For years, Dutch customers trying to move a modest sum — sometimes as little as a few hundred euros — into a regulated crypto exchange have run into the same wall: accounts frozen, transfers held for “investigation,” and no real explanation. The banks call it compliance. But look closely at the record, and a less flattering story emerges — one where the same institutions that got caught laundering money on an industrial scale turned around and made ordinary customers pay the price for their own failures.
They got caught first — and made customers pay for it
None of this scrutiny exists because regulators woke up one day worried about a retiree buying €1,000 of bitcoin. It exists because ING and ABN AMRO were caught red-handed. ING paid roughly $900 million in 2018 for anti-money-laundering failures. ABN AMRO was fined $574 million in 2021 for the same thing. Rabobank has since been formally named a suspect by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service in its own money-laundering and terrorist-financing investigation.
Rather than simply absorb the consequences of their own compliance failures, the banks responded by turning their scrutiny outward — onto their customers. ABN AMRO was ordered to review roughly 5 million retail clients, at a cost of well over 100 million euros. ING quietly expanded its compliance workforce. The bill for years of looking the other way on large-scale laundering has effectively been passed down to everyday account holders, one blocked transfer at a time.
Crypto customers became the easy target
Cryptocurrency transfers turned out to be a convenient place to demonstrate “seriousness” to regulators — low-risk to the bank, high-friction for the customer. ABN AMRO has openly admitted it avoids crypto-linked business because it doesn’t want the exposure of “no or insufficient supervision of the cash flows.” ING has confirmed it puts crypto customers through “more extensive customer research,” including interrogating people about the purpose and origin of their own money.
The result, as of 2018: not a single major Dutch bank — not ABN AMRO, ING, Rabobank, de Volksbank, or Knab — would open a business account for a crypto company. Legitimate entrepreneurs were locked out wholesale, treated as suspects by default rather than customers.
For individuals, the pattern has been just as blunt. One widely reported case involved a Rabobank customer whose bitcoin purchases — which had worked without issue for months — suddenly and repeatedly failed, with the bank offering nothing more than vague talk of “technical issues,” while transfers to actual people went through without a hitch. No warning. No clear reason. Just a wall.
The hypocrisy is the story
Here’s what makes it worse: the same banks that spent years treating retail crypto purchases as a red flag are now happily building their own crypto business. In 2026, ING, ABN AMRO, and Rabobank all joined Qivalis, a nearly 40-bank consortium launching a euro-denominated stablecoin — and all three have rolled out their own regulated crypto investment products the same year. ABN AMRO and Rabobank had even quietly shelved their own earlier crypto pilots, “Wallie” and “Rabobit,” years before deciding the market was worth re-entering — on their terms, for their profit.
In other words: crypto was framed as too dangerous to touch when a customer wanted it. It became acceptable the moment the bank could own the product and collect the fees.
The bottom line
Every hold, every “we’re investigating” call, every frozen account over a modest crypto purchase traces back to one thing: banks that got caught laundering hundreds of millions of euros, and then built a compliance machine that treats ordinary customers like suspects to prove to regulators they’ve cleaned up their act. It’s a system built to protect the bank’s license and reputation — not the customer standing on the other end of a blocked transfer, unable to explain to their family why the money they worked for is suddenly out of reach.
We had a chance to talk with some of the ex-employees working in the fraud teams of the top three banks in the Netherlands — ABN AMRO, ING, and Rabobank. Here is what they had to say:
“Johan M. – 32 years old – Rabobank”
It was really tough and stressful. Our main rule was simple: “First block, then ask questions.” We had to freeze accounts right away, even if it caused huge problems for regular people.
It felt awful having to lie or make excuses to older, senior customers who didn’t understand what was happening, but our managers kept pushing us to do it anyway. Because the work environment was so mean and aggressive, other groups inside the company actually called us “The Bulldog Department” because our whole job was just screaming and arguing with upset investors.
“Matthijs S. – 43 years old – ING”
Looking back at my time working in the fraud department at ING, the office environment was striking, filled largely with immigrants, including many individuals of Surinamese and Arabic descent. While management turned a blind eye and freely allowed massive financial transfers for large corporations originating from questionable, shady sources, everyday average users faced an entirely different reality.
The double standard was glaring, best illustrated by a case where a 58-year-old customer simply wanted to buy €1,000 worth of Bitcoin to send to her son as a gift because the young man was studying blockchain technology. Our fraud team blocked the transaction immediately, and the poor woman couldn’t even buy groceries for over a month because her accounts were indefinitely frozen under the guise of an ongoing “investigation.” The discomfort was hard to resist, so I had to leave the job.
“Dineke K. – 26 years old – ABN Amro ”
Working as a fraud team employee at ABN AMRO was exceptionally difficult, and I ultimately decided to quit because the workplace pressure was unbearable. We were given strict monthly quotas for how many customer transfers we had to cancel and block, which management used as metrics to prove to De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) that our department was performing aggressively and effectively.
The most demoralizing part was hearing the genuinely confused and panicked voices of everyday people who simply wanted to invest modest amounts of money into cryptocurrency, only to have their accounts locked for multiple weeks. This wasn’t just accidental oversight; upper management intentionally prolonged these freezes to cause severe financial stress and actively demotivate customers from ever attempting to invest in crypto assets again.
