BitPay, Bitwala, TenX, and Wirex crypto-debit cards have all been suspended in Europe.

Crypto-debit card users in Europe experienced a nasty surprise yesterday when their debit cards failed to work. VISA claimed that Wavecrest, the European card issuer, had failed to comply with their operating regulations and shut down their functionality without warning.

Assuring card users, Wavecrest issued a statement insisting that all funds tied up on cards were safe and would be "available for redemption through other channels" (cnbc.com).

This presents a major problem for Bitcoin users who have been relying on crypto-debit cards to spend their money at retail. Essentially, card-users are at the mercy of VISA. So far, no more details regarding the precise violation of VISA policy has been clarified, but it looks like VISA wants to clamp down on their platform being used for a competing transactional medium. In fairness, VISA stated that their "actions were not specific to cryptocurrency", but that Wavecrest failed to comply with policies to ensure "safety and integrity" of their payment system (cnbc.com).

This sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me. It appears to me that VISA is quashing an avenue for spending crypto, relatively anonymously, using their platform, with little benefit to them financially. Perhaps VISA will be negotiating to get a bigger piece of the action - or it could be that VISA is trying to shut down this spending avenue completely. It will be interesting to see in what manner exactly Wavecrest has failed to comply with their operating procedures.

sources:

cnbc.com

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