Abra: Buy & Trade BTC & Crypto Reviews

On December 20, 2020 I requested a withdrawal from my bank account to be deposited into my this app account. The expected deposit date was December 21, 2020. When the deposit was not completed I sent an email requesting information. I received an email from Xavier in this app Support indicating with the holidays please be “patient”. On December 29,2020 I sent another email to Xavier advising that my deposit still was not completed. I asked for someone else to look into this situation. On December 30, 2020 I received an email from Ava (this app) indicating that my deposit request was canceled on December 24,2020. On December 30,2020 I sent Ava an email requesting information on who canceled my deposit as I did not cancel it. I also asked why wasn’t I informed of this cancelation? There was more than sufficient funds in my bank account for the withdrawal / deposit. To date, I have not received the courtesy of a response from Ava.
To make matters worse, I submitted another request for a withdrawal from my bank account to deposit into my this app account with the expected deposit date of yesterday, January 4, 2021 and again the deposit has not been completed.
I am totally dissatisfied with this app support staff and I’m seriously considering closing my account and using another wallet to conduct my trading.

I LOVE Abra! I’ll try to keep this short though. I utilize the EARN & TRADE tabs frequently. With their rewards program, I earn 9.25% interest paid out WEEKLY on the funds (TrueUSD) I hold in the this app app under the EARN tab. Also, there’s NO trading fees & 1% back on all trades. I like that I can easily exchange my assets for different ones instantly in app. Their referral program is GREAT & consistent! I’ve had one “dealing” with support and they were FANTASTIC! My issue was I had not received one of my referral rewards in the time frame disclosed. So I reached out to support, and they informed me of why that was, and promptly resolved the issue. I’m a huge fan of their loyalty program too! I definitely recommend Abra whenever I can. If you’ve experienced issues, I’m convinced it’s a technical error, lack of understanding, or simply a USER ERROR. Although people do have different experiences, and expecting total perfection from another human or an app is crazy, but Abra is GREAT if you’re looking for high yield on stable coins and crypto or you’re looking for fee free trading and CASH BACK on those trades with unlimited opportunities to earn more money with referrals!

So Shout our to this app for their wallet it truly is cutting edge in many ways. I found its installation and usage to be quite simple for a crypto wallet. They offer many coins and this was a huge draw for me.
You might ask why 3 stars then. Here’s why:
1: a simple test of their customer service and review. I’d love to hear back from this app on this thread and I will upgrade 1 star when support responds as I cannot give this a 4th star without testing support.
2: Now we come to the only real technical issue I have with the wallet. Though it allows you to swap coins in a variety and keep any coins you have swapped in this app It seems that you can only send and receive BTC LTC and BCHABC. This is a problem for me. Cause this makes it feel like a basic wallet as it really only allows transactions for these 3 coins. I often send in and out of exchanges. I don’t like to keep funds there for obvious reasons. But I was hoping to keep large sums of alt coins on this wallet that was part of a trading portfolio. As I cannot withdraw my swapped coins to an exchange I cannot trade efficiently. If this app upgrades its system to allow for such withdrawals at least I could use the wallet. Deposits in btc and swaps then off to the exchange. Simple request. 😋 this will get you the 5th star.
All this being said if you merely hold bitcoin this app is an excellent option and I find their wallet quite simple and secure.

For privacy reasons, I cannot share any additional information with you in regards to any poor user experience, inability to use Abra /service, any feature limitations, or why this review is 1-star.

So it looked promising, but turned out to be a huge bust. I can't use it for an undisclosed reason despite making decent money, having a valid ID, regularly increasing net worth, decent credit score, etc. They even saw my bank statement and photo of me holding my valid ID. The bank account is just my funding account, so if they looked at it and scoffed, then that's their poor application process. It's not where I keep my wealth dummies. It's just an account used to fund investments as necessary.

Now that I have been denied access for a reason they cannot disclose, I want all of my personal information in their possession destroyed like the social security number, photo of my ID, and my bank account number. This seems like a huge scam as others have noted. I think the BBB, SEC, FBI, and IRS should investigate this organization, but at minimum a good lawyer might be able to make an example of them. We'll just have to see.

I initially had high hopes for Abra, especially their interest rates. However when first opening my account they use a system called prime trust to verify its users information. Normally the system is supposed to take a week at worst, however it became evident after a month that Abras identity verification system is simply terrible. However this wouldn’t be an issue if their support would be able to resolve any problems correctly. I initially emailed them and received a pre-typed a message telling me that they’ve escalated my issue for further investigation. After three months nothing came. I then emailed them on two separate emails requesting that they investigate my support ticket on my original email after not responding to any of my replies to the original email thread or new support tickets. This also led to no response, I also DM’d their support Twitter account and have had no response after two weeks it has been almost 4 months now trying to deal with this terrible app and it’s support only to find that they send you the same pre-typed message that they’re in “further investigating your situation” and will never get back to you at all. TLDR : support will ignore you and if they do even help you at all they will not resolve your issue and only make it worse, then ghost you again. Overall do not use Abra.

Update:
I was told by customer service I would not be able to use a bank account or card. So I don’t know how you can restrict an account that was NEVER used. So I basically had an account that could never be used and was being told what I could do not have my account be useable. I was able to Join Coinbase and be verified quickly. And able to purchase and transfer ETH the same day.

I downloaded Abra , added my card. Said it would be a day to verify. Next day get a message saying I needed to re-add card or contact support. Contacted support and they said they were restricting my wallet and not allowing me to add any funds. No answer as to what was going on or how I could verify my card. Just told I couldn’t add any funds via card or bank. I’ve never had any wallet prior to this. I was branching out and trying to invest in crypto currency and this experience made me realize how unreliable these apps and companies are. They want me to deposit BTC or ETH in their wallet but not any USD. Sounds like fraud to me. Plus they sent a message to contact them yet refused to let me know how in less than 24 hours when never using Abra or any other like it I could be “restricted”. Horrible app and even worse support. If I was given any idea what was happening then maybe it would be different but being very vague and after I barely set up Abra is suspicious.

I’m a crypto OG, been in the space for years - when Ethereum was a $7-per-coin neat idea and when places like The Bitcoin Center filled people with hope. Abra has popped on my radar a number of times over the years. I tried it when it came out and nothing worked so I wrote that off as new development, no big deal. When I came back sometime in 2017 if I’m guessing, I was drawn in by a feature where you could use Amex credit cards to buy crypto. But my card never attached to Abra and I never once got it working. Fast forward to the modern era, I have tried to make Abra usable at least 1-2 times per year. It’s always something new. Whether it’s “can’t be used in the US” (which, why is an app we can’t use available for download? - to be fair that could be an Apple issue) or whether it’s today when the verification process just wouldn’t work - it doesn’t auto-snap a picture of your driver’s license and there’s no manual option. In summary I hope others have luck, but my advice if you are in the USA is to avoid Abra as I don’t feel that it is ready for the US. Either the restrictions are overwhelming for this company so they are over compensating to be safe, which is fair, or they don’t have the current manpower to fix ongoing bugs. Other way… “it’s a no for me, dog”

I really loved using this app, secure wallet, easy to purchase multiple digital assets. But, I was very disappointed, which may be not a big thing for this app help desc, but me being a investor whose major crypto portfolio is stored on this app wallet, I couldn’t get my transactions for 2018 in appropriate CSV format which I could upload on different tax software available in the market. Unfortunately I obtain only manual transaction history, which I was not able to upload on any tax softwares available in the market. Other apps like Uphold, Circle prepared CSV files which were very user-friendly. I requested and communicated with help desk multiple times if I can get my total capital gain/loss in year 2018, in proper spreadsheet format so that I could upload on tax return software but I was told for now this is the only CSV format available. I was highly disappointed, finally I have started transferring mostly my assets to different otherWallets, so probably next year I can apply crypto tax returns more Conveniently.

PLEASE READ!!! I was an avid every day user on this app. I had been building my portfolio trading crypto for about a year no real issues. They had a few bugs here and there but nothing too alarming. Yesterday they had a bug that made your portfolio show as having $0 which can make your heart drop when you see it and others had the issue according to their Twitter support page. Well they finally had fixed it later in the day but for my highest crypto that I had in my portfolio there was a bug in the amount that was showing on my end. I had my friend look on theirs and the price it showed for this one crypto was much different than mine and by quite a bit. I chatted with support with them telling me it’s nothing on their end and that it was all fine and that there was nothing they could do. I had a substantial amount of this crypto too. It was my number one in my portfolio. I even provided screenshots showing the price difference. Still no help. They wouldn’t even explain to me why the screenshots I sent showing the difference. Needless to say I moved all of my money out of this scam app and transferred it to a new crypto wallet and had to rebuy new crypto’s. So beware with Abra they can change your price to be different than someone else’s and there is nothing you can do about it.

I had a regular account. One day I get a notification for an upgrade so I could make transactions “faster. Ever since “upgrading” it’s been a complete nightmare!!!!! I can’t add ANY funds to my account. None! Zero! Zilch! Kinda lame when you prompt me for faster service and it does the complete opposite. I have messaged support everyday because once they respond every agent says the same thing... asked me if I did this or that, if I troubleshooted it this way. I have tried everything under the sun!! Nothing. It’s really discouraging that I would ever want to use their app after this. However the only crypto I am really in, is on this app. I feel trapped! This should t have ever been an issue. I should have just let it alone and dealt with the long ridiculous delays in transfers. I don’t know why ppl still amuse this platform for crypto, but I’m there are several Betty ones out there, however there is very limited places to buy specific coins. If you don’t need to use this app, I highly suggest getting to crypto some place else. Until someone with support registers my glitch/issue and can walk me thru a successful bank transfer in any capacity, I might give the the other 4 stars up. But if I can add money, app is 100% useless.

So even though I have used these guys right from their beginning they decided to cut the chord between my USA bank and my this app account making things super difficult for my liquidity. Next if you use their savings function to earn interest they are far to slow in responding to your request to transfer your money and given the speed at which you need to trade in crypto markets you stand to lose hundreds of dollars or more whilst waiting for your money to be transferred thus negating any benefit you might have to earn interest from these guys. Their customer support is wooden and mechanical and not contoured to you as an individual investor which also really detracts from trading on their platform. They need to start being more flexible or will lose their longtime customers like me.

Wow lots of bad reviews! Might be to easy to use it’s hard which I have experience of doing except on this this app app. As a small investor enter info for download, entered my WF account and funds show up in my U.S. wallet in 24 hours. No fees on transfer and bought some crypto with a 100 and that’s where a small fee of around a 1.50 or less was taken out after purchase of crypto investment. Other transfers from bank to wallet have gone great as well.

Only thing is I can’t make instant buy until the money transfer is complete unlike CB. But CB keeps me in pending for days and locked in on buy and can’t sell until complete. No graphs on this app or percentage of crypto moves of the hour or day. But lots of other sites to look at for that info. Not a bad app and my bank was on their list so that could be making my experience easier as well. Good luck!

Update, just sent some Litecoin from CB account to my this app Litecoin wallet!!!! 50$ worth left CB and 50$ worth showed up in about 2 minutes or less in this app, bye bye horse and buggy Bitcoin technology!!!

this app worked fine for me during the initial crypto buying process (although the limits were too low). However - when it came time for me to sell a little crypto for $USD, I could not accomplish this using this app. The daily limit was so low, it would have taken me days to complete the most simple sell order. When I attempted to "increase daily limits" by uploading my drivers license, the system rejected my photo over 30 times! Yes - I consulted this app's web site and email support. I am a photographer, so I know that the photo must be clear, edge to edge, on a dark background, no glare, etc. (Note, Virginia licenses have a transparent secondary photo that will not show well on a dark background). I contacted support, I was told, "Unfortunately we do not have much control over this process since the ID is validated by our banking partner and they use an automated system.". No willingness to own the problem and contact the banking partner on my behalf, I was told just, "sorry for the inconvenience". Well, my inconvenience with this app is over. So - this app, I'm "sorry", but I have deleted your app and have no problem performing my trades (nor uploading IDs) using other services, using increased limits.

Abra sounds good, has flexibility for funding, diverse coin options. Once you get into it you find out there are limitations to amount you can fund, which I was ok with. I fund my account initially using a credit card, went with max daily allowance $200), which went through without an issue (with service charge $208). Tried to fund to the max allowable daily limit the next day and card gets declined. I try to link my bank account after this and shortly after I receive an email requesting additional verification, which I found excessive and seemed like a phishing attempt. They required a photo of an ID, a selfie of you holding the ID, and a image of the bank statement for the account you linked. Only after they accepted my initial credit card transfer was when this level of verification was requested and now required. I also spoke to my credit card company to figure out why my card was being declined and said that I was only allowed $200 per day including the service charge of 4%. Only when I circled back to this app about this did I find out they required the level of verification described above. Not a good experience unfortunately.

Guys, watch out for places like this that don’t allow you to withdraw to your bank, and won’t give you a reason. This is generally a scam and they’ll end up taking coins from you. (From numerous reports that have been posted) I can also see, from other reviews; I’m far from the first person to have this issue, and when the developer replies, they don’t address this issue, they just “hope you’ll give this app a shot.” Not saying this is the case, but beware. I’ve had no issues with any exchange regarding bank withdraws, besides this one. This is the only one that won’t allow me to withdraw, and I’m kind of worried.

As many issues you guys are having with your “partner bank” who handles this stuff for you guys, I would certainly go with another partner to handle this, or take it into your own hands. It seems like this app has good values, but since you guys can’t give the reasons, I’m assuming it’s the sorry excuse of a partner this app is using. I’ve been dealing and investing in crypto currency for years. Recently signed up for this app.

This is the only issue with this exchange (which is huge). Fix this issue and I’ll give it 5 stars.

Simplex canceled two transactions even though my bank sent them the money. I have reached out with three different emails attaching the emails where they canceled and attached IDs to the transactions. Schools First Credit Union is so protective of their clients. They created a dispute claim for both transactions . Simplex claimed due to how busy they were they couldn’t address the issue. I emailed them and said you have $3500 of my money that has not been released back to me even though I attached the emails with them canceling the transactions with the dates they took place. The cancellations even appear on the this app app under history. Today, I was approved by Simplex for $50 for bit coin. Again, issues where my bank told me the amount was taken and Simplex emailed me stating they were putting in a ticket regarding the transaction. Simplex is a rip off that takes your money and answers your questions later. Simplex said on my transactions on February 28th that were canceled that my cards wouldn’t be charged. Both cards were charged!!!

this app is a great app a friend had mentioned it forever ago and it took me awhile but I’m glad I joined! Thanks for the $25 this app and thank you for creating a seamless crypto wallet!! I’m really happy and impressed! I recommended a bunch of my friends as well
Some have no trouble depositing and others seem to have to jump thru hoops to get verified and make a deposit. That’s the only down side this app requests pics of bank statements which in this online world most don’t have. And again not all are required to do so I’m not sure what the deciding factor is on that. But that’s the only minor fault some don’t complete the sign up because tio much is required. But other than that great !! Crypto experience!!!

There’s an AMAZING referral program that offers mutual rewards and THEY ACTUALLY FUNDED MY ACCOUNT!!! I like the loyalty program and the cashback on trades, the interest account pays weekly and you can set custom price alerts, it’s my new favorite app!!! I’ve really been pushing it on my friends, I’ve got referrals pending and I know when everyone sees that they deliver, they’ll want some too, so get it while the bonus is high! It’s too good to last! I took a star only because I want to exchange some of my cprx for coins to fund my interest accounts but even though it’s been days since I traded and the limit is 500/hr it’s still saying I’ve hit my hourly limit. If they will fix this for me so I can throw a few coins in (which I want to do weekly except for the cprx I want to hodl) then I will give it 5 stars because I LOVE this app!!! Please keep being my favorite wallet and I’ll keep fetching new users!!

Was excited to hear that I can purchase Bitcoin and xrp by using my American Express card. After calling to AMEX to make sure that there are no fees on their end to purchase/deposit to this app, also informing them so there wouldn’t be a issue since I heard this app is not based in the USA. They made notation on my account. I proceeded to create an account at this app and tried to deposit using my Amex. It was a no go, called Amex to make sure it’s not their end, they confirmed it’s not. Sent an email to this app support, they replied a day later that my they will will give me a status of my account within the next couple of day. Waited another day, they sent an email stating they are restricting my account to only accept deposit by bitcoin (no bank, no wire transfer, and no Amex deposit) and they cannot give me a reason why because it’s company policy not to. I already have accounts at other bitcoin exchange, if they’re advertising something and cannot provide the reason why, any reasonable company would give an explanation why. I feel that this company is either disingenuous at the very least or a scamming for account at worst.

This exchange is awesome! Has many great features and overall so easy to use! But there are a few things I have to recommend to the developers for me to rate it 5 stars:

1st There is a push notification defect on iPhones for price alerts. Abra tells me to turn on my push notifications and gives me a link to go to notification settings and when I click the link it just directs me to the iPhone settings for Abra in which it did not give me an option to turn on push notification and then I went to notifications in my iPhone settings and could not even find this app on the notification list. I promise I quadruple checked. It was not there. Idk if anyone else has experienced this problem but it is very frustrating because I have use 3rd party apps to alert me of a price change.

2nd Abra should try to include candlestick view and/or a live chart view like Robinhood has. That would be AWESOME!

3rd They should include crypto currency news/updates and %GAIN monitoring. With this addition to Abra it would make users only use Abra more often and less likely to switch over to other apps and or exchanges that do offer these options.

Overall this is a great app and I do see great potential for it. I would recommend it. I just hope the developers consider at least one of my recommendations and I will happily change my rating to 5 stars. Hope for the best. Thanks!

I signed up for this app for the sole purpose of being able to purchase crypto using an Amex credit card. Tried adding the card to my account but kept getting an error that the card couldn’t be added and to please contact this app for further assistance. I made sure to double-check that all credit card and billing info was entered correctly. Still received the error. Contacted this app customer support and they responded with this: “Unfortunately, we will be restricting your wallet, and you will not be able to transact via bank or AMEX credit card within your this app wallet(s). For privacy reasons, we cannot share any additional information with you in regards to any canceled transactions, wallet limitations, or why your wallet is restricted.” I’ve never used the account for literally anything and now I’m restricted from using it for the one thing I signed up to use it for, with no explanation provided by this app. Garbage app if you’re trying to buy crypto via Amex - should have looked more closely at the all the negative reviews before I signed up.

The only reason why Abra earns 2 stars is because it operates well and the general functionality of Abra is good. So good on the programmers, well made app.

The negative is that on the portfolio screen it will reflect the market place within +/- $10 of exchange pricing, and exchange/coin monitoring apps. However, when you go to buy a coin, expecting the price reflected on the portfolio, the buy price will be increased almost $100 over the market price shown on the home screen.

What is worse, when you go to sell, it will be $100 less than the market price shown in the portfolio. This can be easily overlooked but quick investors, but this makes for extremely deceptive practices at this app. While advertising a coin at one price, it increases the actual buy price while significantly decreasing the sell price, resulting in users getting ripped off.

Abra (and the many other wallets out there that permit buy/sell as well as bank account transfers to cash) need to advertise the ACTUAL buy and sell number IN THE PORTFOLIO. By doing this, you would set yourself apart from all other platforms by being honest and transparent with all transactions.

If I do not see some action being taken to resolve this issue, I will remove all that I have from this app and will not use or recommend Abra to anyone else. I expect honesty from developers, especially pioneers in the blockchain. Not deceptive practices. Thank you.

-Respectfully

12/7 add on review: in addition of my funds not being added, I had to email support multiple times to get my transaction refunded. They claimed it to be “technical problem” which seems to be happening only when on the receiving side.

Additionally, the network fee that they claim for sends are outright rip off. Why send someone or withdraw money when the network fee is 3x the size of the transaction. Save yourself the headache and go with a different exchange even though they offer AMEX adds.

Like the title says. I’ve loaded funds from my AMEX card no problem, but the available balance does not reflect the funds loaded even after confirmed withdrawal from my card. Customer service said it “takes 10-30mins for confirmation”. I’ve waited a day now.... Even on the bitcoin network these confirmations are faster as much as 108 confirmations. I would stay way trying to load funds with your AMEX card because it isn’t reliable at the moment, given the steep 4% fee and for such poor service.