Topic: Visa Owns Up to Erroneous Error After Initially Blaming Coinbase (Read 110 times)

The allegations are now flying that VISA did this deliberately to hurt cryptocurrency:

http://jamescrypto.com/visa-admits-fault-in-coinbase-fiasco-but-was-it-really-a-mistake/

The whole problem started when the credit card companies changed the way crypto purchases are classified. Instead of being straight purchases, they were classified as a type of cash advance, which brings higher daily fees. However, it appears as though according to Visa, they went back and re-charged old transactions under the new classification, but left the original charges as well. Visa claims this was just a technical error, but I think a closer inspection shows how that is almost impossible and it’s very likely Visa did this as way to damage Coinbase and crypto purchases in general.

Nobody knows credit card transactions and how they work more than Visa. I find it highly unlikely that they didn’t know that re-charging people and refunding the original charge would cause huge problems for consumers.

Most of us have probably returned goods that we purchased on a credit card. We all know it takes several days for the refund to appear, it is never instant or the same day. Pretty much everybody who has used a credit card knows this simple fact. Yet, we are to believe that Visa didn’t know that re-charging people and refunding the original charge would cause people to have extra funds unavailable in their account?

The problem is that until merchants start accepting cryptocurrencies, we all have to go through Visa.

In the bricks and mortar world you can pay cash (and retailers love this because it saves on Visa's fees). But online you are literally forced to go through Visa because no other option exists.

Further proof of why bitcoin is needed. Too much power has been vested in too few people; when you let big corporations control such large and important sectors of society, when they fuck up, there's nothing you can do about it. Slowly but surely, Visa will become obsolete. Just wait and watch.

After duplicating charges and draining users’ accounts, Visa has accepted responsibility for the gross error — after initially claiming Coinbase was to blame.

Over the past week, Coinbase users have been experiencing a rather unpleasant situation.

Numerous users reported erroneous duplicate charges on their credit and debit cards, effectively draining users’ bank accounts and leaving many individuals in potentially dangerous situations.

After initially confirming the reports, Coinbase passed the blame for the situation on to Visa, stating the “erroneous credit and debit charges are the result of Visa reversing and recharging transactions. This was not done by Coinbase.” Many individuals, however, were not convinced.

A spokesperson for Visa initially told the Financial Times that Coinbase was actually at fault, stating that the financial institution “has not made any systems changes that would result in the duplicate transactions cardholders are reporting […] we are also not aware of any other merchants who are experiencing this issue” — seemingly passing the blame back to Coinbase.

Yesterday, however, Visa surprisingly accepted responsibility for the erroneous mistake. In a joint statement from Visa and Worldpay published on Coinbase’s official blog, the companies explain:

    Over the last two days, some customers who used a credit or debit card at Coinbase may have seen duplicate transactions posted to their cardholder accounts. This issue was not caused by Coinbase. Worldpay and Coinbase have been working with Visa and Visa issuing banks to ensure that the duplicate transactions have been reversed and appropriate credits have been posted to cardholder accounts.