Why can't I withdraw my funds?

As of May 14th, 2020, any funds you've deposited into the Abra app via ACH your funds will be held for 60 days.

Please note that you can continue to exchange assets without any restrictions. You can also withdraw and send funds, as long as you maintain a total balance greater than the amount of your ACH hold. Additionally, any funds that you deposit using wire transfer, credit card or crypto will not be impacted. 

When you initiate a deposit and hit 'review' a notification pops up and informs you of the 60-day hold and your 'review' page will reiterate the 60-day hold before you hit 'confirm deposit'. Once you tap 'confirm' you are agreeing to this hold.

Example 1: You already have a balance within the app of .5 BTC and $25 TUSD. You then deposit $100 via ACH on May 20th, 2020. The BTC and TUSD that you already had within the wallet already will not be affected by this change and you can exchange the new $100 for any asset within the app and hold as long as you wish. However, with the new restrictions to ACH, the $100 cannot be withdrawn from the app until after July 20th, 2020. 

Example 2: You created a brand new wallet after May 20th, 2020, and deposited via ACH $100. Because this is the first amount you have deposited into your wallet this amount must remain within your wallet for the next 60 days. You can exchange to any other asset within the wallet but you will not be able to withdraw until after July 20th, 2020.

Why did Abra make this change?

We have seen a rise in the number of bad actors that attempt to use the ACH funding method impersonating someone else, and then withdrawing the deposits as soon as they arrive in the Abra wallet. Once the actual account owner realizes that their bank account has been fraudulently debited, they struggle hard in an attempt to recover their funds. Under certain circumstances, Abra has reimbursed the actual account owner and bore the cost of the fraud. However, this is not sustainable and does not address this nefarious activity from happening. By implementing ACH withdrawal holds for ACH deposits we can significantly reduce this type of fraud, and protect our customers.