The ban will not apply to debit cards
Britain’s biggest banking group, Lloyds, has banned its 8m credit card customers from buying volatile assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The ban will not apply to debit cards.
Talking about the ban which comes into effect today, a Lloyds spokesperson said: “Across Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA, we do not accept credit card transactions involving the purchase of cryptocurrencies.”
The crackdown comes amid the digital currency losing more than half its value in two months. The price of Bitcoin has fallen as low as $9,000 within months of touching a peak valuation of $20,000. The bank fears it could end up footing the bill for unpaid debt should the price fall any lower.
This is not the first time the digital currency has faced a regulatory backlash. Earlier last week, Facebook had banned advertisements for cryptocurrencies amid concerns that too many were being used to mislead potential customers.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney also said recently that the G20 needed to consider how easily digital coins should be converted into other central-bank issued currencies, as well as the role of anonymity, as ‘a lot of the underlying use of these currencies has been illicit activity’.
Established in 2009 after the financial meltdown, Bitcoin is a digital currency that has no central bank or regulatory authority backing it up. The digital coins are stored in a digital wallet or on the cloud and can be used in transactions.
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