Greek banks think GoDaddy is a betting company!

This has happened to me many times but I have never written about it before.

Whenever I sell a domain name through GoDaddy or Afternic when the wire arrives in Greece it gets stuck at my bank before hitting my company bank account. They always call me from my branch to ask me what the wire transfer is about and request some kind of paperwork. I usually have to send them an invoice and maybe some other details as well. Then and only then they will release the funds in my account.

It turns out that the National Bank of Greece, that oversees all incoming and outgoing wire transfers in Greece over a certain amount, has GoDaddy flagged as a betting company. So my bank has to produce the paperwork to the National Bank of Greece so as to prove this is a domain name sale and not some illegal or undocumented betting income.

I have tried to explain to them many times that GoDaddy is a big public company in the US with many employees and customers around the world but nothing. As you can understand the somewhat ridiculous GoDaddy brand name does not help.

The same thing happens when I send a wire transfer to GoDaddy. But this never happens when I pay GoDaddy by credit card. Credit card payments to GoDaddy never have any problems.

Wire transfers (incoming or outgoing) never get stuck with any other company: Escrow.com, Dan, Domain Agents, Sedo, etc.

This is really frustrating and in the case of outgoing wire transfers I may lose an expired domain purchase if the wire is delayed even for one day. (You all know GoDaddy has this ancient domain auction system that is not flexible at all…)

Is anybody else, especially in the European Union, having similar issues? The particular issue could be related to the European Central Bank.