Germany FinTech company, Bitwala, announced the immediate closure of all Visa Debit/Prepaid cards following a notice from Visa Europe to its credit card issuer. No further information has been provided yet, but the fact is that anyone using Bitwala Visa cards for payments in Europe is now holding a useless piece of plastic. As a result, a lot of issues remain to be solved regarding customer funds.
At the moment of writing this, Bitwala has sent an email to all its European customers announcing the grave development. In the email, the German company does not give any details about the reasons behind the immediate closure of debit / prepaid cards, except noting that this was asked directly by Visa Europe.
Bitwala reassures customers that they will get "a full refund for their card balance and any outstanding card top-ups directly into their bank account".
Refunds will be also issued to those that had recently order a prepaid card.
However, the company is unable to provide any time frame for the refunds to be issued.
Read the announcement and stay tuned in justcryptonews.com for more updates:
Yesterday our Bitwala Card issuer WaveCrest Holdings Ltd received direction from Visa Europe to immediately suspend all Bitwala cards effective immediately. Unfortunately, neither Visa nor WaveCrest were able to provide us or you with more time to prepare for this announcement.
Our team has been working very closely from the time of the announcement until now with Wavecrest to provide you with the most up to date information possible.
What this means for you
Your Bitwala card is now deactivated and you will not be able to use it for further payments or withdrawals. This affects both physical and virtual cards.
What happens to your funds?
Bitwala has been assured that all affected users will get a refund for their card balance and any outstanding card top-ups directly into their bank account.
To receive a refund
Please fill in this form
Send it to [email protected] with the subject of “Bitwala Card Refund”
For those of you who have ordered your card recently, we agree that it's unfair that you haven't had more time to use it. Therefore, we will be issuing refunds for the card order fee to all users who ordered it on or after 1 December 2017.
However, at the moment we are unable to specify how long refunds will take. We appreciate your patience as we respond to this situation.
What is Bitwala doing next?
The Bitwala Debit Card remains one of the pillars of our service and we will make it again part of our product offering. Ever since we announced our vision, we have been approached by a number of alternative card issuers and we are already in discussions to bring a solution in the near future.
We want to sincerely thank you for using our card. We are disappointed that we can’t serve you anymore and that the change came so quickly. As part of our commitment to you, we will send you an email once the Bitwala card becomes available again. We hope that in the meantime you will continue being part of the revolution and make the most of Bitwala’s Blockchain Banking and Bitcoin wallet.
We have created a dedicated FAQ section on our help center to answer your most common questions in the meantime.