Ukrainian entrepreneurs who have accounts in the American bank Mercury have received letters of termination of service. Ukrainian entrepreneur and founder of Petcube Yaroslav Azhnyuk shared the news on his LinkedIn page.
The letter from the bank states that the decision is related to recent changes in the bank’s policy, which prohibits opening and maintaining accounts for citizens of seven countries, which, for some reasons, includes Ukraine.
Mercury will also stop supporting accounts of companies whose founders have passports from Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela. The accounts are scheduled to shut down on August 13, 2024.
Mercury’s comments
In a comment to the post, the bank’s representatives explained that the changes apply to founders of companies living directly in Ukraine, not to Ukrainians doing business in the United States.
They acknowledged the error in their help center, which previously incorrectly stated that they refused to work with all clients with Ukrainian passports. Mercury assured that it will continue to work with Ukrainians doing business in the United States, but is currently unable to serve companies with founders based in Ukraine. The bank apologized for any confusion caused by the error.
“To give more context about the policy change: while Ukraine is not comprehensively sanctioned, several regions of Ukraine are sanctioned. We previously applied a region-based model to support as many customers in Ukraine as possible; however supporting this policy while also upholding our rigorous standards on compliance has become increasingly complex. We will continue to revisit this policy and hope that we can change this in the future,”
the bank explains.
Mercury promised to review this policy in the future and hopes to be able to change it.
This is not the first time that Ukrainian entrepreneurs have faced similar problems with the American financial system, Azhnyuk pointed out.
Earlier this year, Chase Bank refused to transfer money to Ukraine from its clients’ American accounts. In January 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the financial service Robinhood blocked access to its website for users with Ukrainian IP addresses.
Since the Russian war started, many American websites have also begun blocking traffic from Ukraine, making them accessible only through VPNs.
