CoinsBank, like Wirex, is issued by Wave Crest Holdings Limited. However, it is not similar to Wirex as it has several features that are unique to it. Wave Crest Holdings is a financial services company licensed by the Financial Services Commission, Gibraltar. The CoinsBank website, on the other hand, is operated by CB Exchange LP, a company licensed under IFSC Belize, with FinCEN MSB registration, and vaildated by PCI DSS.
CoinsBank is not just some bitcoin debit card and payment instrument. It can be considered an all-in-one gateway to blockchain services. It has wallet, prepaid bitcoin debit card, and bitcoin exchange functions. It’s a complex financial instrument that supports not only bitcoins but a number of altcoins as well.
CoinsBank was founded in 2016 as a privately held company. It maintains its headquarters at Suite 2, 5 St Vincent St, Edinburgh, EH36SW, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Since CoinsBank is issued by the same company responsible for Wirex, we thought we would similarly have problems with the mobile phone number we used for registering. We thought it would refuse our registration because of an invalid number and that we should use a number from a different network provider. This is not the case, though. The number we used that was rejected by Wirex was accepted. The problem, however, was that it took some time before we received the confirmation code on our phone.
Once we received the confirmation code, getting an account was a breeze. We just had to enter the confirmation code and waited a bit for the account registration to be processed. After these, we were directed to our account. Nothing else was required. In short, we got an account simply by entering our phone number and inputting the confirmation code. No personal details were asked. The registration form was the login form itself.
There’s a lot going on with the CoinsBank dashboard (in one page) so it may look daunting to new users. It’s not too complex but it’s not something we can consider easy to use for those who are new to bitcoin debit cards, especially to something like CoinsBank that has several functions. It may take some time getting used to the interface.
Basically, there are five different sections on the dashboard: General Information, Verify Your Profile, Your Accounts, Card Ordering, and Exchange.
It is in the General Information section where you can enable two-factor authentication, set up your recovery method, and add/change your email address, phone number, and base currency. You can also set various notifications for your account under the General Information section.
The Verify your Profile section is where you add personal details and lift limits imposed on your account. You get to enjoy higher maximum transaction limits the higher the verification level you have.
The Your Accounts section is where you will find the difference balances of your accounts, and also where you can add deposits or make withdrawals. By default, you automatically get 6 accounts for different currencies, namely BTC, LTC, EUR, USD, GBP, and RUB.
The card ordering section has a button through which you can order a debit card or a virtual card. Before you can order a card, you need to make a deposit.
Lastly, the Exchange section is where you can buy and sell bitcoins or other cryptocurrency. It readily presents exchange rates for bitcoins to other cryptocurrency or fiat currency. There’s also a chart showing the changes in bitcoin value over the last two days.
CoinsBank has an automatic session timeout system. If you leave your account idle for a while, it will automatically be logged out so you need to log in again and spend the rest of your 10 free verification codes (via SMS) for the day. Yes, there’s a limit to the free verification codes you can get to access your account so if you tend to log in to your account frequently in a day, it’s better to just enable two-factor authentication so you no longer have to get a verification code every time you log in.
You may change the automatic session timeout duration (one of the options under the General Information section) to make it longer but advise against doing this. It defeats the purpose of an automatic timeout. Switching to two-factor authentication makes more sense.
CoinsBank is more than just a bitcoin debit card. It is also a bitcoin wallet, payment receiving facility (merchant tool), and a bitcoin buying and selling platform (exchange).
No-Name Limited Card – The CoinsBank debit card available to all but has a low limit of only 300 USD or 250 EUR.
Named White Card – Special plastic Named Card that comes with low commissions and no monthly fees throughout the duration of the card’s useful life.
Virtual Card – Obviously not a plastic card, available in1-month, 3-month, 1-year, or 3-year variants. Can be obtained within a few minutes.
As a merchant tool, CoinsBank provides online entrepreneurs an easy-to-set-up and easy-to-use solution for receiving payments with flexible payout settings. It allows businesses to receive cryptocurrency payments for online transactions.
As a bitcoin buying and selling platform, CoinsBank operates as a licensed exchange service. It features a simple interface that makes it easy to manage orders and monitor real-time exchange data. Even better, CoinsBank’s exchange platform does not require documents to start trading. A trading fee of 0.5% is charged regardless of currency.
Lastly, as a wallet, you can proceed to using your CoinsBank account balances to pay for various things in cryptocurrency or fiat currency. You can do CoinsBank to CoinsBank fund transfers without limits.
CoinsBank supports the following currencies: bitcoin (BTC), litecoin (LTC), euro (EUR), US dollar (USD), British pound sterling (GBP), Russian ruble (RUB), Swiss franc (CHF), Japanese yen (YEN), and Australian dollar (AUD).
Unfortunately, CoinsBank only provides no-name limited cards to US residents (without automatic recurring payments). US residents are not allowed to get named and virtual cards. Similarly, the following countries may only avail of no-name limited cards: Algeria, Angola, Afghanistan, Belize, Congo, Cambodia, Congo DR, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Guinea, Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Kenya, North Korea, Laos, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Romania, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Venezuela, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe.
Residents of the following countries are not allowed to obtain named and virtual cards: Angola, Afghanistan, American Samoa, Algeria, Bangladesh, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Belize, Bolivia, Benine, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Cook Islands, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guam, French Polynesia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Iran, Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Honduras, Iraq, Kenya, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kosovo, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macao, Malawi, Mali, Madagascar, Mayotte, Mozambique, Myanmar, Montserrat, Namibia, Nauru, Niger, New Caledonia, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Pakistan, Pitcairn, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Palestine, Saint Helena, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tanzania, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, United States, Venezuela, Uganda, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Upon its redesign and relaunching, the CoinsBank mobile apps (Android or IOS were also introduced. Just go to the Mobile page of the site to find the links to the Android and iOS apps of CoinsBank. You may also look for the app at the Google Play Store or iTunes. The official name is CoinsBank Mobile Wallet (by CoinsBank LP). You should have Android 4.1 or iOS 7 to be able to use this app.
The mobile apps are easy to use and responsive. They have decent ratings and reviews (in general). You may encounter some issues but these shouldn’t be rampant and should be quickly addressed. Just contact CoinsBank’s support team to have your concern addressed.
CoinsBank does not brag anything on its website about how secure it is. However, there’s at least SSL encryption, as evidenced by the use of HTTPS. Users’ data have basic protection from snooping or other forms of electronic data theft. Also, CoinsBank has a reassuring system when logging in.
Moreover, logging in is not the usual entering of a username and password. You will be asked for three details to log in: your mobile phone number, password, and a confirmation code. The confirmation code is sent to you once you enter your mobile number and your password. You can’t proceed to accessing your account without the confirmation code. This means that it’s not enough for somebody to know your username (mobile number) and password to be able to use your account. They also need to get the confirmation code which can only be obtained through your mobile phone. It’s almost similar to Google’s system, wherein you will be required to enter a confirmation code if you log in to your account using a device you have not used with your account before.
Not many may like this setup as it can be tedious to do repeatedly. It’s a good thing that CoinsBank also provides the option to use Google two-factor authentication in lieu of the need for a confirmation code every time you want to log in to your account.
Other notable security features of CoinsBank are the ability to set a session time (you get automatically logged out after the specified session time), enable SMS authorization notifications (you receive an SMS every time you log in), set daily and monthly limits for card operations, and view activity logs. The activity logs are particularly useful if you suspect that somebody else is using your account as it shows details on the country, IP address, web browser, and operating system of the device used to log into your account on a specific date and time.
You can be anonymous when using CoinsBank to a limited extent—that is if you limit your use to the no-name card service. For the rest of its services/functions, CoinsBank conducts identity verification procedures requiring users to submit documents that serve as proofs of their identity. The company reserves the right to conduct further verification procedures if users are deemed to have not satisfied the required identity verification. In-depth primary and periodic analysis may also be undertaken on users who are residents of countries included in OFAC and FATF lists.
CoinsBank already has a good summary of its fees on its website so we will just copy portions of it here. We will just point out some important details about these fees and charges. Overall, we can consider the fees to be mostly affordable. However, fees for POS and ATM transactions are relatively high.
For No-Name Limited Cards , the maximum amount that can be spent us 300 USD or 250 EUR.
For No-Name Cards, the limits vary depending on the level of verification. Non-verified users (Level 1) are given a maximum amount that can be used for POS payments and ATM withdrawals is 300 USD or 250 EUR. For Level 2 card holders (those who completed and submitted the verification form), the maximum allowable withdrawal amount is raised to 1,300 USD or 1,000 EUR while the lifetime turnover is increased to 2,500 USD/EUR (as stated on the site). For Level 3 accounts (those who have had their submitted verification forms approved), the withdrawal maximum is increased to 2,000 USD or 1,500 EUR while the maximum turnover goes up to 15,000 USD/EUR. Finally, for Level 4 accounts (those who verification have passed bank approval), the limits are suited to individual needs.
When it comes to Named and Named White Cards, the lifetime turnover for Level 1 and 2 accounts is set at 2,500 USD/EUR while the withdrawal limit is pegged at 1,000 USD/EUR. For Level 3 accounts, the turnover becomes unlimited but with the same withdrawal limit as that of Level 1 and 2 accounts. On the other hand, online payment limits for Named and Named White Cards are 1,000 USD/EUR for Level 1 and 2 accounts, and unlimited for Level 3 accounts.
For virtual cards, the lifetime turnover maximum is set at 2,500 USD/EUR.
The process of adding funds is similar to how it is done with other bitcoin debit cards. Just make a deposit through the Deposit interface. For the cryptocurrency accounts, just make a deposit to the address indicated. For fiat currency accounts, deposits can be made through Qiwi, Sepa, Perfect Money, OKPay, bank transfers, or debit/credit card.
The minimum deposit allowed is from 10.00 EUR/USD to 500 EUR/USD while the maximum is from 500 EUR/USD to 5,000 EUR/USD. All the minimum and maximum deposit amounts are indicated in the payment method interface.
If you have questions, complaints, or requests for assistance, go to the Support page to use the CoinsBank ticket system. Fill out the form and expect a response via email or telephone. There’s a live chat support facility but you can only access it if you are signed in. You may also directly contact CoinsBank through the following email address and telephone number: [email protected] and +442036088233. If you couldn’t reach CoinsBank’s admin or support team through these options, consider sending a message to their official social media accounts as well as to their official thread on the Bitcointalk forum. The links are located on the footer part of the website.
As indicated on CoinsBank’s website, customer support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through the live chat support facility.
CoinsBank is a promising all-in-one payment or funds transfer service. It claims to be the “world’s fastest, safest, and cheapest payment option”—not necessarily true, but not a frown-worthy exaggeration either. It serves its functions as a debit card, merchant tool, wallet, and bitcoin exchange platform decently, to say the least. Signing up for an account is a quick and easy process although you may have to eventually ditch the use of a verification code every time you log in as it tends to become a bit tedious. It’s also an advantage that CoinsBank supports a good number of currencies and deposit methods. We just wish the fees and limits could be made a little less complicated.
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