I am super late on writing about this but I suppose being late doesn’t matter when nobody else is covering the topic. Recently, Coinbase suspended a whole bunch of cards and looks like some of them have been reinstated after contacting their customer service.
Five months ago I wrote “Is Coinbase card too good to be true?” article on Coinbase card and since then many of you have applied for the card. I explain why it is a great card in “Coinbase card is a must have” post. Anyway as time went on I kept on hearing more and more data points from the readers of card suspension but recently the number of card suspension has been much larger than before.
Several people in our crypto chatroom have had their card suspended. Some relevant data points can be found on Coinbase subreddit as well [1] [2].
The suspension message from coinbase reads:
Your card is temporarily suspended. To keep your funds safe, we suspended your card after detecting some suspicious activity. Please contact us to reactivate your card.
Calling or emailing Coinbase has lead to success in reinstating the account. Their response after reinstatement has been the following:
Our team has completed our investigation and has determined that your account meets our criteria to be unblocked for use. Please note that additional violations of our Cardholder Agreement may result in permanent suspension. Access to spending with your Coinbase Card has been restored.
Closing Thoughts
I suspect this might have happened because Coinbase’s recent data breach (pcmag.com) extends to also card information. You can see a dozens of comments of fraudulent transactions in these two reddit threads [1] [2] that were created around the same time . It appears that some people had fraudulent transaction attempts before they even loaded funds into the card or even before they activated the card. As a result of a wave of fraudulent transactions, Coinbase might have suspended cards that were doing high volume transactions in funny places 😉
There are two takeaway messages here. First, always lock your Coinbase debit card. Second, if you were suspended for ANY reason, contact now and you might just get reinstated without much of a hassle. Several people in the Telegram chatroom have already been reinstated.
