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Bitcoin Ban Expands Across Credit Cards as Big U.S. Banks Recoil

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:34PM   
from the too-much-risk dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

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.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-02/bofa-to-decline-all-cryptocurrency-transactions-on-credit-cards

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Original Submission

• Re:It Seems To Me... Re:It Seems To Me... (Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Monday February 05 2018, @12:54AM (1 child)

  by requerdanos (5997) on Monday February 05 2018, @12:54AM (#633084) Journal

  In the UK, the issuer of a credit card is legally liable for refunding any lost funds should a purchase go bad,

  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.

  Parent

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• Re:It Seems To Me... (Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday February 05 2018, @01:18AM

  by zocalo (302) on Monday February 05 2018, @01:18AM (#633090)

  Seems like the US is pretty much the same as the UK then. So this is almost certainly more about the genuine case of a transaction going bad (e.g. a scam) than the risk of an investment going south; as you say, if you used your credit card to buy into BTC while it was at $15,000, received the coins, and then complain because they're now worth about half that then the card issuer is (quite rightly) going to tell you to take a hike and expect you to settle up your debts. If, on the otherhand, you got hoodwinked by a scam, made a good faith effort to pursue the seller (e.g. the website says "Penis", emails and Twitter accounts have been closed down) then until now the card issuer was obliged to refund your money, subject to any Tc&Cs in their favour, naturally.

  --
  UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  Parent