Question: How to lose ownership of the WISE business account in one easy step?

And no it has nothing to do with the AI running rampant.

Answer: Add a partner to your business account.

If, for whatever reason, the newly added "partner" decides to eliminate you, as the owner, from the account and liberate you from your ownership, no problem. WISE makes it happen without bothering you.

Here is the detailed background of what really happened last month.

As a part of my contract, I had set up a couple of EMI and brick/mortar corporate accounts in the process of building the corporate infrastructure for the company using a Nevada LLC as its corporate vehicle. The owner was a non US person, without ITIN or any other capability to open a bank account in the USA.

The agreement was that I set up the entire infrastructure, i.e. corporation, bank accounts, lawyer, accountant, etc. Once done, and once the owner get their ITINs, I would transfer the accounts to the owner and the deal is done.

With this in mind, we have initiated ownership transfer for ZEN, AirWallex and WISE accounts from me to the owner. I have added the owner as a registered user with all the privileges.

Per our agreement, he then started the process of getting registered as a full account owner. Both Airwallex and ZEN had contacted me, notifying me of the upcoming request. WISE did not - until it was over.

Out of the blue, I got this email from them (quoting verbatim) - from noreply@wise.com:

Hello XXX,

You've been removed from YYY Limited.
ZZZ is now the account owner, and we have removed you from the account. We've also deleted any cards you had for the account.
If you need to rejoin the account, you'll need to ask another team member to invite you again.
Thanks,
The Wise team

and three minutes later another email arrived, again quoted verbatim, from the same email address:

Hello XXX,

We’ve closed your account.
If you’d like to reopen your account in the future, you can use the same email address and password to log in.

Even with your account closed, we still have to hold onto some info about you and your transactions. Learn more about how long we store your data.

Thanks,
The Wise team

In our case, it was exactly as planned, except that we had expected WISE would sent me a notification that this was happening. No such luck.

So in a nutshell, a registered user with WISE business account can replace an account owner without any notification to the owner being sent until after the deed had been accomplished.

How about fiduciary duties WISE should have to its clients?

And finally, the URL re: length of storage of my data lead me to 404 on WISE page. wise.com/gb/legal/privacy-notice

I think the lesson is loud and clear for those who use WISE for business.

Any thoughts/comments welcome.

PS The brick and mortar bank demands that we both meet with them in person to make the transition.

Yes but I am not talking about frozen account here, I am talking about the removal of the account owner w/out the knowledge of the owner.

In this case yes, of course. However, I was talking about a generic case where unsuspecting owner of the account adds a partner only to lose the account. And I only knew about it as I was in constant touch with the owner, so I beg to differ. Cheers.