What a free crypto card really costs you, and who it fits

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The SwissBorg card is genuinely free to issue and free to keep. There is no monthly fee, no annual fee and no separate foreign-exchange charge from SwissBorg itself. What you pay for is a conversion: 0.99% on every card transaction, applied when crypto is turned into fiat at the moment of payment. On top of that sits a card that is virtual only, spends crypto balances and not fiat balances, and cannot reach an ATM at all. My score for it is 6.2 out of 10 — a strong cost profile wrapped around a narrow one.

Who that suits: residents of the EEA, Switzerland or the United Kingdom who want a free virtual card for everyday online spending, already hold crypto in the SwissBorg app, and are comfortable with a custodial setup where the platform holds the funds. Who it does not suit: anyone who needs cash from an ATM, anyone whose income arrives as fiat and needs to spend it directly, anyone living outside the listed countries, and anyone who treats frozen accounts as an unacceptable risk.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 6.2 out of 10

The two ends of that table pull in opposite directions. Cost earns the highest mark of anything here, because a card with no issuance fee, no annual fee and no SwissBorg FX markup is genuinely rare in this category. Reliability earns one of the lowest, because the issuer carries a public regulatory fine and the review platforms are full of people describing frozen money. Those are not equally weighted: a percentage fee you can see on the screen is a smaller problem than an account you cannot get into for three weeks.

One structural point deserves a word before anything else, because it explains most of what follows. SwissBorg is not a bank. It is an app and a card programme. The card is issued by UAB Monavate, an electronic money institution authorised by the Bank of Lithuania, and the crypto side of the business sits with SBorg SA in Lausanne and BlockNodes SAS in Paris. This split matters for you in three practical places: your money is held on an e-money basis rather than as a bank deposit, so it is not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme; when something goes wrong, you may be dealing with two organisations rather than one; and the “brand” you are reviewing is not the regulated entity that holds your balance.

Will They Give You the Card?

Yes, but only on the basis of residence, and only in three blocks of countries. SwissBorg states the requirement as “Reside in one of the following countries”, which is worth noticing on its own: the test is where you live, not what passport you hold.

The eligible group is the EEA — 30 countries, listed as Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden — plus Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The UK was added on 2026-08-27, and the virtual card’s phased rollout on 2026-02-25 covered the EEA and Switzerland.

The card cannot be used in Russia or Belarus. Both appear on the restricted countries list, which reads in part “Afghanistan, Belarus, … Russia, …”. That is a use restriction rather than an eligibility restriction, but for a reader in either country it means the same thing in practice.

For everyone else — a resident of the US, Canada, Australia, the Gulf, most of Latin America, most of Asia — the honest answer is that this card is not for you, and no amount of reading the fee page will change that. If you are outside the three blocks, stop here and look at the alternatives section further down, where the countries listed are a different shape entirely.

Two things the card’s public pages do not say: how long verification takes, and what reasons will get an application refused. The card states the requirements but not the processing timetable or the refusal criteria, so if a decision matters to you on a deadline, plan for that uncertainty rather than for a number.

How to Get It

Four steps, all inside the app, and the whole thing ends with a virtual card number on your screen.

First, download the SwissBorg app — it runs on iOS and Android. Second, open a personal account and complete KYC Level 2. Third, tap Card on the Portfolio screen and accept the terms. Fourth, choose a primary cryptocurrency, and the virtual card is ready instantly.

KYC Level 2 means two things verified: a photo ID and proof of address, and you must be at least 18. Behind that requirement sits a set of account levels that control how much can move through the platform. Level 1 carries a EUR 5,000 cumulative deposit and withdrawal limit; Level 2 allows EUR 50,000 in and EUR 1,000,000 out; Level 3 is unlimited. Because the card draws on the same wallet, card spending counts against those account-wide withdrawal limits, which is the part people often miss — a card purchase is not outside the platform’s limits, it is inside them.

One number in that list deserves a flag. Third-party sites report Level 1 as EUR 5,000 in *and out*, while the card’s own description frames Level 1 as a cumulative deposit and withdrawal limit and Level 2 as directional. The card’s figures are the ones to plan around; the third-party version is unofficial and not confirmed by the card.

What you end up holding is a Mastercard debit card, virtual only. The physical version is described as planned for a later phase, with the card stating that “Depending on community demand, physical cards may become available with an additional issuance and shipping fee.” Delivery time, cost and replacement cost for a physical card are not stated. The base currency is EUR, CHF or GBP depending on your country of residence, and it cannot be changed after issuance.

Fees and What Everyday Payments Actually Cost

The headline is right: there is no issuance fee, and no service or annual fee for the virtual card. The costs sit in conversion, and in what the card cannot do.

Here are three ordinary payments, with the arithmetic left visible so you can check my reasoning rather than take it on trust.

A €40 supermarket shop in Berlin. Your card base currency is EUR, so there is no currency conversion at all. The 0.99% conversion fee applies — about €0.40 — plus whatever liquidity adjustment is live at the moment. Nothing else is charged.

A $30 subscription billed to a euro card. The Mastercard exchange rate does the currency work, and SwissBorg adds no FX fee of its own. But the 0.99% conversion still applies, because the platform is turning crypto into fiat to pay a dollar invoice. So the extra cost here is the conversion percentage, not an exchange-rate markup.

£25 in London. If your base currency is GBP, that is the simple case again. If you are an EEA resident holding a EUR card, the Mastercard rate applies on top, and the conversion fee applies on top of that.

The liquidity adjustment is the part that cannot be pinned to a number. The card says it “may be applied”, which means it varies with market conditions and with size. In a quiet market it will be negligible; in a stressed one, it will not be. Anyone selling you a fixed total cost per purchase is reading more into the card’s pages than the card says.

The absence of an ATM is not a fee, but it is the most expensive thing on this list, because it removes an entire category of use. If cash is part of your week, this card is not the instrument. And on limits, the card is unusually vague on purpose: spending limits are “subject to regulatory requirements and risk assessments and may be adjusted at any time”. You will not find the numbers published, and they can move.

Top up: There Is No Separate Top-Up

This is the concept that trips people up, and it is worth stating plainly: you do not top up this card. There is no prepaid balance to load. The card spends directly from the crypto held in your SwissBorg wallet, so the funding question is really “what crypto do I hold, and is it enough”.

Supported for card spending: BTC, ETH, SOL, BORG, USDC, USDG, EUROP and TGBP. You pick one primary cryptocurrency and can nominate backups, and the system dynamically switches to a backup if the primary balance is short. USDT and Tron are not named in the card’s list of supported currencies — and given that Tether’s USDT is issued on several chains including Tron, the absence of any mention is something to check yourself rather than assume.

The flip side, and it is the sharp edge: fiat balances in the app cannot be used for card payments. The app holds multi-currency fiat balances (EUR, CHF, GBP and others), and they sit there, separate from what the card can draw on. If your money arrives as salary in euros and you are not holding crypto, the card is not the tool for you.

Deposits *into* the app are a different matter, and cheap:

Two of those lines deserve care. The first: a crypto deposit is free, but the network fee is charged by the blockchain, not by SwissBorg. The second: the Apple Pay route can carry a fee of 4.5% on an international deposit at Standard rank, falling to 3.75% at the top rank. If you are outside the EU, loading money through your phone wallet is the expensive way in.

Getting money back out is where the platform’s other fees live. Fiat withdrawal from the app carries a 0.10% execution fee with a minimum and maximum per currency — EUR min 1.50 and max 100, CHF min 5 and max 110, GBP min 1.50 and max 85. Crypto withdrawal is 0.10% plus the network gas, with minimums and maximums per asset and network. Refunds from purchases land in your fiat account in the card’s base currency. And on account closure, funds held on the card are redeemable for up to 6 years, after which a monthly maintenance fee starts to be deducted from 12 months after the agreement ends; closing within 6 months may bring a closure fee. That is a slow, unglamorous clause, and it is exactly the kind of thing that matters if you stop using the card without closing the account properly.

Paying With It Every Day

The everyday experience is decent, in the way a virtual card in a phone wallet usually is. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported, and Curve as well; Apple Pay was initially available in Switzerland and France and requires the latest app version plus KYC Level 2. Online payments run through 3-D Secure with biometric approval in the app, and you can freeze and unfreeze the card instantly. If someone gets hold of the virtual card, you freeze it in the app or email [email protected].

The convenience comes with a category list. Prohibited merchant categories are gambling and betting, adult content and services, cryptocurrency purchases, financial services such as money transfers, illegal goods, cash advances and certain government services. Some of these are obvious. “Cryptocurrency purchases” is not: this is a card funded by crypto, and it still cannot be used to buy crypto. “Cash advances” alongside a card with no ATM is close to redundant. Expect declines at betting sites and at any merchant in those groups, and note that the exact list varies by issuer elsewhere in this category, so a decline is not always about policy.

Rewards work in a way that is worth understanding before you plan around them. Cashback is paid in BORG tokens and is calculated as a percentage of the exchange fee on each purchase — so it is a rebate on the 0.99%, not a rebate on your spending. The rate follows your Loyalty Rank: Standard 5%, Bronze 15%, Silver 30%, Gold 50%, Platinum 65%, Diamond 80%, Elite 90%. The ranks themselves are set by BORG locked in the app, from Standard at 0 BORG through Bronze 1,000, Silver 3,000, Gold 10,000, Platinum 30,000, Diamond 60,000 to Elite 100,000. Higher ranks also bring a yield multiplier from 1x to 2x, priority access to Alpha Deals, governance weight at 10 BORG to one vote, referral boosts and card-deposit fee reductions as seen in the table above.

Read that again: cashback is a percentage of the fee, not of the purchase. Because the conversion fee itself is 0.99%, your cashback is a percentage of that 0.99%. And the card reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue cashback at any time, so it is not a fixed benefit. BORG rewards are also locked for a period under the “Paid to Trade” programme.

The app reviews are mildly positive rather than glowing. On Google Play (en_GB) the rating is 4.6 from roughly 15.2K reviews; on the Irish App Store, 4.4 from 88 ratings. The official SwissBorg site footer shows Google Play 4.2 and App Store 4.6 — the numbers move, which is normal.

If a payment goes wrong, the clock starts. Cardholders must contact SwissBorg through the app (Profile > Support) or [email protected] within 8 weeks of the transaction date. Where a merchant did not specify an exact amount and it exceeded reasonable expectations, a refund is due within 10 business days of receiving the claim or the further information. Liability for unauthorised transactions is capped at EUR 50 if the card was lost, stolen or misappropriated, except in cases of fraud or gross negligence, and you must report without undue delay and no later than 13 months. One line to file away: the original crypto-to-fiat conversion fee is not refunded when a purchase is reversed.

What Can Go Wrong

The complaints are the most concrete thing here, and they are not speculative.

The issuer, UAB Monavate, was fined €270,000 with a warning by the Bank of Lithuania on 2025-11-25 for breaches relating to anti-money-laundering, management and reporting obligations. That is a supervisory action against the entity that issues the card, not against SwissBorg’s marketing, and it is the kind of fine that says something about internal processes rather than about any single customer’s money. It also tells you which regulator to read about the card if you want to know how the issuer is supervised.

The user reports are more personal. Trustpilot shows a TrustScore of 3.1 out of 5 from roughly 1,900 reviews. Three themes repeat across Trustpilot, Reddit and Google Play reviews through 2025–2026: accounts restricted or frozen without a clear explanation or warning, sometimes after a deposit and sometimes lasting weeks; customer support that is slow or silent, with tickets unanswered for days and “radio silence” after a first response; and cooldown periods after card, Apple Pay or Google Pay deposits, during which funds are held and cannot be accessed or withdrawn. That third one connects directly to the table above — if you load money through your phone wallet, a hold is part of the deal, and at international rates you will also have paid 4.5% to do it.

There is a structural reason accounts freeze that is not misconduct: anti-money-laundering rules require institutions to verify customers, monitor transactions and report suspicious activity, and where due diligence cannot be completed they are required to hold back or end the relationship. That is the law working as intended. The problem is what it looks like from the outside when it happens to you without a clear explanation, and the complaint pattern suggests many customers experience it that way.

The custody question is the one most reviews skip. Funds are held in the SwissBorg wallet, custodial — the platform holds the credentials. That is convenient and it is also the trade: you are trusting a provider with your money, and holding funds with a custodian has a history of going badly. Separately, funds on the card are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, because Monavate is an electronic money institution and follows the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 for safeguarding. E-money safeguarding is not the same thing as a bank deposit guarantee, and the distinction is the single most useful thing you can take from this review.

Two more risks worth naming. Crypto transfers are irreversible: a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. And a declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds for several days, typically up to seven.

For support, the channels are in-app chat, [email protected] and a help centre; the issuer Monavate is also reachable by phone at +37069870638 and at [email protected]. Communication is in English, per the card’s terms: “We will communicate with you in English.”

What to Take Instead

If the SwissBorg card’s free pricing is what you are after but its geography or its crypto-only design is not, here is what else is in this category. The comparison is worth doing on four axes: who can open one, what the card is, what it charges to hold and use, and what it spends from.

International Visa Card scores highest of the four, at 6.7. It is a U.S.-issued Platinum Visa, virtual, paying in USD, with a physical version described as coming soon. The $5 one-time issuance fee is the only upfront cost, and the plans are Classic free, Pro $9.00/month, Max $19.00/month. Card use in USD is free on all plans; in other currencies the cost is the Visa exchange rate plus a 2% FX fee, which is more than SwissBorg charges only if your base currency is USD. You fund it by depositing USDC or USDT into the USD account free at 1:1, and also by USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT or FedNow; the networks for the stablecoin deposits are not stated. No cashback is stated. Its availability list is long and exclusion-based, and the rule is by residence or registration rather than citizenship.

UNi Card scores 6.1. It is a multicurrency Mastercard spending from the UNi.Global account balance, with no annual fee and no foreign transaction fee, assets converted at live OTC rates and, in its own words, “No hidden exchange fees”. Spend-to-Earn rewards go up to 3%. What the card does not publish is as important as what it does: no availability statement, no issuance fee, and no description of funding.

Whop Cards scores 5.2. It is a Visa that works wherever Visa is accepted, spending from a Whop balance — pending balance usable as soon as a payment arrives, standard withdrawals using settled funds — with the platform saying “No extra fees” and listing no amounts. Cashback is 5% at select merchants, currently Uber, with more planned. The consumer footprint is 31 US states and the business footprint 41; unsupported consumer countries include Belarus, mainland China, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam. Whether eligibility follows citizenship or residence is not stated.

Read that table as a set of different bets rather than a ranking. SwissBorg bets on being cheap and narrow. International Visa Card bets on US issuance and a membership structure, and its 2% FX fee punishes anyone spending outside dollars. UNi Card promises no FX fee but publishes too little for you to plan around. Whop is not really a general spending card.

Who I Would Recommend It To

I would recommend this card, without hesitation, to someone who already keeps crypto in the SwissBorg app, lives in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK, and wants a free virtual Mastercard for subscriptions, travel bookings and ordinary online spending, with Apple Pay or Google Pay attached and no intention of touching an ATM.

I would recommend it more carefully to someone who wants the 0.99% as a known, fixed cost rather than a variable one, and who reads the “may be applied” liquidity adjustment as part of the price rather than an edge case. And I would want them to have read the custody and safeguarding paragraph, because it is the part that separates this from an ordinary bank card.

I would not recommend it to anyone who needs cash, who earns fiat, who lives outside the three listed blocks, or who cannot psychologically absorb an account freeze with no clear explanation — which, judging by the reviews, is a real possibility rather than a theoretical one. For that last person the problem is not fees. It is that the thing you would be complaining about cannot be fixed by you, and that is a different kind of risk than a 0.99%.

There is a version of this card for people in the US and the UK outside the EU, and a version for people who just want a normal bank card with no crypto in the picture at all. Those are the two groups I would send elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions

What is the SwissBorg card?

It is a Mastercard debit card that spends directly from crypto held in the SwissBorg app — there is no separate card balance to load. It is issued by UAB Monavate, an electronic money institution authorised by the Bank of Lithuania, and offered through SwissBorg. It is virtual only at present, delivered instantly in the app, with physical cards described as planned for a later phase with an additional issuance and shipping fee.

How does the SwissBorg card work?

You pick a primary cryptocurrency, plus optional backups, and the card converts that crypto to fiat at the moment of payment through the SwissBorg Meta-Exchange, charging 0.99% per transaction. If the primary balance is insufficient the system switches to a backup. Fiat balances in the app cannot be used for card payments, which is the single most important limitation to understand before applying.

Is SwissBorg a bank?

No. SwissBorg is an app and card programme, not a bank. The app is owned by SBorg SA in Lausanne, and the card is issued by UAB Monavate, a Lithuanian electronic money institution authorised by the Bank of Lithuania. Money on the card is safeguarded under electronic money rules rather than held as a bank deposit, so it is not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or a deposit guarantee scheme.

Is the SwissBorg card free?

Free to issue and free to keep: there is no issuance fee, no service fee and no annual fee, and SwissBorg adds no separate foreign-exchange fee. What costs money is the 0.99% crypto conversion on each card transaction, plus an optional real-time market-liquidity adjustment. Spending outside your base currency uses the Mastercard exchange rate.

How do I add the card to Apple Wallet?

Apple Pay is supported and was initially available in Switzerland and France, requiring the latest app version and KYC Level 2 completed first. Google Pay and Curve are supported too. Once activated, add the card through your wallet app and authenticate with Face ID or your device passcode; the card number itself stays in the wallet’s secure element rather than on a server.

Can I withdraw cash from an ATM?

No. Cash withdrawals at ATMs are not initially available, and the card says the feature “might be considered in a future iteration”; ATM balance checks are not available either. No date has been given. If cash is part of your regular week, this card cannot serve that need at all, and you should treat that as disqualifying rather than temporary.

How much can I spend, and what are the limits?

The card has daily, monthly and annual spending limits, plus limits on single transactions and on the number of transactions per day and per month, but the exact figures are not published. They are “subject to regulatory requirements and risk assessments and may be adjusted at any time”. Card spending also counts toward the platform’s account withdrawal limits, which are EUR 5,000 cumulative at Level 1, EUR 50,000 in and EUR 1,000,000 out at Level 2, and unlimited at Level 3.

Is the SwissBorg card safe?

That depends on what you mean by safe. Technical safeguards are ordinary and decent: 3-D Secure with in-app biometric approval, instant freeze and unfreeze, and tokenised mobile wallets. But the funds are custodial, held by the platform, and custody carries counterparty risk. The issuer UAB Monavate was fined €270,000 with a warning by the Bank of Lithuania on 2025-11-25, and Trustpilot shows a TrustScore of 3.1 from roughly 1,900 reviews, with repeated complaints about frozen accounts and slow support.

What countries can I use the SwissBorg card in?

Residents of the EEA (30 countries), Switzerland and the United Kingdom are eligible, and eligibility runs on residence rather than citizenship. The card cannot be used in Russia or Belarus, both of which are on the restricted countries list. Residents of the US, Canada, Australia, most of Latin America and most of Asia cannot get it at all, which rules the card out entirely for a large share of people who might otherwise consider it.

How do I close my account and get my money out?

Close the account through the app and withdraw through the normal routes first: fiat withdrawal costs 0.10% with a per-currency minimum and maximum (EUR min 1.50, max 100), and crypto withdrawal is 0.10% plus network gas. Funds still held on the card at closure remain redeemable for up to 6 years, a monthly maintenance fee begins 12 months after the agreement ends, and closing within 6 months may attract a closure fee — so do not leave a balance sitting on the card.

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