Wells Fargo bans customers from purchasing cryptocurrency

Major US bank Wells Fargo has placed a ban on customers purchasing cryptocurrencies via debit cards, according to a tweet over the weekend.

A beleaguered customer of Wells Fargo wrote: “Something fishy is going on with my bank Wells Fargo. I cant buy crypto on Cash App or Coinbase. I tried to attach my debit card and it said “Card not found”, and I just used it to pay my bills. Anybody else having this issue?”

The bank’s support team replied by saying: “Unfortunately, Wells Fargo does not allow transactions involving cryptocurrency.”

It is not the first bank to hold a pessimistic view on cryptocurrencies, with the likes of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon labelling Bitcoin as a “fraud” in 2017 before ironically launching JPM Coin earlier this year.

Last summer, Wells Fargo took the bold step to ban the purchase of cryptocurrencies using credit cards, citing “multiple risks associated with this volatile investment”.

“Customers can no longer use their Wells Fargo credit cards to purchase cryptocurrency. We’re doing this in order to be consistent across the Wells Fargo enterprise due to the multiple risks associated with this volatile investment. This decision is in line with the overall industry,” a spokesperson said at the time.

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Oliver Knight

Londoner ‘Ollie’ graduated from Birmingham City University with a journalism degree in 2016. He combines his writing with his love of crypto and blockchain here at Coin Rivet, saying “It disrupts well-established institutions (banks) while giving an avenue to the less fortunate to achieve financial freedom.” Like all true Londoners, his pet hate is… “People standing on the left-hand side of the escalators on the Tube!”.