Now That All Virtual Dollar Cards Has been Terminated, What is the Way Forward?

Last week, Flutterwave sent an email to all its users that it has discontinued virtual dollar cards effective from Sunday 17th July, 2022. As if that was not enough, other African fintec startups offering virtual dollar card follow suite, sent an emails to their customer stating that their virtual card service will be unavailable indefinitely starting Saturday, July 16, 2022.

Virtual cards are digital replicas of physical bank cards. They are created and stored within digital virtual wallets. Atleast, I made use of my virtual dollar cards mostly to pay for goods online.

From the email I received from Barter by Flutterwave, it reads

“…effective Sunday, 17th July 2022, all our Virtual Dollar cards will be unavailable for any transactions and purchases.” The payments giant attributed the reason for this suspension to “an update from the company’s card partner”. Barter is a Flutterwave consumer-facing virtual card platform that launched in early 2017. 

This announcement by Flutterwave is bound to affect many other startups who use the company’s white-labeled virtual card service to issue virtual cards to their customers. A

Klasha that I was hoping will still be available sent a message to all its users that “All Klasha virtual dollar card services will be unavailable from Sunday, 17 July 2022.

This means that Klasha users will not be able to create, fund, withdraw or use the virtual cards until further notice. If you have virtual dollar cards, you need to do the following;

Other fintech startups including crypto exchange Busha, Rwanda-headquartered Payday, and Ugandan Eversend also issued similar notices. 

It’s not clear which “card partner” Flutterwave and the other fintech startups are referring to, but these platforms have issued virtual cards powered by MasterCard and Visa—two leading global card issuers.

This simply means that all virtual dollar card providers in Africa have terminated their services till further notice.Possibly on CBN’s directive.

What is the way forward.. Which are you currently using?

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11 thoughts on “Now That All Virtual Dollar Cards Has been Terminated, What is the Way Forward?”

  1. But banks like Access and Eco bank are offering this virtual card service too so no need of using 3rd parties services.

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    • I know there are limitations on the amount of dollars one can spend in a month but, what are the limitations on the amount of dollars that could be deposited into a virtual dollar account monthly?

      Reply
  2. Please you didn’t address the question yomi. What’s the way out now that they have terminated all virtual cards? We need your reply… Please find a working solution yomi.

    Reply

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