Kicked out by my bank BNP for no reason! A rant against anti-crypto services and banks!

Taking payments or paying a supplier sounds simple, unless your business has to do with cryptocurrencies. In this video from May 2023 (in French), we look back at the banking and payment difficulties we ran into, up to the closure of our account at BNP. A useful account if you are thinking of selling mining hardware or paying suppliers in cryptocurrency.

Online payment providers

Our shop's Stripe account was closed after two months, without explanation. In our view, Stripe's terms exclude anything related to cryptocurrency financial services, and our shop was caught by this even though it sells computer hardware, not financial services. We then switched to another payment provider, Mollie, which accepted our business.

Paying suppliers abroad

To order ASICs or power supplies, we sometimes pay suppliers in China, through the Alibaba platform or directly, by international transfer in dollars. Our business bank does not handle these transfers itself and goes through an intermediary. A large transfer for an order was refused after seven days, with the only explanation being that it was related to cryptocurrencies.

The bank then suggested we use the Wise service, which could not confirm in advance that the transfer would go through, so we chose not to use it. We therefore got into the habit of paying our suppliers in stablecoins through the Binance platform. As there was no suitable business account at the time, this Binance account was funded from our account at BNP.

The account at BNP

BNP customers for 14 years, we were asked by our bank to justify these transactions: form 3916 bis (the French declaration of digital asset accounts held abroad), form 2086 (gains and losses on cryptocurrencies), transaction statements and proof of the origin of the funds. We sent everything within 24 hours. In the meantime our transfers were blocked, although the card still worked. With no news after two weeks, we managed to reach the branch manager, who called us back three hours later: the transfers were unblocked.

About a month later, as we experienced it, a call from the bank told us the relationship was ending, followed by a registered letter giving us two months to close the account. No reason was given to us. We assume the decision is linked to the transfers to Binance, even though we had provided the documents requested.

Our takeaways

We have since opened a business account on Binance, after a process we found very cumbersome. At the time of the video, this account could not yet be funded by bank transfer. Our conclusion: crypto-related businesses are still poorly accepted by part of the banking and payment sector, and what we regret most is not having been given any explanation. We invite you to share your own experience in the comments.

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