Sooner or later, you may be blocked out of your bank account. It can happen to any of us, and it can even happen with supposedly crypto-friendly “banks,” such as Bitwala, Revolut, and more.
The question is: what should you do if such a company freezes or blocks your account? Well, according to lawyers, there isn't any legal 'magic bullet' you can use that will successfully get your account reopened.
Still, at the very least, you can seek to contact and cooperate with your company as fully as possible, assuming that they've frozen your account in order to carry out KYC (know your customer) or AML (anti-money laundering) checks. And in a worst-case scenario, you can always contact the financial regulator of the country where you and the bank are located.
Desperate clients
Complaints from people being locked out of their bank accounts are surprisingly common. Basically, if you tend to dabble in cryptocurrency trading or crypto-related business, and if you use a bank that accepts your custom as a 'crypto person,' you seem to be at greater risk of having your account blocked or frozen.
For example, the Berlin-based crypto startup Bitwala that provides German bank (solarisBank) accounts, is also being criticized for account-blocking on Reddit. Here's Reddit user "pibyk" writing on the Bitwala sub-Reddit a couple of months ago:
"I consider myself to be sort of lucky as my account got blocked for no valid reason before I put anything in it. So there is nothing to recover and no hassle to get the money back. The message I got was meaningless, and their customer service failed to respond in any reasonable time. As far as I am concerned this action constitutes a serious breach of trust, so I am no longer interested in such an unreliable service."
This kind of problem isn't exclusive to Bitwala. Another reportedly 'crypto-friendly' bank – the UK-based Revolut – has also received a number of Reddit complaints, including this one:
"All my money is locked in my revolut account, I can’t even buy a bottle of water because i got no cash on me and these jerks are ignoring me for no reason. Please help me get in touch with them, I’m desperate."
In other words, the problem is a general one, and similar complaints can be found for Wirex, Barclays, ING, Fidor, and Simple Bank, among others.
‘The quickest and cheapest strategy’
Legally, what can a customer do if their account is frozen by their bank? In terms of taking specific legal actions, the disappointing answer to this question is: nothing.
