Reals pricing, Bitcoin cashback, and a lot of blank spaces

Updated October 2026

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The Bipa card is a Mastercard, prepaid and credit, offered by a Brazilian company, with plans priced in reais and Bitcoin paid back as Satsback on what you spend. That combination is unusual outside Brazil and it is the whole appeal: if you live there, want to be paid in satoshis for ordinary purchases, and do not mind a fintech-style setup with a Brazilian credit-bureau-style approval process, it does something most crypto cards do not — it pays you back in bitcoin while you spend reais.

It also leaves a great deal unsaid. On the pages I could read, the foreign-exchange rate, ATM charges, spending limits and deposit fees are simply not published. Those are not small details when you are choosing a card to use daily. I scored it 5.9 out of 10: the top-up options and the absence of complaint pages are genuinely good, the everyday mechanics are workable, and the pricing is transparent where it matters least, while the things you would most want to know before loading money are silent.

Who should look at this: Brazilian residents who want Bitcoin cashback in reais, and who are comfortable with a card whose limits and FX costs they will only learn from the fee table inside the app. Who should look away: anyone outside Brazil, anyone who needs a card that will work at a hotel abroad without surprises, and anyone who treats an unstated fee as a fee of zero.

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

Who will they give you the card to?

The card’s public pages do not state the eligibility conditions at all — not stated. What they do tell you is the shape of the company. Bipa Intermediação de Ativos Digitais LTDA (CNPJ 37.008.710/0001-78) was founded in 2020 in Brazil, describes itself as both a payment institution and a virtual asset service provider, and says it is regulated by the Central Bank of Brazil. The issuer behind the plastic is Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento, named as responsible for issuing the Bipa cards.

Three things follow from that shape, and they matter more than a country list would.

First, this is a Brazilian product, not a globally open one. The plans are priced in reais, the credit card is based on Brazilian risk criteria, and the credit limit follows Bipa’s own analysis plus the Card Terms. There is no published list of countries, no statement about residents elsewhere, and nothing about what happens if you move.

Second, when you sign up you send a selfie and a document, Bipa may ask for updated registration data periodically, and both Bipa and Stark Bank may verify your data at any time. False information leads to suspension and cancellation of the card. The service is for adults only — an individual, not a business account — and a credit limit is granted only after analysis.

Third, and this is the part worth sitting with: card issuance, use, the guarantee, and disputes are all governed exclusively by the Card Terms, and those terms were not available to me. So the promise structure — who holds your money, what the guarantee actually covers, how a dispute is resolved — is behind a document I could not read. That is a normal thing for any card, and it does not mean anything is wrong. It does mean that the gaps I flag below cannot be closed from the marketing pages.

If you are reading this from outside Brazil, the honest answer to “is Bipa available in my country” is that the card’s own pages do not say. Assume nothing about it; do not assume it is open, and do not assume it is closed. Ask support before you send documents anywhere.

How to get it

The route is the app. You sign up in the Bipa app, send a selfie and an identity document at sign-up, and the identity checks are described rather than itemised: the verification levels, which documents are accepted and how long processing takes are not stated on the page I read.

Your choice of plan decides whether you get a physical card and how good the perks are:

A virtual card also exists, and the prepaid limit can be “enabled in crypto”. For the physical card, delivery time is given as “per the periods informed by support channels” — no number on the page. A Brazilian address is implied by the whole setup.

The benefits of each plan are fairly clear: physical-card fees and Satsback. The physical card is free on Pro and Max and carries a fee on Free and Plus, with the amount not stated. That single line is the most important pricing fact on the card, and the number behind it lives in the fee table inside the app.

Credit is a separate thing from the prepaid balance. There is a Bipa Crédito card, and you can buy Bitcoin on credit in up to 3 instalments. The limit follows Bipa’s risk criteria and the Card Terms, with no amounts listed, and approval depends on prior analysis — so treat any expectation of a limit as a hope, not a plan.

One more thing about the process that trips people up: raising a credit limit needs an extra deposit and the guarantee to be enabled. Bipa may cap the maximum per active plan and review limits periodically.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is the honest picture. Some fees are published and small. The ones you would most want — what a foreign purchase costs, what a cash machine takes — are not stated anywhere on the pages I read.

Three everyday payments, so you can see which of these actually bites.

A coffee in São Paulo, in reais. This is the clean case. You pay for your purchase on a Mastercard, no conversion is involved, no FX rate is applied, no IOF applies. The only fee that touches this transaction is the monthly fee if it is not waived by usage, and it is taken from the prepaid limit or your reais balance — not added to the coffee. If you are on Plus, Pro or Max, 0.5%, 1% or 1.5% comes back as Bitcoin. If you are on Free, the coffee costs exactly the price on the receipt and nothing more.

A subscription bought online. Same mechanics, with two card-specific wrinkles. If the transaction is one the processor classifies as MoneySend, it is blocked, and no blocked merchant-category list is published — so you cannot check in advance whether your merchant is one of them. And if the purchase goes through and you do not recognise it, you have five days from the transaction to report it. A seven-day right of withdrawal applies to online purchases. A chargeback reverses your Satsback.

A hotel abroad, or anything bought in a foreign currency. This is where the card gets vague. Foreign use is limited to travel and personal expenses and only in credit mode — the prepaid card is not the tool for this. The FX rate “may be higher or lower than the BCB average rate”, the IOF rate is not named, and taxes on remittance abroad are your responsibility. You are being told the direction of the risk without being given the number. If the rate is significantly worse than the central-bank average on a foreign purchase, you pay more than you agreed to in advance. Budget for it, or do not use the card abroad at all.

The pattern to notice: the cost of using this card inside Brazil is well behaved and easy to model. The cost of using it anywhere else is a blank you fill in yourself.

Top up: how the money gets in

This is the strongest part of the product, and the reason its score is high. Bipa accepts more ways of loading value than most cards I look at.

• Pix — native Brazilian instant payments, the obvious everyday route
• Bitcoin on-chain or Lightning — the on-chain route costs what the network charges; the Lightning route is the cheap one for smaller amounts
• USDT on Ethereum (ERC-20) or Polygon only — and this is the detail to internalise: Solana is not accepted for USDT
• USDC, SOL, XRP and ETH networks also listed
• Cofrinho — a savings feature with a minimum of R$50

The Solana exclusion for USDT is the single most likely way for a user to lose money’s worth of time. Stablecoins exist on many chains, and the chain you send on must be one the provider supports; a deposit sent on an unsupported network, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. Blockchain transfers are irreversible by design. Before you send, check the network against the list above, not against the network your sending wallet prefers.

Two smaller funding facts. Deposit fees are not stated. And the way the balance works depends on which card you use: the prepaid card’s limit may be enabled in crypto, settled under clause 5.9 of the Card Terms, while the credit card is backed by reais you keep as collateral, or guarantee.

On the way back out, the app carries a guide titled “Como sacar ou transferir Dolar (USDT)” and there is a US$100,000 limit on international crypto transfers, although the mechanics are not detailed on the page. Cancellation of the card is free of charge; Bipa may deduct amounts owed from the available balance.

There is a second reward line most people miss. Alongside Satsback, reais you keep as guarantee earn a separate Bitcoin reward: Free at 75% of CDI, Plus at 100% of CDI up to R$3,000 and 90% above that, Pro at 110% up to R$5,000 and 100% above, Max at 115% up to R$5,000 and 100% above. It requires an active card. This is the most generous part of the offer if you are willing to leave money parked, and it is entirely separate from the Satsback rate you see on the front of the card.

Paying with it every day

The card comes as a physical and a virtual Mastercard, in prepaid and credit form. Mastercard is named as the network. The prepaid side draws on a balance you load; the credit side draws on a limit that Bipa sets after analysis. For anyone used to ordinary banking, the prepaid behaviour is the one to internalise: the card spends only what is in it, so it cannot overdraw — that is a feature, not a limitation, and it is also why a top-up that arrives late leaves you stuck at the till.

The Satsback works like this: bitcoin comes back on card purchases, with crypto bought with the card itself excluded. On the credit card the reward posts after you pay the invoice; on the prepaid card it posts after settlement. So the cashback is not instant on either side, and it is not on every transaction type.

Adding it to your phone is where the vagueness returns. The card “may be enabled in digital wallets according to eligibility” — Apple Pay and Google Pay are not named. Some transactions classified as MoneySend by the processor are blocked, and no blocked merchant-category list is published. In practice: expect to add the card to a phone wallet if your setup allows it, but do not plan a trip around that until you have tried it.

The app itself rates well on its own claims: App Store 4.8 and Google Play 4.7 across 20,000+ ratings and 300,000+ downloads, read on 2026-10-20. Those are the company’s own numbers and I have no way to verify them.

There are three card mechanics worth knowing because they explain most of the friction people report. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds that stays for several days, typically up to seven. Address verification, which compares the numeric parts of the billing address you type against issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards — which can cause declines. And some merchants simply decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards, because the merchant can look up the card’s issuing country from the card number itself. That last one is not a Bipa problem; it is a property of cards issued in one country and used in another.

Disputes have their own clock. Report an unrecognised transaction within five days. Stark Bank does a preliminary analysis, and the final analysis happens “within the period defined by Stark Bank” — no number of days given. Bipa does not assume responsibility for the outcome.

What can go wrong

The specific risks, in the order I would think about them.

A wrong network on a crypto deposit. USDT goes on Ethereum or Polygon only. Send on the wrong one and it may be lost, or need manual recovery with no guarantee. This is the most likely expensive mistake, and it is entirely avoidable.

Spending limits you cannot see. Not stated, other than that Bipa may set a maximum per active plan, review limits periodically, and that merchants may impose their own minimums and maximums. If you are planning a large purchase, the answer is not on the website.

ATM use. Daily, weekly or monthly limits may be imposed, and the fees follow the fee table and your plan, with no amounts published. Treat the ATM as unpriced until you have seen the table.

Foreign-currency spending. Credit mode only, travel and personal expenses only, FX possibly worse than the central-bank average, IOF not named, remittance taxes yours.

A freeze or a block. Three wrong PIN entries block the card, and you unlock it in the app. Losing it or having it stolen means reporting to support to block it. Here is the important caveat: Bipa and Stark Bank never ask for passwords. And Bipa only answers for third-party misuse after the block has been requested — meaning that if your card is used by someone else before you report it, the position is not clear in your favour.

The business behind it. The issuer is Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento; plans are offered with BIPA Instituicao de Pagamento Ltda (CNPJ 40.910.463/0001-05). There is undated news of R$17 million in funding from Ego Death Capital on the company’s own page. I found no dated events at all, which is itself informative: there is no track record here to point at in either direction.

Complaints. Here the record is unusually clean, and I want to be precise about what that means. I searched for Bipa card complaint pages on Reclame Aqui and Trustpilot and found none — no page about Bipa on either. The company claims a 4.8 rating from 26,000+ reviews, which is marketing material I could not verify. A clean search is not the same as a clean record; it is also what a very young product looks like.

Crypto-specific. A stablecoin can lose its peg, and Bitcoin can be worth much less tomorrow than the satoshis you were paid are worth now. Nobody can promise you otherwise.

The category risk nobody can rule out. Card programmes close. Visa terminated its agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued programmes. Closures typically mean a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw what is left. If you hold value on a crypto card, treat it as working capital, not savings.

Protection is not the same as insurance. Safeguards exist in this category — app-based two-factor authentication, instant card freeze, spending limits, 3-D Secure confirmation, tokenised mobile wallets. What that adds up to is a limit on fraud, not a guarantee that you are whole. Deposits of money with an e-money institution are not the same as bank deposits and may not sit under a deposit guarantee scheme. Custody and insurance arrangements here are not stated.

What to take instead

Three alternatives came up in the same review process, and each is stronger in a specific way.

Sponge — 4.9 out of 10. A virtual card created in-app, described on the homepage as a credit card issued by Rain, a Visa Principal Member, accepted wherever Visa is accepted. Funded by moving USDC collateral from the Sponge wallet with a card fund action; the example chain is base, and the SDK mentions base or solana as optional. Its weakness is the same category of weakness: no country list on the card pages (platform terms set a minimum age of 13 for the service), and cost, fees and rewards not stated. Lower-scoring and thinner on facts than Bipa.

Nexo — 6.3 out of 10. For residents and citizens of selected European countries including the EEA and the United Kingdom — note the wording covers both citizenship and residence, and no country list is published, with excluded jurisdictions simply described as “not available in certain jurisdictions”. Virtual card activated in-app, plus a physical card: free shipping, but it requires a balance above $5,000 in digital assets and at least the Gold tier; the virtual card needs at least $50 to activate. Issued by DiPocket UAB. No monthly, annual or inactivity fee — the clearest pricing of the three. Its FX fee is published and depends on weekday and region: 0.2% in the EEA, UK and Switzerland, 2% elsewhere, rising to 0.7% and 2.5% at weekends. Cashback is credit-mode only, above $5,000, paid in NEXO tokens or Bitcoin, from 2%/0.5% at Platinum down to 0.5%/0.1% at Base, and the rates may change and vary by region. One non-official note, from news rather than the card: Cointelegraph reported a 2025-era Bulgarian police raid on Nexo’s Sofia office over alleged Russia-sanctions and anti-money-laundering violations, with no official Nexo statement on Russians found.

Xplace — 7.7 out of 10, the strongest of the four. Visa, virtual instantly and physical (Silver live; Gold and Platinum described as coming soon, delivery 7–14 business days). Cash mode spends a stablecoin balance, credit mode borrows against your holdings. The pricing is the clearest: annual fee Basic free, Silver $99, Gold $249, Platinum $999, and borrowing carries no origination fee. “0% FX on Platinum”, stablecoin spending with “no hidden spread”. Funded by depositing BTC, ETH, SOL, JitoSOL, USDC, USDT or xStocks on Solana. Credit-mode cashback by tier — 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2% — paid in USDC to the wallet at settlement; cash-mode cashback not stated. The gap: the country list is not stated and the site says services are not available in all jurisdictions, and cash-mode cashback is not stated.

Read down the “not stated” cells and you will notice the pattern I keep returning to in this review. On transparency about who can have the card and what it costs to use it, Nexo and Xplace publish more than Bipa does. On raw flexibility about how you can fund it, Bipa publishes more than either. Those are different virtues and the right one depends on whether you already have a working way to hold value.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend this card to a Brazilian resident who wants bitcoin paid back on everyday spending, who is comfortable being inside a Brazilian fintech system with a credit-bureau-style approval process, and who will treat the card as a spending tool rather than a place to hold money. For that person it is a good product: Pix, Bitcoin and two stablecoin networks, a free physical card on the two upper plans, and a guarantee reward that pays a percentage of CDI in bitcoin on parked reais.

I would not recommend it as a first card if you are outside Brazil, or if you travel and pay in foreign currency often, or if your decision depends on knowing what a transaction costs before you make it. In all three cases the information is not published, and you would be making the decision with a hand over your eyes. Nor would I hold significant balance on it: custodial exposure, the possibility of programme closure, and the fact that the guarantee arrangement sits behind Card Terms I could not read all argue for keeping this card funded for the week, not the year.

And if Brazil is not where you are, read Nexo and Xplace first. They score higher, they publish their fees, and each tells you plainly which jurisdictions it will not serve. If you are in Brazil and want bitcoin back on every purchase, Bipa is a reasonable pick with two open questions you should ask support before you load money: what does foreign use actually cost me, and what are the ATM limits on my plan.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Bipa card?

It is a Mastercard, in both prepaid and credit form, offered by the Brazilian company Bipa Intermediação de Ativos Digitais LTDA, founded in 2020, with the issuer named as Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento. The prepaid side spends a balance you load with crypto or fiat; the credit side draws on a limit Bipa sets after analysis. Plans are priced in reais across four tiers — Free, Plus, Pro and Max — and card purchases earn Bitcoin back as Satsback. Currency is BRL.

How does the Bipa card work?

You load value, and the card spends that value, so it cannot overdraw. Top-ups arrive through Pix, Bitcoin on-chain or Lightning, USDT on Ethereum (ERC-20) or Polygon, and other listed networks including USDC, SOL, XRP and ETH. The credit card behaves like an ordinary credit card instead, with a limit following Bipa’s risk criteria and the Card Terms, and can buy Bitcoin on up to 3 instalments. The virtual card exists as well as the physical one.

Is Bipa a bank?

Not in the ordinary sense. Bipa describes itself as both a payment institution and a virtual asset service provider, regulated by the Central Bank of Brazil — that is the company’s own claim. The card itself is issued by Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento, a payment institution, and plans are offered with BIPA Instituicao de Pagamento Ltda. So the money side runs through payment institutions, not a deposit-taking bank, which is a materially different thing.

Who owns Bipa?

Bipa Intermediação de Ativos Digitais LTDA, CNPJ 37.008.710/0001-78, founded in 2020 in Brazil. Two related entities appear: Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento as the card issuer, and BIPA Instituicao de Pagamento Ltda, CNPJ 40.910.463/0001-05, alongside which the plans are offered. There is undated news of R$17 million in funding from Ego Death Capital, taken from the company’s own page.

Is the Bipa card available in my country?

The card’s public pages do not say — not stated. What is clear is that Bipa is Brazil-focused: a Brazilian company, plans priced in reais, and a credit card based on Brazilian risk criteria. There is no published country list and no statement about residents elsewhere. If you are outside Brazil, ask support directly before sending any documents, rather than assuming either way.

Does Bipa require KYC, and is it safe?

A selfie and a document are sent at sign-up, Bipa may request updated registration data periodically, and both Bipa and Stark Bank may verify your data at any time; false information leads to suspension and cancellation. The verification levels, accepted documents and processing time are not stated on the page I read. On safety, three wrong PIN entries block the card until you unlock it in the app, and neither Bipa nor Stark Bank ever asks for passwords.

How do I top up the Bipa card?

Four routes: Pix, which is native; Bitcoin on-chain or over Lightning; USDT, but only on Ethereum (ERC-20) or Polygon — Solana is not accepted for USDT; and other listed networks for USDC, SOL, XRP and ETH. The Cofrinho savings feature has a minimum of R$50. Deposit fees are not stated. Check the network before sending: a transfer to an unsupported network can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee.

Is the Bipa card free?

Partly. The basic service is R$0 a month, and the monthly fee can be waived by usage. But the physical card is free only on the Pro (R$49.90) and Max (R$99.90) levels; on the entry levels a card issue and shipping fee applies, with the amount not stated. Conversion fees, ATM fees, FX and spending limits are also not stated, “free” means no monthly charge, not no cost at the point of use.

Can I add the Bipa card to Apple Pay or Google Pay?

The card may be enabled in digital wallets according to eligibility — that is the wording, and Apple Pay and Google Pay are not named specifically. So do not assume it works until you have tried it. Also relevant on the everyday side: some transactions the processor classifies as MoneySend are blocked, and no blocked merchant-category list is published.

What happens if I need to dispute a transaction?

Report an unrecognised transaction within five days of the transaction. Stark Bank performs a preliminary analysis, and the final analysis happens “within the period defined by Stark Bank” — no number of days is given. There is a seven-day right of withdrawal for online purchases. Bipa does not assume responsibility for the dispute outcome, and a chargeback reverses your Satsback.

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