Coinbase Product Update — February 20, 2018
We understand that the last few weeks have been difficult for customers using cards and PayPal for their Coinbase transactions. We deeply apologize for any inconvenience you might have experienced. Thank you for reaching out to us. This has helped our team identify and resolve these problems quickly.
Duplicate transactions
Over the last week, some customers who had recently purchased digital currency with a Visa credit or debit card had duplicate transactions appear on their cardholder accounts. This issue was the result of decisions made by card networks and processors — this issue was not caused by Coinbase. As soon as we saw customer complaints, we began actively investigating and working to ensure this was resolved for our customers.
As a result, Visa and WorldPay are working to ensure that the duplicate transactions have been reversed and appropriate credits have been posted to cardholder accounts. Please see our blog post for additional detail.
If you made a purchase on Coinbase with a Visa credit or debit card in the last month, we recommend that you:
- Check your statement — Please check your bank statement to ensure that you have not received duplicate charges. If duplicate charges have appeared, your bank should automatically post a refund within the next few days
- Contact your bank — If duplicate charges have not been refunded and/or if you have received other related charges (e.g., overdraft fees), please reach out to your bank to request that these charges be refunded
- Contact Coinbase Support — If your bank fails to refund these charges, please follow up with Coinbase Support early next week
We are deeply sorry for any inconvenience or hardship this has caused.
An update on credit and debit card “cash advance” fees
As you may have seen in our previous update, banks began charging “cash advance” fees for credit card purchases of digital currency. Unfortunately, we subsequently discovered that some debit card transactions were not being properly processed, and as such, these debit purchases were also subject to additional fees collected by banks.
We have been actively working with our processing partners to ensure your purchases are properly classified. However, these additional fees are assessed and collected at your bank’s discretion. If you experience these additional fees related to a debit card purchase, please contact Coinbase support to report the issue and reach out to your bank as you could be entitled to a fee reimbursement.
PayPal update
As you may have seen in our previous update, our current PayPal offering is not meeting many customers’ expectations. Our plan is to eventually re-enable support for 2 weeks and then disable PayPal entirely until we can overhaul the entire experience.
We are actively working with PayPal to temporarily re-enable support. We do not currently have a formal timeline, however, we are working to resolve this issue within the next few weeks. We will provide an update next week.
Adding a bank account just got easier
In addition to avoiding the above mentioned difficulties, customers who invest on Coinbase using a bank account have access to higher limits and lower fees. So we are making the bank account experience even better.
Now whenever you add a bank account, you can choose between establishing an instant connection or manually adding your account and routing numbers. We highly recommend using instant connect, as you’ll be able to get started immediately. Connecting manually can take 4–5 business days to authorize, but is a great option for those who do not have an instant-supported bank.
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As always, thank you for all of the feedback. Your comments have helped us identify and resolve the above card issues, and help ensure we’re working on the problems that are most impactful to you.
