A stablecoin card with virtual and physical options — and a fee schedule the terms never put a number on

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Wasabi is a crypto company selling a payment card that spends a stablecoin balance: a virtual card you can bind to Apple Pay, and a physical card for cash machines and shops. On paper that is exactly what you want if the problem is that an ordinary bank card is hard to get where you live or with the documents you have. The site’s own pitch is for businesses and users who want stablecoin virtual and physical cards.

My score is 6.4 out of 10. That is not a bad card; it is a card whose public pages leave out the one number you need most. The terms list fee *types* — issuance, foreign exchange, cross-border transactions, ATM withdrawals, chargeback handling, replacement — and not a single amount. No monthly fee is named. Card limits are given for the virtual card only, and the physical card is described with adjectives. If your decision depends on what a payment will cost you, you cannot make it from what is published.

I want to be clear about the shape of this review. Everything about the card itself comes from the card’s own public pages and terms, and where something comes from a third party I will say so and mark it as unconfirmed. Where the card does not say, I will say that it does not say, once, plainly, rather than filling the gap.

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

Verdict

Wasabi gives you a stablecoin-funded card in two forms, opens to applicants from 200+ countries and regions, with identity verification that may ask for ID, proof of address and a selfie. Everyday use is the strong part: Apple Pay binding, cash withdrawals worldwide, no published foreign-exchange or conversion numbers to trip over because none are published at all.

What is weak is money and proof. The terms name Wasabi Ltd as a financial technology company that is “not bank or custodians”, with card issuing and OTC provided “in partnership with licensed institutions or banks” — and they do not name the issuer or the licences. One Trustpilot review, dated 8 Jul 2026, describes a provider aimed at businesses, high setup fees of “$15,000 and up”, and restricted cards. That is a single review, not a pattern, and it is a user’s account rather than a finding. But combined with the silence on fees, it points at the same thing: this looks like a product built with business customers in mind, and a person who wants to buy groceries is being invited into that world without the numbers that world runs on.

So who does it suit? Someone who already holds stablecoins, who can clear KYC, who wants a virtual card in Apple Pay today and a physical card later, and who treats the card as a spending tool rather than as a place to hold money. Who does it not suit? Anyone who needs to know the cost of a 200-euro purchase before they make it, anyone who needs a named issuer and a named licence to feel comfortable, and anyone in a country whose address or citizenship the card might reject — the terms exclude “any prohibited or sanctioned jurisdiction” without listing them.

Will they give you the card?

Yes, on the broadest eligibility claim of any card in this category — and that claim is worth reading carefully rather than celebrating.

The starting data says 200+ countries and regions, with no list on the pages I read. The terms then add the catch-all: users must not be located in or residents of “any prohibited or sanctioned jurisdiction”. Three things follow for you as a reader.

First, the wording is residence-based — “located in or residents of” — not citizenship-based, which is common in this category. But that does not mean citizenship is irrelevant: sanctions screening is routinely applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as to your address, so a citizen of a sanctioned country living in a permitted one may still fail. Treat this as “no confirmation without asking”.

Second, because the excluded jurisdictions are not listed, you cannot check yourself before applying. The only way to find out is to ask support, or to try. The card runs live chat, email and phone, and the email line promises a reply “within 24 hours” — languages and opening hours are not stated.

Third, “200+ countries” describes where the card can be used and, per the starting data, where it can be obtained. It does not promise that your application will be approved, and it says nothing about approval rates.

One further practical point sits outside the country question: prepaid and debit cards in this category are generally available to adults (18+), and some issuers set higher limits. The Wasabi terms do not state an age requirement at all. If you are under 18, you have no published answer, and you should assume the answer is no until told otherwise.

How to get it

The application itself is ordinary. You complete “any required identity verification (KYC/KYB) procedures” — and the word “required” is doing real work here, because the terms phrase it conditionally.

What the card may ask for:

• a government-issued ID
• proof of address
• a selfie verification
• for corporate applicants, registration documents and beneficial ownership

What is not published: your age requirement, the document list per country, how long review takes, what “required” means in a given jurisdiction, and any tiered verification levels. A KYC guide article exists in the help centre, but tiers themselves are not stated on the pages I read.

One consequence you should plan for: the terms say that failure to complete verification may lead to suspension or termination. That is standard, and it is still worth reading as a real risk — a rejected document is not a neutral event in the life of the account.

Why this verification exists is not card-specific. KYC rules require regulated businesses to identify customers and assess risk as part of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing law, with ongoing monitoring and suspicious-activity reporting. In the EU, customer due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documentation, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether you are a politically exposed person. In the US, the customer identification programme requires name, date of birth, address and an identification number, and electronic systems also validate proof-of-address documents. If due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to hold off on the relationship and, where necessary, end it — which is why accounts close or freeze pending documents rather than for anything you did.

One more reason not to treat identity checks as a hurdle to clear once: I am not going to explain how to get around them, and neither should anyone selling you a shortcut. Anyone offering to supply a verified account, or documents belonging to someone else, is running the same fraud controls the KYC rules exist to catch, and the account will be closed on top of it.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is the honest version: the terms list what may be charged and never say how much. That is the whole problem with this section.

The fee types named in the terms are card issuance, foreign exchange, cross-border transaction, ATM withdrawal, chargeback handling, and replacement card. No amounts accompany any of them. The monthly fee is not stated. The site’s ATM line reads “Withdraw cash from millions of ATMs worldwide with competitive rates” — no fee, no allowance, no daily or monthly cash limit. The currency line is “Currency conversion rates may apply”, again with no figures.

Limits are partly there. The virtual card is described with a “card limit up to 10,000 USD”. The physical card gets “flexible spending limits” and no numbers.

Now the part I find genuinely useful: what that means for three everyday payments.

A coffee in your own currency. You tap the virtual card in Apple Pay and the payment clears against your stablecoin balance. The published exposure is conversion, if any, at a rate the terms do not quote. Everything else — no monthly fee is named, and no per-transaction fee type is listed for ordinary domestic purchases. But “not listed” is not “zero”, and the fee schedule I cannot read could contain a line item the terms summarise.

A purchase in a currency you do not hold. Now two listed fee types can both apply, in sequence: the foreign exchange fee and the cross-border transaction fee. You would be paying the conversion on top of whatever the rate gives you. Neither amount is published, and I cannot tell you what this costs — anyone who quotes you a figure here is guessing.

Cash from an ATM. The site promises competitive rates worldwide and the terms list an ATM withdrawal fee. What I could not find is the allowance: how much per day, how much per month, how many times. On many cards in this category those limits are lower than the card limit suggests, and they are the numbers that decide whether a card works for you. Here they are simply not published.

The site mentions sending money in 7+ currencies, which tells you the platform handles multiple currencies somewhere. It does not tell you which currency the card itself is denominated in. Card currency is not stated.

If your question is “is Wasabi card free” — and it is one of the most common searches on this card — the answer is that the public pages do not say yes and do not say no. There is a fee list. It has no numbers on it.

One thing you can separate out from the card’s fees: on-chain network fees for your deposit are charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider. So on a deposit you will pay the network’s own gas or bandwidth fee on top of whatever the card may take.

Top up

The card is funded with stablecoins — the site calls it “Spend with Stablecoin”. That is the mechanism in one line, and it is the reason this card behaves the way it does.

What the pages read do not state: which coins, which networks, minimums, fees, or how long a top-up takes. Unofficial starting data names USDT on TRC20 and BEP20. I am flagging that as unconfirmed and not confirmed by the card, because the difference matters enormously — see below. Top-up amounts, top-up fees and any minimum top-up are not stated.

Now the warning, because this is where people lose money in this category and I will not soften it. Blockchain transfers are irreversible. If you send on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, the funds can be lost entirely, or need manual support recovery with no guarantee of success. There is no chargeback mechanism on a blockchain transfer; that is the design.

The chain specifics are not abstract. If you send ERC-20 tokens, fees are paid in ETH only, so a wallet holding USDT with no ETH cannot send at all. Tron prices transactions through bandwidth and energy resources, often burning TRX. And the “same coin, different chain” problem is real: Circle lists USDC as natively supported on 38 networks as of 16 September 2026, including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon PoS, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Stellar — but Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. Tether, by contrast, describes USDT as a token built on multiple blockchains with reserves intended to back it 1-to-1, and USDT has been issued on networks including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon and Avalanche.

So when you read “USDT” in this card’s unofficial starting data, ask which chain, and get the answer in writing from support before you send anything.

And do not assume a stablecoin is a dollar. A stablecoin aims to hold a stable value against an asset such as a fiat currency, but as the BIS put it in July 2025, despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable — and about 90% of market capitalisation sat in Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022; USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity, so these tokens are not censorship-proof either. A balance held in a stablecoin is a balance exposed to that balance’s behaviour.

On the withdrawal side, the card’s terms say funds may be temporarily withheld pending investigation. How to withdraw money from Wasabi is not stated on the pages I read — no method, no minimum, no fee, no timing.

Paying with it every day

This is the part that works, and I want to give it its due.

Apple Pay. The virtual card supports “instant binding” to Apple Pay, and the physical card can be added to Apple Pay as well. Google Pay is not disclosed. This is a real advantage over cards that force you to type a card number into a terminal. Behind it sits ordinary, well-understood machinery: Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific Device Account Number stored in the Secure Element rather than on Apple’s servers, and each payment carries a one-time dynamic security code.

Cash. Physical card, ATMs worldwide, site language about competitive rates.

Security. “Security by Design” as the company puts it: create, delete and isolate funds per card — so each card’s balance is separable. Custody is stated as non-custodian. Two-factor authentication is not stated, which is a gap in a product whose selling point is isolation.

In-store and online acceptance. A card number starts with a 6- or 8-digit issuer identification number that any merchant can look up to see which institution and country issued it, and shops may apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address on file. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign cards outright, because the lookup reveals the type and the country. This is not a Wasabi problem specifically — it is what happens to a card issued in one place and used in another, and it is the single most common surprise for people using crypto cards in countries without a domestic issuing arrangement.

Address verification makes it worse in one direction. AVS compares the numeric parts of the billing address the buyer typed against issuer records, and it is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK — generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines on online checkouts.

Online payments also meet 3-D Secure: an extra identity check where the issuer either approves silently or challenges you with a code or biometrics. Visa’s brand is Visa Secure, Mastercard’s is Identity Check. Card networks can also restrict a tokenised number — blocking it on magnetic stripe, phone or website use. Declined authorisations may leave a hold on your funds for up to seven days.

Blocked categories. Not stated for this card. Gambling is the category worth asking about, because the MCC 7995 covers casinos, betting and lotteries, and many issuers block it by policy rather than law — with a list that varies by issuer. If gambling or any other category matters to you, ask specifically.

Rewards. A “Cashback” product (“Get Cashback on your card purchases”) and a referral programme are listed. Rate and conditions are not stated. I would not build a spending decision around an unquantified cashback.

The app. Web app at app.wasabicard.com. No store listing was found, and ratings were not read — worth knowing, because “how to activate Wasabi card” and “how to use Wasabi virtual card” are both answered in the app, and an app you cannot find in your app store is friction at the very first step.

If something goes wrong. Refunds may take up to 30 business days to be reflected. Chargebacks require supporting documentation, and recovery is not guaranteed. A chargeback is a refund the issuer orders to settle a dispute, with reason codes for fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received. In the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z — prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. Under 3-D Secure, liability for fraudulent online payments can shift from the merchant to your bank, or, per critics, to you.

What can go wrong

I have grouped these by how much they would actually hurt you.

The unnamed issuer. Wasabi Ltd describes itself as a financial technology company, “not bank or custodians”, and says OTC and card issuing are “provided in partnership with licensed institutions or banks”. No issuer and no licences are named on the pages I read; a “Licenses & Compliance” page exists at /en/licenses-compliance, which is where I would look first. Why this matters structurally: a card payment involves several parties. The card network routes messages and sets rules; the issuer holds the card programme; the crypto brand is often only a programme manager or a front-end. So when something goes wrong, knowing which of those roles Wasabi plays tells you who you complain to. Visa and Mastercard themselves do not issue crypto cards to consumers — they license issuers, and they can suspend a programme. Visa said in November 2022 that it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX”, and the FTX US debit card programme 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 Visa programmes. Closures typically follow a pattern: notice, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances.

Non-custody is a real protection, with real limits. Control of crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key or seed phrase. With a custodial wallet the provider holds the credentials, so you must trust the provider completely; with a self-custody-linked card the funds stay in your wallet until the moment of payment. But the latter hands you sole responsibility for key loss, phishing, and clipboard-hijacking malware that silently swaps a copied address. And the sector’s record is not clean: Mt. Gox reported about US$350 million stolen over 2011–2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, and the Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022.

One reported complaint, read as one report. Trustpilot shows a 1-star review dated 8 Jul 2026, giving a TrustScore of 3 from that single review: the provider is aimed at businesses, charges high setup fees (“$15,000 and up”), cards are restricted, quality low. I read this on 2026-10-21. No Reddit threads were found. A single review is not a pattern and proves nothing — but it is consistent with a product positioned for business, and if you are a private buyer you should hear that positioning in the terms’ silence on fees.

Transfers that cannot be undone. Covered above, and it is the loss most likely to be large and immediate: wrong network, unsupported chain, or an address that no longer belongs to you.

Balance that can move under you. The stablecoin peg is not guaranteed, and a depeg hits your spending power directly — the card spends the balance, whatever the balance is worth that day.

Money stuck during an investigation. “Funds may be temporarily withheld pending investigation” is in the terms. When a dispute reaches the chargeback stage, refunds can take up to 30 business days, and support promises a reply “within 24 hours” — reply, not resolution.

Tax. I am not giving tax advice and you should get advice for your situation, but the mechanics are worth knowing. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services, dollars or other digital assets generally produces a taxable gain or loss; for personal or investment holdings the result is a capital gain or loss, short-term if held one year or less. Gain is measured in local fiat currency at the fair market value on the date of the transaction — which means each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. Paying for a coffee with stablecoins is a disposal event, in that framing.

Regulation moving underneath you. MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, took legal effect in June 2023; its rules on asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens applied from 30 June 2024, with the remaining provisions including crypto-asset service provider rules from 30 December 2024. Under it, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. The transitional period lets providers operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until a MiCA authorisation is received or refused. ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised CASPs that you can check a provider against, and a CASP authorised in one member state can serve the whole EU. A card is a payment service regulated separately, so a crypto card often depends on two licences. In the US, FinCEN guidance treats administrators and exchangers of convertible virtual currency as money transmitters while mere users buying goods are not.

What to take instead

I am not going to tell you to pick another card. I will tell you what the alternatives say, and what they do not say, because the comparison is where the fee problem becomes obvious.

All three below are assessed by the same criteria. CardFlow scores 4.9 / 10, HyperCard 4.7 / 10, Card.fi 6.6 / 10 — Card.fi is the only one that publishes its numbers in a way you can budget from.

The pattern is plain. CardFlow and HyperCard are, on their public pages, about as quiet on money as Wasabi is — HyperCard’s App Store page lists no fees at all, and CardFlow tells you card creation is free and stops there. Both are narrower in reach: CardFlow is built around Nigeria, and HyperCard’s “176 countries” describes where the card works, not who can hold one.

Card.fi is the one to read if your problem is not knowing what things cost, because it prints percentages. It also prints the risk: a deposit sent on the wrong chain risks permanent loss, and its terms bar residents of, or orders from, a country subject to sanctions that would prohibit the service — the same exclusion shape as Wasabi, expressed differently.

Its rewards structure is also the most explicit of the three, which means it is also the easiest to calculate against: Classic 0.8% capped at 10 USDT/month, Premium 1%, Metal 1.2% with two cap tiers or 2% with higher ones, a 10% headline at coffee shops capped at 10 USDT/month, and a variable “up to 18%” on balances held on Metal. Whether that beats Wasabi’s unquantified cashback is impossible to say — you cannot compare a number to the absence of one.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Wasabi to someone in this specific position: you already hold stablecoins, you have cleared or expect to clear KYC with documents to hand, you want a virtual card in Apple Pay now and a physical card for cash later, and you are willing to ask support three questions in writing before you send money — which coins, which networks, and what each fee is.

I would not recommend it to you if any of these are true. You need to know what a payment costs before you make it. You need a named issuer and a named licence on the page. You are buying something with borrowed money and cannot absorb a depeg or a frozen balance. You are in a jurisdiction whose status you cannot confirm. Or you simply want a card to buy groceries — for that, the honesty of a provider who prints its percentages is worth more than a longer country list.

The honest summary is this. Wasabi’s daily product is good: instant Apple Pay binding on a virtual card, a physical card, worldwide ATMs, and a per-card isolation model for balances. Its disclosure is not, and disclosure is what you are actually buying when you choose between two crypto cards that both promise to spend your stablecoins. Score it 6.4 / 10 because the card suits a specific person and, for everyone else, the missing numbers are the feature.

Before you sign up for anything, go and read the card’s own terms page and its Licenses & Compliance page yourself, and ask support to write down the fee schedule. I have not done this card; I have read what it publishes and compared it with what it does not.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Wasabi card?

It is a payment card funded from a stablecoin balance rather than from a bank account, offered in two forms: a virtual card that supports instant binding to Apple Pay, and a physical card for shops and cash machines. Wasabi describes the product as “Spend with Stablecoin”. The card currency and the card network are not stated on the public pages I read; unofficial starting data suggests Visa or Mastercard with a USD balance.

Is Wasabi a bank?

No. Wasabi Ltd describes itself as a financial technology company, “not bank or custodians”, and says OTC and card issuing are provided in partnership with licensed institutions or banks. The issuer and the licences are not named on the pages I read, though a “Licenses & Compliance” page exists at /en/licenses-compliance. That page is the first place to check before you fund anything.

Who can get the Wasabi card?

The starting data says 200+ countries and regions, with no list published. The terms exclude users who are located in or residents of “any prohibited or sanctioned jurisdiction” — an unpublished list. The wording is residence-based, though sanctions screening often also touches citizenship. Age is not stated, and prepaid cards in this category are generally for adults.

How do I get and activate a Wasabi card?

You apply, then complete “any required identity verification (KYC/KYB) procedures”, which may request a government-issued ID, proof of address and a selfie, or for companies registration documents and beneficial ownership. Activation happens in the web app at app.wasabicard.com; no app store listing was found. How to activate a Wasabi card is not documented on the pages I read.

What does a Wasabi card cost?

The terms list fee types — issuance, foreign exchange, cross-border transactions, ATM withdrawals, chargeback handling, replacement card — with no amounts, and no monthly fee is named. A virtual card limit of “up to 10,000 USD” is published; the physical card has “flexible spending limits” with no values. Ask support for the numbers in writing before you rely on them.

How do I top up the Wasabi card?

With stablecoins, via the “Spend with Stablecoin” product. Coins, networks, minimums and fees are not stated on the pages I read; unofficial starting data names USDT on TRC20 and BEP20. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so sending on an unsupported chain or to a wrong-network address can lose the funds permanently. Confirm the chain with support first.

Is the Wasabi card safe?

It states non-custodian custody and a “Security by Design” model where funds can be created, deleted and isolated per card. Against that, the issuer and licences are unnamed, two-factor authentication is not disclosed, and one Trustpilot review dated 8 Jul 2026 describes high setup fees and heavy card restrictions. I am not giving you a safety guarantee — only the shape of what is and is not known.

Can I add the Wasabi card to Apple Wallet?

Yes. The virtual card supports “instant binding” to Apple Pay, and the physical card can be added as well. Google Pay is not disclosed. Apple Pay stores a device-specific number in the Secure Element and generates a one-time code per payment, so your card number is not typed into terminals.

Where can I use the Wasabi card, and what can be declined?

The site promises cash withdrawals from millions of ATMs worldwide and the card works wherever its network is accepted. Declines still happen for reasons beyond the card: shops can check the issuer country in the card’s identification number and treat foreign or prepaid cards as higher risk, and address verification is generally unavailable on foreign-issued cards. Blocked merchant categories are not stated.

What are the alternatives to the Wasabi card?

CardFlow (4.9 / 10) is aimed at Nigeria and offers free virtual card creation but publishes almost no fees. HyperCard (4.7 / 10) works in “more than 176 countries” per its App Store listing and lists no fees. Card.fi (6.6 / 10) publishes prices and percentages — $49 Virtual Classic, $249 Virtual Premium, top-up fees of 1.5% + $1.00 or 1%, FX of 3.5% or 2.5% — which makes it the easiest of the three to budget from.

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