New Wave of Fold Debit Card Shutdown

Fold is a debit card that earns Bitcoin as cashback. You can even earn a whole Bitcoin for making your usual purchases. I have written an extensive review of Fold app and card here.

As mentioned in the review, Fold recently introduced fee free debit card funding and it appears it has opened a can of worms. It is likely that people who moved a decent chunk of volume through the new feature found themselves in trouble.

The shutdown process began with “Astra profile suspended” email. Once Astra profile is suspended, you can no fund your Fold card with a debit card. At this point you also lose your ability to fund Fold card with ACH and attempting to do so will yield “in-app ACH disabled: this feature cannot be used” message.

So when inquired via email (support@foldapp.com), I was asked for two documents:

• ID with a note showing today’s date and
• a document showing proof of address

Once the required document was submitted, some folks were asked to submit statements for each debit cards they had used for funding Fold. However, some folks end up getting reinstatement email. In this email I was told that the “account was flagged because the activity was similar to the behavior that our banking partners deem abusive.” The email lists Manufactured spending (MS) as one of the reasons for possible account bans and reward reversals.

Closing Thoughts

Fold is probably one of the very few crypto cards that are still worth using so it would be a shame to lose it altogether. However, as I type this, it appears 4% cashback on Coinbase card will resume soon.