Monaco & Visa - The FUD Explained

There have been numerous questions and comments regarding Monaco becoming a Visa program manager. Much of it is completely false, so I want to explain the source of the FUD and the current state of Monaco Card. (I'm not with Monaco, I'm just an investor and fan of the product. Oh, and if someone could invite me to the Slack that would be really cool... hint hint)

First off I want to clear something up. Monaco is applying to be a Visa program manager, meaning they'll have a direct relationship with Visa and will have much better rates. Monaco's "competitors" like TenX and Xapo go through a 3rd party, which is why they have higher rates.

This whole thing started on August 30th, right before Monaco's app launch. The Twitter account CryptoBreakingNews‏ (@cryptobn) tweeted a leaked image of Monaco's website and app with the words "Spend, save and earn with stunning Monaco Visa® Platinum cards" displayed prominently. (I'm not sure if this is the first place the leaked image appeared, but it's the first place I saw it.) The text on the tweet read: (hashs have been removed)

#EXCLUSIVE : The landing page of the @monaco_card app! The VISA deal is confirmed : http://app.mona.co btc Bittrex monaco mco eth

Immediately after Kris Marszalek‏ responded to the Tweet saying:

This is NOT the final version of the Monaco website and Visa has not approved our program yet - we are investigating this leak now

This caused massive FUD. The story changed too many times to keep track, but people were saying, "Monaco is NOT Visa approved!" or "Monaco was never approved by Visa yet they were using the Visa logo to deceive people!"

Then the app was released with no mention of Visa and again people freaked out. Visa-approval was never meant to be ready when the app was released and if these "investors" did their due diligence they would know this already. Many people mistakingly took the app launching without Visa approval as a sign that Monaco was declined. More FUD ensued and still ensues.

A recent Q&A by Kris on Monaco's Slack channel clears up any remaining ambiguity:

Q: Considering things can take time and you’ve got no items outstanding, are you still confident in the time scale of being a VISA program manager in September?
A: We are confident enough to put it in our app 2 days ago.

Q: Can you tell us anything about the challenges faced in sorting out a direct deal with Visa? Does it require additional regulation or licenses? If so, have you filed for those and how long do they typically take to get confirmed?
A: If you know what you are doing the only challenge is that large corporates take time to get things done

Q: The only wrong thing was showing that cards, and all that news, with the VISA brand.
A: We stepped in immediately when the images were leaked and said the program is not approved yet; objective was not to let the price go up based on this unconfirmed news; having said that, policing the whole internet for fake images and debunking speculators who are incentivised and creative is hard.

So, my own personal thoughts on Monaco are that they really haven't done anything shady. The leaked images were unfortunate and that really hurt their reputation. Fortunately, if/when Monaco does get approved as a Visa program manager, all this FUD will go away.

Hopefully this clears up any questions you had about Monaco and Visa.