PSA: More info on Unsupported Region

I had recently contacted various people from Brave to share concerns that many of you have shared in regards to restrictions and understanding why they were happening. I’m hoping perhaps they’ll make an official post here or in the Help Center for everyone, but in the meanwhile I figured I’d share the response from Chriscat (Product Manager for Rewards), which you can see quoted below or you can read the original post on Reddit.

I hope I can provide some more context here. First, there are two kinds of region reductions that have occurred:

  1. Type-1: Where certain regions stop being supported by our custodial partner(s) entirely
  2. Type-2: Where certain regions are still serviced by our custodial partner(s), but accounts from those regions can no longer be connected to Brave Rewards

An example of Type-1 would be when Uphold stopped servicing Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and countries in the Balkans. Naturally, when a custodial partner stops servicing a region, that region will no longer be supported for connecting to Brave Rewards (with that custodian). Unlike Type-2 changes, Type-1 can affect existing users, since the underlying custodial account is no longer considered valid.

An example of Type-2 would include the earlier restrictions on Philippines, India, or the recent reduction from 19 countries to just the US for Gemini. The reasons behind any given Type-2 reduction vary from case to case, and usually involve a combination of factors.

As we’ve mentioned in previous announcements, one reason would be unsustainable patterns of fraud. For instance, it may be very easy to acquire or forge government IDs from certain countries, making them more difficult to support in a sustainable way. However, it’s worth mentioning that as fraudsters become more bold over time, they also broaden their attacks to include a wider set of countries, including ones you’d normally associate with having strong ID document integrity.

Another would be insufficient localization for a given region (i.e., the UI/UX, KYC process, support process, etc.). Providing a localized experience is primary for retention, and it is hard to actually retain a user if, say, your UI/UX is not available in their native language. It’s also important for fraud prevention, since different methods are used for different regions. An example in this direction was when Gemini was first reduced to 19 countries, which we alluded to in our announcement when we wrote: “Gemini and Brave together are re-evaluating the sign-up flows to ensure that they are sufficiently clear and straightforward for users.”

In sum, what’s important to remember is that our custodial partners help provide some very important services. These services carry operational costs, including ID-verification, infrastructure maintenance, customer support, fraud prevention & compliance, and so on. Sometimes, business decisions need to be made to ensure the partnership remains sustainable for both Brave and the custodial partner, and the particulars of these decisions—i.e., the exact combination of factors, their weights, etc.—can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, and is different for each partner. Altogether, a decision was made to focus new Gemini signups that come through Brave Rewards to the United States, and we continue to work closely with Gemini to see when more regions can be brought back.

When will countries come back?

We’ve been working very hard on changes that will allow us to bring back more countries. These are not just empty promises. For example:

  • Moving forward, to begin or continue using Brave Rewards, users will need to declare their country. These changes are now in the Nightly version of Brave.

This is major in helping us combat the abuse of Brave Rewards that’s harming the experience for everyone else, and represents a major step toward allowing us to re-enable many regions. Accordingly, our Privacy Policy was updated about a week and a half ago to reflect this new requirement:

We will also ask you to select your country, which we will use to assign a country code to your Rewards Payment ID. The country code helps us ensure Ads are displayed to individuals depending on their country. We will also use the country code to help us prevent fraud.

It’s also worth mentioning that some countries are already being brought back online. Yesterday, Colombia was brought back online for Uphold.

Reminders

  • If you’re already connected to Gemini (even if you do not have a US Gemini account), these changes will not affect you. As of this second, if you are logged out of your Gemini account, it may say that you can’t log back in because your region is not supported. But this error will be resolved in the coming week, and then you will be able to log back in. More importantly, even if it says “Logged out”, you’re still considered connected to Gemini (or Uphold) to us, and should still be receiving ad payouts to your Gemini account!
  • Uphold still supports a wider range of countries, and you can find the list of supported countries here

I hope this was helpful, and I thank everyone for sharing their feedback.

8 Likes

Like I said in another topic, I can easily predict a massive amount of self tipping this month, clearly will never be paid and will bring Brave/Gemini to close all (Gemini) creator accounts in November.

This will probably happen after their wallet gets disconnected

This is definitely not true.

I have this scenario and got september payout in uphold

So here I am, legit user of Brave for many years as many of you know. Since completing the region button suddenly I’ve been logged out of Uphold and have the region not supported error. I mean WTFlick? I’ve been with both Brave and Uphold for years. My DD is all good. I am a UK Citizen working and residing in the Cayman Islands. Can you help me to understand this? I don’t see either listed as an unsupported region. In fact Brave have an office here in Cayman which is half the reason why I joined (support local) years ago. This has well pi$$ed me off. I’ve emailed @tmancey and Uphold to try and make some sense out of this. I haven’t received my Sept payout to Uphold as a result. Beginning to wish I had never connected my accounts.

And after more than a year without never logging out from Gemini linking, today I was suddenly disconnected.

Hi! User support will be able to help you. Thanks

What it would go by is the information you used for KYC/AML. Has your passport and other information always been with the UK? Also, if you have updated your residential information with them to show Cayman Islands, then the mismatch of KYC documents wouldn’t allow you to connect to Uphold.

So the #1 thing will be making sure you get the information sorted out on your account. Beyond that, you can try to submit a Support Ticket with Brave and see if they can help at all. But it might be the idea of documentation with Uphold where your problem is going to be.

NOTE

Anyone experiencing problems, please create your own topic. Also, the majority of any problems you have that relate to Rewards generally will require you to submit a Support Ticket and won’t be able to be resolved directly on Brave Community.

It’s just best not to have tons of people commenting on the same topic, especially when it’s a bunch of “me too” as it never helps and instead can distract.

Thanks!

Honestly I have to say I’m really disappointed from Brave; I was expecting a transition period for the new way to withdraw earnings, and if meanwhile my country (Italy) was no more supported by Brave-Gemini fine, cause other europeans already did it, but giving to almost all the world the possibility to collect tokens and only to us citizens the “feature” to withdraw it’s a very bad move. I already know about all the issues regarding countries regulations, this is different, from 19 to 1 it’s a business decision, and stop blaming the exchange on this, there are hundreds of them that would be happy to join in this project (atleast some months ago), if you really want to keep users who didn’t join just for privacy. I bet Uphold will face the same destiny in a couple of months.

3 Likes

Uphold are aware, and have always been aware of this. I had the conversation with them when I joined years ago. My DD is up to date and nothing has changed. Only a few weeks ago I checked my DD with Uphold and they confirmed everything is still in order. The problem happened when Brave asked me to confirm my region - I put Cayman (which is where I’ve always been as Uphold have always known). Wake up next day, accounts disconnected. I’ve reached out to Uphold again. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens if its not Brave side. And either way, as both regions are supported and I travel between both, I can’t figure out why there would be a problem.

Thanks @tmancey Brave User support or Uphold? I already reached out to Uphold and waiting on a response. I have message history going back to 2019 which I just read where my situation (dual resident) has been addressed with them. I am set up specifically as Uphold recommended for my situation. People move. From a Brave perspective, when I go back to the UK how do I switch my (Brave) region to UK? Cannot see any settings within Brave.

Right, and Cayman isn’t supported right now. It was Brave that made the decision. You can have provided all your info to Uphold as you mentioned, but that doesn’t mean anything. If you have address as Cayman and your passport as UK, then Brave won’t let you link to Uphold. Your info has to match, at least as has been explained by Support.

Well, can try both. Uphold overall just would be if you’re able to change to show everything 100% UK. Brave Support just to see if they can work with you on getting things based on your UK ID. I’m just letting you know now that based on how things have worked in the past, won’t be able to verify until Cayman is supported or you’re back in the UK and can designate all your residential and other documents there. (Or if you’re saying you’re on Nightly and that’s where you set for region, that’s likely the issue and that will have to change it to UK instead of Cayman or something. Again, that would be Brave Support to better answer you on how they have that new setup with the system)

1 Like

Cayman isn’t supported by Brave… since when? Brave have a base here in Cayman and run ad cmpaigns here: https://bravebat.info/brave_ads_campaigns

Basically, since around July/August. As long as you were connected, you’d continue receiving Rewards payments to Uphold/Gemini. But once something happened that you’d get disconnected, you wouldn’t be able to link to Gemini or Uphold again until they add support to the region again. At which point payments would only go to your browser, as if you’re Unverified. (since you now would be)

Two different things. Brave supports it in terms of participating in Rewards and earning BAT, but not support in terms of being able to connect to Uphold or Gemini. That’s kind of where this topic you’ve responded to had been about. People wanted to know why support for custodial accounts was reduced. Especially with the most recent being said to limit Gemini connections to United States only, which you can see at Verifying with Gemini now only available for US Gemini accounts (Brave Rewards)

You can also see my larger Topic on this where I’ve been providing updates to Users as regularly as I can. That topic is at PSA: Unsupported Region

1 Like

@Saoiray you’re always so helpful. Thanks for explaining. I guess I’ll have to wait until it all gets sorted one way or the other. And by the way, I checked my Uphold profile and the country (Cayman) does at least match.

1 Like

My gemini is also disconnected since today and now it says i’m in a not supported region. But i’m in Belgium, it’s well supported. Impossible to sync brave et gemini again

Hi Guys

Please, read the post. Don’t be lazy. It is clearly mentioned that, despite the error, you will receive your rewards.

What if my account is no more connected to Gemini wallet? (screenshots below). I’ve been connected for an year with Gemini to Brave rewards.
I’m asking regards that information mentioned over here:

If you’re already connected to Gemini (even if you do not have a US Gemini account), these changes will not affect you. As of this second, if you are logged out of your Gemini account, it may say that you can’t log back in because your region is not supported. But this error will be resolved in the coming week, and then you will be able to log back in. More importantly, even if it says “Logged out”, you’re still considered connected to Gemini (or Uphold) to us, and should still be receiving ad payouts to your Gemini account!

brave://rewards-internals/:
image

Brave rewards panel:
image