One of the fascinating side issues, is that forum members have reported that certain fintech-not-a-bank's, I'm thinking of HMBradley in particular--actually did give them account and routing number at HMBradley's banking partner, Hatch Bank. And they reported success in making test withdrawals directly from Hatch. And you would have to say than in that case, while these conditions lasted, there was no middleman risk. Except that this direct access appeared to be an accidental byproduct of the way things were organized. HMBradley itself did not mention this as a feature, did not promote it, and did not promise it. My guess is that from HMBradley's point of view it was a bug, not a feature. It only existed by accident, and because there was no reason to try to prevent it....But unless you are given an account and routing numbers that you can use at other places that initiate ACH transactions, the money is not yours by definition. In theory, by contract, it's your money, but you have no ability to independently verify that...
The thing is that these empirical properties discovered by customers are not guaranteed and subject to change without notice. And indeed, HMBradley went through a few changes before shutting down. They changed their partner bank, for example. Forum members expressed mild dissatisfaction about this, because was also happening when the terms and conditions at HMBradley were also being ramped down to smaller and smaller benefits.
As far as I know, no HMBradley customers suffered any problems at all except the inconvenience of having it shut down and needing to find somewhere else to bank.
In theory, if a fintech promised, as part of the deal, that you would always have direct access to your money in an individual account at a known bank, with routing and account numbers you could use to make withdrawals without involving the fintech that would seem to be fine. I don't think such things exist, though.
Statistics: Posted by nisiprius — Mon Jun 24, 2024 7:26 am — Replies 103 — Views 9219