I checked the SwissBorg Card's eligibility rules, its 0.99% conversion fee, its crypto-only spending model and its complaint history — here is who it fits and who it does not.

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The SwissBorg Card is a free virtual Mastercard debit card that spends directly from crypto balances in the SwissBorg app. There is no issuance fee and no monthly fee, and the one standing cost is a 0.99% crypto-to-fiat conversion fee on each card transaction. But it is a virtual card only, it has no ATM access, it draws only on crypto — fiat balances in the app cannot pay for card purchases — and it is limited to residents of the EEA, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Add in a complaint record centred on account freezes and slow support, and it is easy to see why I landed on a middling score rather than a recommendation.

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

The verdict: who it suits and who it does not

I scored the SwissBorg Card 6.2 out of 10. That is not a dismissal. It is a card that does one thing unusually cheaply — turning crypto into everyday card payments at 0.99% per transaction with no monthly charge — inside a fairly narrow set of countries, in a virtual-only format, with a support record that gives me pause.

Who it suits: residents of the EEA, Switzerland or the UK who already hold crypto and want a virtual card to spend it from, who are comfortable with a custodial platform, and who mostly pay online or in a shop near home in their base currency. Who it does not suit: anyone who needs a physical card in the post this week, anyone who needs cash from an ATM, anyone who wants to pay with fiat money sitting in the app, and anyone outside the covered region who is uneasy about a Lithuanian-issued card.

Here is the score broken down by criterion, with the marks exactly as I calculated them.

The cost column is the strongest and the reason this is not a 3. The complaints and reliability column is the weakest, and the reason it is not an 8. If you fall into the “suits” group above, this is a genuinely good tool. If you fall into the “does not suit” group, no fee will talk you out of a bad fit.

Will they give you the card?

Yes, if you live in the right places — and residence, not citizenship, is the test. The card is available to residents of the EEA (30 countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden), Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The card’s own wording is “Reside in one of the following countries”, so what matters is where you live.

Two exclusions are worth stating plainly, because they catch people out. The card cannot be used in Russia or Belarus — both appear on the restricted countries list, alongside a broader set of sanctioned countries (“Afghanistan, Belarus, … Russia, …”). And if you are a resident of, say, Nigeria, Brazil or Australia, this card is simply not for you; there is no application to make.

One nuance about residence and nationality. In the EU generally, sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are often applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as country of address. So even if you live in Frankfurt, the way your identity document is screened is not decided by your address alone. The card’s public pages state the residence test; they do not promise that nationality is never considered. If your citizenship is unusual relative to where you live, expect a more careful review and be patient with it.

To summarise the geography: one large region, several countries excluded outright, and no route in for anyone else.

How to get it

Getting the card is a short process inside the app, and it requires you to clear KYC Level 2 first:

1. Download the SwissBorg app (iOS or Android).
2. Open a personal account and complete KYC Level 2 — a verified photo ID and a verified proof of address — and be at least 18 years old.
3. Tap Card on the Portfolio screen and accept the terms.
4. Choose a primary cryptocurrency, with optional backup currencies.
5. The virtual card is ready instantly.

There is no waiting and no shipping, because the card is virtual only. A physical card is planned for a later phase; the card’s language is that “depending on community demand, physical cards may become available with an additional issuance and shipping fee”. Delivery time, cost and replacement cost for physical cards are not stated anywhere on the public pages, so if you want plastic you are waiting on an unknown timetable at an unknown price.

On the verification side, the platform has three account levels with different cumulative deposit and withdrawal limits, and Level 2 is the level the card requires. The public pages do not state how long processing takes, or the specific reasons a verification can be rejected — worth knowing if you are hoping to have a card working today.

The card itself is a Mastercard debit card. Its base currency is EUR, CHF or GBP depending on your country of residence, and it cannot be changed after issuance. That single fact — a fixed base currency chosen by where you live — quietly shapes how it behaves at the checkout.

Fees and limits: what it really costs

The headline is good and the detail is fair. There is no issuance fee and no service or annual fee for the virtual card. The single recurring cost is the 0.99% crypto-to-fiat conversion fee applied on each card transaction, executed in real time through the SwissBorg Meta-Exchange, with an additional real-time market-liquidity adjustment possibly applied. SwissBorg charges no separate FX fee of its own; if you pay in a currency other than your base currency, the Mastercard exchange rate is used.

What catches people is what the card does *not* let you do. Cash withdrawals at ATMs are not initially available, and ATM balance checks are not available either — the card’s position is that “this feature might be considered in a future iteration”. There are also daily, monthly and annual spending limits, plus limits on single transactions and on the number of transactions per day or month. The exact figures are not stated publicly; the card says they are “subject to regulatory requirements and risk assessments and may be adjusted at any time”. Card spending also counts towards the overall SwissBorg account withdrawal limits tied to your KYC level.

Let me run three ordinary payments through that, so the fees feel real rather than abstract:

• A €30 subscription in euros. You pay 0.99% of €30, so roughly €0.30 in conversion, and nothing else if you hold enough crypto. That is the card at its best.
• A €30 purchase in US dollars on a euro-based card. The 0.99% conversion still applies, and because the transaction is in a currency different from your base currency, the Mastercard exchange rate handles the currency step. SwissBorg adds no extra FX percentage of its own.
• A €40 withdrawal from an ATM. You cannot do this. There is no ATM functionality to price. If cash is part of your week, this is a non-starter, not a fee question.

Two more costs sit outside the card but on the same money. There is a seven-tier loyalty programme that changes your cashback, described below — but it changes rewards, not fees; the 0.99% conversion is the same at every rank. And on account closure, funds held on the card are redeemable for up to six years; after twelve months from the end of the agreement a monthly maintenance fee is deducted, and if the agreement is ended within six months a closure fee may apply. That is a low-traffic corner of the terms, but cheaper to read now than to discover later.

How to top it up

There is no separate top-up for the card, and this is the concept that trips up most people. The card spends directly from crypto balances held in the SwissBorg wallet. You do not convert to fiat and load the card; you hold crypto and the card converts at the moment of purchase. You pick one primary cryptocurrency and any backup currencies, and the system dynamically switches to a backup if your primary balance is insufficient.

The supported cryptocurrencies for the card are BTC, ETH, SOL, BORG, USDC, USDG, EUROP and TGBP. Note what is not on that list: USDT and Tron are not named. If your holdings are in USDT on Tron, the card’s materials do not point you to a supported route — check before you assume.

Fiat balances in the app cannot be used for card payments. This is the other big one. The app can hold multi-currency fiat balances (EUR, CHF, GBP and others), but those are separate from card spending. So if you top the app up with euros by bank transfer, that euro balance will not pay for anything you buy with the card.

Because deposits into the app are separate from card spending, the deposit fees matter — but only for how you get money *into* the app, not for the card itself.

Read that last row carefully. Buying crypto with a debit card or wallet costs you several percent; getting crypto onto the platform by bank transfer is free. Since the card only spends crypto, the cheapest path in is crypto transferred in over a network — the app’s own card-and-wallet deposit is the expensive door, useful mainly for a first small top-up.

One more thing about money coming back. Refunds from purchases are credited to your fiat account in the card’s base currency (EUR, CHF or GBP). Fiat withdrawal from the app carries a 0.10% execution fee, with a minimum and maximum per currency (for example EUR min 1.50, max 100; CHF min 5, max 110; GBP min 1.50, max 85). Crypto withdrawal is a 0.10% execution fee, with min/max per asset and network, plus real-time network gas fees.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, the card is pleasant in the places it works and simply unavailable in others. You get the virtual card instantly in the app, and you can add it to Apple Pay and Google Pay; Curve is also supported. Apple Pay was initially available in Switzerland and France and requires the latest app version and KYC Level 2. There is no ATM and no plastic.

The card blocks certain merchant categories outright: gambling and betting, adult content and services, cryptocurrency purchases, financial services such as money transfers, illegal goods (drugs, weapons), cash advances and certain government services. This is a policy list rather than a law, and lists vary between issuers — but it does mean some things you can pay for in a normal wallet cannot be paid for here.

What you get back is cashback, and its shape is unusual. Cashback is paid in BORG tokens and is calculated as a percentage of the exchange fee on each card purchase — a share of the 0.99%, not a share of your spend. The rate depends on your Loyalty Rank: Standard 5%, Bronze 15%, Silver 30%, Gold 50%, Platinum 65%, Diamond 80%, Elite 90%. The ranks are based on BORG locked: Standard at 0 BORG, Bronze 1,000, Silver 3,000, Gold 10,000, Platinum 30,000, Diamond 60,000, Elite 100,000. Higher ranks also unlock a yield boost multiplier (1x→2x), priority access to Alpha Deals, governance voting power (10 BORG = 1 vote), ecosystem reward multipliers and a referral boost. BORG rewards are locked for a set period under the “Paid to Trade” programme. And cashback is not guaranteed: SwissBorg reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue it at any time.

The app itself is well rated. On Google Play (en_GB) it shows 4.6 with roughly 15.2K reviews; on the App Store (Ireland) 4.4 from 88 ratings (read 2026-10-21). The official SwissBorg website footer shows Google Play 4.2 and App Store 4.6, so the numbers move a little by store and region — all in the healthy four-plus range either way.

If a payment goes wrong there is a process. For a dispute you contact SwissBorg in the app (Profile > Support) or at [email protected] within eight weeks of the transaction date; they assist with resolving it or forward it to the card network. Where a refund applies — the merchant did not specify the exact amount and it exceeded reasonable expectations — it comes within ten business days of receiving the claim. Unauthorised transactions cap your liability at EUR 50 if the card is lost, stolen or misappropriated, except in cases of fraud or gross negligence, and you must report without undue delay and no later than 13 months. Reversals and refunds land in your fiat account in the base currency, and the original crypto-to-fiat conversion fee is not refunded — so a refund returns the money but not the fee you paid to convert it.

What can go wrong

This is where the card most needs a cool head, and it is the reason two of the five criteria sit at 5.

The issuer was fined. The card issuer is UAB Monavate, incorporated in Lithuania and authorised by the Bank of Lithuania to issue electronic money and provide payment services. On 2025-11-25 the Bank of Lithuania fined Monavate €270,000 with a warning for breaches related to anti-money-laundering, management and reporting obligations. That is a regulatory action against the entity that actually issues your card — not against the crypto brand sitting on top of it.

Users report freezes and slow support. Recurring complaint themes reported across 2025–2026 on Trustpilot, Reddit and Google Play are: accounts restricted or frozen without clear explanation or warning, sometimes after deposits, sometimes taking weeks to resolve; slow or unresponsive customer support, with tickets unanswered for days or weeks; and card, Apple Pay or Google Pay deposit “cooldown” periods during which funds are held during mandatory security periods and cannot be withdrawn. On Trustpilot the TrustScore is 3.1 out of 5 across roughly 1,900 reviews (per NeoBase aggregation, read 2026-09-15). I read this as a pattern worth planning around, not as a prediction of how you personally will be treated.

The money is custodial, and it is not bank-deposit protected. The card is custodial: funds are held in the SwissBorg wallet. Control of crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key, and with a custodial wallet the provider holds the credentials, so you must trust the provider completely. Funds on the card are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme; Monavate follows the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 for safeguarding, which means segregation or insurance rather than deposit guarantee. In the wider category, custodial platforms have a record of failure — Mt. Gox (about US$350 million reported stolen 2011–2014), Coincheck (about US$400 million, 2018) and Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022) are the standard cautionary names — which is why “it is regulated” and “your money is safe” are not the same sentence. There are real safeguards on the card (3-D Secure for online transactions with in-app biometric approval, instant freeze and unfreeze in the app), but they protect against someone using your card, not against the platform itself failing.

Structural quirks can cost you at the till. A card issued in one country can look “foreign” to a shop in another, because a merchant can look up the issuer country from the card’s identification number and apply extra scrutiny when it differs from the billing address. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards for exactly that reason. Address verification, which compares the numeric parts of the billing address the buyer typed, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines. And a declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven. None of these are defects unique to SwissBorg; they are the texture of holding a foreign-issued card, and this card adds the crypto-conversion step on top.

The legal environment is tightening. Under the EU’s MiCA regulation, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution, and the transitional period for providers already operating under national law runs until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused authorisation, whichever comes first. A crypto card often depends on two licences — one for the crypto side and one for the payment side — so a change in either can affect the card. On the positive side, BlockNodes SAS, the entity behind the app’s MiCA authorisation number A2026-011 from France’s AMF, is authorised; and you can check a provider yourself on ESMA’s interim register of authorised crypto-asset service providers.

On tax, one caution and no advice. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local fiat currency at the fair market value on the date of the transaction. Each card payment funded from crypto may therefore be its own disposal event. I am not qualified to advise you on your taxes and this is not tax or legal advice — but if you will spend crypto regularly, the record-keeping is real and worth raising with a professional in your own country.

What to take instead

If the SwissBorg Card’s narrowness is the problem, the honest move is to compare rather than to force it. I scored the alternatives the same way, out of 10.

A few things stand out. The International Visa Card scores highest of the four at 6.7, and if you want a plain multi-currency card with a USD balance and stated plan pricing, its 2% FX fee is transparent where SwissBorg’s is zero plus the Mastercard rate. UNi Card makes a similar “no foreign transaction fee” claim with live OTC conversion, conceptually close to what SwissBorg does with crypto, but its availability is not stated. Whop Cards is the most different of the four: a US-state-restricted card tied to a Whop balance with merchant cashback, which suits a particular ecosystem rather than general spending.

Two caveats on this comparison. Several fields for UNi Card and Whop Cards — availability, top-up method, detailed fees — are not stated publicly, so I have left them empty rather than filling them in; where the card does not say, I am telling you it does not say. And the eligibility tests differ in kind: SwissBorg and the Visa alternative test *residence*, while the basis for Whop is not stated at all. The right comparison depends on where you live, and on whether you want to spend crypto or plain fiat.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend the SwissBorg Card to a resident of the EEA, Switzerland or the UK who already holds crypto, wants a virtual card to spend it from without a monthly fee, is comfortable with a custodial platform and a Lithuanian-issued card, and mostly pays online or locally in their base currency. If you want to turn a crypto balance into everyday purchases at 0.99% a transaction with no subscription, this is a well-priced tool, and the app store ratings back that up.

I would steer you elsewhere if any of these are true: you need a physical card soon; you need cash from an ATM; you want to spend the fiat balances already sitting in your app; you live outside the EEA, Switzerland and the UK; you want to pay for anything in the blocked merchant categories; or you are the kind of person who will not be comfortable with a custodial wallet and a complaint record centred on freezes and slow support. In those cases an ordinary bank card, a plain multi-currency card, or one of the alternatives above will serve you better.

Frequently asked questions

What is the SwissBorg card?

It is a virtual Mastercard debit card that spends directly from crypto balances in the SwissBorg app. You do not load it with money; it converts crypto at the moment of each purchase, charging a 0.99% crypto-to-fiat conversion fee. There is no issuance fee and no annual or service fee. It is virtual only, with no ATM access, and it is issued by UAB Monavate, a Lithuanian electronic money institution authorised by the Bank of Lithuania.

How do I get the SwissBorg card?

You download the SwissBorg app, open a personal account and complete KYC Level 2 — a verified photo ID plus a verified proof of address — and you must be at least 18. Then you tap Card on the Portfolio screen, accept the terms and choose a primary cryptocurrency. The virtual card then appears instantly, with no shipping. A physical card is only planned for a later phase, and its timing and cost are not stated.

Who is eligible for the SwissBorg card?

Eligibility is by residence, not citizenship: residents of the EEA (30 countries), Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The card’s wording is “Reside in one of the following countries”. The card cannot be used in Russia or Belarus, both on its restricted countries list. If you live anywhere else there is no route to apply. In practice, nationality and country of birth are also screened during compliance checks, even though the stated test is residence.

Does the SwissBorg card require KYC?

Yes. The card requires KYC Level 2 — a verified photo ID plus a verified proof of address — before you can activate it. The wider platform has three account levels: Level 1 at a EUR 5,000 cumulative limit, Level 2 at EUR 50,000 in and EUR 1,000,000 out, Level 3 unlimited. The card’s public pages do not state how long verification takes or the specific reasons a check can be rejected, so allow more time than you might expect.

What does the SwissBorg card cost to use?

There is no issuance fee and no service or annual fee. The one standing cost is a 0.99% crypto-to-fiat conversion fee on each card transaction, with a possible real-time market-liquidity adjustment on top. SwissBorg adds no separate FX fee; transactions in a currency other than your base currency (EUR, CHF or GBP) use the Mastercard exchange rate. There is no ATM, so cash withdrawals are simply not available. Spending limits exist but are not stated publicly.

Can I use the SwissBorg card with fiat money?

No. The card spends only from crypto balances in the app. Fiat balances in the app, even multi-currency ones in EUR, CHF and GBP, are separate and cannot pay for card purchases. This catches people out, because you can top the app up with euros by bank transfer for free and still be unable to buy anything with the card until that money is converted to crypto.

Is the SwissBorg card safe?

It is custodial, meaning SwissBorg holds the credentials to your crypto and you trust it completely. The card has real safeguards — 3-D Secure for online payments with in-app biometric approval, instant freeze and unfreeze in the app — but funds on the card are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme; Monavate safeguards them under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011. The issuer was fined €270,000 by the Bank of Lithuania on 2025-11-25, and users report account freezes and slow support. There is no promise of safety here, only a picture of the trade-offs.

Which cryptocurrencies can I spend with the SwissBorg card?

The card supports BTC, ETH, SOL, BORG, USDC, USDG, EUROP and TGBP. You choose one primary cryptocurrency and optional backups, and the system switches to a backup automatically if your primary balance is insufficient. USDT and Tron are not named among the supported options. The practical lesson from the wider category: pick the coin and network the provider actually supports, because a transfer sent on an unsupported network can be lost or need manual recovery.

Where can I use the SwissBorg card, and where does it not work?

You can use it online and in shops wherever Mastercard is accepted, and add it to Apple Pay, Google Pay and Curve. Apple Pay was initially available in Switzerland and France. It does not work at ATMs, and the card blocks certain merchant categories: gambling and betting, adult content, cryptocurrency purchases, money transfers and other financial services, illegal goods, cash advances and some government services. Being a foreign-issued card, it may also face extra scrutiny or declines from some merchants.

Is the SwissBorg card worth it?

Worth it if you are an EEA, Swiss or UK resident who already holds crypto and wants a free virtual card to spend it from at 0.99% per transaction with no monthly fee. Not worth it if you need a physical card, need cash, want to spend existing fiat balances, or live outside the covered countries. Weigh it against the complaint record — a TrustScore of 3.1 on Trustpilot, with recurring reports of account freezes and slow support — before you make it your primary everyday card.

Content created by the «cryptocardfacts» team