A crypto balance you can spend like a debit card — if you are in the EU

Updated October 2026

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The conditions below are current as of October 28, 2026.

If you already hold crypto on a Trade Republic account and want to pay for everyday things without

first moving money to a bank, this card is one of the few that does exactly that. It is issued by

Trade Republic Bank in Berlin, it is backed by a broker account rather than a current-account

banking habit, and the name you may have heard most is the one behind a German app that is not a

bank in the classic sense — though the card itself does come from a bank entity. That combination

is genuinely unusual, and it cuts both ways: there is a real card on real infrastructure, but there

is also a crypto broker in the middle of every purchase.

The catch is geography. The product is built for Germany and the EU, the site’s readable versions

are en-de and en-nl, and the full country list is not published in readable form. If you are reading

this outside the euro area with an ordinary bank card problem in mind, this is probably not the card

that solves it, and the section on who gets the card is the one to read first.

The conditions below are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 7.2 / 10, a solid card inside a narrow circle

I scored this card 7.2 out of 10. The strengths are ordinary-use reliability and cost; the

weaknesses are eligibility, the fact that the top-up story is thin, and the fact that a lot of the

useful detail is not on the card’s own readable pages.

Who this suits: someone living in the EU who already keeps crypto with Trade Republic and wants to

spend it directly, plus a virtual card for online payments, plus free ATM withdrawals once the

amount is large enough. Who it does not suit: anyone outside the EU’s reach, anyone who wants a

prepaid card they can load from an arbitrary crypto network without checking first, and anyone who

needs a long public list of fees, limits and coin support — because that list does not exist in

public form.

Total: 7.2 / 10.

Two words on how I scored, because a total hides its parts. The 9s are real: this is a well-run

Berlin bank with a strong public rating, and that matters more than most features. The two 5s drag

the total down, and neither is about quality — they are about *information*. Eligibility and funding

are the two things a person actually needs before they commit, and on both, the card’s readable

public pages are silent. What I can fill in comes from third-party sites, and I mark it as such

throughout.

Will they give you the card?

Short answer: if you are in the EU and pass the checks, yes; outside that, the card’s own pages do not

promise you anything.

What is actually stated: the product is Germany/EU based, and the readable site versions are en-de

and en-nl. What is not stated in readable official pages is the country list, the residency

test, or whether citizenship matters at all. That is not me being evasive — that information is

simply not published where a person could read it.

So the honest position is this. The card exists inside a EU banking perimeter, offered by an

institution in Berlin, and the way this sector is built, that means a EU address and a completed

identity check are the likely gate. But I will not turn “likely” into a rule, because the pages do

not say so.

This matters most for the reader with the ordinary-bank problem. Plenty of people arrive at a crypto

card because their bank will not open an account for them. If that is your situation, the eligibility

question here is not about your paperwork being unusual — it is whether you can be served by a

German bank at all, and the answer depends on a country list I could not read. Check the site in your

own country before you invest time in anything else on this page.

The issuer is Trade Republic Bank GmbH, Brunnenstrasse 19-21, 10119 Berlin, named on the card as

Trade Republic Bank. The licence details and the BIN sponsor are not stated in the readable text.

How to get it

The card is called “The Trade Republic Card,” issued by Trade Republic Bank in Berlin. The card

network, and whether the version you get is virtual or physical, are not stated in readable

official text — which is worth sitting with, because in this category those two details decide most

of what a card can do.

Everything about the mechanics is unstated too. Whether KYC is required: not stated in readable

pages. Delivery times: not stated officially. Verification steps: not stated officially. So

there is no honest step-by-step here, and if you were hoping for one, this is the honest reason why.

What third parties report, marked as unofficial: a replacement costs the same as the original — 5 EUR

for Classic, 50 EUR for Mirror — and that applies to loss, theft or expiry. Delivery time is not

stated there either. A virtual card is said to be usable immediately after the account is opened

(based on a third-party review, July 2026).

That last point, if true for you, changes what the card is for. A card you can use the moment the

account opens is not the same tool as one that arrives in the post after a week of waiting. It is

more of an online-payment instrument than a physical wallet, and I would plan around that.

Fees and the real cost of a payment

Here is the thing I keep coming back to: the official pages do not publish the amounts. What follows

is a mix of what the card states and what third parties report, and I mark each line. Do not treat

the unofficial numbers as a promise — treat them as the best available picture and check in the app

before you rely on them.

Three versions are reported: virtual, Classic and Mirror, with Mirror differing only by a metal

casing and carrying the same fees and limits (unofficial, per a third-party review, July 2026). Tier

structure is not stated officially. Which currencies are supported is not stated officially.

Now, three ordinary payments, and which fees actually touch them.

• A coffee in Berlin, paid in euros from a crypto balance. What happens at the till is a sale of

the crypto. The card’s own press release is explicit that card spending counts as a sale, with tax

implications. No card-specific fee is mentioned. What you feel is spread: your crypto becomes

euros at the broker’s rate.

• A coffee in a euro country while your balance sits in dollars. Unofficial sources say the

official Visa rate is used with no surcharge of the broker’s own. That is the good news. The

residual cost is still the crypto-to-euro conversion the broker applies, and that rate is not

published on the card pages.

• Withdrawing 40 EUR at a cash machine in Berlin. Below the reported 100 EUR threshold, so a

1 EUR fee applies per the unofficial source. Withdrawing 150 EUR is reported as free. One further

caution: the ATM operator may charge its own fee, and that is outside anyone’s control.

One more thing that is official and easy to miss: crypto trading on the platform is commission-free,

but the help centre refers to a 1 EUR third-party cost per trade. Spending the crypto with the card

is a conversion event, and it is where the real cost hides — not in a card fee.

Top up: what you are really spending

Officially, the press release says customers can use crypto held with Trade Republic for card

payments. The coin list is not stated. Everything else about funding is not stated officially:

the top-up methods, the withdrawal rules, nothing readable.

Unofficial reporting fills in a thin picture: a SEPA transfer is free, and topping up by card, Apple

Pay or Google Pay costs 1% of the amount. Both from the same source, and neither confirmed by the

card’s own pages.

So the funding story, as far as a person can verify it, is: you hold crypto in a broker account and

spend that balance directly, or you move fiat in by bank transfer at no cost, or by card at 1%. What

you cannot verify from public sources is which coins are spendable, whether you can deposit crypto

directly to the card, and how long a top-up takes.

That last gap is not cosmetic. Anyone who has moved stablecoins will know that sending on the wrong

network is the standard way to lose money permanently, and one of the reported complaints in this

space is precisely a deposit address without a clear network warning. If you intend to move crypto

onto a Trade Republic account, treat the network question as the one you must answer before you

send, not after.

Paying with it every day

The mechanics are thinner than the ambition. Whether Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported is officially not stated; third parties report both are supported, with the card added in the app (per a third-party review, 2026). What the app itself can do is officially not stated — I did not read the store listings.

How disputes and chargebacks work for this card is not stated officially, which is a real gap if

you are used to Visa’s dispute machinery.

The rewards, though, are where the official detail exists, and it is worth parsing carefully because

there are two different numbers circulating.

• The press release of 14 November 2025 announces a 2% Crypto Saveback on card spend, reinvested

into a savings plan, on up to 1,500 EUR of monthly spend.

• The card page itself advertises a 1% Saveback on card payments.

Those are not necessarily contradictions — one is the crypto rate, one is the general rate, and one

review says crypto-funded payments earn 2% with a 30 EUR cap (unofficial, not confirmed by the card) since the end of 2025, which is partly

consistent with the official 2% figure. Unofficial German reviews describe the 1% going into a

savings plan of at least 50 EUR a month, capped at 15 EUR a month, and not paid on transfers, ATM

withdrawals, investments, top-ups, PayPal, gambling and quasi-cash. The 15 EUR cap was third-party

only; I could not verify it officially.

Here is the part I would watch. A user report that GIGA carried says Trade Republic changed the

Saveback terms and someone lost the 1%. Treat the reward as a feature that can be repriced, not as

a fixed return on your spending.

On blocked spending: merchants classify businesses with a four-digit category code, and gambling sits

under one specific code. Issuers block it by policy rather than by law, and the blocked list varies by

issuer — so whether your card works at a betting site is not something a general review can promise

you.

What can go wrong

The general complaints about Trade Republic are worth knowing about, because they are the same

complaints you will read about any broker: slow or hard-to-reach support, wide crypto spreads, and

account blocks that are hard to resolve. German press has reported rising complaints to the banking

supervisor, though I could not pin the date. In July 2026 there was a Portuguese complaint about a

crypto deposit address issued without a network warning.

Against that, the card’s own picture is strong. On Trustpilot, read on 20 October 2026, Trade

Republic scores 4.6 out of 5 from 67,608 reviews, with 11% one-star, the latest review dated 20

October 2026. Visible reviews are mostly positive and one of them simply says the card works

worldwide. I looked for card-specific complaint themes on that page and found none.

The honest reading: the card does not appear to be where the trouble is. The trouble is upstream, in

the broker relationship, which is also where the conversion rate and the account-block risk live.

Three risks specific to this kind of product, in general terms:

• Programmes can close. Cards in this category have been wound down before — one Visa

programme ended in Europe in 2018, and a card backed by an exchange was wound down after the

exchange’s collapse. Closures follow a pattern: loading stops first, then spending, then you are

asked to withdraw what is left. One reported 2026 closure had new loads end on 8 July and spending

stop on 8 August; that is a single unconfirmed source, but the shape of the timeline is the point.

• A hold can sit on your money after a declined payment for several days, sometimes up to seven.
• Spending crypto is a disposal. Tax treatment depends on where you are and how long you held,

and I am not going to advise you on it — but the card’s own press release saying card spending

counts as a sale is a reminder that this is not a free lunch. Get the facts from a professional in

your own country.

And one more thing that cuts against the “it is a bank” impression: support channels, languages

including Russian, and hours are not readable on the pages. That is not a complaint, it is a gap —

and gaps are what turn a minor problem into a bad week when something goes wrong at the wrong hour.

What to take instead

Three alternatives came up in the comparison, and each is a different bet rather than a straight

substitute. The scores are from the same review set as the main card: 7.2 for Trade Republic,

6.7 for International Visa Card, 6.1 for UNi Card, 5.2 for Whop Cards.

Two of these deserve a note rather than a summary.

International Visa Card is the one with an actual 2% foreign-exchange fee. That is a real,

published number, and against Trade Republic’s reported no-surcharge use of the official Visa rate

it is a genuine difference for anyone spending abroad. Its exclusion list is also the longest and

most specific of the four, and it is applied by residence or registration rather than citizenship.

It also pays in USD, with a physical card listed as coming soon.

UNi Card is the closest to Trade Republic on paper: no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee,

assets converted at live over-the-counter rates. But eligibility, funding and whether it is physical

or virtual are all unstated, so it asks more of your trust in the reverse direction.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend this card to a person who already uses Trade Republic as a broker, lives in the

EU, and finds themselves converting crypto to euros just to pay for things — a subscription, a

groceries run, a hotel. For that person it removes a step, the reported fees are genuinely low, and

the card’s own rating suggests the institution behind it is solid.

I would not recommend it to you if any of these are true: you are outside the EU and hoping the

country list will include you; you need the card’s fee and limit schedule to be public before you

commit; you plan to deposit crypto directly and need to know the supported networks; or your

priority is chargeback and dispute rights rather than conversion convenience.

And I would be careful with one expectation. The attractive version of this product — a card that

turns your crypto into everyday spending without friction — depends on a broker sitting underneath.

Every reliability and complaints rating here is about that broker, not about Visa or about plastic.

Judge it that way, and the 7.2 makes sense.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Trade Republic card?

It is a payment card issued by Trade Republic Bank in Berlin that lets you spend crypto held in your

Trade Republic account. The card’s press release treats spending as a sale of the crypto, with tax

implications. Third parties describe three versions: a virtual card, a Classic card and a Mirror

metal card. Official amounts and the full version list are not published on the readable card pages.

How does the Trade Republic card work?

You keep crypto with Trade Republic and the card converts and spends it as you pay, in a way that

behaves like a prepaid balance rather than an overdraft. Coins that can be spent are not disclosed

officially. Spending counts as a sale, so watch the conversion rate — that, rather than a card fee,

is where the real cost sits.

Is Trade Republic a bank?

The card’s issuer is Trade Republic Bank GmbH, at Brunnenstrasse 19-21, 10119 Berlin, and it is

named on the card. The broader Trade Republic group is a broker and platform, which is where the

complaints about support and account blocks come from. Licence and BIN sponsor details are not stated

in the readable text, so I would not read more into either side than that.

Who can get the card?

The product is built for Germany and the EU — the readable site versions are en-de and en-nl. The

country list is not disclosed on the official pages, and whether citizenship matters is not stated.

For residents of the US, UK, or anywhere outside the EU, the honest answer is that you must check

the site yourself, because the published material does not settle it.

Does the Trade Republic card require KYC?

The card’s readable official pages do not say, and I could not find a stated answer. In practice any

German or EU bank will verify identity under anti-money-laundering law before opening an account,

and EU rules require name, address, date of birth, nationality and ID documentation plus a sanctions

check. But that is the law, not a statement on this page — the card itself does not spell it out.

What does the Trade Republic card cost?

Officially, the amounts are not stated; “no monthly fee” comes from a third-party review. Unofficial

figures: virtual card 0 EUR, Classic 5 EUR one-time, Mirror 50 EUR one-time, no annual or monthly

fee, no currency surcharge, ATM free from 100 EUR and 1 EUR below that, card top-up 1%, SEPA free.

Treat these as reported, not guaranteed, and check the app before relying on them.

Can I add the Trade Republic card to Apple Pay or Google Pay?

Third parties report that both are supported and that you add the card in the app (per a third-party review, 2026). Officially this is not stated. One useful detail for the wallet in general: Apple Pay stores a

device-specific number in the phone’s Secure Element, never the real card number on Apple’s servers,

and each payment uses a one-time code — so adding the card does not expose the number itself.

Is the Trade Republic card safe?

Safer than most in its class, but not risk-free. The issuer is a Berlin bank and the Trustpilot score

is 4.6 out of 5 from 67,608 reviews, with no card-specific complaint theme I could find. Against

that: crypto transfers are irreversible, a wrong network can mean lost funds with no guarantee of

recovery, and card programmes in this category have been closed before — the usual sequence is that

loading stops, then spending, then you withdraw the balance.

How do I top up the Trade Republic card?

The card’s official pages do not state the methods. Unofficial sources say a SEPA transfer is free

while topping up by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay costs 1% of the amount. The main way to fund

spending, however, is the crypto already held in your Trade Republic account — and the list of

spendable coins is not disclosed, so check in the app before assuming a coin works.

Is the Trade Republic card worth it?

For someone in the EU already holding crypto there, spending it directly saves a conversion step and,

on reported figures, costs very little. For anyone else, it is hard to justify on the published

information alone: the country list, the fees and the coin support are all unstated officially. My

own answer is yes for the EU user with an existing balance, no for a newcomer deciding on the basis

of a review.

Content created by the «cryptocardfacts» team