Dit S.

I have been a customer of bitstamp for three years. This month they held back my transfer demanding additional KYC procedures.

These procedures require the customer to
- submit salary slips
- submit annual tax revenue statements
- provide data clarifying the purpose of crypto withdrawals
- submit signed wallet addresses to which crypto has been withdrawn
- submit information about which other exchanges are being used
- include identifying information with any of the documents submitted
- elaborate on the bitstamp account usage in greater detail
- elaborate on the destination of crypto withdrawals to various crypto addresses supplying supporting documentation for all the statements

However in bitstamp's "Terms and Conditions", no mention is made about this additional KYC. Yet bitstamp is using this as an excuse to justify its behaviour in withholding customers funds.

As I am typing this in the terms and conditions they only claim to collect the following information:
"A. Personal Information We Collect
We collect the Personal Data which you provide directly to us or which we generate when you open a Bitstamp Account, perform any transactions on the Bitstamp Platform, or use other Bitstamp Services or our website. This may include:

Contact information, such as name, home address and email address;
Account information, such as username, password, Account settings and preferences;
Financial information, such as bank account numbers, bank statement and trading information;
Identity verification information, such as images of your government-issued ID, passport, national ID card or driving licence. Note: US residents may be asked to provide their social security numbers;
Residence verification information, such as utility bill details or similar information;
Information regarding the way in which you use our Services, such as when you used our Services, and the specific Services used; and
Information relating to communications with us, whether through the Bitstamp website or via e-mail, over the phone or via any other medium."

(See: https://www.bitstamp.net/privacy-policy/
https://www.bitstamp.net/s/documents/legal/Bitstamp_SA_terms_of_use_personal.pdf)

I have screenshots to prove that today 04/11/2020 this is precisely what it says on their website.

Bitstamp moved our accounts from Bitstamp Ltd (their UK office) to Bitstamp SA in Luxembourg
In the beginning of August this year.

As a result their compliance criteria probably changed. Yet they decided not to inform their customers knowing very well that very few customers would be happy to provide the information listed above for the "additional KYC procedure".

In the email I received on the 4th of August, (An update regarding your Bitstamp account) bitstamp said:
"The services we offer you will not be affected and you do not need to take any action at this time."
And then:
"Once this process is finished, your account will be subject to Bitstamp Europe SA's Terms of Use and our updated Privacy Policy. For more details, please review the full documents."

The links to those two documents are the links I supplied above. And they contained no information about any additional KYC requirements.

In addition, they said:"No action is required!"

The lack of any information regarding the new KYC requirements suggest that bitstamp was purposefully misleading its customers about the change of compliance conditions resulting from moving the accounts and is now blackmailing its customers by withholding funds until the required information has been supplied.

Any comment by bitstamp pointing out their terms and conditions can be easily refuted. There is nothing about the additonal KYC demands in their terms and conditions at the time I am writing this.

Bitstamp conduct is not acceptable and is probably in direct contravention of the laws of most European countries. Changes in Terms and conditions need to made known.

And people need to be warned to stay away from bitstamp.

Most users will have stumbled accross this company looking of a cryptocoin debit card.

But beware, Paycent is not issuing a mastercard as originally announced. The card has been changed to a unionpay card. Unfortunately you will only find out, when you receive your card. Paycent does not deem it necessary to inform its customers about "minor" changes like this.

The card was originally announced for the end of February. Now the date for delivery for the second batch is given as 4th or 5th of July. Paycent doesn't inform customers of delays. The only place to get this information is their telegram channel. But there it is quite a challenge to retrieve the few gems of valuable information amongst all the fanboyism talk by the investors.

If you don't want a unionpay card (because you paid for a mastercard after all) you can try to get a refund. Good luck with that though.
You will soon realise that they keep no records of when customers paid. They will ask you to send them the transaction hash of when you paid the US$140. Okay that can be a bit of an issue if you use multiple wallets and have many transactions. However if you ordered and pre-registered through the website (and not the app) now is when your real problems begin.

Because of a bug on the website the price in BTC was not updated once you pre-registered. So if you didn't pay on the same day that you registered you will have paid more (or less if you are lucky) because of the fluctuations in the BTC/US exchange rates. If you belong to that group and only paid a couple of days after pre-registration, your amount from the transaction will likely differ. Once you send them the transaction hash they will tell you it is not the correct hash because the amount you paid is more than/less than US$ 140. "And please send us the correct transaction hash."

If you want to check the BTC blockchain info for yourselves (and not just take my word for it) their wallet address is 33mUPvJK29cCB7Uo6xy11L5dcczjBdSbbG.
Scroll down and see how many payments they received that were spot on $140 and how many were more (some as high as US$ 155) others less.
In my case I pre-registered in January and it was only when I asked for a refund that I became aware that there had been a problem with the initial payment. Paycent never bothered to inform the customers. Even though they are very much aware of it and are now utilising it as a cheap trick not to repay the deposits.

If they realise, that that cheap trick is not going to work because you have your pre-registration email as proof they will refund. But not the full amount. Even though they charged you US$140 for the card. They will refund you what works out best for them and if the BTC price has dropped, it is BTC you will get, even if that means you are now only getting US$ 120.
Very unethical behaviour.

There are other issues as well, bugs in the app, payments that get stuck and need to be be retrieved manually, a process that on average takes three days to a week.

In view of all that it comes as no real surprise that paycent had problems with the audit and mastercard stopped further issuing of mastercard debit cards.

So at this stage my advise to potential new customers is to avoid paycent.

If you already ordered a debit card, check your transaction hash, see what the exchange rate was at the time and if you paid more than US$140 ask for a refund.

If you odered a debit card, expecting to receive a master card, cancel now. The second batch of the new cards will be dispached during the first week of July. Once the cards have been sent out cancellation is bound to be more difficult.

I paid for a six month membership upgrade. I received an email confirming that my membership had been upgraded. Logging in I saw that indeed it had been upgraded.

Logging in a day later I was back at free membership.

I contacted support requesting them to look into it: no reply.
I contacted support again 24 hours later, still no reply.

I cancelled my membership, requesting a refund.
They told me, that my payment had not been received and they were not going to refund my money.

So my money is gone. My advice, stay away from this site.