Krak card review — a crypto debit card that earns up to 2% cashback, weighed against its limits
Available in US
Krak is the consumer app of the Kraken crypto exchange, and the Krak card is a Mastercard debit card that spends directly from a Krak Everyday account. It is free to order, has no monthly or annual fee, and offers up to 2% cashback in cash or crypto. In this review I go through who can actually get one, what it costs in real use, how the top-up flow works, and the regulatory and reliability questions I would want answered before applying.
The conditions in this article are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 7.1 out of 10
The card is strong on the everyday side — no monthly fee, free ATM withdrawals in 190+ countries, Apple Pay and Google Pay support, and a 2% cashback ceiling — but it is held back by a narrow geographic reach and a mixed trust record. The issuer is Monavate, an e-money institution authorised by the UK FCA and in Lithuania, so the card sits in a regulated frame. Still, public reviews are split and reports of accounts being restricted after deposits make this a card worth weighing carefully rather than treating as a default choice.
| Criterion | Mark | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 5 / 10 | UK and EU residents today, with more countries promised but not listed |
| Cost | 9 / 10 | No order, monthly, annual, transaction, FX or ATM fee; only a card-replacement fee and a variable spread on crypto |
| Top-up options | 7 / 10 | Spends the Krak Everyday balance across 600+ assets via a user-set order, but not every asset is available for the card |
| Reliability and complaints | 5 / 10 | Reviews disagree and restricted-account complaints are common |
| Everyday use | 10 / 10 | Virtual, physical and metal; Mastercard; Apple Pay and Google Pay; cashback up to 2% |
| Total | 7.1 / 10 |
The card fits UK and EU residents who already use Krak or Kraken, want crypto cashback, and value fee-free spending more than a broad country list. It is not the right choice for someone outside the UK and EU, for someone who wants every fee spelled out in advance, or for anyone uncomfortable with a card whose availability depends on a single regulated issuer in a relatively young product line.
Who can get the Krak card
Krak states that the card is “currently available to residents of the UK and the EU, with more countries coming soon.” The wording is residence-based, so citizenship alone is not the deciding factor; where you live is. Krak adds a footnote that geographic restrictions apply, which in practice means individual countries can be excluded even inside the UK/EU frame.
A help article I came across uses slightly different language and lists personal accounts for UK, EEA and US residents, which is wider than the card page. I would treat the help article as informal: if you are in the US, do not rely on it; the card page is the safer reference. The card page also does not set out the documents, age or proof-of-address list for getting verified. What it does say is that you must have a verified Krak account with completed KYC before the card can be ordered, and the help article adds that the applicant must be at least 18 and that Monavate, the issuer, must verify identity before issuing a card.
If you live in the UK or the EU, the path looks open. If you live anywhere else, the honest answer today is that the card is not yet available where you are, even if the marketing suggests expansion is on the way.
How to sign up
The flow is the same one Kraken users already know, with a card step at the end:
- Open a Krak account and complete KYC. Krak does not publish the exact list of required documents on the card pages, so the most reliable way to find out is to start the process and see what the app asks for.
- Once your account is verified, order a virtual card in minutes inside the app. The virtual card works for online and mobile-wallet spending from the moment it is issued.
- Order a physical card (orange or black) if you want one for in-store use. Shipping is free; delivery countries are listed as UK and EEA. Krak does not give a delivery time on the official page, so I would not plan around a specific date.
- If you want the metal card, you need to hold an average of GBP/EUR 50,000 in combined assets across Krak, Kraken and Kraken Pro. The card itself is described as stainless steel and 16 grams.
A few practical points worth knowing up front: the official card page says “no monthly or annual fees” but Monavate charges a $4.99 (or card-currency equivalent) replacement fee if you need a new physical card, and a third-party source puts the metal-card replacement fee at GBP/EUR 60. The $4.99 number is from the issuer; the GBP/EUR 60 number is unofficial. Virtual and physical cards are cancelled separately, so it is worth understanding which one you are closing if you ever need to. KYC level names and processing times are not stated on the pages I read, so I cannot tell you what tier you will end up in or how long a particular review will take.
Fees and what the card really costs
The headline number is friendly: no order fee, no monthly fee, no annual fee, no transaction fee, no FX fee and no Krak ATM fee. That is the strongest part of the cost picture, and it is the reason the card scores 9 out of 10 on cost.
| Fee or limit | Amount |
|---|---|
| Card order | Free |
| Monthly fee | None |
| Annual fee | None |
| Transaction fee on spend | None |
| FX fee on card payments | None (Mastercard rate passed through) |
| ATM withdrawal fee from Krak | None |
| Third-party ATM surcharge | May apply, shown before withdrawal |
| Card replacement (physical) | $4.99 or card-currency equivalent |
| Crypto conversion | Variable spread (size not stated) |
| Card currencies | GBP for UK cards, EUR for EEA cards |
| Spend currencies | 600+ |
The “variable spread” line is the one to watch. When you pay in a non-card currency or pay from a non-fiat balance, Krak converts on its side, and the price you get is not the public market price plus a flat fee. The size of that spread is not stated on the official card pages, so the only honest answer to “how much will my coffee cost in BTC” is “the app will tell you, and it will be a little worse than the screen you saw on a price site.” If you mostly spend fiat from your Everyday balance, this is less of a concern.
The ATM line deserves a careful read. Krak says it does not charge for ATM withdrawals, and that the card can be used in over 190 countries. The “over 190” number is the number of countries where the network is reachable, not a promise that any specific machine will be free; ATM operators can add their own fee, and Krak says this is shown to you before you commit. The free-withdrawal allowance — how much you can take out per day or month before any cap kicks in — is not stated on the card pages. A third-party source points to typical contactless limits (GBP 300 in the UK, EUR 150 cumulative in the EEA) before a PIN is required and to card-count limits (up to two virtual and two physical cards active, with a cap of three virtual cards created in any rolling 30 days), but I would treat those as unofficial.
For everyday spend, the typical case is simple: a card payment in the card’s primary currency, with a fiat balance loaded, has no fee at all. A card payment in a different currency has no Krak FX fee but Mastercard’s rate applies. A card payment funded from crypto has a spread baked in, the size of which the app will show you. ATM withdrawals are free from Krak’s side up to whatever the daily and monthly limits are, and third-party ATM fees are visible at the machine.
How to top up the card
Krak does not use the word “top up” in the same way a prepaid card does. The card spends the balance of your Krak Everyday account, and the order in which different balances are drawn down is set by you in the app, in a Spend Order. You can stack fiat balances, stablecoins and other crypto, and the card works through them in the order you choose. Krak says 600+ assets are offered across the app, but not every one of them is available for card use — assets that are not supported will simply show “Unavailable” in the Spend Order.
A few things to know about getting money onto the card:
- Deposits can be made at any time inside the app. Some deposit methods carry a 3-day withdrawal hold, so the funds may be visible but not yet spendable.
- Fiat funding pages exist for Plaid (EUR/GBP) and PayPal, which means you can connect a bank or PayPal balance as a funding source. The card pages I read do not state a deposit fee or minimum.
- A third-party source puts a card deposit by debit at GBP/EUR 0.25 + 3.75% and describes it as “near-instant”. I would treat that number as unofficial; the card page does not show a fee of that shape.
The networks and specific coins the card accepts are not listed on the official card pages, which is the kind of detail I would expect to see in a help-centre article. In the absence of that, the only safe assumption is that you should deposit using whatever method the app shows you, on whatever network the app tells you to use, and not assume a coin you hold elsewhere will work on the card. Sending funds on the wrong network is the classic way to lose them, and once a blockchain transaction is sent there is no undo button.
Paying with the card every day
In daily use the card behaves like a normal Mastercard debit card. You can add it to Apple Pay and Google Pay, which is how most people will use it in a phone-first routine; mobile-wallet payments go through tokenisation, so the real card number is never shared with the merchant. Krak does not publish a list of blocked merchant categories, but you can block individual currencies from being spent by editing the Spend Order.
Cashback is one of the main draws. The headline rate is up to 2% in cash or crypto, with the actual rate depending on the average assets you hold across Krak, Kraken and Kraken Pro. Travel booked through Krak Concierge can earn up to 4%, which is unusually high for a debit card and worth keeping in mind if you already use the concierge.
For disputes, the path is to open the transaction in the app and tap “Get help with this transaction.” Refunds return to the Everyday account in the card’s primary currency, and crypto is not automatically converted back. UK complaints are acknowledged within 24 hours with a final response within 15 business days (extendable by 20); EEA complaints run to 15 business days (35 if delayed). The Kraken help centre notes that dispute resolution itself can take 45–60 days, which is longer than the card-page numbers. A 14-day cooling-off refund of fees is mentioned on the card pages.
There are a few things the card pages do not say, and I would want to know before relying on the card for a trip: which merchant categories are blocked, whether Google Pay is officially supported (a help-centre article says yes; the card page does not list it), and what the daily, weekly and monthly limits actually are. A third-party source says such limits “apply to both card spending and ATM withdrawals” and “vary by region and are shown in the app”, and that hotels and car rentals may pre-authorise an extra 10–20%, with the unused portion taking up to seven days to clear. Those numbers feel right but I cannot confirm them on the official pages, so check the app for your own limits before any large trip.
What can go wrong
The strongest part of the picture is the regulated frame. The card is issued by Monavate, an electronic money institution in the UK (FCA FRN 901097, company no. 12472532), and in the EEA by Monavate UAB, authorised in Lithuania (licence no. 92). The Krak app is Kraken’s consumer app, and the underlying E-Wallet is an e-money account issued by Kraken, not Monavate. That means the card sits inside a regulated product, but it also means the safeguards that apply depend on which entity is on the other side of the balance.
The weaker part is reliability. Two aggregators give very different Trustpilot scores for krak.app: 3.8 from 34 reviews, and 1.9 from 126 reviews. The sources disagree, so the only honest takeaway is that the public signal is mixed. The themes that show up in user reports are familiar from the wider crypto-card space: accounts restricted after a bank transfer or deposit, with funds reported as hard to access; generic customer-service replies without timelines; and a July 2026 Reddit thread describing an 11-day security review that suspended deposits, withdrawals and card use, where Kraken support later said it “dropped the ball.” One UK cardholder reported terminals asking for a signature instead of a PIN and a slow refund, and a separate case described a slow response to an unauthorised-transaction claim.
A third-party aggregation site (penchan.co, undated, unverified) also describes card payments failing for several hours in the UK and EEA, automatic freezes after small transfers from sanctioned addresses, an undisclosed spread, and a Bank of Lithuania fine or warning against Monavate UAB related to AML and safeguarding. I cannot confirm any of these from the official card pages; I list them so you can decide whether to dig further.
Two structural risks are worth flagging clearly:
- Custodial crypto. The crypto you spend from the card is held by Kraken/Krak, not in your own wallet. The CryptoCardHub overview (unofficial) says fiat is held in segregated accounts at regulated institutions and that UK e-money is not covered by FSCS, with the EEA wallet having no deposit-guarantee coverage. The official card pages do not contradict that and they do not explain the safeguarding setup themselves.
- Issuer dependency. The card only exists because Monavate holds the licence. If that licence were lost, suspended or restricted, the card programme would be at risk. Programme closures in the wider market have a familiar shape: new loads stop, spending stops on a later date, and users are asked to withdraw their balance within a window.
On the security side, the official app lets you freeze, unfreeze or replace a physical card instantly. Real-time transaction monitoring and data encryption are mentioned; two-factor authentication is not described in the card pages, so the only way to know whether it is on by default is to check inside the app. Support is described as in-app and 24/7, with a Support Center; languages, email and phone are not listed.
What to take instead
Krak is not the only crypto card in the market, and the right comparison depends on where you live and what you care about. The cards below come up most often alongside it.
Young Card
The Young Card scores 5.7 out of 10 in my scoring frame, lower than Krak. The card-side facts are not stated officially in the materials I have, so I would not lean on it as a like-for-like replacement for Krak’s regulated UK/EU setup. Its main pull is cashback paid in YNG tokens, with rates set by Club tier: Essential 0.1%, Gold 1.8%, Platinum 3.6%, and Bronze and Silver not stated. If you are a YNG believer and want a token-denominated rebate, it is worth a look; if you want a fiat-denominated cashback ceiling you can reason about, it is not.
Coinbase Card
Coinbase Card scores 6.4 out of 10. It is a Visa prepaid debit card available in all US states except Hawaii, with account opening under the USA PATRIOT Act identity rules (name, address, date of birth and ID). The cost picture is “zero spending fees and no annual fees,” with all fees disclosed in the Cardholder Agreement and User Agreement, and a spread applied when Coinbase buys, sells or trades crypto at the point of conversion. The card is funded by linking a bank account or by paycheck deposit (both fee-free), and you can spend your crypto balance, which is converted to USD. Rewards are optional crypto rewards on every purchase, US Card users only, with a variable rate shown in the app and a rotating menu of reward tokens. If you are US-based, Coinbase Card is a real alternative; if you are in the UK or EU, it is not on offer.
OKX
OKX scores 6.2 out of 10. It is available in the EU plus Norway, launched 28 January 2026, with Iceland and Liechtenstein excluded; one explainer says “entire EEA”, which conflicts with that list, so I would not assume the EEA is fully covered. The card is a euro-denominated Mastercard virtual debit card linked to OKX Pay, issued via an unnamed European licensed payment provider; no physical card is mentioned. There is no card fee, no transaction fee and no OKX FX fee, with a conversion spread of 0.1% per a May 2026 explainer, against a 0.4% market spread in the launch press release; the explainer is newer, so I would use 0.1% as the working number. Funding is from USDC or USDG held in OKX Pay, with other coins requiring conversion first and no auto top-up — the card declines if the balance is insufficient. Cashback is paid only on USDG purchases (USDC earns none), with monthly caps in EUR of 2%/cap 10 for Regular, 4%/cap 300 for VIP1, 4.5%/cap 450 for VIP2, 5%/cap 1,000 for VIP3, and 10%/cap 1,000 for VIP4+; one source describes the range as 2–5%, the table says 10% at the top, so treat the upper end with caution. If you are EU-based, hold USDG and want a euro card, OKX is the closer competitor to Krak; if you want a physical card or a fiat-from-GBP balance, it is not.
| Card | Score | Where it works | Cashback | Notable trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Krak | 7.1 | UK and EU | Up to 2% (up to 4% via Concierge) | Spread on crypto not disclosed; mixed public reviews |
| Coinbase Card | 6.4 | US (all states except Hawaii) | Variable, rotating crypto rewards | US-only; spread on conversion |
| OKX | 6.2 | EU plus Norway | Up to 10% on USDG (table); 2–5% (text) | Virtual only; cashback only on USDG |
| Young Card | 5.7 | Not stated officially | 0.1–3.6% in YNG by tier | Token-denominated; thin official detail |
Who I would recommend it to
I would recommend the Krak card to a UK or EU resident who already uses Krak or Kraken, who is happy to spend from a fiat Everyday balance most of the time and use crypto selectively, and who values fee-free spending more than a fully transparent spread table. The 2% cashback ceiling is competitive, the Apple Pay and Google Pay support is real, and the regulated issuer frame is a meaningful point in the card’s favour.
I would not recommend it to someone outside the UK and EU today, to someone whose spend pattern is mostly crypto-funded (because the spread is variable and not disclosed), or to anyone who needs a published, universal table of daily and monthly limits before they can plan a trip. The public Trustpilot signal is mixed, the regulator has acted against the EEA issuer in the past, and the absence of a published spread means the worst-case cost of a crypto-funded payment is something you will only learn by making the payment.
If you fall into the second group, the practical next step is to load the app, complete KYC, order the virtual card and test a small payment in your card’s primary currency with a fiat balance, before deciding whether to use crypto-funded payments at all.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Krak card?
The Krak card is a Mastercard debit card issued by Monavate (UK) and Monavate UAB (EEA) that spends directly from a Krak Everyday account, which can hold fiat balances and crypto from the broader Krak/Kraken ecosystem.
How does the Krak card work?
You fund a Krak Everyday account, set a Spend Order for the assets you want the card to draw from, and the card pays at the Mastercard rate, with a variable spread applied on the sell side when you spend crypto.
Is Krak a bank?
No. Krak is Kraken’s consumer app, and the card-issuing side is Monavate, a UK-regulated e-money institution; the underlying Everyday account is an e-money account issued by Kraken, not a bank deposit.
Who owns Krak?
Krak is Kraken’s consumer app, so Krak sits inside the Kraken group; the card programme is run with Monavate as the licensed issuer in the UK and Monavate UAB in Lithuania.
Is the Krak card available in the United States?
The card page says UK and EU, with “more countries coming soon”; a help article mentions US residents for personal accounts, but I would not treat that as confirmed card availability in the US.
How do I get a Krak card?
Open a Krak account, complete KYC, then order a virtual card in the app in minutes, or a physical card (orange or black) for free shipping within the UK and EEA; the metal card requires an average of GBP/EUR 50,000 across Krak, Kraken and Kraken Pro.
Does the Krak card require KYC?
Yes. You must have a verified Krak account with completed identity verification before a card can be ordered, and the issuer (Monavate) must verify your identity as well.
How do I add the Krak card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay?
A help-centre article says the card can be added to Apple Pay and Google Pay; the official card page confirms Apple Pay but does not explicitly list Google Pay, so the most reliable route is to add the card from inside the Wallet app once it is issued.
How do I top up the Krak card?
You fund the Krak Everyday account, in fiat via Plaid (EUR/GBP) or PayPal or by depositing crypto, and the card spends from that balance in the order you set in the Spend Order; some deposit methods carry a 3-day hold.
Is the Krak card safe?
The card is issued by a regulated e-money institution, the app supports instant freeze and replacement, and the funds are held by Kraken/Krak rather than in your own wallet, which means you carry custodial and counterparty risk; the card pages do not describe safeguarding, and UK e-money is not covered by FSCS.
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