EXCLUSIVE: Wirex users hit by unexplained account restrictions and “disappearing” funds
At least 16 Wirex customers have complained over unexplained account restrictions in the last nine days on Twitter, preventing them from accessing funds.
A handful of them have taken the issue up with the Financial Ombudsman, adding to those on Trustpilot who say they’ve done the same.
The Wirex app – when it’s fully working – allows users to buy, store, exchange and spend crypto and fiat currencies in a multicurrency account. It also offers a Mastercard, with 1.5% cashback on certain crypto transactions.
But a growing number of customers are fleeing Wirex over restrictions imposed for weeks at a time on their accounts, with apparently “no explanation”.
The worst cases include one customer having waited 246 days to get access to their account – and counting. Another told FinTech Futures they’d been waiting more than a year to get access to an account which held €20,000.
Disappearing money
The customers which spoke to FinTech Futures did so under anonymity. One user had his account locked for a week. The fintech cited a need for “verification documents” he’d already sent.
Multiple customers on Trustpilot claim this “verification” process can take upwards of six weeks. “The ineffective support is killing all the advantages [of Wirex],” one said.
When FinTech Futures’ source regained access to his account, which held around €3,000, Wirex started over-charging fees on his transactions. He shared videos of the issue with FinTech Futures.
“They unlocked my account but made it impossible to withdraw more than €300,” he says. “I buy €500 LTC (Litecoin), they say it’s €5 fees, and [they] end up taking more than €10 without it being specified anywhere. You just see your money disappear.”
To transfer his money away to a different cryptocurrency exchange, this customer ended up paying more than €100 in fees. “It cost me a bit but at least I’m not depending on scammers anymore,” he says.
Another big complaint is over pending transactions. One customer on Trustpilot had £1,300 pending out of their Wirex account for more than three weeks, with no update from customer support on the whereabouts of the money.
From Twitter to the UK’s ombudsman
Wirex customers on Twitter are beginning to corroborate the issues around account restrictions. Another customer, under anonymity, tells FinTech Futures “sending out funds is locked”.
“We can do anything except sending things out of Wirex. Customer support does not reply, or they say they will do something. But they won’t. In response to complaints, they just say it works”.
“Some folks, including me, started a complaint procedure at the Ombudsman. After this, we can move on to a lawyer.” Customers on Trustpilot also say they eventually resorted to higher authorities to try and reclaim pending funds or access to funds in their Wirex account.
One Twitter user claimed last week that their ticket had been sitting there for “over two months now”. “I need to chat with somebody [at] Wirex,” they write. “But [I] can’t use the chat because [my] account is locked without ever giv[ing] me a reason why.”
Another customer, Robert Vasliev, called on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to take away Wirex’s licence. Wirex operates as a regulated electronic money institution (EMI) under the FCA.
The start-up claims its operations don’t apply to the Financial Ombudsman. FinTech Futures has reached out to both regulators to understand how they work together in relation to cryptocurrency firms like Wirex.
A capacity issue?
Earier this week, Alertify reported on the Wirex complaints too. It traced complaints back to December 2020.
But even as far back as February 2019, per a Reddit post, customers have been accusing the firm of locking their accounts “without reason”, claiming “Know Your Customer (KYC) issues” which “took weeks to fix”.
Upon approaching Wirex, a spokesperson told FinTech Futures: “Wirex is aware that there are some users that are experiencing issues after being locked out of their accounts. Unfortunately, to maintain the integrity of our checks, we often cannot disclose the full details of why individual accounts are blocked.”
The fintech then seems to point to a capacity issue in its right of reply. The spokesperson says Wirex is “receiving tens of thousands of new users”, “on top of” its “already existing 3.5 million” customers.
“These customers still need to pass the stringent KYC checks required by a regulated company. Meaning that some users may experience some delays with their transactions and verification.”
The firm also told Alertify that at the end of January the start-up turned off IBAN functionality due to a change in third-party providers. But the fintech didn’t quote this as a reason for freezing or restricting accounts.
Since its £3.7 million crowdfund last October, Wirex’s CEO, Pavel Matveev, has referenced “growing pains” to investors. Suggesting the company is fully aware of the frictions it’s causing customers.
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@wirexapp fail to explain the locking of my account this is now getting stupid first they a XRP transaction hostage for 3 weeks (flare airdrop time surprise surprise) then I make a card purchase that is declined and the money never returned to my account it has been 3 weeks now then I top up and instantly my account is now locked @CryptoprenuerUK twitter
When I read about this complaints I withdraw my 67 pounds of bitcoin from wirex and they charge me 27 pounds of withdrawal fee. They took almost half of my money. This is not acceptable
Wirex is terrible. Check out club swan. Never an issue. Spot on service and low low fees!
don’t rely on wirex for crypto-out, I am a victim as well, they are holding transfer outs to other wallets … the support is a rubber wall, is incredible.
Their attitude to customer service must definitely have been developed living in eastern block countries, as they simply don’t give a damn, unbelievable how customers like me have their transactions blocked for thousands of euro for weeks, and no solution in sight
I too have had my account blocked for verification reasons I gave them everything I could possibly give them but still they send me the same reply and that’s I need more documents. Coinspot ask me for the same documents but it was accepted sorted instantly Scammers that’s all they are I have $7k in my account lucky I sent the other 40k to my ledger although that took me a week to do that as they restricted how much I could transfer and once a day twice if I was lucky but at small amounts absolutely scandalous
I am getting all sorts of issues with my Wirex account. I cannot withdraw $ from my Wirex US debit card to my account. The balances on each of my currency accounts (USD and Euro) is incorrect (make n sense at all). Money transferred over a month ago from Euro debit card to account has gone from card but not credited the currency account. I have therefore transferred out as much as I can via BTC but still have balances due to above issues. I reported the problem over 3 weeks ago and got an email yesterday saying Wirex were receiving large volume of calls and so could not resolve it for some time. At the same time they have sent me my new MasterCard. What a mess.
I need some help. I had £700 in the account I havn’t touched it as I was saving it for a rainy day. The price has been increasing over past months. So, I asked them for a card, because the one they sent me didn’t work. They told me they weren’t issuing cards. I asked how I can withdraw the funds. I havn’t used the wirex to make a transaction and I asked them to explain clearly how I do it in layman’s terms. All of a sudden on checking the account one day it said £750 then when I looked the next day to see if I had any answers from them my account said 0.01p. I sent them a message asking what had happened. I got automated replies saying they had sent me emails re fees. I asked them to set out the fees which I opened and read. It said they would charge me £5 month if I don’t make a transaction. I had emailed asking them how to make a transaction. Result. They have taken £700 in storage fees saying that they had let me know. I am livid. I was saving it for a rainy day in the future. I sent 3 requests for answers and they have fobbed me of with automated replies saying it was taken for storage fees. I don’t quite know what to do really. Any advice. I can’t deal with them they are cowboys!
Sara the same thing has just happened to me! ive had no replies or even emails to say about the storage fees, ive noticed little ones coming out slowly over the past couple of months but now its not even showing the last one come out its just pending because they’ve taken it all! wtf is going on with them!
I have my account blocked for nearly 3 months with my money there (£2600.00). The customer support only reply to my complains and tickets (I raised) with a standard email saying that they are looking into it. 3 months!!!! I feel scammed! Wirex is a scam. They should get their license revoked!
I love a it of sleuthing and looking at Wirex’s accounting dates in Companies House, these problems started around when they pushed back their accounting date in 2019 to December 2019…hmmmm. Maybe I’m putting 2+2 together, but those would be the first audited accounts to get filed and if you deduct the WXT tokens they issued, those figures would look like dogs**. They created a basically worthless WXT token and assigned an asset value to it – I wouldn’t mind betting to offset mounting liabilities if they are failing. Even weirder and more worryingly (I’m a financial analyst so this didn’t;t go unnoticed with me and is an instant warning sign of a company on the brink…) is that they had to crowdfund. As a company that (says they have) 3 million+ customers, you’d expect that they would (like all their so-called rivals who have successfully) have investors queueing up… but… tumbleweed…. nothing… hence needing to crowdfund to keep the lights on. Methinks it’s time to pull my money out of this jokeshop lickety split and go to a more reputable company like Revolut (ahem!)… This is seems like a digital Northern Rock waiting to happen and it smells of them clinging on to deposits to avoid collapse…. Where’s the FCA when you need them?!!
I had about £3000 in cryptos and £ on my wirex account and disappeared today. Don’t know to call anyone. They used to send email once a day. Responds on chat after 2-3 hours. Very bad costumer service.
But the biggest issue is the money and cryptos disappear from wirex account. What can I do now? Who’s able to help?
All my crypto taken from my account March 7th by Wired for Inactivity fee. That’s like £500. What can I do 😥
Wirex m’a prélevé d’un seul coup plus de 5000€ de frais de garde, soit les 3 quart de mon compte . Le service client ne répond pas à mes mails quotidiens depuis. C’est clairement du vol. Un vrae arnaque
All true. My account locked for 3 months now after years of daily use. Support is keen to answer to every review at TrustPilot but does nothing to help.
Now the débit card from Wirex have been canceled and the new card imposed by them is not working.
The send functionthat allowed to transfer to a bank account is greyed and not working, so my money is locked there. No way to use it. Wirex does only answer standard we are looking into it, like if my case was the only one, but I talk to a friend who is in the same situation.
Wirex is illegally blocking their users money, they should lose their license.
today 1.28 ETH have been stolen bfrom my Wirex wallet by justifying it with “Storage fee”. I have spent almost 20 mins online with their “customer care” and they have replied me that they will let me know asap via email. I have lost almost 2.000 € and have no idea on how to get them back. Any suggestions? Does someone succeeded in having back their money? I am so frustrated for this… that was my little treasure for the future, in case of emergency.
Do you know any class actions on the run for that?
Since this story broke by Fintechfutures, the number of reports of account freezes has exploded and the number of people affected is well into the hundreds looking at Wirex community forum.
I myself had a £2,000 Bitcoin account frozen in January and despite dozens of messages to support, complaints to head office, they still haven’t even provided a reason or timescale for lifting, so I’ve had to get the FCA and Financial Ombudsman involved since they now just ignore messages and send standard bot responses.
I have a feeling there is something more serious going on with Wirex involving either liquidity cashflow problems and/or major outright fraud. It shouldn’t take 4 months to check customers details and unfreeze accounts.
Other red flags seem to support this:
1. The sheer amount of complaints on their community forum involving random unexplained charges on debit cards, balance differences, and complaints about their ‘share’ crowdfund which has failed to give any tangible benefits for the millions generated. Then there’s the withdrawal limits applied to many accounts and suspensions, whenever people try to withdraw their funds. And if you complain about any of this on their community forum, their staff are now selectively deleting any critical messages, entire threads and even suspending customers from posting.
The scale of the issues is now so alarming and affecting so many that I am forming a WIREX CUSTOMER LEGAL ACTION GROUP. If you have had your account suspended and can not access your funds, please contact me by e-mail at [email protected] with details of your situation as I can help you recover your funds from Wirex.
My account has been locked for 30days .I reported it was hacked and have reported this to the police.
I was trying to set the App up on my imac but after receiving 3 authentication numbers from wirex I was unable to do so.
I was on my iphone in the app at the time and all my coins and funds except XRP disappeared within minutes.
I firmly believe I triggered there security but have no word from them and they keep saying that there team are looking into this.
Awaiting word back from the police and meantime sent them a copy of there customer service and security as they obviously have never read it.
Total shambles no way they should be operating in uk
I have over 20k in Wirex account in Crypto. They have locked my account for the lost one month without giving me any reason. Same issue as most people, i thought FCA was suppose to protect the consumers, what is the point of the regulation if they can not action on such unethical practice. I have reported to financial ombudsman but they can not take any action, they have suggested to give the Wirex 8 weeks to resolve the issue. Keeping my money hostage is like keeping my family hostage. Where are all these regulator bodies that supposed to protect the consumer. Has anyone manage to recover there money via financial ombudsman?
I have been able to transfer crypto out of my Wirex account but not withdraw any of the GBP funds. And when I try to buy crypto with GBP so I can transfer it Wirex blocks the exchange. I have GBP funds in Wirex that I can’t do anything with except spend using the card. The app won’t even let me use my GBP to buy Wirex tokens! They offer to pay interest on Wirex token balances but then stop me buying any more Wirex tokens.
My account was locked last year without a reason specified. Support kept saying they’d fix my issue then eventually stopped replying. I’m still trying to recover my £500.
I have been locked out of my Wirex account for 341 days with no access to my funds. The value of the funds currently sits at over £18k. No response from Wirex accept for them to say ‘the relevant team are investigating’. No one should even think about using Wirex.
I can’t get my GBP out of my WireX account. Really terrible. I finally got through to support and they said they had a regulatory issue and can’t release anyone’s funds. Surely this is illegal. They sent me this link; https://wirexapp.com/help/article/temporary-changes-for-uk-customers-0390
Can anyone help?
My GBP is stuck in wirex too. I just looked at the link date, and you would think the issue would be sorted. Has anyone contacted the FCA for the reason wirex cannot operate as normal?
Wirex is holding thousands of dollars of mine after I had been a loyal customer for years. They ask for ridiculous forms of of proof such as the exact last transaction of mine, which was years ago. Their customer service is unresponsive.
Have been locked out of my account for 6 months, literally about 150 email pleads from me to regain access. I get the same response from “Anastasia” who sends a temp password which never works. A couple of weeks ago I was sent standard KYC docs, then they sent another temp password..which again did not work. the are holding thousands of pounds of my money 🙁 don’t know where to turn to!
Reading these comments is really concerning me, I thought my issue was just affecting me but it is the same as many. I had about £10k of mostly crypto (before the crash) but I’ve been locked out of my account since early May. Keep being sent one-time passwords which don’t work and “the technical team is working and trying to resolve it as soon as possible”…..for 6 weeks!!!
What a joke! I can’t work out if it’s a scam or just a really incompetent company totally out of their depth!