Account frozen within a week
Bigbank presents itself as a modern and innovative bank with slogans about “instant services” and convenience, but my experience was the complete opposite. My trust in this bank disappeared very quickly.
The bank blocked a simple €500 transfer between my own personal accounts. Even though I operate a self-employed business officially registered with the tax authorities and provided documents proving my activity, that was apparently not enough. They then requested bank statements from other banks I use.
Because I have long-standing business relationships with those banks, I asked whether such sensitive personal financial information could safely be sent via regular email. Because of this unusual request, my other bank initially asked me whether I was actually communicating with a legitimate bank or possibly with scammers pretending to be one. That alone says a lot about how questionable and poorly handled this entire process felt. Despite that, Bigbank continued demanding statements from my personal foreign bank accounts.
Throughout the entire process, my account remained restricted and my card was blocked. In the end, while hiding behind AML, anti-terrorism financing laws, and “Know Your Customer” procedures, the final message from the bank essentially sounded like: “send what we ask for, maybe we will ask for even more later, and most likely we will terminate the relationship anyway.”
At that point, the question becomes simple: why should a customer continue cooperating with a bank that already treats them as guilty by default?
Everyone can decide for themselves whether it is worth dealing with such a bank. But one thing is clear — if this is how customers are treated, these situations will continue happening to others as well. It becomes only a matter of time before a payment is suddenly frozen or an account and card are blocked without warning.