Re: Wirex- Bitcoin Debit Card | Buy Bitcoin | Mobile Banking | Send Money
Been using Wirex/e-coin for a few months now. Very happy with their service. 
Pros:
Cons:
Pros:
- Shipping with their express option was ridiculously fast, got my card within 2 days
- Submitted KYC documents and have been approved just 24 hours later
- Excellent support, always replied in a timely manner
- A while ago I got my card skimmed and a bunch of huge large amount transactions were made, they sent me the form to file a claim and I had my money back within 10 days
- Never ever had a transaction refused in physical store or online. Could even use the card for car/hotel reservations/authorizations
Cons:
- The BTC rate they use when you top up your card with EUR is always too low; currently 563 is what they give you, compared to Kraken's 584 and Bitstamp's 583 rate. 3.5% difference is quite a lot..
- Cards don't support NFC payments which has become a standard by now
- Their transition to Wirex is rather confusing, it has been going on for months but still need to use the old site to manage your card.. even have 2 different facebook pages
- No possibility to change PIN of the card (In Europe it seems to be a standard that you can only change the PIN at an ATM of the issuing bank, which is in this case, impossible, I tried at least 10 different bank ATMs)
- You are forced to have SMS notifications enabled for transactions; they are completely useless and annoying when you already have the Wirex App with Push notifications..
thanks for your detailed and constructive feedback.
On the cons:
1) rate - strange that you are seeing such differences, although the rate you are getting with wirex/e-coin is different from exchanges (which is normal, as those are two different kinds of services), but the difference should not be that high
2) yes, indeed, it's proving to take more time and effort than originally expected. We have considerably increased our dev team, yet, the transition is still ongoing. On the positive side, the convenience and functionality of the renewed site and service will be considerably improved
3) It should be possible not with the issuing bank's ATM, but with any ATM supporting the function. Appreciate that not all ATMs support it, and we can't really direct you to the ones they do, you just need to try different ones. Have you tried 10 different banks in Europe, and none of them offered the option?
4) SMS notifications are compulsory by the issuing bank, it's a security measure. If you really don't want them, you could write to our support team and we will ask the bank to disable them for your particular account. Push notifications work alright, correct?