“Not available in my country” is four different questions wearing one sentence. In the fomo app they have four different answers, and people give up at the wrong one all the time — they hit a blocked bank withdrawal and conclude the whole app is closed to them, when the part they actually needed was working fine.
Here are the four, separated.
1. Can you open an account and trade?
Almost everywhere. Signup needs no KYC — fomo describes it as being about as involved as making a new Instagram account — and the app runs in most countries.
The exceptions are a sanctions-shaped list. fomo’s terms name Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Yemen among restricted jurisdictions, and the full list is longer than the examples given. Reviews circulate country lists that add names like Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Jordan and a scattering of small jurisdictions, but fomo does not publish a public country table, so those lists are secondhand and go stale as the app expands. The only authoritative test is opening the app from where you actually are.
2. Can you fund it with Apple Pay or a debit card?
This is the limit that varies most, and it is not the same list as question 1. Card and Apple Pay funding runs through payment rails that are licensed country by country, so plenty of places where the app works fine cannot buy through it.
If that door is closed, the app still accepts a USDC deposit — that is the route that ignores geography entirely. You need USDC somewhere already: on an exchange, or in a wallet. Buying it is a separate problem from using fomo.
3. Can you withdraw to a bank account?
Sometimes. fomo’s deposits and withdrawals guide says withdrawals to bank accounts are not supported in all regions, and it does not say which.
This is the one people mistake for a total block, and it is the least fatal of the four. USDC withdrawal to a wallet you control works wherever the app works. From there a crypto card turns the balance into something you can spend — how to withdraw from fomo without a bank account walks the whole path, including the trap where the card takes USDC but not on the chain you sent it over.
What the USDC route cannot do is put cash in a bank. If that is the requirement, see the bottom of this page.
4. Can you trade the derivatives and the tokenized stocks?
Different rule again, and this one is written down clearly. Perps are not available to US persons. The Robinhood token products — the tokenized US stock and ETP exposure — are unavailable to US persons and in US markets, and also to residents of Canada, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, plus anywhere else Robinhood designates or local law forbids.
Note the shape of that: it is the opposite of what people assume. The app’s connection to a US broker does not make the US the privileged jurisdiction — for these products the US is the excluded one. Spot trading and USDC withdrawal are the parts that travel; the derivatives are the parts that don’t.
The VPN question
fomo’s terms prohibit using “any technology or mechanism” to circumvent the restrictions. That is the rule as written.
The practical risk is a separate thing from the rule, and it is the part that costs money. Access and identity get checked at different moments — signup, funding, withdrawal, and any later review. A geography that worked when you deposited is not guaranteed to work when you withdraw, and an account flagged mid-withdrawal is an account with your balance inside it. That is a materially worse position than never having opened it.
So what actually applies to you
Work down the list in order, because each answer changes which question matters next:
- Can’t sign up at all. Nothing to route around. This is the only one of the four with no workaround.
- Can sign up, can’t fund with a card. Deposit USDC instead. Everything downstream behaves identically to a card-funded account.
- Can trade, can’t withdraw to a bank. Withdraw USDC, spend it through a card. Pick the card by which USDC networks it accepts, not by its cashback rate — see the card comparison.
- Can do all of the above but want the tokenized stocks. If you are in the US, Canada, the UK or Switzerland, that product is not coming. The rest of the app still works.
And the case with no clean answer: you need money in a bank account, and your country is one where fomo cannot pay out to one. A card does not solve this — it is a spending instrument, not a payout rail. You would need an exchange with local banking in your country, and if such an exchange existed for you, the bank withdrawal probably would have worked in the first place. Some people in that position are genuinely stuck at “spend it or hold it,” and no amount of routing changes that.
One caveat on everything above: region rules for this app have been moving as it expands, which is what happens to any app that goes from launch to a top-five finance chart position in a matter of months. Treat published lists — including this page — as a starting point and the app itself as the authority.
Related: what the whole round trip costs · getting the money out as USDC · how crypto cards work
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