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Barclays Terminates Financial Relationship with Coinbase

According to reports, the relationship between one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, Coinbase, and banking giant Barclays, has now officially ended. Barclays will no longer be facilitating GBP withdrawals for the San Francisco-based exchange.

The reports have it that Coinbase has already moved on and is now to do business with a challenger bank in the U.K., Clearbank. On the surface, it would seem that Coinbase has already handled the situation but the Barclays abandonment of their partnership has reportedly taken a toll on the exchange’s business.

Before now, Barclays gave Coinbase access to the U.K.’s Faster Payments Scheme (FPS), which was very beneficial to the bank as it could handle immediate deposits and withdrawals of the GBP for all of its customers. Now that Barclays is gone with FPS, this same function is now significantly slower for customers who need to transact GBP.

The new relationship with ClearBank should however return Coinbase’s access to FPS but would most likely not take effect until the September, when the 2019 3rd quarter would end.

Why Did Barclays Leave?

On one hand, some believe that Barclays was no longer comfortable with the crypto sector for reasons which are still largely unknown. An unidentified crypto stakeholder in the U.K. opined that the bank became apprehensive and decided to terminate the Coinbase relationship.

“It is my understanding that Barclays’ risk appetite has contracted a little – I’m not sure exactly why or what’s been driving that, maybe there has been some activity they are not happy with. But it’s about Barclay’s comfort level with crypto as a whole.”

Image Credits: Stock Photo Secrets

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