Crypto Card Comparison

How to read each column

• Availability is where you must be resident to pass identity checks, not where the card can be used. A card issued to residents of one region spends anywhere its network is accepted. Filter by the country on your ID, and check the residency line before sending any funds.
• Top-up assets are the coins the card turns into balance directly. Depositing a coin the program has to convert first (a volatile asset into a dollar balance) adds a spread that rarely appears as a fee line. Loading the stablecoin the card holds natively avoids that layer.
• Top-up cost is the typical effective cost of turning coin into spendable balance. A tilde marks an approximation from a typical tier rather than a quote. "Not published" means the schedule exists only inside the app, so it could not be checked from outside.
• FX fee is what the card adds when you spend in a currency other than the one your balance is held in. "None / interbank" means no markup over the network's own rate. It does not by itself mean no cross-border fee, which some programs charge on any foreign merchant whether or not a conversion happened. FX, DCC and the cross-border fee traps separates the two.
• Physical card is the one-off charge for the plastic. "Free" says nothing about subscription or staking tiers, which is where several programs put the conditions for their best rates.
• Cashback is often paid in the program's own token rather than in dollars. A percentage paid in a token whose price moves is not the same as cash, and "stake-tiered" means locking a quantity of that token for a period to qualify. The lockup is a cost of its own; the hidden costs of crypto cards works through an example.
• Verified is the month the official fee page was last read for that row. The older the month, the more likely a number has moved.

What the table cannot tell you

• Limits. Daily and monthly spending caps, ATM caps and single-purchase caps depend on your identity tier and are not in the table.
• Which networks a top-up asset is accepted on. A card that takes USDC may take it only on some chains. Sending on the wrong one is the most common way to lose a deposit to a support queue. Check the deposit screen in the app, not the marketing page.
• Whether your balance is held as the coin or as fiat. Some programs convert at top-up and hold dollars; others hold the stablecoin until you spend. Only the second kind is exposed when the coin trades below $1, and the table does not distinguish them. What a depeg does to a U-card holder explains how to find out.
• Freeze and review risk. Source-of-funds checks and compliance sweeps can lock a balance for days. That risk is real on every card here and is not a column.
• The smaller fees. ATM withdrawals, card replacement, inactivity and account closure are outside the table.
• How long a promotion lasts. Welcome rates carry caps and end dates, and a cashback figure quoted "up to" is the top tier, not the default.

Common mistakes when shortlisting

• Sorting by the cashback headline. Cashback paid in a token you must also lock up can be worth less than a lower rate paid in dollars with no conditions. Compare the net after the lockup, not the headline.
• Optimising the top-up fee when most of your spending is in a foreign currency. The top-up fee is paid once per load. The FX fee is paid on every purchase. For a traveller the second column matters more than the first.
• Reading "0% FX" as "0% abroad". Check the fee page for a separate cross-border or international fee before assuming foreign purchases are free.
• Applying from an unsupported country. The availability column is the first filter for a reason: identity checks are where an application from the wrong country fails.

How to check a fee yourself

The table gets you to a shortlist. A small test does the rest. Load an amount you would not mind having stuck for a week, and compare the coin you sent with the balance you received: that ratio is the real top-up cost, whatever the fee page says. How topping up a card with stablecoins works shows where to find it in a card app. Then make one small purchase in a foreign currency, divide the amount deducted from your balance by the amount on the receipt, and compare that rate with the mid-market rate on the day the purchase cleared, usually a day or two after you paid. The gap is the FX markup plus any cross-border fee, combined. If either number differs from this table, the official page and your own statement win, and the fee calculator will take the real figures.