Major French Bank Refuses Money Transfers To Crypto Platforms

I must admit having heard about this scandal before (on Reddit) but didn’t believe it at the time. Apparently in Europe several banks have the nasty habit of all of a sudden being unable to transfer moneys from their customer’s accounts to any crypto platform like Kraken or Coinbase.

Customers have shared rumored screenshots of such refusals or difficulties before. The attached link shows the situation in Belgium where at least two banks were caught doing so in the beginning of the year.

This time round though, a known social media account in France has asked a major bank, Crédit Lyonnais, directly whether the screenshot they had received was true. They did not respond by the time of writing. As the account has almost 20,000 followers, you would expect the bank to do so soon because of the possible negative fallout.

Bonjour @LCL . Confirmez-vous que vous interdisez à vos clients d'acheter des bitcoins ou d'autres cryptomonnaies ? Cette décision s'applique-t-elle aux clients s'adressant à des Prestataires de Services sur Actifs Numériques (PSAN) enregistrés comme tels par l'@AMF_actu ? pic.twitter.com/qlf43e3Q6Q

— bitcoin.fr (@bitcoinpointfr) November 11, 2020

Even though Bitcoin may be on a roll this year (it went swiftly over $16k this morning and the Bitcoin price is trading now at $16,250) with major companies like Square and PayPal joining the cryptosphere, several classic financial institutions are not ready to share profits with others, and certainly not with crypto platforms.

French banks

According to a study published at the start of 2020, several known banks in France were rumored to refuse money transfers to crypto platforms. Among them Crédit Agricole, the Banque Postale, the Caisse d’Epargne and BNP Paribas.

However, most of that was still rumored as any transfer that a customer asks from their own account to another should always be allowed, no?

This time round, the Crédit Lyonnais, a known French bank with 17,500 personnel is caught in the crossfire.

Je confirme que les paiements sur les sites comme @binance ne fonctionnent plus depuis environ 2 semaines. Je recherche une nouvelle banque.

— Thierry Nicolas (@tnicolas972) November 11, 2020

Crédit Lyonnais, known as LCL, was the largest French bank back in the 1990s, majority state-owned at that point. It was acquired by former rival Crédit Agricole in 2003. You can understand that it is mired in history.

For some strange reason, a screenshot is appearing on several French social media platforms now, featuring the LCL logo, which explains why the bank has refused one of their customer’s demand to transfer moneys to a known crypto platform.

Have you ever been refused a money transfer by one of your banks towards any crypto platform? Let us know in the comments below.