December 8 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's First Investment Bank (Fibank) [BUL:5F4] said on Friday it could no longer service operations involving cryptocurrencies, but has granted a certain period of time to cryptocurrency traders to settle payments to customers.
"A large part of the correspondent banks, such as JP Morgan Chase, Commerzbank, and a number of other banks working with Fibank, refuse to accept transfers for the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies. In this respect, Fibank cannot continue to provide services to traders of cryptocurrencies," the bank said in a statement on its website.
On Thursday, two Bulgarian cryptocurrency exchange websites said that Fibank has blocked their accounts and terminated their contracts. Both operators said they were working to resolve the issue as they were unable to offer most or all of their services after the termination of the contracts.
"The bank has unblocked the accounts of all cryptocurrency traders and has provided them with an interim period of time to enable them to pay their customers," Ivailo Alexandrov, Fibank's corporate communications director, told SeeNews by phone on Friday.
Fibank was Bulgaria's third largest bank by assets as of end-October 2017, according to central bank data.
Fibank shares closed unchanged at 5.3 levs on Friday on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)