About 10 years ago a startup I co-founded had about $3M in a Chase account. We received a notification that they were closing our account within 30 days. We weren't able to get any information but I assume this was a KYC false positive. The only thing I can think of is that we had some investors from the Middle East. We had no problem withdrawing our funds but since then, I've opened another business account and a personal travel credit card with Chase, both of which were shut down within weeks, so apparently I'm personally flagged for life.
Just for posterity, we received this on 6/28/2013. Looks like they actually gave us 60 days.
> Dear [redacted] Inc.
> A review of our records indicates that we are unable to retain your above-referenced account(s) (the "Accounts") at JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (the "Bank").
> The terms and conditions governing the Accounts ("Account Rules") provide that
the Bank may close your Accounts at any time. Although the Account Rules do not require the Bank to provide you with advance notice of the termination of the Accounts, as a courtesy, please be advised that the Accounts will be terminated and closed after the close of business on 08/26/2013. Any items presented for
payment on the Accounts and not paid prior to termination will be returned unpaid. If the Accounts were covered by Overdraft Protection, as that term is defined in the Account Rules, such Overdraft Protection will terminate with respect to the Accounts on the Termination Date.
> Please do not deposit checks to the Accounts within five (5) business days of the Termination Date or any earlier date that you close the Accounts. Please arrange to cause any Automated Clearing House or ACH deposits or transfers to the Accounts to be terminated prior to closure. Provided that no checks have been deposited to your Accounts within the five (5) business day period before the Accounts are closed and no deposits of any kind have been made to your Accounts within a two (2) business day period before such closure, upon closure the Bank will, at your risk, mail to you at the address set forth above a check for the balance of your Accounts, less any service charges assessed to the Accounts. If deposits are made to the Accounts prior to closure inconsistent with the foregoing, the Bank will mail your check as soon as reasonably possible following closure of the Accounts. If you wish to make other arrangements for receipt of any funds remaining in the Accounts or if you have questions, please contact 1-877-691-8086 OPTION-NUMBER-1.
> Notwithstanding the Bank's intent to allow the Accounts to remain open until as set forth above, the Bank reserves the right to close the Accounts earlier, at any time, for any reason, without notice.
did you retype this? Assuming not, I just noticed they made the "if" -> "fi" typo twice and in two different ways -- interesting that what amounts to boilerplate can have that stuff get through.
> the Bank may close your Accounts at any time...the Account Rules do not require the Bank to provide you with advance notice of the termination of the Accounts
I assume most of the big banks probably have similar language, which would be a huge red flag to me for a small business account. But what about banks like Mercury Bank, mentioned in the article as being more supportive of small businesses? Do their terms of service provide at least some kind of guarantee about due process if the bank has a question about your account?
"A financial institution is not allowed to inform a business or consumer that a SAR is being filed, and all the reports mandated by the BSA are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act."
Roughly, if you deposit more than 10K USD in cash, they will need to file this form with the OCC. And, a bunch of other activities qualify. There is no guarantee that this will result in account closure, not does it directly indicate illegal activity. This seems to be a myth online. In the industry, the SAR is regarded as a "get of jail free card" for poorly staffed compliance departments. "When in doubt, file a SAR!", then the bank cannot be so easily sanctioned for allowing illicit activities.
If a bank suspects you of money laundering, they cannot discuss it with you. A bank employee could go to federal prison just for leaking the existence of a suspicious activity report (SAR).
So, the guy who rushes up and parks his car right by yours in the otherwise spacious bank parking lot to block yours from view, the fellow wearing a mask, hat and dark glasses who's sporting a "Suspicious Person Here" flashing Caution button on his Tshirt, is he going to cause trouble for the bank's opinion of you?
But this is bullshit though? if they indeed didn't want you to know of the SAR they would have not closed the account and let you build more of a case to arrest you
Most SARs are innocuous, the feds aren’t going to run a sting operation every time someone is a little too suspicious for a compliance department to touch.
> In the U.S., SARs gather up in piles at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Most are write-once read-never. The dominant way they are actually used is that, when someone comes under criminal suspicion for other reasons, law enforcement runs their name through FinCEN. That will, some of the time, turn up sufficient threads about their money laundering to allow investigators to send letters to the relevant financial institutions to get full account histories.
Had a similar experience at a startup I co-founded. Chase's risk or compliance team suddenly decided to close our accounts. Possibly because we were in the crypto space.
The Chase Sapphire card was rated as the best travel card. I had no idea that I had been flagged personally at the time I applied.
I can't remember why I chose them for a business account. At the time I was working under the assumption that this was a "lightning strike" type of event which could have happened with any bank. I'm more inclined to believe it's Chase-specific now, or at least more likely with Chase, esp. based on other anecdotes in this thread! I was also inclined to believe that most large banks are terrible. For example, I have experienced extremely poor customer service with B of A, and Wells Fargo is a very sleazy company. However, my experience with Chase is by far the worst I've personally experienced.
I'm a very happy customer of Mercury Bank for my current business, FWIW.
> I'm more inclined to believe it's Chase-specific now, or at least more likely with Chase, esp. based on other anecdotes in this thread!
The only reason anecdotes in this thread are about Chase is that Chase is the bank you mentioned in your article. If you had mentioned any other of the big banks I am sure you would get similar anecdotes. All of the big banks work basically the same way. For example, as I commented in another response upthread, they probably all have similar "we can screw your business any time we like and there's nothing you can do about it" language in their terms of service.
> my experience with Chase is by far the worst I've personally experienced.
Have any of your experiences with other big banks been small business accounts? If not, that's an obvious reason for your Chase experience to be worse.
I’ve had business accounts with almost every large US bank. I’ve founded quite a few businesses - venture-backed and bootstrapped product and consulting companies, going back to the 90s. I’ll repeat: I’ve never had an experience as bad as the one I had with Chase. Not sure what would possess you to
post something so condescending about a statement of opinion and then to make incorrect assumptions about the extent of my experience.
Also: the same company that got flagged by Chase had an account with Bank of America open at the same time and later opened accounts with a couple of other banks. No KYC issues with any of them despite exactly the same set of facts. And again, we did nothing even remotely shady or suspicious.
Correction from the poster I was responding to: it is not his article. My comment about why the anecdotes in this thread are about Chase are still valid, but I did not realize that the poster I was responding to was not the article's author. So I should have said "mentioned in the article", and the last paragraph of my post is irrelevant to the poster I was responding to. Sorry for the confusion on my part.
These banks are too big to fail and get bail outs funded by taxpayers (and SMEs), and yet SMEs are too small to matter and entire livelihoods can be thrown to ruins based on ahat is often a very subjective and often erroneous risk process. I understand banks have to comply with laws and often complex risks but i doubt they would shutdown accounts of companies worth over $1B unless youre violating some serious laws and even then it would probably be done with a lot more caution due to risk of law suit.
I doubt Mercury can do much more as arent they just a vrand on top of a bank? Like Heroku vs AWS.
For all of the complaining about banking majors in the US here on HN, why don't more people bank _intentionally_ with credit unions, or at least local banks? When you open your account, make sure that the branch manager knows who you are and what your pattern of business will be. Open your account wearing good clothes (suit, if possible), and share a business card with your account rep and branch manager. Think old school, like it is the 1950s, and it will be much harder for them to terminate your accounts.
> why don't more people bank _intentionally_ with credit unions, or at least local banks
Simply put, national access to those banks. Traveling business owners who deal with cash will have access to physical banking locations all over the country. You cannot deposit cash in San Francisco for a bank that is local to only NYC.
Woah, you picked a strange edge case. What legitimate businesses in 2024 fit this category? I'm pretty sure that you can deposit cash at any ATM if that ATM and your card have either "Cirrus" or "Plus" interbank network compatibility.
> I've opened another business account and a personal travel credit card with Chase, both of which were shut down within weeks
This pattern repeats itself frequently here on HN. My questions / advice are always the same. Did you send written letters to Chase to ask for an explanation? In parallel, CC the same letter (yeah, by snail mail, and tell Chase you are doing it) to your local and national banking regulators. I cannot believe you will get zero response.
What exactly is a "personal travel credit card"? I never heard that term before.
Believe it. Our account seems to have been closed due to a KYC issue, and the bank, by law, cannot tell you any details. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41333832
And, yes: we tried every avenue to get more information, including having an attorney write a letter. As you can imagine, this was quite concerning for our company. We wanted to understand if there was some piece of information that might lead other banks to close our account. As I mentioned in another comment, none of our other accounts were closed - only this Chase account.
I tried again to get more information when the Chase accounts I opened, for another business and subsequently a personal credit card, were closed, although by that point, the only logical explanation was my connection to the business bank account that had previously been closed and I didn't have much hope that I'd get an answer.
Also: to be blunt I'm not sure what gave you the impression that I'm looking for advice. I was relating an old anecdote that was relevant to the OP, not asking for help. I just stay away from Chase. At this point I know that I'm blacklisted with them. I have no issue with other banks.
> What exactly is a "personal travel credit card"? I never heard that term before.
"Personal" as in: this was a credit card for me personally, not a business credit card. My point is that I seem to be blacklisted by Chase even for _personal_ accounts unconnected to the business whose account the closed. I assume you've heard of a "travel credit card", but if not: https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/credit-cards/travel
Credit cards typically come in two flavors: cash back and travel. Cash back is self explanatory, travel cards reward points instead (cash equivalent of 1 point is $0.01 at least for the US). These points can be transferred to other accounts to take advantage of things like reward seats on airlines.
