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BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries (2024)

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343 points beeburrt | 9 comments | 16 May 25 06:23 UTC | HN request time: 1.531s | source | bottom
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rwarfield ◴[16 May 25 07:07 UTC] No.44002548[source]▶
We have normalized the treatment of the financial and payments systems as things that exist primarily to perform law enforcement surveillance functions. It's the same dynamic that leads to debanking of small accounts - payments firms exist on thin margins and the potential fines for inadvertently servicing a bad actor are stratospheric, so it's entirely logical to play it safe by refusing to service anyone whose profile looks even the slightest bit risky.
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ngruhn ◴[16 May 25 07:19 UTC] No.44002616[source]▶
The alternate is crypto. That will service anyone for ANY reason.
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sabas123 ◴[16 May 25 07:32 UTC] No.44002688[source]▶
Which is not necessarily a good thing.
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notpushkin ◴[16 May 25 07:35 UTC] No.44002714[source]▶
But not necessarily a bad thing either.

If everything else fails, I know I can still have two things to pay with: cash and crypto.

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_Algernon_ ◴[16 May 25 08:20 UTC] No.44002971[source]▶
This is a strange viewpoint considering that crypto is 100% reliant on some of the most complicated and high-maintenance infrastructure ever built by man: the internet.

If "everything else fails" the internet has failed, and crypto will be worthless. Gold will probably still have some value, unless shit really hits the fan.

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1. notpushkin ◴[16 May 25 08:38 UTC] No.44003080[source]▶
We’re talking about different “everything else fails” scenarios. Basically, I’m concerned about my bank accounts being frozen (happened with my Revolut account for example).
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2. sofixa ◴[16 May 25 13:17 UTC] No.44005139[source]▶
The solution for that is to have redundancy via multiple bank accounts, ideally in multiple countries.

Then nothing short of planning a serious terrorist act can get you kicked out of all accounts.

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3. ferbivore ◴[16 May 25 18:37 UTC] No.44008573[source]▶
Is that really the case? Per https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-... you can be pretty much completely debanked for only a couple of SARs/STRs, and it doesn't seem particularly hard to have one filed against you.
4. immibis ◴[16 May 25 21:46 UTC] No.44010055[source]▶
Are you a resident of multiple countries?
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5. notpushkin ◴[17 May 25 01:09 UTC] No.44011253[source]▶
Ah, yes, the classic 3-2-1 method: three accounts in two different countries, one of them being an offshore. Yeah, I’m doing all that (not the offshore part... at least not yet).
6. sofixa ◴[17 May 25 07:48 UTC] No.44012741{3}[source]▶
Don't have to be - fintechs like Revolut, Wise, N26 are based in different countries, but service customers in a decent chunk of Europe.
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7. immibis ◴[17 May 25 12:39 UTC] No.44013859{4}[source]▶
and you can get debanked from all of them in the same incident.
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8. sofixa ◴[17 May 25 16:16 UTC] No.44015296{5}[source]▶
The "incident" has to be pretty severe for you to be debanked in multiple EU+UK countries. Little less than terrorism would do it (I was going to say coup attempt might, but the Catalan leaders who tried to illegally secede from Spain didn't get debanked, so probably not).
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9. immibis ◴[17 May 25 20:46 UTC] No.44016878{6}[source]▶
Remember that Germany considers not liking the Gaza holocaust to be terrorism, and has issued Schengen area bans against EU politicians for this crime.