Mercury restricted a number of accounts linked to African startups and didn’t exactly say why

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Mercury restricted a number of accounts linked to African startups and didn’t exactly say why | TechCrunch techcrunch.com/2022/03/01/mercury-restricted-a-number-of-accounts-linked-to-african-startups-and-didnt-exactly-say-why

15 sats \ 19 comments \ @KenyaCoin 2 Mar 2022 bitcoin

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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 2 Mar 2022

"Hi, Your access to the Mercury account for [company’s name] has been temporarily restricted. Let us know if you have any question or concerns"

What? As if you can get your account frozen and only might have questions or concerns. Puke.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @247bf84fda 25 Aug freebie

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0 sats \ 15 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 2 Mar 2022

The number of companies involved with this restriction is unknown. But several sources told TechCrunch that they range from a dozen to 30 — including well established YC-backed startups and newer upstarts.

Mercury did not give any prior notice that it would take this action, nor did it explain why the action was taken in its first email to the affected startups.

"Hi, Your access to the Mercury account for [company’s name] has been temporarily restricted. Let us know if you have any question or concerns,” read the first email Mercury sent out.

Upon further questioning, Mercury [...] told some of these startups that their accounts had been flagged and placed under review by its compliance team after it noticed some “unusual activity” and couldn’t provide further details until its review was complete.

Startups from other regions don’t seem to have experienced a similar problem, judging by activity linked to the situation on Twitter.

CEO Immad Akhund reached out via email to those affected: [...] Since it’s a reasonably large set of accounts it’s taking us some time to work through all of them but it’s the highest priority for us internally and we have more than 10 people working on this.

0 sats \ 13 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 2 Mar 2022

Mercury’s restriction came at an inconvenient time — the end of the month — when major obligations such as salaries and taxes ought to be attended to; now, those will have to wait, the founders say.

Doh!

Hodling bitcoin permits the ability to later borrow against those funds, or to liquidate for cash should such a need arise.

0 sats \ 11 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 3 Mar 2022

I have a feeling that Mercury is going to close all those accounts for good. I might be wrong (and I hope I am). From experience, when a US bank restricts your account for more than 24hrs, that account is going to be closed.

If they were not going to close the account, the restriction would be removed within hours. It’s been over 48hrs. It will take a lot of pull and a little bit of magic for those accounts not to be shut down. I hope I am wrong because I am actually rooting for Mercury.

0 sats \ 9 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 3 Mar 2022

I immediately excused myself from the table to make a call. The dinner was to be paid by the company using the Mercury corporate card I had and by a quick scan on our order, I knew I did not have enough funds on any one card to cover the cost of dinner.

The financial operations of many companies run by African founders have simply bring brought to a halt overnight.

The fact that 100s of banking accounts owned by Africans across the continent were suddenly blocked shows us that this is clearly a bigger structural issue.

https://mochievous.medium.com/on-mercury-restricting-accounts-of-african-startups-59189c143580

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 3 Mar 2022

We were told that all the accounts that were blocked had “linked activity”, we are now in a holding pattern waiting for the official statement on what type of activity could have linked all of these companies asides the fact that they were all African.

As of the writing of this piece, I have not seen any public complaint on this by a startup without African founders.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 3 Mar 2022

Day 3 of our bank accounts being arbitrarily blocked by @BankMercury. Not sure which is more surprising, that the issue hasn’t been sorted out or that the ecosystem is just going about their business like this isn’t a major issue.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 3 Mar 2022

So what are the alternatives?

Our crypto fam have risen to the occasion to explain how using decentralized finance can solve for this. In the shorter term, some startups have shared that they can provide international banking services to African founders.

2.) Eversend is a one-stop financial services hub allowing Africans to exchange, save, manage and send money at the best possible rates, both online and offline.

https://mochievous.medium.com/on-mercury-restricting-accounts-of-african-startups-59189c143580

Eversend also permits buy and sell of bitcoin, stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies, in some of their regions (e.g., Uganda).

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Mar 2022

Another article on the subject:

African startups had their bank accounts suspended. Russia sanctions might be to blame https://restofworld.org/2022/african-startups-had-their-bank-accounts-suspended-russia-sanctions-might-be-to-blame/