Since VISA’s decision to suspend all Bitcoin prepaid debit and virtual cards issued by Wave Crest Holding in the EU, citizens of Europe and many other countries have had no option to use cryptocurrency cards for withdrawals and POS payments. However, two cryptocurrency-related companies are preparing to bring their new physical and virtual cards to the market.
This is not true. Visa banned WaveCrest from their network, thus they had to cancel their clients cards. WaveCrest although was possibly the biggest issuer of crypto supported cards, did not have 100% of this market. There were and is several companies which have working cards.
(
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/05/some-cryptocurrency-backed-cards-dropped-from-visa-network.html)
The whole article to which OP refers seems very poorly written and most likely just a part of marketing campaign of Wirex.
I'm not much happy with the news because I was waiting for a debit card provider who will offer to worldwide customers.
After all the drama, all the old names are still limited to the old country list. After a long time waiting they haven't brought anything new to the table.
I hope they have a plan to expand their business to worldwide customers and are working behind.
There is a good card which has had surprisingly little spot light in crypto currency space -
CENTRA TECH , whicih is working not only in Eu but alson US and other countries. They support a ton of tokens and I do not know any competitor which is close to them only tons of wanna bees.
In fact there was a card which allegedly works all the time in EU,it is MasterCard from
Mistertango based in Lithuania.I personally have not tried this card,but experiences are mostly positive.
Lately I heard about
Revolut based in UK and they offer Visa contactless card.I read some comments that users send EUR from Coinbase/GDAX on this card with extra low fee,and POS payments have 0% fee.
For both cards you need to have compatible OS on your smart phone,because users can control card via app which is great.
I just want to say that such cards do not provide any anonymity,so you need to know that your tax office will probably get the data that you have open account in some other country, and that you convert
BTC to fiat.
Just got my MrTango few days back, it has a Btc wallet which converts your BTC automatically to Eur with 1% fee or 0,0025 BTC depending on the total. This could be a very fairy good alternative. I do not know if Revolut has any relation to crypto world .
In any case i believe that crypto world should concentrate more to direct crypto terminals than relaying to VISA and MasterCard networks which basically are a direct competitor to block chain tech.