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A growing number of big U.S. credit-card issuers are deciding they don't want to finance a falling knife.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. said they're halting purchases of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on their credit cards. JPMorgan, enacting the ban Saturday, doesn't want the credit risk associated with the transactions, company spokeswoman Mary Jane Rogers said.
Bank of America started declining credit card transactions with known crypto exchanges on Friday. The policy applies to all personal and business credit cards, according to a memo. It doesn't affect debit cards, said company spokeswoman Betty Riess.
And late Friday, Citigroup said it too will halt purchases of cryptocurrencies on its credit cards. "We will continue to review our policy as this market evolves," company spokeswoman Jennifer Bombardier said.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:39PM (4 children)
That while it may seem to be heavy-handed of credit card companies to do this, they are only doing this when *credit* is being extended. The opportunities for fraud are immense:
1. Open credit card account with fraudulent details
2. Max out the credit with bitcoin purchases
3. Transfer bitcoins to a different wallet.
4. Profit!
This would cut out the necessity to purchase items and then sell them to realize monetary gain.
This seems likely, as the TFS claims that debit cards are unaffected by this "ban."
I could certainly be wrong, but it makes sense to me.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:47PM
As far as I understand these things, I believe step 1 is more commonly "Purchase a list of skimmed credit card numbers in a seedy, run-down chat room."
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Monday February 05 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Monday February 05 2018, @12:54AM (1 child)
The issuer is responsible for its errors, and for unauthorized charges (less a $50 you-lose fee in many cases).
As for a transaction that "goes bad," if it's not the issuer's fault, then it's not the issuer's responsibility, though many will refund you for a product that proves defective or a service that turns out to be worthless.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission [ftc.gov] says on the topic "You generally can dispute charges for unsatisfactory goods or services (including issues about the quality of an item) if you made a good faith effort to resolve the dispute with the seller, if the charge is for more than $50, or if you made the purchase in your home state or within 100 miles of your current billing address. In addition to disputing the charge with the issuer, you may want to consider filing an action against the merchant in small claims court."
And sure, you can dispute a charge for a bad investment, but if you were trying to buy ripoff coins at $15,000 each, and an investigation reveals that you did in fact receive the ripoff coins (even if their value later dropped to 15 cents each), then the transaction didn't "go bad" at all--you bought what you were trying to buy, and you aren't going to get a refund from the issuer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday February 05 2018, @01:18AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!