Card stopped authorising on Sunday and the balance is still sitting in the wallet

Something weird is happening. Bitget Wallet Card was fine for six weeks, then Sunday night every authorisation started coming back declined. Three merchants, all different, all instant declines.

The balance is still sitting there in the wallet! It shows, I can see it, it just will not spend. The whole point of this one is that it is self custodial so I assumed nothing could be held, but apparently something can be.

Anyone had this? Is the card frozen or is it the wallet side?

self custodial means they can't take it. it does not mean they have to let you spend it

The balance showing is expected — it is in your wallet, so of course it shows. The card is a spending permission on top of that, and the permission is what has been withdrawn.

Bitget runs light KYC at signup rather than none, which means there is a compliance layer that can switch the card off without touching your funds. Six weeks and then a sudden stop across three unrelated merchants is a rules change on their side, not a merchant problem. Check whether you got a prompt to complete verification and ignored it — that is the usual cause of this exact shape.

There was an email. I did ignore it.

There it is. FWIW this is the normal failure mode for anything with a KYC step deferred to later — the product works fine right up to the point their review window closes, and then it does not, and nothing in the UI tells you why.

IME the fix is boring: complete the verification, wait for the queue, card comes back. The money was never at risk because it is not theirs to hold. The lesson is not that they froze you, it is that light KYC means KYC, eventually.

Solved in four posts by reading your own inbox.