WaveCrest Terminating Prepaid Crypto MasterCards as Well

It seems that WaveCrest is also terminating their prepaid MasterCard cards powered by crypto currencies, but unlike the sudden surprise at the beginning of this year with their Visa issued cards, now at least it is not entirely “effective immediately”. There is 1 month grace period for users to either use the funds or withdraw them, though loading up money to the card has been stopped effective immediately. Below is a quote of the official email that WaveCrest has been sending to its customers regarding the situation…

Dear Cardholder,

We regret to inform you that from the 27 February 2018, we will no longer be able to service your MyChoice Prepaid Debit Card.

You should, therefore, use up or remove any balance on your card before that date. We will block the loading of new funds to your card effective immediately to help avoid any balance remaining on your card. You will be able to request that any remaining balance on your card after 27 February 2018 be refunded to you in line with the Cardholder Agreement.

Unverified cards must be verified in order to be eligible for a refund. Please note that any funds that remain on your account after this date will continue to be subject to the terms of the Cardholder Agreement (other than as set out in this email). You can find the Cardholder Terms here.

Please also note that we have taken the decision to set new daily ATM limits to EUR 1000/USD 1000/GBP 800 for transaction inside the SEPA region; transaction outside of SEPA will be limited to EUR 500/USD 500/GBP 400.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please contact us at support15@xxx.com.

Kind regards,
WaveCrest

It seems that the crypto services offering prepaid MasterCard bank cards powered by Bitcoin and/or other crypto currencies will need to find an alternative issuer for their customers, just like the ones affected by the WaveCrest VISA ban form earlier that month. It is a fact that the main issuer for most of these services, at least in Europe, was WaveCrest using Visa along with some using MasterCard. The services that were surprised at the start of the year are reporting that they are already working with new card issuers to restore their functionality, though it could still take up a few more months. Meanwhile other innovative financial services that are not originally crypto oriented may use the opportunity to gain a lot of new users by providing attractive and useful services and maybe even slowly introducing cryptocurrency support.