US Bank Blocked Coinbase CEO’s Payment, Crypto Fixed It

The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, is in the Coinbase news today for his Twitter post in which he complained about his user experience with two popular legacy fiat payment apps. Armstrong apparently tried to send a payment to a colleague and a US bank blocked his payment, when he highlighted the need for crypto alternatives.

Brian Armstrong was apparently not able to make a peer-to-peer payment to his friend using two different but very popular payment apps – PayPal and Square Cash App. He tweeted stating:

“Trying to send money to pay back a friend. Paypal tells me “recipient is unable to receive money” and SquareCash tells me my bank declined the payment. This is in the U.S. where these services work best. Imagine rest of the world.”

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1227678692425359360

Armstrong pictured how a US bank blocked his payment and how he is facing these difficulties in the US, the world’s largest and most developed economy. He also pointed out that residents of smaller and less economically developed nations would face even larger obstacles than he had.

Armstrong also elaborated on the take, explaining that the US bank blocked him and that the regulatory restrictions are often to blame for lackluster customer experiences, as the companies themselves must comply with new regulations and often have their hands tied.

While the crypto news show that alternatives are still very early and have similar problems with UX, Armstrong believes that the crypto payments will be the payments alternative which “just works” in the future.

“Crypto has it’s own (numerous) UX challenges of course. But by building on new underlying infrastructure there is an opportunity to make things better, and finally have payments that “just work” as he noted.

The Ripple-backed remittances service Moneygram also offered Armstrong a promotional code in an effort to shill their services to his Twitter audience. It is unclear whether Armstrong took them up on the offer. He also went on to mention that as the US bank blocked his payments, there is plenty of space for innovators to introduce groundbreaking new alternatives in regulated markets.

“There is a lot of opportunity to launch products in regulated markets though. It is so much harder to be innovative, so most entrepreneurs shy away from it,” he noted in the Coinbase news today.