Surprisingly frustrating to fund BAT wallet

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1

This has probably been talked about before, but I wanted to share my experience. As I understand it, the process to get money to contributors is

  1. Create a rewards wallet in Brave
  2. Set up an Uphold account
  3. Verify the Uphold account
  4. Add a funding method
  5. Add money to a fiat card using funding method
  6. Transfer money from fiat card to a BAT/BTC/ETH/LTC card
  7. Transfer money from BAT/BTC/ETH/LTC card to Brave wallet

I got kinda stuck at step 5. Two MasterCard cards and one Visa card declined the transaction, and two more MasterCard cards had an error while attempting to add them as a funding method. I talked to Citi (MasterCard) about the declined transaction, and they told me they decline all cryptocurrency transactions. I know I could probably throw in the towel on credit cards and add a bank as a funding method, but I preferred not to do that.

Lastly, Uphold told me there’s no way to set up recurring deposits into BAT. It’s too much to expect a user to manually top off. Everyone has an auto-payment these days.

I know there are plans to allow you to fund your wallet directly in the browser. I think that’s really what’s needed here. This was far too painful a process to ever achieve widespread adoption.

2 Likes
2

well said. I think Brave is really far from that reality

3

@keegan you don’t need an Uphold account in order to funding your in browser wallet (brave://rewards).

You can send BAT/BTC/ETH and other supported currency (that listed under “Add fund” dialogue box) from other exchange/wallet. Like Coinbase, etc.

4

Yes, I’m aware I don’t have to use Uphold and can use whatever platform I want. That’s how cryptowallets work. But the only link in Brave’s FAQ is documentation on how to setup Uphold. I’d expect this is what most users would do. Only users already comfortable with some other cyrptoplatform would know to do anything different.

I’m new to crypto myself, but I’d expect the cards will likely get declined even if I chose another platform. And are there any platforms where I can automate the funding of the Brave wallet?

5

It sounds like you’re looking for a cloud wallet with a schedule-payment option. I used to use coinbase (which I gave an account number and funded via ACH). They had a way to make recurring payments, I imagine others do too–it seems like a no-brainer feature.

I decided I didn’t like cloud wallets (why should I trust them with my private keys?). Every cryptocurrency I’ve ever worked with had a cli client which would let you trigger a payment with a single command, so if I wanted to schedule payments I’d probably just make a cron job to do it and have it run on a raspberry pi or something.

A third option would be to have a smart contract make the payment, which they discuss here:

I realize most of these options require a rather technical user, but that’s how it is in the world of crypto–we’re still building it.

6

Keep on making things too technical for us non-nerdical types and adoption by the masses will be even more slower.

7

I agree with your sentiment, it’s a problem that the cryptocurrency community would benefit from solving, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that this is not a deficiency in brave.

It’s like you want to send me a package from a country without a post office. There are several ways I can try to help, but at the end of the day it’s a feature that is missing from the source–not the destination.