Troubleshooting

Start here when you have difficulty depositing to, or spending your card.

Card is getting declined

There are seven possible causes for declines:

The first step to determining the cause of the decline is to view the details of the card.

1. Transfer of Value Decline

A Transfer of Value is a purchase that is buying another asset-like item. For example, buying gold, cryptocurrency, paying off a credit card, or making a bank transfer.

These are prohibited by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), because due to the anonymity of prepaid cards, those purchases can be abused for money laundering.

That means that depositing to your PayPal balance, Apple Cash balance, sending a Venmo, or any other attempt to transfer the balance off of your Bitoo card will be declined.

Even items like in-video-game skins, points, or other items that can be resold, and therefore abused for money laundering, will be declined.

This result may be declined by the merchant before attempt, or after attempt and blocked by the issuer. If any product in your transaction can be used to store or transfer value, remove it and try again.

2. Merchant Determined High-Risk

This is the most common cause. Merchants and their respective processor have their own risk tolerance. If they view the transaction as high-risk, they will decline it. They are concerned with a user purchasing an item, then initiating a chargeback after receiving the item, which is not possible on our platform.

Most often, the merchants will decline without attempting the card. Usually, they will give a generic error like "card not accepted", "not enough funds" or similar, even though it's due to their risk engine.

This is optimal from a merchant's perspective, because notifying the user "this appears to be fraudulent" will either:

In almost all cases, a user using a normal browser, no VPN, a matching billing address, and operating from and/or delivering to a high-trust country (as determined by the merchant) will not be viewed as high-risk. We see very, very few declines under these conditions.

To ensure the merchant and processor correctly view you as low-risk:

3. Decline due to country jurisdiction restrictions

Most of our cards have country restrictions. Any attempt to use the card: from outside that country, with a merchant headquartered out of that country, or ship an item outside of that country will be declined.

Our country restrictions are as follows:

The physical location of the card "swipe" or spend is the relevant information for the country-restriction. Of course, for an online purchase, there is no physical swipe, so it's based on a combination of the business' location, the user's location, and if shipping a physical item, where it's being shipped to.

The country restriction is enforced by every entity in the payment chain. The bank, card issuer, Bitoo, the receiving business, the business merchant processor, Visa, Apple/Google/Samsung Pay, PayPal, etc. all play a part in enforcing the country restriction. That means that even if you get a Bitoo U.S. card while outside the United States, it's highly unlikely to work; it will be frustrating to attempt.

If you are physically outside the country of a Bitoo card, please do not try to use it. It will not work, it will use up time, and potentially cause you to lose funds. More importantly, it greatly increases our risk of missing on compliance.

4. Incorrect card details

Usually, incorrect card details will show in the transaction list with an error regarding expiration or CVV. However, if a digit is incorrect in the card number, we will not receive that data.

Your card detail fields are copyable. Simply click on each field to copy it, then paste it into the merchant fields to ensure the details are correct.

Also, of course, ensure that the balance on your card covers the cost of the purchase. If it doesn't have enough balance, it will show in the transaction list.

5. Non-matching billing address

All of are cards require the billing name to be "Bitoo Finance". The billing address requirements vary by card, however.

For our U.S.-only, web reloadable card, there is a billing address associated and required. It is shown under your card details in the web dashboard. If that billing address is not used, the transaction will fail.

For all of our non-reloadable cards (all cards in the extension), there is no billing address associated. You are free to use any billing address.

However, two strategies are more likely to make your transaction succeed:

Either one of those strategies are likely to increase your success rate.

If you would like to use a U.S. billing address, but are unsure which to use, feel free to use ours: 5900 Balcones Drive Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731

6. Merchant does not accept prepaid

Some merchants simply do not accept prepaid cards, Bitoo or otherwise. We will have this integrated into the extension so it can tell you ahead of time, but that's not available yet.

In the meantime, you can view our list of accepted and confirmed denied merchants here: bitoo.finance/merchants

If you have a new acceptance or denial that isn't listed, we would love it if you can submit that on the merchants page.

7. Bitoo Finance bug

If none of the suggested fixes help, please let us know. Our goal is to improve Bitoo and the card success rates until your card can be your primary form of spending.

That means having a very high success rate. If you are still having declines, please send us an email at [email protected] or on Telegram at @BitooFinance with your wallet address, card type used, merchant attempted, and item attempted to be purchased.

Card is stuck loading

For some users, a new card will be stuck on the loading indicator.

This is generally due to one of the following:

1. Card Information Retrieval Disrupted

In the normal flow of card retrieval:

  1. The card is purchased, or extension is opened with a card in loading state.
  2. Card shows in extension with a spinning loading indicator.
  3. A browser tab with the card issuer URL is opened in the background.
  4. The extension inputs the corresponding card login information, and extracts the card details from the opened tab. This takes 12-24 seconds.
  5. Card information is uploaded to the Bitoo servers, and shown in the extension.
  6. Card issuer tab closes.

During step #4, the tab needs to be left in the background; don't open it. If the tab is opened, the card retrieval stops.

More importantly, if you do choose to open the link, do not enter your personal (or any) details. The card needs to match what our system ordered.

Inputting different details will flag the card as potentially stolen, causing spending success rate to drop. It also prevents Bitoo from forwarding mobile pay codes, updating card balance, or viewing by customer support.

Lastly, if the card is not filled after 20 seconds, close that background tab and the extension. Re-open the extension and let it try the process again.

2. VPN is on when retrieving card details

As part of the issuer's risk engine, user's with a VPN on are viewed as high-risk. When the extension attempts to retrieve the card details, it wil be blocked, and retrieval will fail.

Make sure to have your VPN turned off when ordering the card. Once the card details are shown in the extension, you can turn your VPN back on.

3. Mismatch between card and user country

For our US and Canada cards, attempting to access the card details from outside of the United States or Canada, respectively, will cause the card detail retrieval process to fail.

If you are not in either of those countries, avoid the headaches and just use the international card.

Note: None of Bitoo Finance's cards support Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria or Ukraine. We also have an active issue where Apple Pay does not work in France, Finland, Portugal, and Italy.

4. Ad-blocking interference

AdGuard, AdBlock, Adblock Plus and other advertisement blockers will interfere with the card retrieval.

They generally have code to prevent websites or extensions from opening other tabs or popups, which can prevent our extension from opening it. Disable the ad blocker, and try again.

Once the card has been retrieved, you can re-enable the ad blocker. Subsequent opens of the extension will show the card data instantly.

Deposit isn't showing in balance

If you have made a deposit, and it hasn't shown in your account after 15 seconds, that is unexpected.

In almost all cases, it's that the deposit was one of:

1. Deposit Sent From Different Address

A lot of other services, like large exchanges, create a new deposit address per user, or per deposit.

At the moment, Bitoo is not at the scale where we can do that profitably. Instead, we have a single deposit address per product + network. It's the same address for all users.

The way we credit funds is solely by the on-chain sender.

If you are logged in with 0xabc, and deposit with 0xfgh, the deposit will credit to 0xfgh. To verify your sending address, get the transaction hash from MetaMask or your wallet app.

Check that From address. Does it match what is shown when you login to Bitoo?

If it does match, then you sent from the correct address. Move onto #2.

2. Sent to a deposit address from another network

This one is pretty straightforward. Here are the deposit addresses by product and network.

Web

Extension

If your deposit was sent to a mismatched deposit address, send us a DM at @BitooFinance.

3. Incorrect currency deposited

Bitoo only supports USDT, USDC, and DAI on EVM networks (Ethereum Mainnet, Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism). Only USDT and USDC on Solana.

If you deposit any other currency, it will not be credited to your account. For example, depositing ETH, MATIC, SOL, or any other currency will not result in a deposit.

If you accidentally sent the wrong currency, send us a DM at @BitooFinance.

Adding card to Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay

All Bitoo cards, with the exception of the Canadian CAD card, can be added to Apple, Google, or Samsung Pay.

First, add the card to the mobile wallet app as normal. Make sure to use "Bitoo Finance" as the name, and use the address that's on the card.

Some cards do not require any additional verification. The ones that do will require a One Time Password (OTP), which is a 6 digit code. If your device requests that, there should be an email already associated with the card, ending with @bitoo.finance; select that option.

For the International card, the Apple, Google or Samsung code will show in the settings cog on your card.

For the web reloadable card, click the Add to Apple/Google Pay flow, and the code will be shown in Step 3.

Failure Adding Card to Apple Pay or Google Pay

Unfortunately, some users will encounter an error when adding their card to Apple Pay or Google Pay.

It may be an error as listed above, or it may only allow you to add by calling the issuing bank, which will not work.

Of course, the first thing to check is that the entered name on the card is Bitoo Finance, and that it matches the billing address for the card.

On iOS, make sure to add that billing address even if it has succeeded without it.

If that's not working, try using the same billing address you use personally use on your phone.

Second, verify that the card you're using matches the country you're in. If you are:

If those are correct, it may be that your device is marked by either Apple or Google as "high-risk". Both companies run a black-box algorithm to determine it. The factors that go into it are not known, but the signals you would expect, such as a new phone that's not signed in, or a phone on VPN, tend to trigger that rating. Note that Apple and Google Support aren't trained on that algorithm, so contacting them is very unlikely to bring results.

To verify if your device is marked as high-risk, try adding your card to another Apple or Android device.

For some International Reloadable users, they have found success by changing the name on the card to their own name, and a billing address within their country.

If all of those fails, it is that Apple or Google have marked your device as high-risk. The only way to resolve that is to factory reset your device and restore from backup. This is a last resort, but it has not failed us yet.

Deposit form shows $0, or wallet doesn't connect

Two common issues happen when attempting to deposit. Either the deposit form shows $0.00 unexpectedly, or you can't even connect your wallet.