Hi, I’m the guy who lost his wallet! I agree it’s a convenient overlap and understand your cynicism but I assure you that it’s genuine. I can even provide you with the receipt from me riding a jump bike around for an hour looking for my wallet! :)

EDIT: spelling + I did pin the tweet about transferwise after it blew up, and I also changed my bio to share my small side project: Podmast.com - check it out :)

Thanks for dropping in. Sorry if that actually happened to you. The sad thing is when much of tech is dedicated to churning attention capital into financial capital in an ever-more-clever cat-and-mouse game, one stops being able to trust anything that grabs one's attention. Or, at least every social interaction starts to feel purely transactional. It's a shitty social dystopia we're building for ourselves.

Whichever way your story went, thanks for the neat tale of what can be done with bank transfers! Glad it worked out.

Just post the thread from the slack channel at work where you obviously posted this story :p

I've seen that thread, it's funny :) Even I thought this is too perfect story as a co-worker, but it is.

*assure

Whoops thanks.

That's what someone who does this kind of thing would say.

I'm not saying I think it's fake, but I think it might be. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and posting a defense isn't evidence.

Edit: I wondered if I got this slogan right, and it turns out to have a name - The Sagan Standard! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard

> That's what someone who does this kind of thing would say.

Speaking of cynicism, this argument is known as an Ad Hominem Circumstantial:

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

The amount of cynicism is too damn high!

I'm not all that cynical about it. I don't think that people (micro-)blogging made up stories (which this may or may not be) means there's something terribly wrong with them. It's a white lie told repeatedly with a straight face. It's worse than a white lie told once, but not as bad as a more directly harmful lie like faking an illness and collecting money from strangers on GoFundMe.

You're making it worse.

Anyone can conveniently lose a wallet, but one with a bank card with no identifying info in it anywhere? A finder who went to bizarre lengths to make Faster transactions to your bank account to send you a message? Absolutely no other identifying information in the wallet? A plan to ride a jump bike around to prove you looked for it with receipts?

Before sending someone pennies with context in the transactions, hoping that person would get them before they canceled all their bank accounts because they lost their wallet, I would just take the card to the bank and have them call the owner, or take it to the police and they'd do the same.

Uhg, sorry, "I ensure you" and "jump bike receipts" is not enough to convince me.

EDIT: Removed the quotes from Faster, my point seemed to get lost because of that.

Would you please review the site guidelines? They include "Assume good faith."

The cost of getting this wrong is much higher than the benefit of getting it right, and in our experience the probability is higher too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Um, this is how banking works in the UK. Nobody cancels their bank account if they lose their card, they just cancel their card. And given someone else's card I could send them 1p within a minute (even if it's cancelled). Now I've seen this approach, it's what I'll do next time. And it doesn't involve the poster's company in any way, transferring thousands of pounds instantly within the EU is trivial.

Also in a lot of cases these days you don't even have to cancel the card.

If you're like "Oops, that's gone" and it fell into a waterfall or something then, sure, you cancel it and have a replacement sent, but say you just got back from the store and it isn't in your wallet. You call a modern bank. "Hi, I think I lost my card maybe?" Good chance they say - "OK, we'll freeze the card, call us if you find it or if you give up and we'll send a new one".

Both my accounts I just freeze it in the app, but yes, quite.

> Now I've seen this approach, it's what I'll do next time

I'd suggest calling or sending it to the bank instead. I'm sure they can find its owner with a lot less hassle than this.

Both of those options would take longer and be more effort, but I've only find someone else's cards 3 times in 40 years...

Faster Payments is a UK banking thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service

In the UK the details needed to transfer money into an account are on most bank cards (Account Number and Sort Code), so that's enough identifying info.

That would also mean someone can send you money if your card is blocked or cancelled. Account number and sort code don't change when you get a new card.

Also, "Faster Payments" is the name of the normal system to transfer money between accounts in the UK. It doesn't cost the sender anything other than the money they send. It's called "faster" because the old system was a lot slower (because it was based on paper I think?).

The old system (BACS) has been electronic since 1983, or possibly even 1968 when it was introduced. (Wikipedia is unclear, it seems transactions were recorded on magnetic tape for the first 15 years, before using phone lines.) It slowly replaces the paper based system: cheques.

The 2-3 days got the old system will have been a limitation of batch based computer processing from that time, and maybe moving the magnetic tapes around.

I'm curious about this. I've always banked with NatWest so I'm only really familiar with their cards, but my bank account number is definitely not printed on the card (the sort code is).

Do some other UK banks really print the account numbers on their cards? Or is there some way to send a Faster payment to a debit card number?

I'm with Starling Bank, and along with the usual Mastercard numbers (card number, expiry, CVV etc.) it has the account number... though not the sort code, strangely. I guess you could look it up if you wanted to, but you'd need to know this 8-digit number with no label was the account number. Weird.

My personal Barclays debit card has sort code and account number. My RBS business debit card has sort code and company name only.

I think Natwest is the outlier in this case. I've always had my account number and sort code on all my cards with other banks (Barclays, Lloyds, Halifax).

Edit: Maybe also Monzo, no account number on that one.

In my case, I have two card from one bank has sort code and account number. I also have one card from a different bank has none of that.

Pretty sure my Natwest debit card has my account number and sort code on it.

Just checked my Halifax Visa Debit card... Contains my name, visa card number, sort code and bank account number.

Faster Payments is the standard, free way of making payments to bank accounts in the UK. Everyone with online banking here has easy access to it regardless of what bank they use. Also, our debit cards generally have enough information to send someone a payment that way for some reason.

Unless something changed pretty much all payments in the UK are “Faster”.

Salary payments are typically still BACS and I think Faster does have a transaction limit in the 10’s of thousands of pounds range.

IIRC the limit according to the standard is £100,000/day but most banks impose their own arbitrary limit. Assuming things haven't changed in 5 years, this[1] lists the limits for a lot of banks. I can also add to the list that Monzo's is £10,000/day.

1. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2014/11/customers-bei...

BACS is generally cheaper at volume. In addition, BACS Bureau allows a payroll company to transfer money directly from your employer's account to yours without the money ever reaching their account.

All fixable, but payroll companies are generally chosen on price, not innovation.

Anyone can say anything they want on the internet! The variables here are conveniently precisely aligned where real world chances of this happening are null. I also call BS. But a noteworthy mention to the marketing idea. With all due respect.

For what it is worth, I saw this story and thought "Oh, I love this; creative use of metadata in the payments system", principally because I am professionally involved with payments. All the "coincidences" here are explainable by "people who geek out on X will tend to see a lot more X in their daily lives than civilians and will become focal points for other people who geek out on X, who see a lot more X in their daily lives than civilians." You can trivially reproduce "OMG banks!" on any social media feed you control; just kvetch in public about a banking story.

Also, there are people on HN who do marketing for a living (checks business cards including me?), and to the extent that you model someone as going into their planning meeting with "OK guys I have this great idea for how to hit our Q4 numbers: lets do stealthmarketing on our personal Twitter accounts", you should know that that would not receive the reply "Genius Bob, why do we employ teams of expensive professionals to do this when you come up with such pearls of wisdom for free."

Mentioning this half because excessive cynicism is a failure mode for geeks and half because many people on HN will, at some point in their life, actually have to get good at causing people to adopt a product or service, and HNers should correct the mental model that would suggest that this is in any way aimed at or effective at causing adoption of a product or service.

Reflexive cynicism is a simple, easy way of asserting intellectual superiority over others without directly insulting them. Super common in internet comments, including, arguably, this one.

It's vastly less complicated to just assume and assert that everything is bullshit everywhere, all the time, than to actually try to discern where cynicism and optimism are each warranted.

>Reflexive cynicism is a simple, easy way of asserting intellectual superiority over others without directly insulting them. Super common in internet comments, including, arguably, this one.

Or maybe it's a natural adaptation to a world where almost everybody seems to have some ulterior motive.

Edit: a word

> anterior motive

I think you mean ulterior motive :)

floatrock is pointing out the fact that there is a motive for this to be a PR stunt.

I'm not sure that's reflexive cynicism.

I've seen that type of cynicism and it is ugly. It's also ugly to assume there are never ulterior motives, or to disparage someone for questioning something.

I've found that just as there is reflexive cynicism designed to feel superior, there's also reflexive anger to people who go against the current.

floatrock provided evidence and reasoning as to why he questions the validity of this event. He never put blanked statements and didn't even accuse the event of being fake. He merely pointed out it might be.

Your comment is something I'd think of as reflexive anger toward cynicism. There wasn't any real weighing of evidence or deep consideration. Just a general dislike toward cynicism.

BTW: I understand the word reflexive to mean: without thought and consideration, automatic and many times pre-programmed (i.e. prejudicial either toward cynicism or against it)

> He never put blanket statements and didn’t even accuse the event of being fake. He merely pointed out it might be.

I feel like this is a debate-team style nuance that doesn’t really have merit in actual conversations.

If somebody tells me a story about their day, and I respond “well, it’s possible that you made all that up, and this is all a ruse to trick me”, I’ve not accused them of making it up, I’ve just pointed out it’s possible. But I’ve implied an accusation, otherwise I’d not have gone out of my way to announce this “possibility”.

And, as noted in your comment, you then do directly accuse the reply of being “reflexive anger towards cynicism”, with the implication that the audience is required to provide “deep consideration” when responding to the possibility. If the original comment is just pointing out something that could potentially be true, without any accusation, why are the rest of us required to give it deep consideration?

Can’t I just respond “well it’s possible you’re fake!”? To which the original commenter could retort “no, you’re fake!” And then we go back and forth forever, secure in the knowledge that it’s impossible to totally prove the voracity of any story. That would lead to a lot of comments back and forth, but it seems unlikely any of them would lead to meaningful/productive discussion.

> If somebody tells me a story about their day, and I respond “well, it’s possible that you made all that up, and this is all a ruse to trick me”, I’ve not accused them of making it up, I’ve just pointed out it’s possible. But I’ve implied an accusation, otherwise I’d not have gone out of my way to announce this “possibility”.

Except your example is not very compatible.

First, by making it a direct accusation, instead of 2 third parties discussing someone else. If I said it directly to you, you'd be correct in the accusation bit. Situations will make the same words have very different interpretations.

Second, and most importantly, your example has no reason. It's just doubt for doubts sake. That's the definition of reflexive. floatrock isn't just saying 'it's possible you made it up'. But, 'hey look, climate deniers are funded by big oil, maybe they are biased/not honest'. Conflict of interest is a REASON for doubting.

floatrock did provide reason for his doubt in the form of the exposure of a conflict of interest. Which is why I felt his comment was good. He even showed the doubt in a conscientious, non aggressive way. I actually don't agree that it was a PR stunt. But putting out relevant information, like conflicts of interest, should be relevant to all thinking people.

Next, you are welcome to provide a REASON for why it isn't a PR stunt. Personally, I think such a PR stunt would have marginal benefits toward the KPIs for transfer wise. Their small team would probably be better served on other things than this PR thing, if it was that. So I personally don't think it was a PR stunt. But that's beside the point. The point I was making: Reflexive statements suck, whether reflexively cynical, or reflexively sheepish, and I felt the person making the 'reflexive' accusation was unintentionally ironic.

The fact that you are ignoring the 'reasoning' element, makes the word 'reflexive' not seem relevant, when it is.

You can't prove anything definitively, but you can provide evidence to further an idea or not.

Evidence, reasoning... that's where the in-depth comes from. I would hope that's required on both sides.

It's called content Marketing and it's quite commonly seen here.

No, actually Content Marketing is not planting fake stories on social media.

I guess we can assume by this that TransferWise is patio11 approved :D

Isn't this a success story of a regular bank account though? I would find this super far-fetched as some sort of weird promotion, especially where OP's company is never mentioned and not actually posed as better than a regular bank account (or a regular bank account as bad).

Let's just enjoy nice stories that we come across.

Marketing is not a banner ad or billboard anymore.

A viral tweet like this could land him 5 minute segments on any number of local-news stations that need a feel-good piece. He'll then have the opportunity to talk about his company.

And followers. As this tweet makes it's rounds through the media, he'll get more. He can then use that following to promote his business.

It opened the door for people to openly bash their existing bank or financial provider, and he (and his company) didn't have to say ANYTHING - their followers did it for them.

AND... a bank card without a name on it of any kind? A wallet without any identifiable information? No license, no other credit cards, no shopper cards, not a business card???? Nothing?

Those things don't have phone numbers/email on them, so getting in contact with the owner isn't that easy.

Most cards have a business name or person's name. Taking the card to the police or the bank would get a call directly to them.

Who would think, I'm going to start a chain of 1 penny transaction to contact this person at this bank account, and hope they get them before they cancel their bank account because they lost their wallet.

And is this a wallet with cash and a single card with no identifiable information on it? NOTHING else?

EDIT: Because I can't reply below: because they have access to that bank account now. Pretty simple. The card in question is said to have their banking info right on the card, so you close that account and start a new one.

Why would you cancel a bank account over a lost wallet?

reply to your edit: (btw, you can click on the timestamp of a comment and reply directly, always) … That's not how it works. If you loose a card, you let the bank deactivate the specific card. The account itself is not permanently compromised by a card. Someone else knowing your "banking info" (= account number) doesn't mean much and is not a reason to close an account.

Option 1: Open up my phone, type a few numbers, and 3 short messages.

Option 2: Work out where my nearest police station is, and what time it's open, go to it, wait, fill out whatever crap they make me fill out.

Option 3: Work out where the nearest branch is to me, what time its open, go along, queue up, explain the situation, hope they can do something.

A bank card has the sort code and account number of the account on. Those let you transfer money into the account. They don't let you take over the account. They're like an area code and phone number, which don't let you take over someone's house.

A lot of HN regulars come from America, where knowing the equivalent information does often make it possible to steal money from someone's bank account and where you can only make payments like this using third-party companies or paper checks. I think a lot of the misunderstandings in the comments might stem from people not realising that UK banking is different.

> because they have access to that bank account now. Pretty simple

Have you ever considered that most countries don't have banking systems as ass-backwards as the US does?

Anyone you've ever written a check to has access to your bank account info.

There's a softer version of this intuition: a guy who works for Transferwise would be more likely to write a blog post about something like this when it happened to him.

I understand the cynicism, but at this point, Transferwise isn't a scrappy startup and I can't see any reason why they'd want to pull off such a PR stunt. They're valued at $3.5B. $3.5B companies don't "fake lose" their wallets to get to the top of HN

Don’t ignore your bullshit-ometer on social media platforms, it’s rarely wrong.

Transfer wise does forex not traditional bank transfers like this

Plenty of people here who are paid or pay someone else in foreign currency. Myself included.

TrasnferWise saved me thousands already, even if Interactive Brokers are half the price, but not an easy UI.

Sure, but 150k users liked and 30k users retweeted a deep-dive engagement into the intricacies of how hack-ey the current money transfer system is.

Some percentage of those people who deal with this stuff on a weekly or monthly basis will say "yeah, this is f'd, there must be a better way..."

Where is there a "deep-dive engagement into the intricacies of how hack-ey the current money transfer system is" at the link? I see a tweet with a fun story that's about no negative part of banking and bunch of replies about how this is cool or how the commenter also has a story about lost property. If it's deeper I didn't scroll far enough down, and I doubt very many of those interacting with the tweet did either.

Be all that as it may, in a world where people use their Wi-Fi SSIDs to say nasty things to their neighbours, I totally buy that this story is plausible.

Or set your phone to hotspot mode and transmit a poop emoji everywhere you go! It's the little things in life ...

To be a bit more cynical, every time I see those generic "change the world" and cheeky "office dogs" things listed as a reason to work there, I can't help think; "you really couldn't come up with any meaningful reasons to work there?"

Maybe I've already gone through enough shitty startups to not fall for it anymore, or maybe I'm just a cynical guy in general.

Just want to chime in to tell any prospective new Transferwise customer that my experience with the company has been dreadful. They can for no reason deactivate your account with funds still remaining. That’s not the problem though, it is that their appeals teams takes over 2 weeks to respond per message. Yep, waited 3 weeks to get an answer for deactivation. Another 3 weeks to convince them it was an error. Now it has been a month since I sent in my supporting documents and no reply yet. Think I might have to file a formal complaint at this point.

If it wasn't a real story it's a brilliant bit of marketing.

But this may be more commonly known 'hack' in the UK with their banking system than it appears.

>If it wasn't a real story it's a brilliant bit of marketing

Marketing for what?

Transferwise.

But which Transferwise product? Without any kind of a link between these posts and Transferwise products they might as well be posting cat photos.

It's not noteworthy all of itself, things get unproportional amounts of attention all the time on the internet, but I find it interesting that this story then ended up on the very top of HN

Hacking payment transfers to send messages can be used for "good or evil". I recently read about somebody using it to harass an ex-partner.

But this is a standard bank account and transfer? This is the old way of doing things, not his new way.