Just a few days ago we were reporting the several banks are considering a ban on buying cryptocurrency with their cards, as names like Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Bank of America are already doing this.
After this ‘select club’ was joined by Capital One, Discover, as well as Lloyd’s, which recently made an announcement, Virgin Money is latest important name to confirm this.
Banks are reviewing their policies
“Following a review of our policies, I can confirm customers will no longer be able to use their Virgin Money credit card to purchase crypto-currencies,” said one of the bank’s spokespersons. It’s worth mentioning that the ban only applies to credit cards, not debit cards.
The bank opted for this measure as it’s concerned about customers racking up big debts, as the cryptocurrency market is currently in a free fall.
Virgin Money announced that bank almost at the same time with Lloyds. The bank made an announcement this Monday, leaving eight million credit cards customers across Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, and MBNA in the impossibility of buying Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies with their cards.
Lloyds also declared that they won’t be contacting customers in any way, in order to inform them about this new credit card policy change. However, they will let them know that they should query a blocked cryptocurrency credit card transaction, says BBC.
“We continually review our products and procedures and this is part of that,” said a spokeswoman, when asked about the ban.
As for the rest of the banks, a lot of them haven’t taken an official position on this yet. Still, UK Finance, for example, declared that it had not released any specific guidance on this matter.
Not everybody is following the trend, though
Barclays is still the exception, as the bank said its customers in the United Kingdom are able to use both credit and debit cards for purchasing digital assets.
“We take precautions to assess affordability before extending credit, flag and prevent any suspicious transactions and also closely monitor credit risk,” a spokeswoman said.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading at under $7,000, at $6.929.13, while analysts consider that the prices could go even lower.
