The Coinbase exchange house, the largest in the United States, announced that it will not accept the affiliation of new credit cards on its platform.
Resident US users will no longer be able to purchase bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies with their credit cards, according to an official publication made yesterday. Coinbase claims that it has disabled this option due to complications in offering the service.
However, debit cards will still be accepted. This measure was taken over by the prohibition issued to its clients by JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citi Group banks in recent days for the use of credit cards for these purposes, a measure to which Lloyds Bank also joined.
In the statement, Zach Abrams, of Coinbase, assures:
We know of many customers who added credit cards as the main payment method, we do not take this decision lightly. We are actively working with the operators of the growing networks and card issuers to reach a solution. For buyers in the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Singapore, we will be receiving comments and evaluating similar changes.
Despite how alarming this information may appear, Coinbase assured that debit cards can continue to be used "as long as banks allow it". In the statement, Abrams ensures that those users whose cards are blocked or wish to save their commissions, can change the payment method to debit cards or bank accounts, which would allow customers to make larger purchases.
The new measure is related to the appearance of new fees and costs added to the purchase with credit cards, which are not the responsibility of Coinbase but of the credit operators. These rates have generated uncertainty in the user community.
Likewise, Coinbase announces that it will very soon disable withdrawals of funds via PayPal until they can offer a better service in this regard, which is expected at some point this year.
Given the incompatibility and lack of agreements between financial institutions and transactional operators, bitcoin users and buyers are assuming the consequences, which undoubtedly has effects on the market.
In the statement they say that Bitcoin's SegWit addresses will be enabled in the near future, because although the value of Bitcoin fees and commissions for deposits, withdrawals and remittances has already fallen after unprecedented highs, they say they are committed to offering solutions for their clients in this sense.
They also added in their latest software update new windows in the user interface that will make it possible to clearly distinguish the information when sending cryptocurrencies, preventing Bitcoin Cash (BCH) from being sent to SegWit Bitcoin addresses and / or vice versa. At times, it is presumed that if shipments are sent to the wrong address, the technical team could have the ability to resolve the error, but once the SegWit addresses are implemented.