A prepaid Visa with a European IBAN, useful for some, costly for others
Available in US
Bitsa is a prepaid Visa card linked to a European IBAN. You fund it with crypto, with a regular bank card or by SEPA, and the balance is held in euros that you spend wherever Visa is taken. The card comes in virtual and physical form, is managed from a phone app, and pitches itself at people who have trouble opening a conventional bank account. After spending time with the numbers and the user feedback, the honest score is 5.0 out of 10, which puts Bitsa in the “useful for a narrow audience, awkward for everyone else” bracket. This review walks through what the card actually does, what it costs, where the rough edges are, and who should consider it.
The conditions in this review are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 5.0 out of 10
Bitsa earns 5.0 out of 10 in this review. That number reflects a card that does the basics well, supports an unusual audience, and is held back by a thin fee structure, unclear country rules and a poor public reputation. The breakdown below shows exactly where those marks come from.
| Criterion | Score | Why it scored that way |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 5 / 10 | Bitsa does not publish an official country list; third-party sources name 27 EEA countries with Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Latvia, the UK and the US excluded. |
| Cost | 4 / 10 | Physical card EUR 20, virtual EUR 2.50, plans from free to EUR 9.99 a month, 1.5% on card top-ups, 1.75% or 2% on non-euro payments and EUR 0.55 plus 1% at foreign ATMs. |
| Top-up options | 5 / 10 | Bitcoin, Ethereum and USD Coin are listed, alongside card, SEPA and voucher top-ups, but Bitsa names no networks, so you are guessing which chain to send on. |
| Reliability and complaints | 3 / 10 | The card issuer is not named on the public pages; a third-party source says it is Pecunia Cards EDE. Trustpilot is at 1.3 out of 5 from 363 reviews, with 68% one-star and recurring complaints about frozen accounts. |
| Everyday use | 9 / 10 | A physical and a virtual Visa with a European IBAN, with Apple Pay and Google Pay support reported by third-party sources, and a daily withdrawal limit abroad. |
| Total | 5.0 / 10 | — |
The audience this card makes sense for is narrow: a eurozone-based person who has been turned down for a normal bank account and who wants a prepaid Visa they can top up with crypto, set to autopay, and forget about. Outside that case, the FX and ATM charges pile up quickly, and the customer-reputation problem is hard to ignore. If you are not in that narrow group, you will be paying Bitsa more than you would pay a mainstream debit card or a better-known crypto card.
Who will they give you the card
Bitsa’s own pages do not publish an official list of supported countries. That absence is itself a fact: the card’s marketing never claims to be open to “everyone in the EEA”, even though that is roughly how it works in practice. If you are deciding whether to apply, you have to rely on what third-party reviewers say, and that is not the same as reading it in Bitsa’s terms.
A third-party site, CryptoCardHub, lists Bitsa as available to residents of 27 EEA countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. The same source lists Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Latvia, the United Kingdom and the United States as restricted. That is unofficial information, not confirmed by Bitsa, and Bitsa has not published the list itself, so treat the table as a useful indication rather than a guarantee.
What Bitsa does say is that it is a simplified joint stock company (SAS) registered in the Nice Trade and Companies Register in France. The card issuer, the institution that actually holds the Visa licence and puts the card programme together, is not named on the public pages Bitsa shows; the same third-party source names Pecunia Cards EDE S.L.U. (PecunPay) and says Bitsa SAS operates the programme on top. Until Bitsa publishes that information itself, the issuer line is unofficial.
The practical question is: which country are you a resident of, and is it on the unofficial list above. If you are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Bulgaria, Croatia or Latvia, you should not assume you can apply. If you are a resident of one of the other EEA countries, you can probably apply, but you should still expect to be refused if Bitsa’s own KYC team decides your profile is too risky. Anyone outside the EEA will be looking at a different product.
How to get it
The signup path Bitsa describes is standard for a prepaid card: download the iOS or Android app, create an account, complete identity verification, order a card and start topping up. The product itself is described as “a prepaid Visa crypto card” available in both physical and virtual form. The balance is in euros, even when you top up with crypto, because Bitsa converts before the funds reach the card. The card also comes with a European IBAN, which means you can receive SEPA payments into the account, not just spend from a balance.
Identity verification is not described in detail on Bitsa’s public pages. The third-party source says Bitsa asks for proof of residence in an eligible country and a standard identity document, with a “Bitsa Young” path for ages 16 to 17 that requires guardian authorisation inside the app. That source also says the issuer can suspend accounts for failed KYC, fraud or AML risk, or for missing source-of-funds documents. None of this is confirmed by Bitsa, so you should expect the same thing you would expect from any regulated prepaid card: a real check, a real delay, and a real possibility of being turned down or asked for more documents partway through.
Delivery times and shipping details are not stated on the official pages. The third-party source also does not state them. The only concrete numbers in the signup process are the card costs: a physical card is EUR 20, an additional virtual card is EUR 2.50, and there is no annual fee on the Free plan. Order the card, complete KYC, wait for the physical card to arrive if you ordered one, activate it in the app, and you are ready to load funds.
The “how to apply” question is therefore: download, sign up, complete the identity check, and be patient. If you are in a restricted country you will find out quickly, and if you are in an eligible one you should still expect to provide documents, possibly more than once.
What it really costs: Fees, plans and limits
Bitsa runs on three plans: Free, Move and Pro. The free plan gives you one virtual and one physical card, the Move plan adds extra cards and a small cashback, and the Pro plan removes most of the everyday fees. The trade-off is that you pay for it monthly or annually.
The physical card is EUR 20 once, the virtual card is EUR 2.50. The Free plan has no monthly cost; Move is EUR 0.99 a month or EUR 8.99 a year; Pro is EUR 9.99 a month or EUR 69.99 a year. Beyond those plan fees, every action that touches the card has its own line on the bill. Reloading the card with another card costs 1.5%. International payments cost 1.75% outside the euro zone and 2% elsewhere. A transfer to another person costs EUR 1 on Free and Move, free on Pro. The crypto conversion spread is not stated by Bitsa; a third-party source puts the sell fee at 2.39% on Free, 2.14% on Move and 1.89% on Pro. ATM withdrawals abroad cost EUR 0.55 plus 1% of the amount, with a minimum of EUR 0.75, and you can only take EUR 450 a day outside Spain.
| Fee or limit | Free | Move | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Card issuance (physical) | EUR 20 | EUR 20 | EUR 20 |
| Card issuance (virtual, additional) | EUR 2.50 | EUR 2.50 | EUR 2.50 |
| Monthly fee | EUR 0 | EUR 0.99 | EUR 9.99 |
| Annual fee option | — | EUR 8.99/year | EUR 69.99/year |
| Reload with another card | 1.5% | 1.5% | 1.5% |
| Payments outside the euro zone | 1.75% | 1.75% | 1.75% |
| Payments elsewhere (non-euro) | 2% | 2% | 2% |
| Transfer to another person | EUR 1 | EUR 1 | Free |
| Crypto sell fee (unofficial) | 2.39% | 2.14% | 1.89% |
| ATM abroad | EUR 0.55 + 1% (min EUR 0.75) | EUR 0.55 + 1% (min EUR 0.75) | EUR 0.55 + 1% (min EUR 0.75) |
| Daily ATM limit (outside Spain) | EUR 450 | EUR 450 | EUR 450 |
| Purchase limit | EUR 1,500 | EUR 5,000 | EUR 15,000 |
| Max balance | EUR 2,500 | EUR 15,000 | Unlimited |
| Top-up | 500/day, 1,000/month, 2,500/year | 1,200/day, 5,000/month, 15,000/year | Unlimited |
| Crypto reload cap | Up to EUR 20,000/day | Up to EUR 20,000/day | Up to EUR 20,000/day |
To make the fee table feel less abstract, three everyday situations show what you actually pay.
Paying for EUR 100 of groceries in Spain on the Free plan. No FX fee applies, the card is a Visa in euros and the merchant is in the euro zone. You pay no card fees on top of the EUR 100 you spent. If you topped up with another card at 1.5%, you pay that fee on the amount you load, and that is the only fee you see.
Paying for a EUR 60 hotel booking in Prague on the Free plan. Prague is in the EEA but not the euro zone, so Bitsa charges the 2% “elsewhere” fee. The hotel charges you EUR 60. Bitsa adds EUR 1.20 on top. You will not see this as a separate line; it is folded into the euro amount the merchant receives. If you also loaded the card with a non-Bitsa card, the 1.5% reload fee (EUR 0.90 on a EUR 60 load) is in addition.
Withdrawing EUR 200 from an ATM in Thailand on the Free plan. The 1% plus EUR 0.55 fee applies. You pay EUR 2.55 to Bitsa, and the local ATM operator may charge its own fee on top, which Bitsa says is passed through in Spain. There is no public commitment on what happens with operator fees outside Spain, so the safe assumption is that you will pay both. The EUR 450-a-day limit does not bite at EUR 200.
The headline reading is that, on the Free plan, the FX fee is the most expensive part. The 2% “elsewhere” charge is on the high side for a euro card, and even the 1.5% reload fee is more than some competitors. Move trims a few edges and adds small cashback; Pro flattens the transfer fee and the crypto sell fee, but at EUR 9.99 a month or EUR 69.99 a year it is a notable cost, and the FX fee is the same on all three plans.
Top up: getting money onto the card
Bitsa accepts six top-up routes, in two broad families: crypto and fiat. On the crypto side, the supported coins are Bitcoin, Ethereum and USD Coin. On the fiat side, you can top up with another card, by SEPA transfer to the European IBAN, from a wallet, or by buying a voucher. Bitsa does not name the networks, which is the single most annoying thing about the top-up flow: if you want to send USDC, you have to know whether Bitsa expects Ethereum, Solana, Polygon or something else, and the public pages do not tell you.
A third-party source says the in-app crypto flow is buy and sell only: you cannot send crypto from an external wallet into Bitsa to be held, and you cannot withdraw crypto out of Bitsa to an external wallet. The same source says Bitsa generates a new address for each external-wallet top-up, which is the standard pattern for a custodial service. If you want to move Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC into the card, the typical flow is: open the app, copy the Bitsa deposit address, send the funds from your own wallet, wait for confirmations, and let Bitsa convert the crypto to euros at its published rate.
The reload limits in the table above apply to fiat top-ups, and the daily crypto reload cap is EUR 20,000 a day on every plan, with the overall plan caps dominating once you move past Free. The third-party source also mentions a 0% crypto buy fee on all plans, and a voucher top-up fee of 0% to 6% depending on the voucher. None of those numbers are stated by Bitsa itself.
The other top-up route worth knowing about is SEPA. Because Bitsa is a card with a European IBAN, you can receive a normal euro bank transfer into the account and the funds become available to spend on the card. That is the route that makes the card useful for people who are paid in euros but cannot get a normal bank account; the SEPA transfer is not a crypto transaction, it is a plain bank transfer, and Bitsa’s role is to hold the euros in the card programme and make them available to spend.
What is not stated is how long each top-up route takes. The official page does not say whether a card top-up is instant, whether a SEPA transfer arrives in hours or days, and how many confirmations Bitsa waits for on a Bitcoin deposit. Treat each route as “sometime between fast and slow” and do not plan a same-day purchase around an uncertain deposit.
Paying with it every day
Bitsa is a Visa, so it works anywhere Visa works. The product page calls it “a prepaid Visa crypto card” and emphasises that crypto is converted to euros on the way in, so the card is a euro card at the point of sale. The day-to-day experience is closer to a prepaid card than a debit card, in the sense that you can only spend what you have loaded, you cannot go overdrawn, and the card balance is a euro balance, not a fluctuating crypto balance.
A third-party source confirms Apple Pay and Google Pay support in Bitsa’s current help material. That means you can add the virtual or physical card to a phone wallet and pay by tapping, which is the default expectation in 2026. The same source notes that a Samsung Pay launch was announced earlier but no current setup guide is published, so Samsung users should expect to do extra checking. Bitsa lists “Cashback up to 15%” among the Move plan services, with a description of cashback at favourite brands; the payout asset and the conditions are not stated, so the cashback is real but the rules are not on the page.
A third-party source rates the Bitsa app at 2.8 out of 5 on Google Play, with the same page showing a conflicting 2.9 figure, and the number of ratings is not given. That is a low rating, and the absence of a public number of ratings means we cannot tell whether the rating reflects a handful of angry users or a wider pattern. The iOS rating is not stated on the public pages read for this review.
The card is meant to be a daily-use card, not just a way to convert crypto. The European IBAN, the SEPA inbound route, the prepaid Visa rails, the Apple and Google Pay support, and the 1.75%/2% FX fee structure all point to a product designed to be the user’s primary euro card, with crypto as one of several top-up options. Whether it works as your primary card depends on whether you can live with the FX fees and the limits, and whether you trust the platform with the balance.
What can go wrong
The single biggest risk with Bitsa is the same risk that dogs most prepaid crypto cards: the platform holds your money, not you. Once the euros are on the card, they sit in a programme run by an issuer whose name Bitsa does not publish on its own pages, and if that issuer decides to freeze your account, your money is not at your bank and not in your wallet, it is in someone else’s ledger.
A secondary aggregator reports a Trustpilot score of 1.3 out of 5 from 363 reviews for Bitsa, with 68% of reviews at one star. That is the lowest kind of customer-reputation signal a fintech can have. Themes in the negative reviews include accounts frozen or blocked with funds withheld (reviews dated from September 2020 to September 2026, including several in 2026), unresponsive support that can take weeks or months to reply, repeated demands for KYC documents well after signup, crypto top-ups that arrive only partly or not at all, login and app failures, and unexplained account closure. Bitsa has not replied to the negative reviews. Two reviewers claim they were warned by a regulator, which is unverified. The source for these numbers is a single third-party aggregator reading Trustpilot; Bitsa’s own pages do not comment on customer satisfaction.
The next risk is the unnamed issuer. Bitsa does not name the card-issuing bank on the public pages; a third-party source says the issuer is Pecunia Cards EDE S.L.U. (PecunPay), registered with the Banco de Espana as 6707. Until Bitsa confirms that on its own pages, the “card issuer” line is unofficial, and that is an unusual absence for a card product. If you cannot find out who issues the card from the card product’s own website, you have to take the third-party word for it.
The next risk is sanctions and country coverage. Bitsa does not publish a country list of its own, and the unofficial EEA list excludes several countries that look like obvious candidates (the UK after Brexit, the US, Canada, Croatia, Bulgaria, Latvia). The wider rule, the one that catches people off guard, is residency. Bitsa’s rules are about where you live, not where you are a citizen, so a US citizen living in Germany can probably apply, and a German citizen living in the US cannot. That rule also runs in the background of every transaction, and a card that worked in Madrid can stop working in a different jurisdiction.
The next risk is the FX fee. 1.75% outside the euro zone and 2% elsewhere is not the most expensive FX fee in the category, but it is high enough that anyone using the card heavily outside the euro zone will feel it. Compare it to a mainstream travel card, which typically charges unofficial market averages of 0% to 1% in FX fees, and the difference becomes real money over a year of travel.
The last risk is operational. Crypto deposits depend on the network being the one Bitsa expects, and the network is not stated. SEPA transfers can take a business day or more. Support is reported as slow or absent. The app rating is low. None of these is a deal-breaker on its own, but together they describe a product where the small things go wrong more often than they should, and where the support you would need to fix them may not be there.
What to take instead
Bitsa is one of a growing group of prepaid crypto cards, and it is not the only one. The three alternatives below cover the main patterns: a US-issued Visa, a multicurrency Mastercard, and a stablecoin-backed spending balance.
International Visa Card, 6.7 out of 10. A US-issued Platinum Visa sold as a virtual card, with a physical version “coming soon”. Spending in USD is free on all plans; foreign-currency spending adds Visa’s exchange rate plus a 2% FX fee. The Classic plan is free, Pro is USD 9 a month, Max is USD 19 a month, and card issuance is USD 5 one-time. Deposits in USDC or USDT are at 1:1, and USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow deposits are also listed. The country rules are more detailed than Bitsa’s, blocking residents and legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, and blocking purchases in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. There is no cashback.
| Card | Score | Plans | FX fee | Cashback | Country rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| International Visa Card | 6.7 / 10 | Classic free, Pro USD 9/mo, Max USD 19/mo | 2% | None | Long blocklist, by residence |
| UNi Card | 6.1 / 10 | No annual fee | None stated | Up to 3% | Not stated |
| Whop Cards | 5.2 / 10 | No extra fees | Not stated | 5% at Uber (and others planned) | 31 US states for consumers, longer blocklist for corporate |
| Bitsa | 5.0 / 10 | Free, Move EUR 0.99/mo, Pro EUR 9.99/mo | 1.75% in non-euro EEA, 2% elsewhere | Up to 15% (unofficial details) | Unofficial EEA list of 27, with 6 restricted |
UNi Card, 6.1 out of 10. A multicurrency Mastercard that spends from the UNi.Global account balance. No annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, and assets are converted at live OTC rates with no hidden exchange fees. The card is marketed with “Spend-to-Earn” rewards of up to 3%. Funding routes and country rules are not stated on the public pages. If UNi Card’s published numbers hold up, it is cheaper than Bitsa in the everyday case, but the absence of published limits and country coverage makes it harder to recommend without doing your own reading first.
Whop Cards, 5.2 out of 10. A Visa that spends from a Whop balance; the pending balance is usable as soon as a payment arrives, with settled funds for standard withdrawals. Backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet, the coin and network are not stated. Cashback is 5% at select merchants, currently Uber, with more planned. The country rules are the most explicit of the four: consumers in 31 US states, businesses in 41, and a long list of unsupported consumer countries that overlaps heavily with International Visa Card’s blocklist. The card page says “no extra fees” without listing any fee schedule, which is the kind of statement that needs to be backed up before you load meaningful funds.
The honest read is that Bitsa is not the strongest card in its category. International Visa Card scores higher because the FX and funding rules are more transparent, even if the country rules are stricter. UNi Card scores higher because it removes the FX fee entirely, at the cost of an unstated country list. Whop Cards scores slightly higher because the rules are clearer, even though the fee schedule is not. Bitsa is the only one of the four with a real European IBAN, and that is the feature that matters for the audience it is built for. Outside that audience, the alternatives win on cost and clarity.
Who I would recommend it to
Bitsa earns a recommendation in a narrow case. If you are a resident of an EEA country that is not on the unofficial restricted list, if you cannot get a normal euro bank account, if you want a prepaid Visa with a European IBAN, and if you plan to spend mostly inside the euro zone, then Bitsa is a reasonable choice. The Free plan is enough to test it, the IBAN lets you receive a salary or a SEPA transfer, and the Visa rails let you spend in shops and online as if you had a normal bank account.
If any of those conditions does not hold, the recommendation changes. If you travel outside the euro zone often, the 1.75%/2% FX fee will add up faster than a mainstream travel card would. If you are outside the EEA, Bitsa is not for you. If you can get a normal bank account, you will get a better-regulated product with the same basic utility. If you want to use the card as a primary euro card and you are on the Free plan, the 1.5% reload fee and the EUR 1 transfer fee will start to feel expensive. Move and Pro smooth the rough edges, but at EUR 9.99 a month Pro is a serious subscription for a prepaid card.
The other condition for a recommendation is your tolerance for the customer-reputation problem. The Trustpilot score is 1.3 out of 5, and the themes in the negative reviews are exactly the themes you do not want to see: frozen accounts, slow support, missing crypto deposits. None of this means Bitsa will freeze your account, but it does mean the company’s track record is not reassuring, and a regulated product with a bad public reputation is something to enter with eyes open.
The bottom line is that Bitsa is a useful tool for a specific person in a specific situation, and an expensive, reputation-burdened card for everyone else. If you are in that specific situation, the Free plan is enough to start, and the IBAN is the reason to be here in the first place. If you are not, the alternatives above will serve you better and cost you less.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Bitsa card?
Bitsa is a prepaid Visa card linked to a European IBAN. The balance is in euros, the card is managed from an iOS or Android app, and the card can be topped up with Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, a regular payment card, a SEPA transfer or a voucher.
How does the Bitsa card work?
You fund the card in euros, by crypto or by fiat, and the app converts crypto to euros at the time of top-up. You then spend the euro balance anywhere Visa is taken, in shops, online or through Apple Pay and Google Pay, where supported by a third-party source.
Is Bitsa a bank?
No. Bitsa is a simplified joint stock company (SAS) registered in France. A third-party source says the card itself is issued by Pecunia Cards EDE S.L.U. (PecunPay), but Bitsa does not name the issuer on its own public pages, and the funds held on the card are programme funds, not bank deposits.
Who owns Bitsa?
Bitsa SAS owns the Bitsa brand and the app. A third-party source says the card programme is operated on top of Pecunia Cards EDE S.L.U. (PecunPay), registered with the Banco de Espana as 6707. None of this is confirmed by Bitsa’s own pages.
Is the Bitsa card available in the United States?
No. The United States is on the unofficial restricted list maintained by third-party sources. Bitsa does not publish an official country list, so the only way to be sure is to start the application and find out.
Does the Bitsa card require KYC?
Bitsa does not describe its KYC process in detail on the public pages. A third-party source says proof of residence in an eligible country and a standard identity document are required, with a “Bitsa Young” path for ages 16 to 17 that uses guardian authorisation in the app.
How do I top up the Bitsa card?
You can top up with Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC by sending crypto to the address the app generates, with another card at 1.5%, by SEPA transfer to the European IBAN, or by buying a voucher. Bitsa does not name which blockchain network the crypto top-ups use, which is the main uncertainty in the process.
How do I add Bitsa to Apple Wallet or Google Pay?
A third-party source confirms Apple Pay and Google Pay support in Bitsa’s current help material. Adding the card follows the normal wallet flow: open the wallet app, choose to add a card, scan or enter the card details, and complete the issuer’s verification step.
Is the Bitsa card safe?
Bitsa uses standard safeguards, including SMS codes and a personal SCA secret for online purchases, and the cards can be blocked in the app. The platform is custodial, which means the balance is held inside the card programme, and the public Trustpilot score is 1.3 out of 5 from 363 reviews, with recurring complaints about frozen accounts and slow support.
Is the Bitsa card worth it?
For an EEA resident who cannot get a normal bank account and wants a prepaid Visa with a European IBAN, yes. For a traveller, a non-EEA resident, or someone who can get a normal bank account, no: the FX fee, the reload fee, the lack of a published country list, and the customer-reputation problem all argue for a different product.
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