Hey guys
after all those fud and concerns I think it is time for some positive news: I finally received my card
I have to admit that it took almost 3 month (ordered on August 12th and received it on November 11th) and that I am living in Germany, so one of the rather unproblematic regions regarding the WaveCrest delivering problems.
Click me for a picture of the card Well … since a lot of you may be waiting for it I think it is a good idea to describe my experiences with it so far.
I have to excuse that for this post I somehow was to dump to get thumbnails in here. Also I was not able to do screenshots of the app directly, since the app does not allow to take some...
1) Ordering the CardWell that was rather easy. Just install the mobile app, choose a pin and insert some personal data (mail address, name and so on). Then swap some small BTC to the mobile app that is worth at least 15 dollars and hid the card button on the front page of the app. There you have to insert some data about your address to get KYC level 1 (more about KYC later) and then you can order it. In my opinion rather simle.
2) Receiving the Card and ActivationWell waiting was a pain. As mentioned it took three month between the order and the card arrival. In the meantime the app was only useful as a nice looking mobile wallet. Thats it. But finally on November 11th it arrived surprisingly. Interestingly I received the mail with the DHL tracking code one day after on November 12th xD
Activating the card is simple. Just go to the card menu point in the app and tab on activate. Then you have to insert the last 4 digits of your card number (that you only know once you have it in our hand – I can not remember that it way printed anywhere else). Afterwards the card menu in the app changes. It now shows your card balance in BTC, SGD (Singapur Dollar) and in your selected currency (Euro in my case). The exchange rate for you seems to be fixed four you for 15 minutes once opening this tab.
On the bottom there are two additional panels for showing your ATM pin (thumbs up that it is so easy to see it) and a button to hit for reaching KYC level 2. Also you have the opportunity to lock your card right there in the app, e.g. when it is lost. And also you can unlock it right when you found it back. I like that function.
3) KYC level Currently there are 3 KYC (know your customer) level around that are important for us.
KYC 0 is plainly that the company knows almost nothing about the customer. Maybe they have a valid Email address, but thats it. It is clear that TenX can not work with this level, because they have to send you something physical.
KYC 1 means that they have a working address where you can receive physical mail. This does not mean that you are residing at that address or that your name is real. Just that post with that information gets delivered.
With KYC 2 it is verified you are a living person with exactly that name living at the address you gave them. This usually requires a photo of some passport or something similar as well as a photo of some document proving that your are residing at the address.
So why should be switch to KYC 2 with TenX card? Well due to the European Union money laundering laws the livetime load of a prepaid card (which is the TenX from laws point of view) is bounded by 2.500$ / 2500€ and the limit for daily ATM withdrawal is set to 2x 200€ / $. From December 10th onwards the limits will be even more sharp. Then livetime limit in KYC 1 is 250 € and one time limit is 100 € because of new EU regulations. This is nothing unique to TenX and also affects other similar cards (e.g. I have a Uquid card with same limitations).
So reaching KYC 2 will help getting the full potential out of the card. For this you must tab on the above mentioned panel in the app. Then you can select which type of document you would like to submit. I personally selected front page of my traveling passport and a page of a telephone company bill. You can chose to use your mobiles camera or some photo from the phone gallery right from the app. Note that I had to do this twice, because I somehow missed the condition that each picture must be smaller then 400 kbytes and the pics generated by my phone camera were larger… The app does not warn you about it, I just got a message one day later that the size was to large. But after resizing them it worked.
It took two days and a few hours (it was sometime at night) for my card to switch to KYC level 2. Now the original button vanished and was replace by some FAQ and get support button. By the informations from settings menu my daily limit is now 20.000 $, single transaction limit 10.000$ and no lifetime limit. Note that two days is very quickly for the KYC 2, because the document musts be visited by humans. Many exchanges require much longer for the verification.
4) Using the CardDirectly this morning my car complained about fuel being empty, so I decided to buy some with the freshly activated card. Well and what to say except from it worked just fine. Gave my card, they scanned it and asked for the PIN. I typed the one in from the app and the same moment I felt that my phone was vibrating because I got a notification about a successful payment.
Click me for a picture of the notificationBeside the notification from the app I also got an Email with the same information. The exchange rate was only 0.35% off the average exchange rate of Kraken and Bitfinex at that moment (I checked it before leaving the station). Very nice, because the rate at most European exchange is worse.
Right now the rate is in an uptrend. Poor me, a hour later my fuel would be less expensive. But thats life.
Click me for a picture of the receiptOverall ImpressionIf this would be a review I would say its a 4/5 with the two minus points being the long waiting time and that currently I only can use BTC for loading the card. With other coins the daily use may be much higher due to lesser block times (e.g. Ethereum, all ERC 20 or ZEC) and lesser transaction fees. Never the less the product itself is working very well – I was surprised that APP and physical card are working good together. This also may be a reason why it is so hard fining an other card issuer, because the application programming interface of WaveCrest that allows such an integration of the card is rather unique. Therefore I can understand that they chose this issuer for their cards.
But if TenX sticks to their plans in adding more currencies and finding either some new issuer or is sometime be able to issue their own cards – well this is an amazing product.
Ps: For all those who got kind of burned when buying PAY tokens at higher price I have some investment strategy for you: buy more right now! Why? Well I also bought about 10 PAY when it was at 4$ each. I personally hate selling with loss if I do not require the money urgently, so I hold this token all the way down. Now I bought additionally 100 at about 1.65$. So I am still in loss zone, but calculator said I bought 110 PAY for 205$, so if 1 PAY goes up again above 1.87$ I am already in the winning zone. The idea is simple: if you were thinking that 4$ was a nice price for a product, then be happy to buy more of it at even lower price
So far so good. Stopping here right now before this post gets too long. Thanks for everyone that read all of what came into my mind and have a nice day.
