SEPA transfers to & from Binance might be unknown to crypto unfriendly banks

[ashkoba]

I've personally observed this year that Binance, through partner company "Harmoniie SAS" (branded as OuiTrust), accepts SEPA transfers through, and likely makes them outward from, virtual IBAN accounts created in the customer's exact full name as presented in KYC. These accounts, though the customer doesn't control them directly, are apparently used as proxies:

• Following Binance's euro "Deposit" instructions clearly shows an IBAN account very clearly in the customer's own name. Users can confirm that depositing euro into that account is immediately delivered into euro funds in the user's Binance account.
• Withdrawals from Binance are likely also sent *outward* through this account: since they show up in the destination IBAN account with the customer's own exact full name on the bank statement as the transfer donor.

So Harmoniie SAS, whether intended or not, seems to function as an "anonymisation layer" for IBAN account holders to interact with Binance: since, hypothetically, the company name & banking identify of Binance are not apparent to the remitting or receiving bank.

Therefore, also hypothetically, Binance might safely be used as a source or destination for IBAN accounts even at crypto UNfriendly EMIs or landed banks. Before going too far with this idea I wanted to confirm others' experience here: if not with this system itself then about SEPA in general, including these questions:

1 - Will incoming transfers (e.g. to your landed bank or EMI from "your" virtual French IBAN at Harmoniie) have any metadata in them that shows an "ultimate origin" of Binance?

• If the answer can be proven NO, it would seem that even conservative transfer agents like Wise or Revolut would accept incoming SEPA into customer IBAN accounts done from Binance in this manner.
• If uncertain: Is it possible to ask retail banks or EMIs for "full SEPA details" of a successful bank lodgement sent from Binance through Harmoniie... to confirm that the full account name was an exact match, and that it doesn't reveal the Binance origin in the transaction metadata?

2 - Could "Harmoniie SAS" be blacklisted itself... as a potential co-conspirator in banking privacy, or as a middleman for Binance or for crypto exchanges in general? My assumption has been NO (and therefore "safe"), mainly because the OuiTrust web site makes no such claim... but also because the current Google "AI overview" of search term Binance "Harmoniie SAS" (you'll have to type this yourself: linking to it seems to drop the Binance term from AI) currently always has some variation(s) of:

• "No Direct Relationship: While both entities exist, there's no indication of a direct or official relationship between "Harmoniie SAS" and Binance."

3 - Since the account holder name is identical between the Binance customer and the proxy IBAN account, it also seems possible (?) that euro foreign remittance services (e.g. Money2India Europe) — generally requiring that account names be identical between sending and receiving bank accounts — would accept an outward transfer from Binance directly into the remittance service:

• The answer would be YES (and therefore remittance orders accepted) if that remittance service only saw the customer's own name in the account: as we can verify in the Harmoniie IBAN account details for incoming Binance transfers... and hopefully also from the "transaction metadata" from Question #1.
• ALSO one would need to be sure that the Reference or Purpose for the transfer... generally containing a transfer code to identify that remittance and the account where it's ultimately going on the other end... is also passed along without modification.
• Generally I would assume the only way you'd know if this works, for any particular remittance service, is to try it... with a transfer you can afford to lose for a few days, while you contact Binance and/or the remittance service if something goes wrong: e.g. the Reference / Purpose not passed along correctly or if something about the metadata causes the remittance to be rejected.
• BUT I'm also hoping someone with general knowledge of "transaction metadata" in the SEPA network might know of a reason why this generally would or wouldn't work.

That's all I can think of for now & I hope we can collect here some knowledge & experience to either disprove or validate each of these use cases.

 

[diro]

I honestly have no idea what this thread is about. And since you haven’t gotten any replies, I’m guessing others are either just as confused or too lazy to read through it all.

Can you explain what you’re trying to say?

 

[ashkoba]

OK, here it is from a different writing angle if that's what it takes. Binance now creates new IBAN accounts for all their EU-domiciled customers though a virtual IBAN provider that makes it look like you own that the account. So, if you're given this based on a Euro domicile...

1 - When you send a SEPA transfer from Binance, it looks like it's coming from your account created by an innocuous-looking fintech company rather than a crypto exchange: so Wise, Revolut, N26, Deutsche Bank, etc. can't flag you for crypto business and wreck your account.

2 - When you send a SEPA transfer to Binance you definitely use that Virtual IBAN with your exact name on it: so instead of those crypto-unfriendly banks blocking your transfer or cancelling your account for a transfer to Binance, it just looks like an unremarkable remittance to yourself at a same-named account.

3 - And since remittances generally rely on account names being the same to determine validity — as people on this forum know well from their withdrawals from crypto cash-out services — it seems to open up remittances directly from Binance into such services, rather than having to use another IBAN account as a buffer between them & making 2 separate transactions.

I've never heard of anyone else on this forum mentioning that Binance had a built-in privacy feature that masks Binance's identity from customers' other banking partners that might be offended enough by it to close your account (as Wise would for instance).

There are dozens of threads here about people needing to create "buffer" accounts between crypto brokers and conservative banks... and here Binance appears to be doing it automatically. How is that obscure, or not of interest to people?

The bulk of the message is "What could go wrong with that idea?" From 5 years of reading this forum I know readers & writers here think of those questions preemptively and that's why the extra detail & exploratory thinking is there: to verify & consider this question:

What could you do if you felt certain that SEPA deposits & withdrawals on Binance looked like they were coming from or to you instead of Binance?

 

[Piano]

OK, here it is from a different writing angle if that's what it takes. Binance now creates new IBAN accounts for all their EU-domiciled customers though a virtual IBAN provider that makes it look like you own that the account. So, if you're given this based on a Euro domicile...

1 - When you send a SEPA transfer from Binance, it looks like it's coming from your account created by an innocuous-looking fintech company rather than a crypto exchange: so Wise, Revolut, N26, Deutsche Bank, etc. can't flag you for crypto business and wreck your account.

2 - When you send a SEPA transfer to Binance you definitely use that Virtual IBAN with your exact name on it: so instead of those crypto-unfriendly banks blocking your transfer or cancelling your account for a transfer to Binance, it just looks like an unremarkable remittance to yourself at a same-named account.

3 - And since remittances generally rely on account names being the same to determine validity — as people on this forum know well from their withdrawals from crypto cash-out services — it seems to open up remittances directly from Binance into such services, rather than having to use another IBAN account as a buffer between them & making 2 separate transactions.

I've never heard of anyone else on this forum mentioning that Binance had a built-in privacy feature that masks Binance's identity from customers' other banking partners that might be offended enough by it to close your account (as Wise would for instance).

There are dozens of threads here about people needing to create "buffer" accounts between crypto brokers and conservative banks... and here Binance appears to be doing it automatically. How is that obscure, or not of interest to people?

The bulk of the message is "What could go wrong with that idea?" From 5 years of reading this forum I know readers & writers here think of those questions preemptively and that's why the extra detail & exploratory thinking is there: to verify & consider this question:

When did Binance start with those new IBAN’s ?
Any idea who this innocuous-looking fintech company is ?

 

[TheCryptoAnt]

I've never heard of anyone else on this forum mentioning that Binance had a built-in privacy feature that masks Binance's identity from customers' other banking partners that might be offended enough by it to close your account (as Wise would for instance).

This has been common practice in the crypto industry since ~2020. Most platforms do this for their EUR deposits.
The underlying banking provider is usually OpenPayd.

Indeed it works with Wise.

You havent discovered anything new lmao.

How is that obscure, or not of interest to people?

See above

so Wise, Revolut, N26, Deutsche Bank, etc. can't flag you for crypto business and wreck your account.

They can. Try getting 250k into Wise (even as a 1st party transfer) and see them quickly ask for source of funds.

 

[ashkoba]

When did Binance start with those new IBAN’s ?
Any idea who this innocuous-looking fintech company is ?

This has been common practice in the crypto industry since ~2020. Most platforms do this for their EUR deposits.
The underlying banking provider is usually OpenPayd.

I don't know when Binance started doing this. The OP already said who the company is literally ("Harmoniie SAS" - branded as OuiTrust) but was also asking "who they are" in terms of their target market: whether they're potentially blacklisted as doing entirely crypto business, etc.

In 2020 Binance was using the old AdvCash (long before its rebranding) and an appalling Chinese gateway "ePay" for incoming SEPA. No hint then of creating "buffer" IBAN accounts, although the tech was there and EMIs like SpectroCoin were using it.

I know autonomous OpenPayd accounts are created for crypto.com customer IBAN accounts... while the Harmonie SAS accounts created for Binance accounts aren't autonomous: Binance operates the account entirely as a front end for deposits (and probably withdrawals, but to be sure I'd need to know I could get all SEPA details from the bank... another question in the OP).

From what @TheCryptoAnt is saying these IBANs aren't flaggable themselves for crypto business based on the "bank" that created them. Neither Harmoniie / OuiTrust nor OpenPayd claim to be offering anything other than "payment reconciliation" which will include lots of other applications besides crypto.

You havent discovered anything new lmao.

Indeed it works with Wise.

Thanks for helping me catch up since I've done nothing but crypto-to-crypto transactions since onboarding in 2020 and then riding the crashes. Small cash-outs in this mediocre market today without having to worry about EMIs declining transfers and cancelling accounts will be a huge relief.

People who read the whole OP will see why I wanted to authenticate that it was safe before committing to it, rather than posting some "new discovery". I'm glad you're laughing at my question since it suggests the industry has had some time to adapt to this need and any flaws in the "anonymity" of the arrangement would have been exposed long ago.

They can. Try getting 250k into Wise (even as a 1st party transfer) and see them quickly ask for source of funds.

Again I appreciate the confirmation since it suggests (correct me if I'm wrong) that such transfers would be flagged according to the amount of the transfer and not the IBAN that it was coming from.

 

[happyjohn]

OK, here it is from a different writing angle if that's what it takes. Binance now creates new IBAN accounts for all their EU-domiciled customers though a virtual IBAN provider that makes it look like you own that the account. So, if you're given this based on a Euro domicile...

1 - When you send a SEPA transfer from Binance, it looks like it's coming from your account created by an innocuous-looking fintech company rather than a crypto exchange: so Wise, Revolut, N26, Deutsche Bank, etc. can't flag you for crypto business and wreck your account.

2 - When you send a SEPA transfer to Binance you definitely use that Virtual IBAN with your exact name on it: so instead of those crypto-unfriendly banks blocking your transfer or cancelling your account for a transfer to Binance, it just looks like an unremarkable remittance to yourself at a same-named account.

3 - And since remittances generally rely on account names being the same to determine validity — as people on this forum know well from their withdrawals from crypto cash-out services — it seems to open up remittances directly from Binance into such services, rather than having to use another IBAN account as a buffer between them & making 2 separate transactions.

I've never heard of anyone else on this forum mentioning that Binance had a built-in privacy feature that masks Binance's identity from customers' other banking partners that might be offended enough by it to close your account (as Wise would for instance).

There are dozens of threads here about people needing to create "buffer" accounts between crypto brokers and conservative banks... and here Binance appears to be doing it automatically. How is that obscure, or not of interest to people?

The bulk of the message is "What could go wrong with that idea?" From 5 years of reading this forum I know readers & writers here think of those questions preemptively and that's why the extra detail & exploratory thinking is there: to verify & consider this question:

Thanks for breaking it down, that actually makes a lot of sense now.

I didn’t realize Binance was going that far to mask transactions. Definitely useful for avoiding issues with banks like Wise or Revolut.