MasterCard and Visa classify cryptocurrency transactions as particularly risky

Payment cards are becoming difficult to obtain for crypto traders who operate in the OTC brokerage sector. MasterCard and VISA have announced that they consider cryptocurrency transactions to be particularly risky and are therefore discontinuing services to offshore trading platforms and brokers whose business is related to cryptocurrency.

Payment giant MasterCard began talking about the high risks of the cryptocurrency industry back in May of this year. Now the company has officially transferred all brokers, ICO issuers, CFDs, Forex and binary options companies to the high-risk category. Such transactions are classified as a special group and this means that chargebacks can take up to 540 days after the date of the transaction.

MasterCard introduced new standards from October 15 and these changes apply to all transactions carried out through Debit Mastercard and Maestro.

A similar statement was received from VISA, which expects to adopt the same standards from December this year.

This policy is mainly aimed at companies that operate freely regulated jurisdictions or offshore zones without licenses. Some exchange operators were forced to inform their clients that they would stop accepting funds through the card channels of global payment providers. However, the new policies of VISA and MasterCard threaten not only offshore and unregulated companies, but brokers who operate under EU legislation. 

Brokers' clients who operate without licenses or in lightly regulated jurisdictions are facing difficult times. They either must rely entirely on bank transfers and alternative payment providers, or wait for their payment processors to resolve the issue. 

Until such a decision becomes a reality, payment operators have taken a tough position towards this category of brokers and cryptocurrency platforms.