However bad I thought the swallowing of Afex into Corpay (Fleetcor, Cambridge FX) was (see blog article and blog article), I was mistaken. It is worse. I cannot in good conscience suggest that any Afex customer spend even a moment trying to preserve their customer relationship with Afex. Here are the latest disasters.
In the old days of Afex, before they got swallowed by Fleetcor/Corpay/Cambridge, what would happen when somebody in another country sent money to us was that we would receive an email letting us know that we had received some money. And it said who sent the money. I am emphasizing here that it said who sent the money.
Yesterday some money came in through Afex. An email came in from the new company (Cambridge) letting us know that the money had come in. It said how much money had come in. But nothing in the email said who it was from. It did not say what bank had sent the money. Nothing in the email even said what country the money was from. I later spoke with a human being at Afex who said that that is how it is now. If you ever do receive a notification that you have received money, the notification never says who it is from, and it never says what bank sent the money, and it never even says what country the money came from.
But it’s worse than that, as I will now explain.
Let’s start by recalling how it is that your foreign colleagues used to send money to you through Afex. And to understand it, we will also recall how other Afex customers would receive money from their foreign colleagues. The situation was that all of those foreign colleagues would wire their funds into a single bank account. And then the Afex people would work their way through all of the various incoming bank wires, one by one, to work out which Afex customer is supposed to receive each particular amount of money. The way the Afex people would figure this out is by looking at the OBI (originator to beneficiary information) which is a sort of comment field. The sender of the money would mention the Afex customer account number in the OBI field. So for example if one of our firm’s foreign colleagues wished to send money to our firm through Afex, they would mention our Afex account number in the OBI field of the bank wire. And the Afex people would see our Afex account number in the OBI field of the bank wire, and the Afex people would credit the money to our account at Afex.
Another possible outcome might be that the Afex people would see the account number of some other Afex customer in the OBI field of a bank wire, and so the Afex people would credit that money to that Afex customer.
One of the key things about this is that we did not need to know that money was on its way to us. Even if we had no idea that somebody was sending money to us, we would learn that the money had arrived, for the simple reason that the sender would have mentioned our Afex account number in the OBI field, and the Afex people would see the Afex account number, and the Afex people would tell us that we had just received the money.
What I learned today is that under the new Afex-swallowed-by-Cambridge (now part of Corpay now part of Fleetcor) system, there is nothing like this. The general rule is that nobody at the new company looks at the incoming wire to see if there is any Afex account number in the OBI field. The way it works now is, and I am not making this up, the only way that we would ever actually receive the money is if we somehow know that it is on its way to us, and then only if we go to the trouble to contact Afex to specifically ask that the money be credited to our account.
So for example suppose the sender used an email to let us know they were sending the money, and suppose the email got lost somewhere along the way. Then we would not know that the money is on its way. We would not know that we are supposed to contact Afex to specifically ask that the money be credited to our account. Where would the money go, I asked an Afex person? The answer is, Afex would keep the money. If we ever did get around to asking for the money, Afex would give it to us.
To give a second example, suppose the sender were to mail a letter to us to let us know they were sending the money, and suppose the letter got lost somewhere along the way. Then we would not know that the money is on its way. We would not know that we are supposed to contact Afex to specifically ask that the money be credited to our account. We would probably never receive the money.
The way I found out about all of this was, I was sort of wondering just how good or bad the new Afex company (called Cambridge) is at handling incoming money transfers on behalf of its customers (such as us). So I figured why not do a test transfer? So I used our Wise account to send money to our own Afex account, using the bank details for Cambridge (the new Afex bank details). The money reached Afex (Cambridge) last Friday morning. I included our new six-digit Afex account number in the comment field.
I kept waiting and waiting, figuring that sooner or later Afex (Cambridge) would get around to telling us that somebody had sent us money. No news last Friday. No news this past Monday. Nor Tuesday (yesterday). So finally I phoned up Afex and asked about it. A fellow at Afex invited me to provide proof that the money had really been sent. I provided a confirmation from Wise. He said he would get back to me.
Today, I received one of the content-free emails telling me that some money had arrived. No of course it did not say who sent it, nor did it even say what country the money came from. But yes it was the right amount of money. And it said (untruthfully) that the money had arrived today (Wednesday). So they (Afex) had kept the interest on the funds for the intervening five days. I phoned up the company. If I had not contacted them yesterday to ask what happened to this money, would I ever have seen the money, I asked? And the answer was, no if I had not asked about it, I would probably never have seen this money.
To summarize, this first aspect of things, namely that if a notification does arrive, it never says anything about who sent the money or even what country the money came from, is really inferior to the way it was with Afex before the acquisition by Fleetcor.
And to further summarize, this second aspect of things, namely that nowadays you need to actively know that money is on its way to you, and you need to actively ask Afex to find your money and give it to you, or otherwise you likely will not actually receive your money, is strikingly inferior to the way it was with Afex before the acquisition by Fleetcor.
Meanwhile if you were to use Transferwise (now Wise) to receive money from somebody in a foreign country, the bank details that are assigned to you are unique to you. If some other Wise customer is going to receive money from somebody in a foreign country, their bank details are not the same as yours. So what does not happen for example is that everybody’s money goes into one bank account and it has to get divvied up later. No. If somebody in a foreign country tries to send a bank wire to our firm, they are putting a bank account number into their bank wire that is not the same as the bank account number used by any other Wise customer. You do not need to know that the money is on the way, and you do not need to ask for the money in order to actually receive the money. And yes, Wise tells you who sent the money.
Oh, there is one more interesting development. An email showed up just a few minutes ago from somebody I never heard of before at Afex, somebody named Brian Marshall. The email has a subject line “AFEX – Closing Account”. The body of the email begins:
Carl,
My name is Brian Marshall, and I am reaching out to let you know unfortunately AFEX will be closing your business account.
I am guessing that somebody at Afex saw the previous two blog posts and decided the thing to do is to save us from having to go to the trouble of having to make a decision about whether or not to close our Afex account.
As I say, I cannot imagine that any customer of Afex would want to stay with the company the way things are now.
I am no expert in international finance or tax laws and regulations, but this also sounds like under certain circumstances, in doing business with Afex, you could end up with big problems in an IRS audit, complying with tax regs, and/or having the appearance of money laundering or other improprieties that would draw scrutiny.
“Unfortunately”? Doesn’t sound like it.
I would like to weigh in on the article and add concerns.
As a Finance Manager of a mid-sized UK company, which has used AFEX for years, all seemed to be going well. Their online UI looked a bit dated, sometimes randomly logged me out, but issues were nothing but minor niggles. All the important aspects of a company that holds funds for you, six digits at times, were spot on. If anything seemed asmiss, within 3 minutes you had someone on the phone who would help sort it out, usually the account manager.
Come the current month, December 2021, and the full merging of AFEX and Cambridge/Fleetcor has occured. Sadly, instantly, the issues mounted. I will keep it it short and succinct, so here it goes:
– trying to reach someone via phone: little chance. Either no reply (not even a voicemail), other times a voicemail from an O2 mobile (!!)
– transfering of own funds to Cambridge: if funds arrive on day x, it might take anything from 1-4 days to become available, and you won’t know onec it does
– just like in the article chasing/calling is required to make funds become available
– no statement function on the next Afex/Corpay website: previously, going to Transactions > Funding Balances, one could get some sort of statement. No more, there are no statements
– transaction data (payments/receipts) from November 2021 on the AFEX platform: invisible on Corpay, so I cant reconcile that bank account. The balance Corpay opened with WAS correct (as far as I can tell…) but sitll, statements would be nice
– after placing a transaction on the new Corpay, there is a pop-up that basically says: “transaction done”. Previously, one could go to a specific menu, and download a nice looking receipt/proof of said transaction: gone! Yes, one might receive an email containin something aking to a receipt, but sometimes one doesn’t (namely, for scheduled payments in the future).
I am sure there are more problems, but either way, we will be looking elsewhere, where our funds are held and treated in a way the conveys confidence.
Hopefully others will vote with their wallets (accounts) and teach them that this is no way to merge two platforms. How about creating dummy duplicates and run dummy data through them for a few weeks before making customers guinea-pigs and alpha/beta tester?
Bye Corpay.
I recommend that anyone having problems or issues with this company reaches out to the corresponding regulator. They should know about these issues because they approved for Fleetcor to acquired AFEX, according to what says on the Fleetcor website. When I spoke to my account manager, he told me AFEX doesn’t exist anymore. Management and many employees were laid off or left after the acquisition. I worked with Cambridge and that was a terrible experience so as soon as I realised AFEX was becoming Cambridge under Fleetcor, I closed the account. I had issues closing the account and reported to my financial regulator. For those who don’t know, do a research on the issues the FTC has had with Fleetcor. No business should be doing business with a company like Fleetcor.