Aussie Bank Bars Crypto Purchases Through Credit Cards

Commonwealth Bank of Australia joined a growing list of banks blocking its customers from buying cryptocurrencies.

“Due to the unregulated and highly unstable nature of virtual currencies, clients will no longer be able to use their Commonwealth bank credit cards to purchase virtual currencies.” This will come into effect as of 14 February 2018,” Commonwealth Bank announced on its website.

“Our customers can trade virtual currencies using other Commonwealth Bank transaction accounts, and their debit cards. We have made this choice because we believe that digital currencies cannot meet a minimum standard of regulation, reliability, and reputation when it is compared to currencies that we recommend to our clients. Specified the dynamic, unstable behavior of the virtual currency market, this situation is often reviewed.”

The decision follows similar moves from JP Morgan Chases, Bank of America, Citigroup and Lloyds Banking Group who all declared the ban on crypto purchases using credit cards last week.

This move taken by the Commonwealth Bank breaks line with Australia’s leading banks Westpac, ANZ and the NAB who announced last week that they had are not planning to block cryptocurrency purchases through credit cards.

At the time of writing the other Australian banks have not blocked crypto credit card purchases, but it’s possible that some will follow suit in the coming future.The news has had little impact on the Bitcoin price today which currently sits up 2.92% at $US8,784.99.

Like other main cryptocurrencies bitcoin also had a burning time this year, falling from $US20,000 in mid-December to below $US6,000 in early February.