Ukrainians are increasingly complaining about the blocking of bank accounts during fundraising. During the war, money is collected more often than ever, and for a variety of reasons: some help the military , some - victims of bombings and relatives of fallen soldiers, some - relatives who have gone abroad.
Usually, the organization of aid is not carried out by professional volunteers from specialized organizations (with appropriate status), but by ordinary people (individuals) who want to help. Sometimes public figures can join, for example, people's deputies.
However, everyone may have problems with blocking their accounts later.
The other day, this happened to Olga Stefanyshyn, a member of parliament, who was collecting funds to help the victims of the rocket attack in Kyiv, and very quickly it was blocked by monobank, people could not send donations.
Banks "Strane" explained that this is not an isolated, but a very common phenomenon.
The reason is that collections are made to accounts that are not registered to professional volunteer organizations with the appropriate status. Usually these are cards of ordinary individuals, which are used without warning (banks) to collect donations.
There are usually three problems in such cases:
- Compliance with standard requirements for financial monitoring, where a sudden flow of money transfers (even small amounts) is a standard sign of suspicious or risky transactions.
- Compliance with the requirements of finmon by a public person (PEP) - a politician, people's deputy, high-ranking official, which banks monitor even more strictly, realizing that there is a risk of corruption.
– Violation/exceeding the number of transactions provided for a specific card account or card package. As soon as the limit is exceeded, the account is blocked.
For example, even before the war (from October 2021), Privatbank limited the number of outgoing and incoming transfers between individual cards. Each client was allowed to send 100 transfers to other Ukrainian accounts and receive 100 transfers to his own in one month, as well as make 25 transfers abroad and receive 30 from abroad. Privat explained this limit by the fact that 7 million of their customers make monthly transfers between cards and 99.7% of these limits are sufficient.
Unofficially, it was found that the restriction arose in order to stop/minimize illegal business activity. The State Bank of Ukraine tried to push Ukrainians to open sole proprietorships (individual entrepreneurs) more actively and pay taxes when they earn from trading on the Internet, markets or other businesses.
The main question is what should people who organize gatherings do so that their accounts are not blocked? The first tip is to get volunteer status and open a separate bank account for this activity. But you can do it even easier - to warn the bank in advance that you want to open a fund collection for charitable purposes, and do not conduct business activities. This can be done through the support center (by phone, chat). At the same time, the bank may ask the client to re-identify with the provision of documents (passport, tax code) and update data on current income. The higher the amount of income, the more card transactions will be allowed.
For example, a monobank with an income of UAH 150,000/month. gives a limit for the average amount of transactions per month of UAH 600,000, i.e. a ratio of ¼. In this way, a person can insure himself, although there cannot be a 100% guarantee against blocking, if the operation seems suspicious to the bank, he can still stop it and block the account.
"Banks are obliged to know the planned volume of receipts on clients' accounts. However, please note that any enrollment may be subject to verification and it will be necessary to provide documents confirming the origin of the funds. This is related to NBU resolutions No. 162, No. 164," explained monobank manager Diana.
So you still need to be ready to answer the bank's questions if needed.
