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Card Platform Problem Deals A Bad Hand To E-gold/Digital Currency ATM Debit Cards by mgmt — published on January 6th, 2007 Prepaid debit cards are a very popular method for digital money users to exchange their digital currency into green cash. In case you need cash right away, debit cards are cheap and handy to have around. Cards can be reloaded, so anyone can own one or two cards and continually use them to access the value in their digital currency accounts. During the past 4-5 years, there have been many cards, many companies and many problems. The two biggest problems, were the changing laws in the US and the appearances of so many different small companies & cards. First, the big changes in US law occurred with the passing of the Patriot Act. In the United States, prepaid debit cards or any financial product a terrorist could use to move money — became much more restrictive to issue and own. Second, so many dozens of small companies were issuing prepaid debit cards with different names, rates & terms that no one company offered consistent service. A new card issue may have been great when it first came out and then just a few months later disappeared along with your balance. Some companies started out doing sincere excellent business and the scammers drove them out of business with fraudulent or illegal deposits. Other operators closed because of inexperience or the authorities. Several smaller companies just offered really bad options, no customer service, no email responses and the time from loading to having cash available on the card was anywhere between 1 hour and 1 week. It really was a ‘coin toss’ to see if you could find a new card about every few months. Some of the time it was not the operators fault, but we all know that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In just the past several years, one financial institution had corrected both of these problems and just about about everyone using a digital currency debit card has some company’s branded version of their cards. (myself included) The company brands included:
North York Credit Union, the issuing institution, is located in Canada so their cards could be issued worldwide and were not regulated under any new rules. Canada is considered “offshore” in the US. Also, new cards offered a digital currency loading solution to resellers which integrated digital currency into the instant card loading process. In other words, the moment you sold your e-gold or other digital currency the balance (minus fees) would instantly appear on your ATM card. No more waiting! The card company also incorporated ACH payments into their loading. If you are using any one of several particular card brands (each offers different services) you could receive payments from PayPal, Adwords and other ACH type online systems. These are very handy cards to have and this issue was like a real card miracle. Later the BestGoldCard added icing to the cake, by integrating their cards directly into the 1MDC platform so all 1MDC users can load funds directly from their account or from any e-gold account. BestGoldCard also automatically accepts and exchanges Pecunix, so the issuance of their card really opened a floodgate of options for digital currency users. They quickly became a leader in the industry. Financial backing, experience, customer service, BGC has it all. Additionally, ROBOXchange integrated Webmoney into their instant loading card.(well done) All of these companies provide good customer service and it seemed, for a few years at least, the debit card industry was shaping up. Well, as of yesterday, all of these North York Credit Union cards are dead. Users must also understand, it is through no fault of the brand companies, this is just a case of very bad luck with the platform. What does the future hold? New cards of course. Knowing the history of a changing industry, experienced and well financed operators have been expecting ’some’ type of problems down the road and rest assured they already have replacement card plans in action. Rumor has it that BestGoldCard has been working for some months now on a backup card and IGEcard seems to be about 30 days away from a replacement. It is a sure bet that GoldtoCard and gCard also are working closely with issuers to remedy the problem. So stay tuned, it appears help is ‘in the cards’. Let us hope there are will be more cards on the way in just a few weeks or sooner. **Please note that there are NO problems with North York Credit Union, the hiccup came from an associated company by the name of CU-Connect and only the card platform was affected. This is the part of the card network which delivers the switching and transaction processing service through the Interac / Cirrus / Maestro networks for credit union. It absolutely — has nothing to do with North York Community Credit Union itself where the customer funds are held safe and sound. http://digitalmoneyworld.com |