Visa Suspends Bitcoin Debit Card Payments In a Crackdown on the Card Provider

This Friday, world’s largest payment gateway - Visa ended its association with card provider WaveCrest Holdings Ltd. which resulted into the decline of several transactions of the holders of pre-paid cryptocurrency cards in Europe.

Visa, in a statement, said: "it recently terminated a single prepaid card issuer in Europe from our network for violating Visa's operating regulations. That issuer, WaveCrest, was required to close its Visa card products, some of which were linked to cryptocurrency wallets.”

WaveCrest also confirmed this matter in an email to CNBC. WaveCrest said that it was asked, “to immediately close all Visa Cards.” It further added "As a licensed E-Money Institution, WaveCrest is required to safeguard funds to cover all of its issued electronic money and we can confirm that these funds are safe and available for redemption through other channels.” A WaveCrest spokesperson said: "We deeply regret the inconvenience that this has caused to all of our customers affected by this decision."

The service allowed users to spend their cryptocurrency holdings - majorly Bitcoin and Ethereum - is regular retail store and establishments through a debit card. Four major providers of cryptocurrency debit cards had to suspend their services, which include Cryptopay, Bitwala, BitPay, and TenX.

These providers soon took to their social media platform and Twitter handles to announces the suspension of services. One of the payments processors - BitPay - said that the company will refund the card balances as well the card order fees for those who purchased the card after Dec 1, 2017.

In a statement, BitPay said: ”Yesterday our European BitPay Card issuer WaveCrest Holdings, Ltd. received direction from Visa® to immediately close all accounts of its prepaid Visa® debit card programs. The BitPay Card (non-US) is one of these programs, along with other cryptocurrency-related and standard prepaid Visa® debit cards. Unfortunately, WaveCrest was unable to provide us or cardholders with more time to prepare for this change.”

However, to assure its customers about their funds being safe, BitPay issued an email statement saying: "We are already in discussions with potential alternative issuers for the BitPay Card which will allow us to serve customers in Europe and beyond."

However, Visa has confirmed that only those providers associated with WaveCrest have been affected and other Visa cards converting Bitcoin into normal effect will not face any problems. "Visa has other approved card programmes that use fiat funds converted from cryptocurrency in a number of jurisdictions. The termination of WaveCrest’s Visa membership does not affect these other products."