Transferwise suddenly decide to send me snail mail to confirm my address

[Neil]

I used TW last year and this year to send money to the UK no problem. Now I’m trying to send money to Australia. They received my money OK and sent a confirmations saying the money should be arriving that day. Then I waited and kept checking my page on their website but the money didn’t arrive. Next I get an email from Support saying:

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I am sending this email regarding your recent payment from Japanese Yen. Due to regulations, this payment cannot go through until your address has been verified on TransferWise.

We have already sent a non-forwardable verification letter to your home address. However, it was returned by Japan Post.

Please double check if your profile address is correct and get back to us as soon as possible.

If we don’t hear back from you in the next 5 business days though, we’ll have to refund any money paid in - we can’t hold your money for too long.
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Of course I'll just reply and hope I'm in next time, but has anyone else had this? Is it because it’s Australia? I don’t understand why they suddenly need confirmation after I’ve used them twice already. They even told me the money should be arriving that day, so it sounds like something caught their attention or at least threw a spanner in the works. Not to mention the stupidity of a system whereby because I wasn’t at home the PO sent the mail back. No slip or anything. Grrr.

[RetireJapan]

I had this last year. Basically I originally opened my account before the current rules were in place, so making a new transfer triggered the ID confirmation.

It's a bit of a pain and not ideal to have it done when you're trying to send money, but I guess they have enough dormant accounts that it wasn't worth checking everyone when the new rules came in.

Once you jump through the hoops everything should be fine

[ricardo]

They could at least have emailed all their customers to warn them. What if the transfer had been urgent?

[Neil]

Yes. And if Ben got one last year, why am I getting one now, just a month after last sending? Seems very random for a 'regulation'.

[adamu]

Better give up and pay your bank a few thousand to do it for you instead. I honestly don't think that'll be any easier. But as always, please let us know if it is.

[Neil]

I got this in an email:

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Address for JPY transfers needs to be verified when the first payment is over 100 000 JPY or customer makes a second transfer from JPY (regardless of the amount).

We can see that you have two successful transfers from JPY, most likely due to bug in our system your second payment went through without an address verification. We will investigate this issue from our end.
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In the end, I wasn't in and the postman let my wife use her own hanko anyway... I was going to add this info to the last blog post on Transferwise but comments are closed. Maybe useful if someone needs to send urgently.