A careful look at Kolan, the crypto-funded virtual card from Hurupay

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Kolan card sits in an unusual spot. It is built for people who do not have an easy path to a normal bank card and who hold crypto they want to spend online. In that narrow use case — paying for online services in US dollars from a crypto balance — it does the basic job. The trouble is that almost everything about it is under-documented. The public material does not state who can actually get one, what it costs to issue, hold and spend, which network it runs on, or who is the licensed issuer behind it. Most of those blanks can be filled only with unofficial listings, and even those do not agree with one another. I have worked through the published facts and the unofficial listings, and I have laid out where each number or claim comes from so you can judge for yourself.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Kolan earns 5.7 out of 10 in my scoring, which is a middling result and not a recommendation. The mark reflects a real strength — the card seems to exist in over 100 countries, with a US-dollar balance designed for online spending — weighed against an unusual number of unknowns for a financial product, and the absence of a Trustpilot page or any visible public complaints record. The strongest reader for this card, on the published facts, is someone who needs a virtual USD card to pay for online services (Cursor Pro+, subscriptions, SaaS tools and the like) from a crypto balance, who is comfortable with a small, US-registered fintech they have probably not heard of, and who can absorb the risk that a quiet product like this can change or disappear with little warning. The card is a poor fit for someone who needs a physical card, who spends in shops face to face, who relies on chargeback or Regulation E protections, or who wants a card with transparent fees before they sign up.

Score table

Will they give you the card

The first thing any prospective applicant wants to know is whether the card is even available where they live, and the honest answer from the published material is that we do not really know.

The card’s own starting data says 100+ countries. That figure is the strongest claim in the public material, and it suggests a deliberately broad reach rather than a country-by-country rollout. Below that headline number, the details are not stated. The card’s own pages do not publish a list of supported countries, a list of excluded countries, age rules, residency rules, or citizenship rules. None of that is spelled out in the public material I was able to read.

The unofficial picture is a bit more specific but you have to treat it with care. A listing on Alchemy and a separate startup-directory entry describe Hurupay — the company that operates Kolan — as offering accounts in “more than 100 countries,” and describes the Kolan profile as non-US individuals in over 50 countries. The first of those is about the underlying Hurupay account, not the card itself, so it is an indirect signal rather than a confirmed card-eligibility rule. The second matches the 50+ figure some startup listings use for the Kolan profile. Taken together, the unofficial material points to a card that is plausibly available in many places, with a US-person exclusion in the profile, but none of it is stated by Kolan as a policy.

If you are trying to work out whether you personally can sign up, the cleanest advice is this: the card is positioned as broadly available, but the only way to find out for sure is to start the sign-up flow and see what the application asks. There is no published table that will give you a yes-or-no answer in advance.

The KYC side of this is also not stated. The published material does not say what documents you will be asked for, what level of identity verification is required at sign-up, or whether verification tiers exist. Given that the operator is registered in the US, you should expect some form of identity check, but the card’s own pages do not promise or describe one.

How to get it

The published material does not describe a step-by-step sign-up flow, and the card form itself is not stated officially. What we know, again, is mostly from unofficial listings.

The consistent picture from those listings is that Kolan is a USD virtual card aimed at online spending, and that it is created from inside the Kolan app once an account is in place. The network — Visa, Mastercard, or something else — is not stated on the card’s own pages; a Cursor forum post remarks that such a card “could work if it’s a Visa or Mastercard,” which is a guess, not a fact, and I am not relying on it. There is no physical card described in any source I could see: starting data and the unofficial listings both describe a virtual product only, and delivery time is therefore not stated in any meaningful sense.

KYC levels are not stated either. The card’s pages do not tell you what to expect, so I cannot tell you whether you will be asked for an ID document, a selfie, a proof of address, or simply an email and a wallet. If identity verification is required, it is the kind of thing you only find out by trying.

The honest summary: sign-up is described at the level of “create a Kolan account, get a virtual card,” and the specifics — the form of the card, the network, the documents, the waiting time — are not stated in the public material.

What it really costs — fees

This is the section I find the hardest to write, and it is also the section most worth reading carefully if you are considering this card. The reason is straightforward: the card’s own pages do not publish a fee schedule. Issuance fee, monthly fee, conversion fee, foreign-exchange fee, ATM fee, daily and monthly limits — none of it is stated.

The only direct cost claim I have is unofficial. A directory description of Kolan, written in 2026, says “no hidden FX fees.” That is a single source, it is not the card’s own page, and it is a marketing line, not a fee table. I would not treat it as a guarantee. The same source does not put a number on conversion, ATM withdrawal, or inactivity, so we do not know what the actual cost of using the card looks like in practice.

To put that in perspective, here is what the card’s own pages do and do not say. The table below is built only from the published material, and most rows are “not stated” — that is the honest answer, not a placeholder.

The lack of a published fee schedule is a real issue for a payment product. Even if the fees turn out to be reasonable, the only way to find them out is to load the card and read the small print at the point of payment, or to write to support and ask. That is not the same as a competitor that publishes its fees on a single page and lets you decide before you sign up.

Let me walk through three everyday situations and what fees would apply, because this is where a vague fee schedule bites you.

If you top up the card with USDC and then spend the USD balance at a US merchant, the conversion is from USDC to USD — a stablecoin-to-dollar conversion that, in principle, should be cheap. The card’s own pages do not state what the conversion fee is, so the cost here is unknown. The unofficial “no hidden FX fees” line suggests there is no separate foreign-exchange mark-up on top of the conversion, but it does not say what the conversion itself costs.

If you spend the same USD balance at a non-US merchant in euros or pounds, the card network will do a USD-to-local-currency conversion. The card’s own pages do not state an FX fee, so the cost is unknown. Some cards with no published FX fee still earn margin on the exchange rate itself; without a published number you cannot tell.

If you try to withdraw cash from an ATM, the picture is again not stated. The card is described as a virtual USD card for online spending, and ATM access is not mentioned in any of the published material, so the safest assumption is that ATM withdrawals are not a designed use case for this product.

In all three situations, the answer is the same: the published material does not give you enough to budget for the card. That is worth weighing on its own, separate from whatever the actual numbers turn out to be.

How to top it up — top up

The top-up path is the one part of the card that is described in some detail in the public material, and it is also the part most worth understanding before you sign up.

The flow, as the starting data describes it, goes like this. You deposit crypto into your Kolan account. That crypto is held as USDC in a linked wallet, as collateral. When you want to spend, the USDC is converted into USD and loaded onto the virtual card, and the card then spends in US dollars. The model is therefore a pre-loaded balance: the card cannot overdraw, because it only spends what has been converted and loaded.

The starting data does not say which crypto assets you can deposit, which networks are supported, or how long the conversion takes. An Alchemy listing for Hurupay describes USDT, USDC and BTC wallets in general terms, but it does not bind those to the Kolan card product specifically, and the networks behind them are not named. The practical effect is that you have a USDC-collateralised flow, and the rest is for you to discover in the app.

A few things follow from that. First, because the card holds USDC as collateral, the depeg risk of USDC is a real consideration — USDC briefly lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis, and the value of the collateral on your card is then no longer exactly one dollar. Second, because the networks are not stated, you cannot safely send funds from an exchange until you know which network the deposit address is on. Sending USDT on a network the card does not support is a real risk: blockchain transfers are irreversible, and recovery is not guaranteed. Third, because conversion runs through a stablecoin layer, the cost of the conversion is the cost you should focus on, even if the foreign-exchange side is described as having “no hidden” fees.

Withdrawal is not stated for the card specifically. Hurupay accounts, on the unofficial Alchemy listing, allow withdrawal to crypto exchanges or local banks, but that is a feature of the underlying account, not a confirmed feature of the Kolan card.

Paying with it every day

The day-to-day picture is narrow, and that is by design.

Kolan is a virtual USD card. There is no physical card in the public material, no plastic to tap at a shop, no card to hand over at a restaurant. The intended use, in the unofficial listings and in the Cursor thread from August 2026, is online spending in US dollars — paying for software subscriptions, online services, and similar online checkouts. If your day-to-day spending is in a coffee shop, at a supermarket, or on public transport, this is the wrong product for that.

Mobile wallet support is not stated. Apple Pay and Google Pay are not described on the card’s pages, and there is no mention of tokenisation into a phone wallet. That is consistent with a virtual-only product aimed at online checkout, but it also means you cannot tap to pay on a phone.

The app itself, dispute handling, and any rewards or cashback are not stated. None of those features are described in the public material. If you are the kind of user who reads the rewards page before signing up, there is no rewards page to read.

Spend controls are mentioned in one unofficial source. A directory description refers to controls including a card freeze, which is the ability to lock the card from the app so that no further charges go through until you unlock it. That is a useful safety feature and it is the only everyday control I can point to in writing. Two-factor authentication, biometric login, and custody arrangements are not stated.

The everyday picture, then, is a card you load from a USDC balance, use at online USD checkouts, and freeze from the app if you need to. That is the whole feature set I can confirm from the published material.

What can go wrong

A crypto-funded card is exposed to several categories of risk at once: the risk of the operator, the risk of the issuer, the risk of the network, the risk of the asset, and the risk of the merchant experience. I want to walk through each of these because the published material gives very different amounts of information about each.

The operator risk sits with Hurupay Inc., which does business as Kolan. The company is described in the starting data as US-based, and in unofficial listings as a fintech registered as a money services business. The specific registration body and the registration number are not given, so the registration is something I am taking on trust from a directory description rather than confirming against a public register. Kolan was part of the inaugural Circle Developer Grant Program cohort, which is a third-party signal of involvement with USDC but not a regulatory status.

The issuer is not stated. The card’s pages do not name the licensed bank or e-money institution that actually issues the card and holds the card programme. That is a meaningful gap: a card programme is run by an issuer under a network licence, and the issuer is the entity that handles KYC, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and dispute resolution. Without a named issuer, the reader cannot easily check the licence, the regulator, or the country of supervision.

Complaints and incident history are quiet rather than alarming. I could not find a Trustpilot page or any Reddit thread for Kolan or Hurupay in my search, and there are no official incidents in the public material. The only public signal I found is a Cursor forum thread from 13–15 August 2026, where Cursor staff observed that prepaid and crypto-funded virtual cards “often have issues” — declined checkouts, failed renewals — and that Cursor neither supports nor blocks the Kolan card specifically. That is not an incident with Kolan; it is a category observation, and it is worth taking seriously because it describes the failure modes this kind of product tends to have.

Asset risk sits with USDC. USDC is described by Circle as redeemable 1:1 for US dollars and backed by cash and cash equivalents, with monthly reserve attestations by a Big Four firm. The same coin has temporarily lost its peg before, in March 2023. If you are holding USDC as collateral on the card, your balance moves with USDC, and a depeg event is a real possibility even if it has not happened recently. Stablecoins are not risk-free just because they are called stable.

Network and merchant risk is the one most readers will feel first. A card that is foreign-issued — and a US-issued card used outside the US — can run into Address Verification Service gaps and merchant category code filters. AVS is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK, and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines at online checkouts. Merchants can also decline prepaid or foreign BINs outright when the BIN lookup reveals the card type and issuer country. 3-D Secure can add an extra identity check, and the issuer can decide to challenge or block the payment.

Finally, programme risk. Card programmes can be wound down. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022, and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer. In Europe in 2018, Visa suspended WaveCrest, which closed all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes overnight. The pattern is well known in the industry. The risk for any small, US-registered card programme is that the network or the issuer changes the relationship, and the card stops working with relatively short notice. The Kolan programme is small enough that this is a non-trivial concern.

What to take instead

Kolan is one option among several, and the alternatives below are not endorsements — they are simply other cards I can describe from the same kind of public material, so you can see how the published facts line up.

Cardex is a debit crypto card on the networks Verve, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay, with both virtual and physical cards. Its App Store listing is Naira-focused, the site talks about an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchanges at the moment of payment, and the card currency on the listing is Naira. Cardex scores 5.6 out of 10. The published facts say “one crypto card, 200+ countries” without a country list, fund with USDT, USDC or BTC, and the conversion fee is described in prose rather than as a published number. The advantage over Kolan is that Cardex offers both virtual and physical cards and runs on a known card network family. The disadvantage is that the App Store focus and the Naira currency make it feel more like a Nigerian product, and the conversion fee is not a published number either.

CardFlow is positioned as “Nigeria’s smartest fintech card platform,” serving Nigerians and global users. It offers a virtual USD Mastercard created in minutes, with funding in Bitcoin, USDT, ETH or Naira bank transfer. The site FAQ says creating a virtual card is free; monthly and other fees are not stated. CardFlow scores 4.9 out of 10. The advantage over Kolan is that the card is explicitly a Mastercard, so the network is known, and creation is described as free. The disadvantage is that the country list is not stated, the conversion fee is not stated, and the product positioning is clearly Nigerian.

HyperCard is a prepaid card with a balance in USD or EUR. The App Store page says it works in “more than 176 countries” — that is acceptance, not eligibility — and the official pages do not state a country list. Funding is in USDT, BTC or ETH in the app, converted to USD or EUR on the card; networks are not stated, and no fees are listed on the App Store page. HyperCard scores 4.7 out of 10. The advantage over Kolan is that HyperCard supports both USD and EUR balances, which is useful for European spending. The disadvantage is that the network is not stated, the country eligibility list is not stated, and the fee schedule is empty.

Putting those alongside Kolan, the practical question is what you actually need. If you need a card on a known network, Cardex (Visa/Mastercard/UnionPay) and CardFlow (Mastercard) name the network, while Kolan and HyperCard do not. If you need a physical card, Cardex is the only one of the four that clearly offers one. If you need published fees, none of the four publish a full fee schedule, but CardFlow is the only one that explicitly says card creation is free. If you need a published country list, none of the four publish one. The cleanest way to choose between them is to write down the one feature that matters most to you — known network, physical card, USD balance, free creation — and pick the card that explicitly states that feature.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Kolan only to a narrow reader, and I would flag the rest of the audience to look elsewhere.

The reader I would point at this card is someone who has crypto, who cannot easily get a bank-issued card in their country or whose existing bank card is rejected at the online services they want to pay for, who only needs a virtual USD card for online spending, who is comfortable with a small US-registered fintech they have never heard of, and who is not depending on a published fee schedule to make their budget work. For that reader — paying for a Cursor Pro+ subscription or a similar online service from a USDC balance — the card does the basic thing it is built to do, and the lack of physical features is not a problem because they were not going to use them anyway.

The readers I would steer away are several. If you need a physical card, Kolan is not it — there is no physical card in the public material. If you need to spend in shops, on public transport, or at a cash machine, this card is the wrong product. If you rely on chargeback rights or Regulation E protections, the issuer is not named and the dispute handling is not stated, so I would not assume those protections apply. If you want a fee schedule you can read before signing up, the card’s own pages do not publish one. If you are uncomfortable with the operator being a small US-registered fintech with no visible Trustpilot page, that discomfort is reasonable and I would act on it. And if you need a card on a known network, neither the network nor the issuer is named in the public material, and that is a meaningful gap for a payment product.

My overall view is that Kolan is a niche product that does its narrow job, and that the lack of public detail is the main reason it scores in the middle rather than higher. A virtual USD card funded by USDC for online spending is a useful thing, and there is a real audience for it. The same product, with a published fee schedule, a named issuer, and a real public complaints record, would be a different proposition. Until then, treat it as a tool for a specific job, with the appropriate amount of caution for a product where most of the detail is unofficial.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Kolan card?

Kolan is a virtual USD card aimed at online spending, funded by crypto. The starting data describes it as a payment card into which you deposit crypto, which is held as USDC in a linked wallet and converted to US dollars to load the card. It is operated by Hurupay Inc., which does business as Kolan. The card is positioned as broadly available, with starting data listing 100+ countries, but a published country list does not exist in the public material.

How does the Kolan card work?

You deposit crypto into your Kolan account. The crypto is held as USDC in a linked wallet as collateral, and is converted to USD to load the virtual card. The card then spends in US dollars at online merchants. The model is a pre-loaded balance, so the card cannot overdraw. The specific crypto assets accepted and the blockchain networks supported are not stated in the public material.

Is Kolan a bank?

No. Kolan is operated by Hurupay Inc., a US-based fintech that is described in third-party listings as registered as a money services business. The licensed bank or e-money institution that issues the card — the entity that actually holds the card programme — is not stated. The public material does not name an issuer, so Kolan is best understood as a programme manager or front-end rather than a bank.

Who owns Kolan?

Hurupay Inc. does business as Kolan, according to the starting data. The company is described in unofficial listings as a US-based, MSB-registered fintech, and Kolan was part of the inaugural Circle Developer Grant Program cohort. The specific ownership structure beyond that is not stated in the public material.

Is the Kolan card available in my country?

The card’s starting data lists 100+ countries, and an unofficial Kolan profile mentions non-US individuals in over 50 countries, but the card does not publish a list of supported or excluded countries. The only way to find out for sure is to start the sign-up flow and see what the application asks. There is no published table that gives a yes-or-no answer in advance.

How do I get a Kolan card?

The published material does not describe a step-by-step sign-up flow. The consistent picture from unofficial listings is that you create a Kolan account and get a virtual card from the app, but the specific documents required, the KYC steps, and the form of the card are not stated. The card is described as virtual only, and the card network is not stated on the card’s own pages.

Does the Kolan card require KYC?

The card’s pages do not state what identity verification is required at sign-up, or whether verification tiers exist. Given that the operator is US-registered, you should expect some form of identity check, but the specifics — documents, processing time, tiered limits — are not described in the public material.

How do I top up the Kolan card?

You deposit crypto into your Kolan account. The crypto is held as USDC in a linked wallet as collateral, and is converted to US dollars to load the virtual card. The specific crypto assets accepted and the blockchain networks supported are not stated in the public material, so you should confirm the deposit network in the app before sending funds from an exchange.

Is the Kolan card free?

The card’s own pages do not publish a fee schedule. Issuance, monthly, conversion, FX, ATM, and inactivity fees are all not stated. An unofficial directory description claims “no hidden FX fees,” but it is a single source, and it does not give a number for the conversion itself. Treat the cost as unknown until you can confirm it in the app or in the cardholder agreement.

Is the Kolan card safe?

The card is operated by Hurupay Inc., a US-registered fintech. The licensed issuer is not named in the public material, the custody arrangements are not stated, and there is no Trustpilot page or visible Reddit footprint for Kolan or Hurupay. A directory description mentions spend controls including a card freeze, which is a useful safety feature. The category risks — operator risk, USDC depeg risk, programme-closure risk, and merchant-decline risk on foreign-issued cards — all apply. The cleanest reading is that the card is a small, US-registered product with a thin public footprint, and that the safety case has to be made by the operator’s regulator, licence, and audit trail, which are not stated.

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