EC9 Bitcoin & Beer Meer Up Wirex Debit Card

Writing this of the back of going to a meet up this week , I had written a rant initially which I have stepped away from

There are loads of crypto debit card offerings out there is an article here from some months ago on a "full list"

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@bitcoinshirtz/a-full-list-of-bitcoin-debit-cards-for-2017

So slightly different to a lot of the meet ups to date

https://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Beer-Club/events/247380418/

Beer Pizza , random conversations and a presentation that has resulted in my comments below

Spoke to a "At home FX trader" who wants to learn more about crypto and use his model trading, I gave him some pointers to websites and https://mycrypto.guide/.

There was then a presentation from Wirex

YOTI also did some quick update

They are a KYC on your phone app which I wanted to follow up on , however after handing back to Wirex the evening took a turn for me and I pursued another conversation which is below. I appreciate this is a personal lens and the context is below

They started with the the big sell of banking being legacy and we are blazing a new trail world

Ok fair enough I get it there is a lot of legacy out there and yes there is transformation on the way , I buy into that .

However I have walked away from this tonight in a very indifferent mood.

Wirex sponsored the event , I happen to have an account with them and purchased a plastic visa card just before the Wavecrest issue which left it and lot of other providers with a redundant product.

I will say at this point I commend the WIrex response they fronted it up , ran some live online updates and dealt with some pretty angry feedback at this point in the best way they could - Well done so far.

I also am not in this with my eyes closed, its early days there are going to be bumps in the road and you need to be prepared at this point to lose it all. So dont put your house on it and expect that services like this are going to have challeges

I am of the opinion that this tech will transform the landscape , what has frustrated me was ithe sell that took place with little recognition of the challenges they have had , so if you walked in there not knowing the history of the recent issues you would be none the wiser. That was unless you heard my challenge to one of the reps.

This to me is matter of trust , They painted that Wirex is going to make Banking look like the dark ages its and what they have coming is going blow traditional banking away , a crypto debit card soon that will change everything.

There was also a prize on offer , 4 lucky individuals would walk away tonight being the first 4 to get accounts in the UK and get a tour of their office.

This is where the Victor Meldrew in me started to get upset

I am already a customer, I had a card which I paid for , it was cancelled in a week and there has been no product since the 5th January , I am down the fee it cost me to send bitcoin to wirex , down again the fee on the way out and the fee for the card. which I think was £15

I challenged them on this , I did provide the context of I was impressed with their response but dont claim to be taking down the banks when your product was made redundant over night and not operational since. Even RBS with the issues they had were not out this long.

I got little empathy, no we are going to make good customers like yourself that have been impacted. I could sense the please go away now and never really felt like there was a feel he wanted to reconcile with me.

The conversation moved on and I then started to speak to one of the other attendees, but I dragged myself back in when I heard

"it's not our fault"

In that small moment it undermined the whole offering , what you are basically saying is :

We will charge you for a card to provide a service but have not control over it end to end so you are on your own if it fails.

And their right in the sense that a "3rd Party" has impacted them and its beyond their control and this is where the issue is. One of the driving forces behind the crypto movement is that you remove the 3rd party.

The Wirex product itself can be the best of the best world beating tech but if its relying on the legacy banking system they are claiming to displace then we have not really progressed have we ?

I also dont like the "It's not our fault" stance, if you are offering a service and claiming to displace another in the way that they did you cant then use then claim its not your fault.

So had they called this out , had they highlighted this constraint or risk everyone there could make an informed decision and more importantly created a trust which I now dont have.

Still a long way to go before Wirex can claim they are blowing away traditional banks RBS had issues but they were not out this long and they really need to work on their messaging at events like this and how they deal with a current paid up out of pocket customer.