EXCLUSIVE – Add one more to the mix. Today Lloyds Banking Group confirmed it has banned customers from buying bitcoin with their credit cards.
The move comes only days after U.S. banks including Bank of America, Citi, and JPMorgan Chase have done the same.
For Lloyds, that ban includes card credits for all the banks in its group, including Halifax, MBNA and Bank of Scotland, totaling more than nine million customers.
Lloyd’s ban, which was first reported by the Telegraph, does not come as a surprise, as banks continue to grow increasingly uncomfortable taking on the risk associated with customers using their credit cards to purchase ever-volatile cryptocurrency.
Over the past week, many banks have already issued a ban on using credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies. These institutions, aside from the ones mentioned above, also include Capital One Financial and Discover, and that’s just in the U.S. Various central banks around the world like South Korea and India have issued multiple warnings on buying and selling the cryptocurrency. These moves coincide with a precipitous drop in crypto values from highs reached in late 2017.
It’s not only the banks that are growing skeptical of cryptocurrency. More recently, payment processor Stripe said it was removing bitcoin payments on its platform, attributing its price volatility for making it an unsuitable form of payment. Even social media platform Facebook said it was banning ads for bitcoin or any cryptocurrency on its platform.
It may be argued that the banks’ concerns are valid, given the drop in prices seen recently. On the other hand, the bank prohibitions may have contributed to the fall in price.
So, basically, your bank will let you open a betting account but not a bitcoin account. I don’t remember voting for them to be moral arbiters over different ways to throw away your own money. It’s this sort of thing that gives bankers a bad (well, worse) name.
— David G.W. Birch (@dgwbirch) February 5, 2018
Today the digital currency is down around 16% to $7,320, according to CoinBase, a far cry from its much celebrated $10K milestone.
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