My wife just tried to transfer money from her chase account to her Monzo account (chase just did a big cut in interest), and the app told her to call.
When she called they kept her on the phone for 27 minutes only to tell her that they wouldn’t transfer her money to a Monzo account because Monzo is ‘a high risk bank’.
She’s kinda upset and will probably be closing the Chase accounts. (Let’s face it, it’s not your account if they don’t let you move your money).
Has anyone else heard of this?
Nope. Move my money from Chase Savings to Monzo regularly. Have done for nearly three years now 
Might be better asking in here though:
I don’t understand any of this tbh. Are you saying it was fraud blocked and chase didn’t allow the transfer? I’ve never heard of this happening but it must be a thing.
In the days I had chase I had no issue transferring to and from.
By the way, I wouldn’t be too hasty closing chase. I’d imagine all banks will cut the interest eventually, and also if she closes it and wants back in, they won’t let her. They don’t allow old customers back.
Perhaps try moving smaller amounts of cash to Monzo. If she tried transferring a large sum all at once this could have flagged. Chase seem to be screwing up lately. If the transfer of smaller amounts doesn’t work tell her to close the account and send her a cheque
I can confirm this. I tried to transfer £1,000 to my brother-in-law, and they kept me on the phone for over 30 minutes, repeatedly asking if I was being forced to move the money, etc.
They eventually approved the transfer, but wasted so much of my time that I’ll probably be using Chase less in the future.
It was the 3rd time I sent them the £1K, usually every month end
I don’t particularly mind if they rang to do a quick check, what I detest is asking me the same question 20 different ways, over and over and over again because of just £1K, they even sent me a message and requested that I read it out loud like a school kid, and they seem not to believe whatever I told them. Not a good experience, I’ve had similar calls from HSBC and it was always brief and to the point.
Ask to speak to their manager. That’s what I did when I was lending my sister a few thousand from my Chase savings account. I was on for over half an hour being asked things like “I can hear voices in the background - are people telling you what to say?”
I asked to speak to a manager, was put on hold for a couple of minutes, then the original agent came back on the line and said the money would be released straight away!
I’ve had the full 20 minute ‘are you sure nobody’s asking you to do this?’ experience from HSBC before, so they do do it.
I understand the rationale for it, but it is frustrating when you just want to move your money between accounts and get on with your day.
I wonder what kind of hit rate they get with people who are victims of fraud and cave after 15 minutes of being asked the same thing over and over?
Well this thread got informative quick. I’m aware of banks declining the payment, usually followed by a quick phone call. Though even for me with HSBC it’s rare. Only one time trying to re-add a card to my Apple Watch of all things.
But point blank refusing that’s a new one and as you say sounds like there’s additional detail here.
So, did the money eventually be allowed to transfer? And in the new world of protection what will banks do if they don’t allow it.
I know - but, as you say, I’d sent her payments and she’d repaid me a number of times before this without any issues. It was the relentless “are you absolutely sure there’s nobody telling you what to say” that annoyed me, despite saying “yes, I’m sure” plenty of times.
Unfortunately that doesn’t work either. With fraudsters getting customers to set up accounts with Monzo, Revolut, Wise etc. confirmation of payee becomes a lot less reliable.
Either large or small payments don’t matter regarding checks. What customers and journalists seem to walk past regarding the CRM code, is there are two main components. There’s a refund consideration element and then a scam prevention element too, which these blocks fall under.
Established payees mean little with certain scams too. Investment scams and romance scams can go on for years and are the biggest fraud losses to customers and banks.
You dont see stories in the Daily Mail where a bank has refunded over £1m due to APP fraud. But we’ve had to do this more than once this year alone.
If we want to keep free banking at the point of use, then this is the cost I believe.
The same logic that Australian banks are using to ban their customers from transacting with cryptocurrency exchanges applies for banks stopping transfers to the most risky bank (Monzo) for their customers in terms of APP fraud
I wouldn’t expect them to fully block it though, but definitely atleast make you call when transferring your whole savings to a new Monzo payee
The only time I’ve had to call HSBC was when I paid around £11,000 to my Chase savings. It was the first transaction to that account and it was dealt with in around 5 minutes with no repeated questions like the Chase call. All transactions since have been fine.
I’m no longer happy paying anybody from Chase directly - I transfer it to my HSBC account and then pay them from there. Never had any issues with that.
In the case of Monzo, you’ll be waiting up to 2 days with a frozen account for the specialist team to ask you very basic anti scam questions and unfreeze your account - while you probably already made the payment from another one
Out of Monzo, Revolut and Wise, I’d say Monzo was safest. There’s nowhere else to send money other than to a payee which I believe Monzo would pick up.
Revolut I have trust in, the problem is the crypto platform where people are duped into sending payments to fraudster through that as it can’t be clawed back.
Wise was always very high on the fraud list and Barclays would halt almost all payments to that platform because of the level of scams/financial loss involved.
Id have guessed that there was a lag period where Monzo, Revolut etc were friendlier to crypto exchange payments - or just checked less payments in general - than the bigger banks, meaning a fraudster would have a higher chance of getting cash out when the last bank is a fintech
It’s likely I may have misunderstood somewhere in the chat, but payments get held up being sent to revolut because of the crypto side - resulting in higher than normal level of risk.
If revolut didn’t have crypto attached, I don’t think the risk profile would be as high as it is for other banks, and payments would go through with less friction.
Revolut is fine as a general account, but because crypto is fairly risky, and the stories told commonly refer to sending money to revolut, then out via crypto, this is part of the problem, probably the biggest part.
Monzo are still crypto friendly afaik.
I will be moving some of my savings soon from Chase (to accounts in my name that I transfer into chase from regularly) so I hope this doesnt happen to me.
Good luck!
Theres lots of ways they set it up, from either by convincing the victim to download the third party bank app and go through unboarding or they do the same thing via a mix of remote access and coaching. Monzo, Revolut and Wise are some choices for fraudsters as there’s a higher chance some demographics dont already have these accounts and are less aware that they’re unrelated to their existing provider. That and the quick account opening without a hard search helps too.
Either way the fraudster has control of the new account in the end.
The victim is either convined to send funds to the new account by faster payment or authorise an open banking request. Generally done under the guise of a safe accout scam.
The initial attack is a random fraudulent card check (after a successful phishing attempt) and the fraudster calls the victim with that knowlege in hand to get the scam started.
My dad had the same recently trying to buy a drone - for less than a £1k. The difference was it was his Tesco credit card asking all the questions!
They blocked his card but didn’t tell him - the drone payment declined so he used his Barclaycard. He then went to buy fuel and couldn’t pay!