Barclaycards’ Crypto Ban Cannot Be Justified Under English Law
If private banks can prohibit legal activity based on unilateral risk preferences, then the rule of law no longer governs access — arbitrary power does. That is a fact and here is the evidence.
Barclays informed customers that form 27 June, customers will no longer be able to use a Barclaycard to make any type of crypto-currency transaction.
That can’t be done in the UK lawfully. It requires breaking the law and that is so without a doubt.
What Barclays is doing amounts to:
“I comply with the law — unless I have a hunch that complying would be risky, inconvenient, or ideologically undesirable to me.”
That is not legal discretion. That is privatized adjudication — a bank replacing the law with its own judgment, selectively. In legal terms, this undermines:
The rule of law — the principle that no one is above or outside the law.
Legal certainty — the idea that laws, not private whims, govern access to rights and services.
Equal access — guaranteed by regulatory frameworks that govern essential financial infrastructure.
Barclays is not merely expressing a policy preference. It is functionally acting as a shadow legislator restricting lawful activity without statutory authority.
That is not discretion. It’s overreach. What makes this a crisis is that our regulators and judicial system no longer recognize it as such.
Barclays, as a globally systemic bank and financial institution, could be prevented from engaging in such conduct without the need for litigation, using existing statutory powers vested in the Bank of England and the FCA. Both its business model and business practices are subject to regulatory scrutiny. It is within the competence of these regulators to stop a supervised entity from applying practices that, while facially lawful, violate regulatory principles — including equal access, non-discrimination, and operational integrity.
What do I know? Apparently more about the law and banking than these two regulators — not to mention Barclays and their legal department.
Making a mistake doesn’t indicate incompetence. It indicates a lack of adequate internal control. That is a governance failure with regulatory consequences. If the Bank of England and the FCA choose to ignore that, they may be in breach of their own statutory duties.
None of this is controversial. I am simply describing the law.
What is needed now is a factual assessment: did Barclays apply discriminatory or arbitrary restrictions in violation of financial conduct regulations?
Barclaycard Official statement:
“Can I use my Barclaycard to make a crypto-currency transaction?
No, it’s not possible to make crypto-currency transactions using a Barclaycard. From 27 June 2025, we’ll block crypto-transactions made with a Barclaycard because we recognise there are certain risks with purchasing crypto-currencies.
We’re doing this because a fall in the price of crypto assets could lead to customers finding themselves in debt they can’t afford to repay. There's also no protection for crypto assets if something goes wrong with a purchase, as they're not covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service and Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
To find out more about crypto-currency and the risks of using it, go to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) website and search for ‘crypto the basics’.”
This statement from Barclays is not a regulatory directive; it is a discretionary commercial policy framed as consumer protection. However, that justification introduces contradictions:
Risk as a basis for prohibition: If Barclays blocks crypto purchases on the grounds that the asset might lose value and lead to unmanageable debt, then logically it would also need to block equity trades. Yet it does not because we typically don’t buy stocks via credit card. Selectively enforcing “customer protection” undermines the principle of equal treatment and opens the door to arbitrary restriction.
No Protection Schemes: Barclays claims that crypto lacks protection under the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). But Barclaycard is a credit card product — not a deposit instrument — so deposit protection is not applicable to credit card transactions. By Barclays’ own logic, we should therefore be prohibited from purchasing anything that lacks deposit protection.
But what can I buy with a credit card that is covered by FOS and FSCS? Can I go to the bank and say: “I want to buy something that includes deposit insurance and I want to put it on my Barclaycard?” Of course not — that category doesn’t exist and creditcards treat cash only purchases differently.
Let’s take their logic further. Suppose Barclaycard allowed me to make unlimited interest-free cash purchases. I’d like to use it to buy £10 billion in Sterling and engage in interest arbitrage. There’s no risk for Barclays — I’ll grant you a lien over the assets and agree not to move the funds, repaying my bill in full. Since this is a domestic purchase, there are no credit card fees either (if they treat it as goods). A few friends would like to do the same.
Unless Barclays permits this, the “protection argument” collapses. It is impossible to apply consistently. It is incoherent even under their own terms.
But many legal purchases — including art, collectibles, or secondhand goods — also lack such protections. The absence of third-party recourse is not, in itself, a lawful ground for prohibition unless explicitly regulated.
Crypto as FX + Settlement Utility: Purchasing crypto typically involves gas or miner fees, meaning the transaction requires a foreign currency (e.g., ETH or BTC) to settle. If I’ve agreed to sell a financial instrument (e.g., a tokenized security), the crypto may serve as the medium to transfer ownership. Blocking this transfer may force me to breach a private contract — not due to the token’s legality, but due to Barclays’ decision to restrict access to lawful payment mechanisms. In doing so, Barclays interferes with lawful commerce and contractual performance, possibly inducing breach.
Regulatory Implication: Barclays cites the FCA website to suggest that this policy is grounded in regulatory guidance. But the FCA has not banned crypto. Nor has Parliament. Barclays is enforcing a private ban under the guise of regulatory alignment — a paternalistic risk framing without legal foundation. This misleads customers, who may reasonably infer that the restriction is mandated or approved by the FCA. Since this is not the case, Barclays must clarify that invoking the FCA here is nonstandard and does not reflect any binding policy. Failing to do so constitutes regulatory misrepresentation.
If Barclays has legitimate concerns about specific crypto merchants — such as fraud, money laundering, or compliance failures — it already possesses the regulatory tools to address them: transaction monitoring, KYC procedures, and AML flags. If, in a specific case, it finds that all sellers in a category are structurally non-compliant, it may have grounds to decline service in that context. But that is not what it claims.
Instead, Barclays asserts a general ban based on non-performance-related risks. It claims the right to prevent customers from engaging in lawful transactions, not because Barclays cannot fulfill its obligations, but because it speculates about the buyer’s future financial situation.
That is not risk management. It is overreach.
Barclays elevates itself into a position where it claims the authority to deny individuals access to their own private property based on its opinion of what constitutes acceptable risk — not to the institution, but to the individual.
This is unlawful.
Any justification based on risks external to Barclays’ own contractual liabilities constitutes an infringement on individual liberty. There is no statutory authority allowing a bank to enforce such preferences.
A bank like Barclays will not amend its terms and conditions without legal review. That such a change — one that plainly conflicts with basic legal principles — passed internal legal scrutiny is revealing. It shows a deeper systemic failure: not of bad intent, but of degraded legal reasoning.
Highly credentialed lawyers in a globally regulated institution were unable to recognize what is legally straightforward. This is not merely about crypto. It exposes a more general epistemic decay — the collapse of precision in legal language.
Law loses its function when those tasked with interpreting it can no longer distinguish between normative authority and discretionary preference. If legal professionals cannot correctly parse the scope of a service contract versus civil liberty, then law itself becomes unrecognizable.
The issue is not compliance, but comprehension.
If Barclays (or any bank) could set arbitrary terms for who may or may not use their services, including denial based solely on category (e.g., asset type, group affiliation, transaction target).
Then it must follow that Barclays could lawfully:
Deny credit card access to Black people
Deny services to Muslims
Refuse to process payments to left-wing bookstores
Prohibit purchases of meat (if they choose) because they feel vegan is the way to go
These actions would violate anti-discrimination law, financial access law, and likely equal protection principles under UK and EU frameworks.
So, if those exclusions are impermissible, then categorical exclusion of lawful assets (like crypto) must also require specific legal authority — not just “bank preference.”
Otherwise, you create a contradictory standard:
Discrimination is illegal unless we call the category “risky” or “controversial.”
That’s not law. That’s discrimination masquerading as not being discriminate when it is discrimination, and when it restricts access to legal goods, it becomes private coercion over public liberty.
This is airtight legal reasoning and not just logical. The law is not law when it requires irrational arguments:
If banks enjoy absolute freedom of contract, racism is legal
Since racism is not legal, neither is arbitrary exclusion without legal basis
What Barclays has done is a private veto on a legal activity, and that’s structurally indistinct from discrimination.
If Barclaycard had said:
Purchasing crypto is legal.
No UK law prohibits individuals from using their funds to buy cryptocurrency.
Credit cards are regulated instruments.
They are not like ay other personal contracts; they operate under consumer finance law, anti-discrimination statutes, and banking regulations. Banks cannot invent exclusions arbitrarily.
“Risk” is not a legal basis for exclusion.
A risk-based approach allows for enhanced due diligence, not blanket bans on asset classes that are lawful. Otherwise, they’d have to ban alcohol, tobacco, or airline tickets.
Barclays has no statutory exemption that permits redefining discrimination as protection. The absence of a right cannot be substituted with good intentions. A private entity may restrict services only where it has a lawful basis to do so — contractual, statutory, or regulatory. Barclays has cited none.
Instead, it frames its interference with lawful purchases as “customer protection,” while presenting no evidence that the risk in question is borne by Barclays. If the risk is mine, it is mine to assess. Preemptive paternalism without legal authority is not care but coercion.
In legal terms: this is not discretion. It is ultra vires, an act beyond their legal power.
If the FCA or Parliament has not explicitly authorized such a restriction, Barclays is assuming legislative power which it doesn’t have.
The analogy to protected classes holds.
If banks could deny services based on subjective or undisclosed criteria, they could exclude protected groups under the same pretext. The only safeguard against that is law, not bank “policy.”
If you find a legal argument why I should be wrong I would love to hear it.
Right now I can only assume we have lost an understanding of what the rule of law means.
PS: Anti-Discrimination Law Ceases to Function If Barclays Can Lawfully Ban Crypto — and If Not, the Rule of Law Is Already Broken
The counterargument that anti-discrimination laws specify the protected groups and that crypto is not listed doesn’t invalidate my argument — it proves it. The following should be possible under that logic: someone could deny credit cards to a protected group, say on the basis of faith, by saying: “We are not discriminating against Muslims; we are protecting them from financial decisions we believe are too risky for Muslims.”
The law doesn’t say I cannot call what I do "protection" and thereby override the law. It is logic.
If the law depended on enumerating every trick by which someone might relabel exclusion as something else, it would collapse. If the law says that calling something “protection” is not allowed to justify discrimination, then saying, “Fine, I didn’t protect, I carefully safeguarded,” must also fail. I can come up with plenty of different names — enough to fill a book.
If anti-discrimination law required that discriminatory behavior be labeled as such by the actor to be actionable, it would delegate interpretive authority to precisely those parties it is meant to constrain — parties who, by definition, lack that authority. The ability to determine what constitutes discrimination is not private discretion but legal authority. Only courts possess it.
That’s why legal language must be governed by reason, not just by text.
So, if Barclays claims “protection” but cannot show risk that is internal to its own obligation, then the motive is irrelevant. The form is one of arbitrary exclusion, which functionally equals discrimination. If the only defense against discrimination is logic — and logic is selectively applied or overridden by discretion — then all protection collapses into administrative preference. And the law is no longer law; it becomes despotism.
So if they say:
“We stop you from buying crypto to protect you from financial harm,”
then I should be able to say:
“Okay — so if I make any unaffordable or risky purchase, and you don’t stop it, then you’re responsible for letting it happen. You can't have it both ways.”
If they claim to protect, then they are liable if they fail to protect me consistently.
This falls under:
Promissory estoppel – if they led you to rely on their protective policies, they can’t disclaim responsibility when they fail.
Duty of care – if they exercise discretion to block some purchases, then they’ve assumed a duty and must do so fairly and predictably.
Fairness in contract – you can’t have an agreement where one party controls your choices but bears no consequences.
There is no other conclusion possible. Anti-discrimination laws do not establish a right to discriminate but forbid discrimination against people for a certain reason. Companies enjoy freedom to offer certain services or not, but if you volunteer to offer a credit card service then you have exercised your freedom to offer it. And restricting your offer without a valid reason under the law is discrimination and illegal. If that wasn’t so, anti-discrimination rules could be circumvented if somebody says: I don’t discriminate against people of a certain faith but only Londoners of such a faith. The law doesn't mention Londoners as a protected group, and you can’t say that’s what the law means if the law doesn’t say it — because then we can all invent what we want the law to say. And a faith-based group and people of a region who also are of a certain faith is not the same group. Therefore, the law that forbids discrimination does not create a right for discrimination unless the people are mentioned — but it forbids discrimination in particular for the reasons mentioned, and therefore any other unlawful reason. And the reason Barclaycard cites is not a lawful reason because it makes them decide on my behalf what financial risk I want to take. I have no agency, and Barclays decides on my behalf what I should purchase or not.
The fact that “crypto” is not a protected group is irrelevant under the logic of indirect discrimination. What matters is:
Whether the policy (e.g. banning crypto purchases) has a disproportionate effect on a protected group (e.g. Muslims),
And whether that policy can be objectively justified by a legitimate aim, using proportionate means.
A crypto ban carries legal risk for Barclaycard (assuming any judge or lawyers cares about the rule of law in England which I have not seen much evidence of) because it could function as a proxy for a prohibited ground of discrimination (faith, ethnicity, etc.). That risk must be evaluated, not dismissed by pointing to the surface neutrality of the policy.
In formal terms: disparate impact plus lack of justification equals unlawful discrimination, regardless of the explicit content of the rule.
Thus, if Barclays bans crypto, they must be prepared to demonstrate that:
The ban is not targeting a protected group, even indirectly.
The policy serves a clear, lawful, and proportionate purpose.
Failing either test puts them in breach of anti-discrimination law.
"Crypto not being a protected category" is not a defense. It's not about the category, it's about the consequences and whether they're legally defensible.
That is the rule of law.