail to multiple people multiple times but it isn't clicking, so they keep calling me.

I now ignore the phone calls. Hope I don't regret that later lol.

JoshTriplett• 11 months ago

I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast majority of my financial assets

Which one(s)?

bigstrat20032• 11 months ago

I read the whole story and I'm still struggling to understand what you did wrong here. You indicated many times "I know, that was a mistake" (or similar phrases), but each time I was baffled because I saw no mistakes. It was your business, and you had every right to move around the funds within your account. What gives anyone at Chase the right to say diddly squat about how you manage your business' finances?

gspencley2• 11 months ago

I don't think he was trying to imply that he did anything wrong. He was admitting the ignorance regarding how banks and banking work... plus acknowledging that a lot of readers will have had experiences that would make them think "Oh you young fool."

In 2022 I lost my business banking and had to shut down a business that I owned for 20 years because it was related to the adult entertainment industry and, despite being completely legal and aboveboard, a single wire transfer that got a little bit of scrutiny resulted in them asking questions about what we did and, knowing that I was doing absolutely nothing wrong, I answered all of their questions truthfully and completely. A few months later I was told that we "fell outside of their risk appetite", our accounts were being closed... and for two months we searched for any bank or credit union in Canada but none would take us.

A lot of industry insiders had that exact reaction: "Are you stupid? Did you not know?! You NEVER admit that you're in this industry you moron!" etc. We even had a very sympathetic branch manager suggest that we re-incorporate, re-brand and hide what we do (a front, in other words). I couldn't do that. And I mean, we had no issues for 20 years. 10 of which were banking as a corporation (was personal accounts before that since we ran it as a proprietorship) and I thought that being in Canada we were pretty progressive. No one I told on a personal or professional level had ever cared. So why would the banks? We were lawful so why should they care?

gwbas1c9• 11 months ago

TFA didn't really explain the mistake.

What I think it was:

1: Chase's business account wasn't appropriate for a tech startup; nor was it appropriate for the amount of money Mitchell was handling.

2: When your bank calls you after a very, very large money transfer, you should take the call.

That being said: In today's world where every other phone call is some telemarketer trying to scam you or otherwise sell you something you don't want or need, I can sympathize with why Mitchell blew off the first call.

conductr• 11 months ago

It's not even an indication of fault. It's actually their internal sales/marketing system that flagging these messages. When they notice something like a large deposit, it triggers a message because they want to sell you a new account. Maybe it's savings, a CD, or you're getting ready to buy a house and they can help you with a mortgage. The average teller or even customer service person can't turn off these notifications, although, you may have some ability to opt out of them. Unfortunately, I find opting into useful notifications also opts me into useless ones, so I just ignore the texts...

Your whole arrangement of having an operating account separate from your wealth accounts is highly regular.

Edit - sorry realized I replied to a reply! Put air quotes on You/Your

dilyevsky• 11 months ago

The biggest thing to me imo is that everything was in one account while fdic insurance is only 250k although if chase goes out of business you probably wont need the money anyway. Also specialized startup banks come with a lot of perks for companies and founders and chase evidently didnt (or just had account rep who sucked at his job)

pzshaikh• 11 months ago

Most banks have dedicated startup bank account tier where you get many perks (AWS/GCloud/azure credits, transactions fees waived for the first few years, accounting software discounts, virtual credit cards) so it's a good idea to open that account instead of a standard business account plus he had $35m just sitting there in a checking account if he has opened an account with a bank that is more experienced in dealing with this type of businesses their RM would have suggested to keep certain amount in the business account and create another saving account where most of the money would have earned interest or invested in some fund. So I think maybe he is implying that due to these mistakes he missed out on personalized guidance.

chao-5• 11 months ago

The fraud story is interesting, but something I had hoped would be addressed by the end of the post, wasn't. You wrote:

Someone out there is probably mentally screaming at me "you fool!" at this point. With hindsight, I agree...

I was hoping the piece would end with what you would do now (or what should you have done) when Alex called you. Did I fail to understand something in the piece, and simply staying on the phone with Alex would have somehow avoided the fraud situation down the line? It doesn't seem so?

If I were to get such a call, today, my instincts would be to engage in the same "I'm fine" get-off-the-phone-fast actions. What is the alternative?

trillic• 11 months ago

I would imagine this phone call's primary goal is trying to sell you higher margin financial products/services.

buckle8017• 11 months ago

I'm curious what value you get from the private banking side?

hankthecat3• 11 months ago

This is somewhat funny to read because if you were a JPM(chase) Private Bank client you wouldn't have any of these issues (zelle works, you can deposit checks, pull from any/all ATMs).

gnerd00• 11 months ago

yeah agree -- it seems like a mistake to use retail banking for real business amounts of money and transactions. I suspect that young adults focused on a fast-moving tech world really did not live the hard lessons of the past with business restrictions. On the one hand, it is a new world now (no one would have come up with the kind of money referenced here, with Mom and Pop business pace); on the other hand, maybe you really are trying to load a trucking worth of transactions onto the top of your used Honda Accord, so to speak.

CamperBob2• 11 months ago

Or just plain Schwab One. Don't know about Zelle but ATMs and checks work just fine.

(Better than fine, in fact, in that they refund your ATM fees.)

lotsofpulp• 11 months ago

I move $10k+ in and out of BoA/Merrill every week and I’ve never received an alert or phone call. I would have stopped using Chase a long time ago if they were that annoying.

I basically never want to talk to anyone at any bank, like any other utility.

meistertigran• 11 months ago

What I took from this is that you have a really engaging writing style. Was interesting to read from start to finish.

welder2• 11 months ago

You should start a business for your construction projects, then use a business bank like Mercury instead of Chase and get all the nice business features.

mkl• 11 months ago

What are the nice business features you're referring to?

dpkirchner• 11 months ago

At what point does it make sense to sign up for private banking? I've been happy with our credit union for day to day stuff but we don't keep a ton of cash around (most of our money is in a brokerage account (ETFs)). Is private banking just for folks that want to have a lot of cash around but not have it in an easy to use account?

0x3f• 11 months ago

When you need the specialized services they offer, e.g. Lombard loans, unique mortgage products.

sneak7• 11 months ago

When you are managing a $500k-1M+ liquid net worth.

I think Chase starts “Private Client” at $250 or $300k. (Don’t use Chase, however.)

It might in some cases be more trouble than it is worth, if you are right around the threshold. A “normal” retail checking account and a brokerage account at another institution with the ability to transfer between them is probably sufficient for most. If you need loans or mortgages or other stuff, it might be worth the hassle (and phone calls).

hankthecat3• 11 months ago

Private banking basically means high net worth wealth management. Includes banking, investments, lending, etc.

zie2• 11 months ago

If you have to ask, the answer is you don't have enough! :)

Seriously though, just wander into any big ass bank(Chase, BOA, etc) and ask them. They have multiple tiers of private banking, depending on your wealth level. Generally the bottom tiers start around $100k and go from there. To get into the fancy tiers you generally need $1M or more of bank assets. To get into family offices, you generally need $100M or so. Though shared family offices are sometimes available at the low 30-50M range.

Just be very careful of fees. Generally the larger the private client services, the higher the fees.

attentive• 11 months ago

What's the point of a private bank or do you mean investement/brokerage?

fastball• 11 months ago

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatebanking.asp

Aloha• 11 months ago

Chase has a decent private banking operation, which you might consider (so does BofA, and most large banks) which can give you the best of both worlds.

thrown-08252• 11 months ago

why does zelle even exist?

every time i have to interact financially with americans its always focused around these random transfer apps like zelle, cash, venmo etc.

jcattle• 11 months ago

The US tends not to regulate what kind of services a bank has to offer to its customers. A bank doesn't need to offer any kind of transfer services to be a bank. As far as I know you can legally be a bank and only offer cash deposit and withdrawal.

The EU has PSD (Payment Services Directive) and PSD2 which stipulate what kind of transfers have to be possible to customers.

Because of that the US just has a bunch of startups which offer services that unify the payment landscape. The alternatives at a bunch of banks is still that you need to write checks.

GJim• 11 months ago

private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors
depositing a quick check.....Zelle.

Good lord

American banking really is in the stone age. I don't think I've seen a cheque in 20 years. As for private banks, in Blighty they all (?) offer 'retail' services that out perform high street offerings.

Incidentally, all high street banking is free in the UK. Only private banks tend to charge for their services.

asib• 11 months ago

Yes, it's honestly a joke.

Zelle limits the amount you can send per day, starting at $500, so you can't even necessarily pay your rent in one go the first month.

With Chase, I don't have the ability to do ACH transfers to accounts I don't own (I hear other banks allow free ACH transfers), so if Zelle limit is too low, my only option would be a paid wire...

mprivat• 11 months ago

That was an interesting and entertaining read. Well written. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me I do have a bank with physical branches, the digital world made me forget all about that.

insane_dreamer• 11 months ago

Couldn't find the RSS feed for your writing. Available?

randomsofr• 11 months ago

Congrats on the success! I’ve had a similar experience since I started moving more money around. My local branch started calling me too. I live in a busy area where lines at the bank can take hours, but now they told me I can just message someone whenever I go and they’ll move me to the front.

The other day I was just poking around the investment section of the app to see what kind of rates they offered, and almost immediately I got a call from my personal banker, haha. I actually ended up trying the investment since the returns looked good.

fabiensanglard• 11 months ago

Would have been interesting to read what the author would have done differently with what he learned.

You create a startup -> Do you need to do anything special with regard to the bank you chose?

ajd555• 11 months ago

Great read - as a young startup with Chase, this is an interesting story. As Mitch says, this isn't inherently an issue with Chase, but interesting bank behavior. I'll be sure to keep this story in mind, if we ever get to these amounts of cash!

bdcravens• 11 months ago

During COVID, I took a major haircut in my day job, and ended up doing a lot of side work to stay solvent. All my banking was with Chase; I setup a new checking account for my side work. One day they just took about $900. No matter who I spoke to, they bounced me around and never gave me an answer why. I can only guess there was a fraud trigger or something, but to this day, I've never gotten the money back or even gotten an answer as to what happened. I'm fortunate enough in life that $900 isn't a big deal, but at the time, it was HUGE. As a result, I will never, never do business with Chase again (and it would be very convenient, given how many branches I have around me)

gwbas1c9• 11 months ago

Take them to small claims court.

(Also close the account. No bank should lose money like that.)

righthand• 11 months ago

I agree small claims would be an easy win.

mortos• 11 months ago

I'd instead talk to the CFPB.

You might also try some other governmental bodies but I've read a lot of success with the CFPB

sneak7• 11 months ago

PayPal did this to me in 2004 or so when I tried to use a debit card to withdraw cash and it didn’t give me the cash but still debited the account. Hours on the phone, never got the $400 back.

I closed my account and have never directly used PayPal since.

astrange6• 11 months ago

File a CFPB complaint. Or email executive/investor relations.

thrown-08252• 11 months ago

I see you are operating under the idea that the US still has consumer protections and isnt a gutted husk of what it once was.

holman• 11 months ago

Amusing to read this and think back on GitHub's seed round ($100M). At the time we just had a small business account from Bank of America... going from relatively thin cushion in the account over the previous few years to suddenly dropping in $100M was pretty amusing. I believe we moved to a more sophisticated setup quickly thereafter.

gwbas1c9• 11 months ago

One of the more frustrating things in life are cleaning up novice mistakes from people who should know better.

I wonder why the investors didn't at least do some due diligence into where the money was being stored?

Giorgi• 11 months ago

Would never thought there is so much money to be made in cloud services.

dabeeeenster• 11 months ago

Favourite part of this story is how the casually realise there's $1M in funds sent from customers that they didnt notice.

lackbeard• 11 months ago

This was a super-interesting read, but I'm disappointed there isn't a description of what, exactly, was wrong about what he did, and what one should do instead. The only thing that comes to mind is the obvious one: you don't want more than the FDIC limit in a single bank account.

chihuahua2• 11 months ago

you don't want more than the FDIC limit in a single bank account

especially when you're talking about Silicon Valley Bank, ironically.

fakedang5• 11 months ago

Eh, depends. It's perfectly alright to put in more than the FDIC limit in a bank with consumer banking services. The amount of scrutiny and shit they have to put up with means that they can't really try SVB type shenanigans. You can bet your ass if Wells Fargo, UBS or Chase goes under, the Fed will bail them (you) out. The alternative would be having bigger problems in your plate than that.

Source: I'm a recent Credit Suisse business banking customer. Now UBS.

dragonwriter• 11 months ago

you don't want more than the FDIC limit in a single bank account.

If the FDIC limit is a concern, you don't want to make the mistake of thinking it applies on a per account basis (it applies per depositor per institution per account class.)

laksmanv• 11 months ago

What banks are recommended for startups if not chase?

jabo• 11 months ago

Mercury

recursive• 11 months ago

The author imagines that all readers obviously know why his actions were so wrong.

My understanding of banks is much like his naive version. So what's the more enlightened understanding?

jackvalentine2• 11 months ago

Yeah I'm not sure why I would really care about the motivations of the bank. If I need them to be a store of money that I can move in and out and I'm happy with that then leave me alone.

When you're big enough for that to be a problem, like in the story, then someone who knows more that you've hired will have a stronger opinion of that.

TZubiri7• 11 months ago

I can explain a little bit

1- KYC, the bank is a highly regulated entity, regulated by the state, they are a branch of the executive, they enforce banking laws set by the legislative, and can get involved in cases of fraud, money laundering, or other illegal activities. If they see a million dollar transaction, they usually want to know where the money came from, if they don't they would essentially be looking the other way. In general know what your business partner needs, in any walk of business. Let them know that you have a such and such business, that you got a round of funding. Also know what kind of bad actors you want to differentiate yourself from, let them know you are not a drug dealer, you are not laundering money, or running a ponzi scheme, and that the money won't be frozen putting them in trouble.

2) Money is a very complex subject, the fact that you think of money as "something that is stored in a bank" is testament to the fact that banks do a good job, it's an illusion, there's a lot going on behind the scenes that you are unaware of, similar to how there's a lot going on behind the scenes in Google or ChatGPT, which have simple interfaces but complex inner workings.

3) In general, a bank is a vendor, a supplier a business partner, you pay them for services. Maybe in your personal life you don't care and you are used to anonymous transactions because of the low amounts. But in business, these are strategic relationships, you want to get the most out of your money and establish a relationship with your vendor. Loyalty goes a long way, although switching vendors is always possible, it's a tradeoff with consequences that needs to be considered, and not ignored.

phil21• 11 months ago

Banking works as a store of money and money mover until they decide what you are doing is outside the normal course for their average account holder.

After that you very rapidly get educated on the fact that money within a bank is not your money - it’s the banks money and they are not afraid to more or less tell you that outright.

There is very little recourse once you hit some internal KYC/AML or other “non-desirable” entity flags so it’s best to establish relationship banking prior to ever getting close to those (hidden and secret) thresholds. Even having multiple accounts at different banks isn’t much protection since they seemingly by law or regulation share these databases with each other. You will likely never make it off such a list if you get added to one.

For me at least that’s all private banking or even banking beyond a checking and savings account is. It’s paid insurance for continued access to the financial system.

awl130• 11 months ago

I had the same experience at Citibank. We started at a small branch in downtown LA with our Series Seed round check for $3M. Even then we barely got any attention, and dealt with just a local branch manager. Later we closed $7.5M, still no attention; except this time due to consolidation we were kicked to a regional team that handled our account as a team. In fact we never had a dedicated banker, we were just handled like so many SMB by calling a banking center. Over the years we asked for things like corporate credit cards and the like, but it always seemed we were just a little too small (I guess with Fortune 50 clients, we were small to them). Anyway we eventually moved to a smaller independent bank for different reasons.

krashidov• 11 months ago

Chase Bank Story time -

We sold our company in 2020. Anticipating the wire I decided I needed to upgrade to a big boy bank from my small regional bank that I've been using since I was 16.

What finer institution is there than J.P. Morgan Chase? I opened an account with them. I called them telling them there was going to be a larger than average transfer. I put in $500 to "warm up" the account (stupid in retrospect).

Acquisition goes through. Champagne for everyone. I try to login to look at the funds and my account has been closed. I call Chase and ask them "wtf?"

They say there's been fraud in the account. We've closed it. We will mail the check to your address. So I'm thinking they're going to mail me my acquisition funds over check?? FML. 24 agonizing hours and 10 calls to them later (all leading nowhere), I eventually got the funds to be wired to my original regional bank lmao. No thanks to Chase, this was all because of PNC who was in charge of the acquisition.

This is probably my fault for using a new account like this (I think someone told me to use a large bank or something I don't remember), but I will forever hold a grudge against Chase.

P.S. I never got back my $500 that they stole from me

astrange6• 11 months ago

File a CFPB complaint!

apt-apt-apt-apt• 11 months ago

Semi-interesting, but it felt like it was leading up to something big or interesting knowledge all the way up to the end.

Seems like it could have been way shorter, the plot is essentially "Deposited more and more money into a local Chase branch, made some guy named Alex a rising star. They called once in awhile, not sure why. Moving lots of money around isn't super straightforward."

chihuahua2• 11 months ago

Yes, I was expecting the outcome to be that the account gets frozen because it triggers some kind of anti money laundering filter.

Asraelite• 11 months ago

Same. If anything, this post taught me that actually, depositing and moving around large sums of money is straightforward.

ungreased0675• 11 months ago

I’m curious why this company raised money, only to park it in a bank account? What was the raise for?

urbandw311er• 11 months ago

My take on that was that they did use a lot of the money but were also generating revenue that came in to replace it.

wmf• 11 months ago

Pretty much the best case for a startup is you don't need money -> VCs are begging to invest -> you take the money just in case -> you never need the money. Especially if it's a top tier VC the PR from raising is worth the dilution.

jancsika• 11 months ago

Ultimately, there was no long term negative impact of the events that transpired (except maybe for Alex, but I truly don't know) and I can now look back on it with amusement.

So a software guy who didn't understand people or banking opens an account at Chase. And a guy from Chase who didn't understand people or software calls him-- repeatedly over years-- and fails to ever connect on any human level whatsoever. Now when first guy withdraws millions from Chase, he unwittingly causes the second guy to lose his job. This means the the second guy isn't around to help the first guy when he needs him the most-- to help him navigate banking fraud on that same account.

This just seems tragic. Second guy's success as a banker and first guy's ease of mind as a customer were inextricably linked. Yet neither of them knew how to form the simple social bond of two 4 year-olds playing in the same sandbox.

Seriously-- how did Chase not hand the account to someone who could connect with this guy? For a multi-million dollar account this just doesn't pass the smell test.

gck1• 11 months ago

Banker was probably asked daily by his managers if the multi-million dollar client was happy and the banker probably always responded with-yes, very.

TZubiri7• 11 months ago

I think daily is an overstatement, but it does sound like the guy took credit for some type of relationship that wasn't there, which is kind of unnecessary because maybe what he did was the right move, he gave the client exactly what he wanted.

TZubiri7• 11 months ago

This is one of the takeaways I wasn't able to formulate. Author added some disclaimers which already clarified their inexperience with the world. But I think that a.. preference for avoid human interactions, and a worldview of computer systems with no human systems are what explains why Author wasn't able to quickly adapt to this adult experience.

What sealed the deal of this interpretation to me:

"He literally writes down a phone number on a piece of paper. This is all feeling so surreal."

Why would this feel so surreal? Gauging by the dates, Author was born in around 1994, phones where definitely a thing, and phone numbers more so. My interpretation is that this guy was absolutely absorbed in computers, every social interaction occured in dms, or emails or posts, or articles. Both the 'unsophisticated' act of transmitting numbers and the need to deal with a human in real time were foreign. Without going into harsher labels like autism or antisociality, I think it's definitely the type of behaviour (described as being heads down), that is necessary to be competent enough with computers to build a hypertechnical security product over the span of almost a decade.

The point of view of the banker and how he fumbled this as well is a nice touch, illustrates the advantages of throwing a bone to your business partners. I mean even if you think of it from a non social perspective, only business, this is a supplier like any other, loyalty and gifts go a long way in general. But I guess that you don't need business acumen for a startup, you can just hyperfocus on your product and have your investors worry about the rest.

sneak7• 11 months ago

You should not underestimate the median level of incompetence and unprofessionalism among low level Chase employees.

I had one call the police on me recently for (non-surreptitiously) recording our interaction as we conducted a safe deposit box inventory.

whalesalad• 11 months ago

Quite happy with Mercury. I had really terrible experiences with Chase and will never give them my money again.

sneak7• 11 months ago

I too have a “Chase is pathological and untrustworthy” business banking story.

https://sneak.berlin/20191119/your-money-isnt-yours/

I finally just closed all my accounts there. It feels great. Fuck Chase.

josh2600• 11 months ago

Once upon a time my wife went to close a bank account in Italy.

She went to the post office which is also a bank in Rome. She asked to closed her account. She was told that she needed to go to the branch where she opened her account in Florence.

We rented a car and drove to Florence.

When we arrived at the bank in Florence, the teller informed us that we would have to come back “domani” which is Italian for tomorrow because the only person who could help us was the banker who had originally opened the account for my wife when she was a student many moons ago.

We came back the next day and met the banker who immediately recognized my wife including recanting that she was an artist. He informed her that he could not close her account, she would have to speak to the Director of the bank.

We waited in line for the director of the bank but we were told it was too close to the end of the day and the bank was out of money so we’d have to come back… Domani.

Domani arrived and my wife again waited. The Director willfully ignored her for 2 hours and it wasn’t until my wife began to cry that the Director finally called her over and allowed her to close her account.

This for €2500. That was a balance that meant a lot to us at the time.

I will never forget banking in Italy.

dml21352• 11 months ago

This is everything in Italy, not just banking. I remember studying abroad there, it took us a week and a half of “domani” to get the wifi password for the dorm!

epolanski• 11 months ago

I'm Italian and both the previous story as well as your comment trigger me.

1) You could've asked the password to literally anybody in the dorm.

2) Unless this was geological ages ago, by law, all you need to close a bank account is a certified email (or PEC) or a certified letter (you go to the post office with a document and a simple form that specifies where you want your stuff transferred) you don't need to go in person anywhere at all.

mierz002• 11 months ago

I have a similar story in France. Closing an account with Caisse d’Epargne was nothing short of pure torture.

Luckily, I didn’t actually have to go in, but the process took me nearly 6 months of back and forth, multiple phone calls, multiple hand written letters. Yes, France loves hand written letters, no you cannot type it.

Every now and then I think it would be nice to return and live in France, but the thought of having to deal with French administration has vaccinated me for life.

DownGoat2• 11 months ago

It's so easy in Norway. When you start a new relationship with another bank, they just offer to move all your money and automatic bill payments from the other bank to your new bank. So the new bank handles everything

benhurmarcel• 11 months ago

Sounds like your experience was some time ago. Banking with “traditional” banks is still slow and bureaucratic, but not to that point. And online banks let you do everything online quickly.

nshelly• 11 months ago

When I was an American PhD student in Zurich, none of the Swiss banks would accept me—except the official post office bank. This was due to the stringent FATCA laws, which made U.S. citizens too burdensome for the traditionally privacy-centric Swiss banks.

Within the first few months, I accumulated around 40K CHF in salary that the university owed me (technically from the Swiss government, since researchers were federal employees). Eventually, the university emailed me to ask if I’d like to pick up my money in cash (Bargeld). Apparently, this wasn’t uncommon.

One day I went to the office to collect it. They asked which denomination I preferred (I assumed 20s or 100s). I asked for a mix, and they handed me several envelopes filled with 1,000 CHF notes and smaller bills. I distinctly remember carrying multiple envelopes. At one point, as I walked back to my office on top overlooking Zurich, a gust of wind blew behind me. I turned around and saw colorful 200 CHF and 1,000 CHF notes scattered along the road. I calmly walked back and picked them up.

For a few months, I paid my rent and groceries entirely in cash. The Swiss didn’t think anything of it—in fact, it was fairly common. Eventually, I was able to open an account and received a yellow two-factor authentication device that looked like an old calculator. I deposited the rest of the money and, for the remainder of my studies, used the “yellow calculator” to pay bills online by debit. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQhylNX...

I never did receive an official Swiss credit card which was fine. However, I did accumulate funds a Swiss 401K which is another story unto itself.

FinnKuhn• 11 months ago

One thing that has always amused me as a German is that for every banking/investing account I have ever opened they always included one question: Do you have an USA citizenship?

I assume with online banking this has become less of an issue, but apparently having US clients as a non-US bank is a massive hassle that no one wants to touch.

immibis• 11 months ago

It's still a thing. The US thinks it's hot shit, wants banks all over the world to comply with extra requirements for US citizens, which no other country does. Banks don't want to deal with it. Ordinarily they'd just ignore stupid requirements coming from stupid countries like China, but when it's the US they don't want to be sanctioned.

Thankfully, the US is now trying to delete its special position so we may soon be in the situation where stupid requests from the US are treated the same as stupid requests from Russia.

didibus• 11 months ago

I'm not sure I understand why there's anything wrong, strange or embarrassing about what the author did?

Can some finance person tell me why the author feel they did did in not smart ways and maybe made some mistakes?

s_dev• 11 months ago

He didn't do anything wrong, the takeaway is that he made Alex a rising star in his bank who was supposed to be giving him 'white glove' treatment but to the Founder it was a just a bank account. Years later he decides to move money to another bank. Alex can't stop it because he has no personal relationship or rapport to lean on. A few years later he encounters some fraud on the account the kind of exact situation that Alex could uniquely help with but Alex had presumably been let go for not giving the white glove treatment and built a rapport to the Founder.

Personally I found the whole thing frustrating to read as it underscores how traditional banks operate 'look after rich people' and 'be indifferent to not rich people'.

eadmund• 11 months ago

Personally I found the whole thing frustrating to read as it underscores how traditional banks operate 'look after rich people' and 'be indifferent to not rich people'.

Would you expect the fellow who earns the bank $20,000/year and the fellow who earns the bank $200/year to be treated the same?

I also think it’s less about ‘looking after rich people’ as offering the right services to the right customers. Someone who lives paycheque to paycheque and bridges the gap with credit cards and someone who has a few tens of thousands of dollars in cash have different needs; someone who has a few hundreds of thousands has still different ones; someone who has a few millions has yet different ones. Different products make sense to use — and from the bank’s perspective, to offer — at those different points.

Remember, too, that it costs different amounts for the bank to offer different products. Technology can help reduce those costs, which is a good part of how we all have jobs, and a good part of how so many people are so much better off than fifty years ago (back in the day, one had to place orders for 100-share blocks of stock, and pay a broker a commission on it — now it is possible to purchase fractional shares with no commission, enabling anyone with even a few extra bucks to get started compounding returns). But some costs, particularly regulatory costs, cannot be reduced.

merek• 11 months ago

I never told them what my business does or what I'd use the money for.

This stuck out to me. I'm in the process of opening a bank account in Singapore for a newly registered company, and boy is it difficult.

Hour-long KYC interview. Details of what the business does. Anything remotely controversial could be a red flag. They want to hear about boring B2B services. They want to see evidence of customer communications or contracts, so they can see you're a legit business and not a shell company. This is very difficult for a company that hasn't started operating yet. Why would I start operating without banking? How can I show business activity before commencing operating?

By comparison, I've opened business accounts in both AU and the US without hassle.

fakedang5• 11 months ago

It's likely because of the nature of the country. Singapore and the UAE (another similar country) are notoriously difficult for getting started with business banking because banks often expect you to be either well-funded (from elsewhere) or matured as a business. For a long time, they haven't ever evolved their thought to expect startups to natively grow, and even of late, they expect startups to be these well-capitalized entities with angel/VC funding. That, I presume, is because of the fact that these countries tend to be conduits for money rather than destinations themselves - they'll roll out the red carpet for you if you went with another, more "matured" objective in mind like laundering money or expanding into the country.

On the other hand, Switzerland has been surprisingly very easy to get started with quickly, even though Switzerland falls in the same category. You can easily obtain a (shitty service) Postfinance account to get started, and UBS is a breeze to work with, despite being bulge-bracket - even for new companies. Or you can also opt for a cheaper Kantonalbank, which are surprisingly very open to new businesses.

TZubiri7• 11 months ago

Also international accounts have more stringent KYC of course.

decimalenough• 11 months ago

Are you Singaporean? I found opening my business account (UOB) extremely straightforward.

kjellsbells• 11 months ago

Whenever I move significant sums into my bank account, I guarantee that my bank is going to do an "Alex" call. I can also guarantee that there is no freaking way I am going to do a call with some rando not already in my contacts to discuss my financials. I really don't know why banks don't understand this.

Chase is not the only offender but they are unhilariously, shockingly bad at this: if you do a large transfer, they will sometimes cancel it unilaterally and without warning because of their fraud detection. And then they'll call you, but the dude speaking won't know anything about your account and ask you about what you just did. "We are clean on opsec" is very much not the vibe.

Lest this be just me moaning, Fidelity gets it right. When you log on you can see who your banker is and how to reach them. A real human with a phone! And that person is the one who calls you, emails you, and you can set up a call/mtg with, so you don't have these random calling you.

My startup banking story (2023)

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