I’ve now had three different incidents with banking cybersecurity that has resulted in major inconveniences.
Wise
I use Wise app to transfer money back and forth from the U.S. to Europe. The app and service has been pretty good but lately they have gone insane with cyber-security. It’s already bad enough to jump through hoops to log in to the app, multi-factor authentication then getting an email to confirm your login. The last time I tried to transfer money, I was required to send in a copy of my bank statement to prove I own the bank account. Keep in mind that I’ve been using this service for years and from the same bank account and then they spontaneously decided to start asking for IDs, banking statements, and other hoops.
I suspect they are using some idiotic third-party service that flagged my transaction as high risk for some reason and they believe that stupid service over my multi-year history with Wise.
Zelle
I have been using Zelle to send money since it’s inception way back when and never had any problems. The issue I had here was that it was with an old bank that I kept around because I didn’t want to bother with moving Zelle because I feared the hoops I’d have to jump through to get this moved over to Chase.
Unfortunately, we had to pay our property taxes and my wife was going to charge it to her credit card to earn miles and I was going to pay her with Zelle. The catch is that the account that has Zell active has a low balance so I had to switch it to Chase.
The problem with Zelle is that after years, it still only allows ONE bank account to transmit money. It’s 2025 and we have autonomous cars, computers, AI and other techno marvels but you can’t have more than one bank account linked to your Zelle account? Good grief!
Chase
After going through hoops to move Zelle from my old bank account to Chase, I tried to send money. The limit is $2000 so I tried it once. I had to confirm my identity but every phone number Chase had was from 20 years ago and none of those were active so texting and calling were out. The only option left was scanning my drivers license with the app but the app wouldn’t access my camera so I called tech support which was totally useless. I had to answer questions like “who/why are you sending this money to/for what, etc?” They told me they would clear the transaction but it ended up getting canceled TWICE.
For security reasons, I had moved my Chase app to require Face ID which evidently prevents the app from accessing the camera on your phone. It took a while to figure this little gem out.
After scanning my ID and waiting 10 minutes, I tried to send $1000 and it finally ended up working. Needless to say, this all cost me about 2 hours of wasted time.
I actually don’t hold too much money in any bank account now since I prefer to keep that cash in brokerage accounts earning higher interest but now I’m looking for a broker that might have Zelle access and avoid these banks altogether.
I get the banks and people deal with lots of fraud and hacking issues but this is really starting to get ridiculous. Hey banks, if you’re having to majorly inconvenience your customers then you’re using the wrong systems for your banking transactions. At this point, I’d rather just use bitcoin for all my transactions and bypass this mess.
Share The Wealth
Have you had Zelle and cyber-security adventures like this? Let me know in the comments below.