A cheap Mastercard with an IBAN, run by a Maltese e-money firm — and a Trustpilot score of 1.9

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Blackcatcard is an electronic-money account with a euro IBAN and a Mastercard attached to it, issued by a company called Papaya Ltd. in Malta and regulated there. You register, get an account, and can buy small amounts of BTC, ETH or USDT with euros or have euros sent in by SEPA transfer, then spend the balance as you would from any bank card. The idea is simple and appealing to people who cannot open a normal bank account easily. The problem is what the card’s users report afterwards. When I looked at the score the card’s own claims deserved against the complaints its users have published, it came out at 4.3 out of 10. That is my number, and I will explain where it comes from before anything else.

Conditions on this page are current as of October 28, 2026.

This is a review, not a recommendation to sign up. I am not suggesting ways to get around identity checks or country rules, and I am not telling anyone to hand their money to this card. I am telling you what the card says, what its users say, and what I think the difference between those two things means for you.

The verdict: 4.3 out of 10

The score is not a shrug. It is a specific judgement: this is a working product with a real licence and a usable card, sitting on top of a foundation of user reports that describe money arriving and then not going anywhere. Let me show the breakdown.

Total: 4.3 / 10.

Who is this card for? In the best version of the picture, it is for someone in the EEA who wants a euro account and a Mastercard without going through a traditional bank, and who is comfortable holding a balance with a licensed e-money institution rather than a bank. The account is euro-based, the card is a Mastercard, and the cash-withdrawal allowance in the EU is generous for a prepaid product. If that is you, the card does its job.

Who is it not for? Anyone whose income depends on that balance being available on the day they need it. The complaints are not about a shop being declined in a casino — they are about transfers and card payments being declined or cancelled after money arrived, withdrawals suspended, and accounts closed. If you are reading this because you are considering moving savings here, read the complaints section below before you decide anything.

The single most important thing I can tell you is also the thing the card does not lead with. The fees are mostly knowable, and some are not. But the reliability figure — 2 out of 10, based on what users have posted — is the one that should decide whether this card is your everyday card or a spare.

Will they give you the card?

The answer depends on which of two things you want, because the card and the account have different availability.

The account — the euro account with an IBAN — is described as available straight after a successful registration, and the card’s own file frames it as an account that is open globally from age 16. The card is for residents of the EEA. So if you live outside the EEA, the account may be available to you and the card may not; if you live inside the EEA and are over 16, both are in scope. There is no country list on the site, so I cannot tell you from its pages which specific countries are open beyond that. The business-account side is described as available “from most jurisdictions”, which is a phrase that gives you an idea rather than a guarantee.

Two things I want to flag because they are honest gaps rather than answers. The card’s public pages do not state what identity verification is required — the KYC level is not stated on the pages I read. So you will not find a checklist of documents here. And the card-versus-account distinction above comes from the card’s own file; it is not confirmed on the public pages I read, so treat it as the shape of the offer rather than a guarantee.

What you do get, if you are eligible, is a Mastercard — described as the “Free Mastercard” — with the virtual card issued instantly and a euro account behind it. A physical version is implied by the delivery fees described further down. You are dealing with an electronic money institution, not a bank: a body authorised by the Malta Financial Services Authority to issue e-money and payment cards, which can offer services across the EU and EEA from a licence granted in one member state, but which cannot lend.

How to get it

The path is a registration. The card’s site presents a “Free Mastercard” alongside a euro account, and the virtual card is issued instantly — the usual reason people pick this kind of card is that the virtual one is usable within minutes, before any plastic arrives in the post.

If you want the physical card, delivery is where the time and the money show up. Standard delivery by regular mail is free and takes 15–20 business days. Express delivery takes 1–5 business days, and the fee is calculated individually rather than published as a fixed number. If a card is lost or damaged and you need a replacement, that is €7 or €12 — the card’s own page tables disagree with each other on this, which is worth knowing before you rely on either figure.

That is the whole sign-up picture as far as the public pages go. What is not stated is the verification level: which documents are asked for, whether there are different tiers of checks, and what happens if a check is not passed. For an e-money institution in the EU that is unusual information to be missing, but I am reporting what is published rather than filling the gap in.

What it really costs: Fees

Here is where I can be most concrete and also most frustrated on your behalf, because some fees are published and one of the most important ones is not.

The honest summary of that table is this: the fixed costs are genuinely light, and the two fees that would actually bite you on a trip or on a large purchase are the two that are not stated. The crypto conversion fee is not published — the card’s claim is “lowest fees on the market”, with no figures behind it — and neither is the foreign exchange fee. If your money is going to move between crypto and euros often, or if you will be spending outside the euro area, those two blanks are the first thing to ask about, and the only honest way to fill them in is to read the fee page yourself at the moment you sign up, because I cannot invent numbers that are not there.

Let me make some of these real, because a table is not a budget. Take three ordinary payments.

Paying for something online in euros, from euro already in the account. The card draws on the balance you have. If you topped up by SEPA, that was free. So the cost of the payment, in fee terms, is zero — unless you loaded the card from crypto, in which case the conversion fee applies at whatever rate the card charges, and that fee is the one not published.

Paying for something in a shop on the other side of the euro area, from euros already in the account. Here the foreign exchange fee should apply, and it is not stated. This is the payment where the cost to you is genuinely unknown from the card’s own information, and it is the one to think hardest about before you travel.

Taking €100 out of a cash machine in the euro area. Under €200 a month, ATM withdrawals in the EU are free, so that €100 costs you nothing in fees. Once your monthly withdrawals pass €200, the rate becomes 1% — and outside the EU it is 1% from the first euro, with a €1.50 minimum. Your daily ceiling is €5,000 and your monthly ceiling is €10,000 in cash, though spend limits are not stated.

Two more costs sit further out. If you leave the account inactive, a dormancy fee of €15 a month starts in the seventh month — a €15-a-month charge for doing nothing is the sort of thing that quietly appears on a statement. And if you close the account while funds are still on it, the listing shows a €50 monthly fee on closed accounts holding funds. Neither is dramatic; both are avoidable.

How to Top up the card

There are three ways money gets in, and one of them is where most of the ambiguity lives.

The first is the built-in crypto service. You buy BTC, ETH or USDT with euros from inside the app. The partner named in the card’s file is Manerio UAB. The minimum purchase is 5 EUR, so the entry point is very low — which is also why people get in trouble: a small deposit, a small card, and then a complaint when it does not move.

The second is SEPA into the account. This is free, and there is no amount limit on incoming transfers. If you have euros coming from anywhere in the euro area, this is the cheapest road in and the one the fee table treats most generously.

The third is internal transfers, also free and with no limit.

The catch sits underneath the crypto route. When you buy crypto through the built-in service and load the card from it, the card’s pages do not name the networks these assets travel on. That matters more than it sounds. A crypto transfer sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost, or can need manual support recovery with no guarantee of success — blockchain transfers are irreversible, and the network cannot freeze or return funds for you. So before you send anything, read what network the app is actually asking for. I cannot tell you which networks are supported, because the card does not say.

Getting money back out is a separate set of rules. SEPA transfers out are free five times a month and then €0.20 each. Closing the account is free, except for the €50 monthly charge noted above if funds remain on a closed account. Crypto withdrawal fees are not stated at all.

Paying with it every day

The everyday picture is the strongest part of this card, and it is why it scores 7 out of 10 on use.

The virtual card is issued instantly, so you can be paying online the same day you register. The physical card arrives free by post in 15–20 business days if you want plastic, or in 1–5 business days with a fee calculated individually if you want it sooner. The Mastercard is the card — not a novelty network, not a restricted product — and the account is a plain euro account with an IBAN, which is what makes SEPA and standing orders work.

Cash in the euro area is the other half of daily use: free ATM withdrawals up to €200 a month, then 1%. That is one of the more generous prepaid allowances you will see.

Rewards exist and are worth reading carefully, because the headline is bigger than the detail. The card advertises “up to 5% cashback”, “Up to 4% p.a. reward”, and “2% cashback on Amazon”. But the currency in which the reward is paid, and the conditions attached to it, are not stated. “Up to” is a ceiling, not a rate. I would not build any spending around it until you have seen what the app actually credits and under what conditions.

What is missing from the everyday picture is mobile wallets. Whether Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported is not disclosed. That is a real gap, because a large share of ordinary spending in much of the world happens through the phone, and if these are absent, the card lives or dies on its physical form and on online checkout. The app itself is on iOS — “Blackcatcard – My prepaid card” — so if you are on Android, check before you commit.

One more everyday cost to know: a “transaction claim without grounds” — that is, disputing a payment you cannot otherwise justify — carries a €10 fee. The time frames for making a claim are not stated, so do not assume you have long.

What can go wrong

This is the section I would read twice, because it is where the score comes from.

Payments and transfers blocked after the money arrives. The central theme in the public reviews is that a user tops up, and then outgoing transfers and card payments are declined or cancelled. The examples in the complaint record span 8 May, 27 June, 28 July, 4 September, 25 September and 2 October 2026. There were also reports of suspended withdrawals and account closures, and allegations of scams. I did not find an official incident notice from the card — but the absence of a published incident is not the same as the absence of a problem, and if you are considering this card, the complaint record is the most substantive evidence available.

The score behind those complaints. On Trustpilot, at the time I read it, the card had a TrustScore of 1.9 out of 5 across 744 reviews, with 56% of them one-star. The recurring themes were payments and transfers blocked after funding through May to October 2026, suspended withdrawals, account-closure problems, and support replies that were generic. Those are user reports, not audited findings — but they are specific, dated, and numerous, and 1.9 out of 5 is not a rounding error in someone’s opinion.

Who you are actually trusting. The company is Papaya Ltd., 31 Sliema Road, Gzira GZR 1637, Malta, authorised and regulated as an Electronic Money Institution by the MFSA under registration number C55146. Two consequences follow directly from that status. First, funds sit in an e-money account with no deposit-guarantee scheme — they are not bank deposits and are not covered by the Depositor Compensation Scheme. Second, the model is custodial: the credentials are held by the provider, not by you. The card says private keys are protected by a licenced institution, and PIN recovery runs through 24/7 in-app support — but “custodial” still means the counterparty and hack risk sits with you the moment the balance is non-trivial. History in this space is not encouraging: custodial platforms have failed badly, with Mt. Gox, Coincheck and the Ronin Network all losing very large sums.

The regulatory floor underneath it. In the EU, e-money institutions must safeguard customer funds by segregating them or insuring them — but such funds are not the same as bank deposits. Beyond that, the crypto side is governed separately by MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto regulation, whose stablecoin rules have applied since 30 June 2024 and whose transitional period for existing providers ran until 1 July 2026. A crypto card sits on two licences — one for payments, one for crypto — and it is worth knowing that ESMA keeps a public register of authorised providers so you can check one.

Frozen money is a legal category, not a malfunction. Under EU customer-due-diligence rules, if due diligence cannot be completed, the institution must hold off on the transaction and may end the relationship. That is why accounts get closed or frozen “pending documents” — it is the rule working, but it is also your money being stuck, and it is one of the things the complaints describe.

Transfers are one-way. Blockchain transfers are essentially irreversible. A deposit on an unsupported network, or to a mismatched address, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. And stablecoins are not censorship-proof — Tether says it disables tokens on wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity.

Small declines still cost you. A declined online authorisation can leave a hold on your funds that sticks around for several days, sometimes up to seven, even though you never spent anything.

Closures happen in this category. Card programmes do get wound down: Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022, and WaveCrest, which supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018 with all its programmes closed. When programmes close, there is usually a notice, then loading and spending stop, then you are asked to withdraw what remains. A crypto card is not a place to park money you cannot lose.

What to take instead

If the reliability score is the dealbreaker, here is what else I looked at. I am not ranking these as better than Blackcatcard in every respect — each has its own gaps — but each is a different answer to the same problem.

A few things stand out when you put them side by side.

The International Visa Card is the highest-scoring of the three, at 6.7. It is also the most restrictive in who it will serve: it is not available to residents or registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela or Vietnam, with FATF grey-list countries reviewed case by case. Purchases are blocked in several of those countries. The rule is by residence or registration — citizenship is not what it keys on. On the plus side, its fees are the most transparent of anything here: $5 to issue, no maintenance, and use in dollars free on every plan, with a clearly stated 2% foreign currency fee on top of the Visa rate. Its catch: it is a dollar card, and the physical version is not out yet.

UNi Card scores 6.1 and is the quietest value proposition: no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, assets converted at live over-the-counter rates with no hidden exchange fees, and “Spend-to-Earn” rewards of up to 3%. What it does not tell you on the pages I read: who is eligible, how you fund it, or whether it is virtual or physical. The transparency on fees is excellent; the transparency on the basics is missing.

Whop Cards scores 5.2. It is a Visa that works anywhere Visa is accepted, with “no extra fees” stated and 5% cashback at select merchants — currently Uber, with more planned. But the eligibility list is long and specific: 31 US states for consumers and 41 for businesses, with a defined set of unsupported countries, and the basis for eligibility — citizenship or residence — is not stated. It spends from a Whop balance, and the coin and network behind that balance are not named.

The honest comparison, then: if transparency on fees is what you need most, the International Visa Card publishes the most and asks the most about who you are. If you want low fees across currencies and rewards, UNi Card publishes the cleanest fee story but the thinnest practical detail. And all three of them, like Blackcatcard, sit in the same category where the licence and the complaint record are what you should read before the price list.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend this card to a narrow group: someone in the EEA, over 16, who wants a euro account and a Mastercard quickly, is comfortable that their balance is held by a regulated e-money institution rather than a bank, and — crucially — is not relying on that balance for anything urgent or irreplaceable. For that person, the product is competent. The instant virtual card, the free SEPA in, the €200 free monthly cash allowance and the low fixed fees are a genuinely useful combination, and 7 out of 10 on everyday use is not a polite score.

I would not recommend it to anyone saving money on it, anyone living outside the EEA who is counting on the card, anyone whose income arrives into it, and anyone who needs to be certain their money is there on a given day. For those people the 2 out of 10 on reliability is the deciding fact, and I would look at the alternatives above instead.

And before anyone acts on this: the thing to check first, in this order. Read the fee page yourself, today, and find the crypto conversion fee and the foreign exchange fee — the two numbers I could not give you. Then read the Trustpilot reviews in full, because 1.9 out of 5 across 744 reviews is more informative than any marketing line. Then confirm which network the app wants for any crypto you send. If those three things satisfy you, this card is fine for what it is. If any of them does not, that is not a small doubt — that is the answer.

Frequently asked questions

What is Blackcatcard card?

Blackcatcard is a euro electronic-money account with an IBAN and a Mastercard attached to it. It is issued by Papaya Ltd., a Maltese Electronic Money Institution regulated by the MFSA (registration C55146). You register, and the account is described as available worldwide from age 16, with the card itself for EEA residents. You can load it with euros by SEPA or buy small amounts of crypto through the built-in service.

How does Blackcatcard card work?

It works much like a prepaid card. You put money in first — by a free SEPA transfer, an internal transfer, or by buying BTC, ETH or USDT with euros in the app — and then the Mastercard spends that stored balance. Because it is a pre-loaded balance, the card cannot overdraw what you have put in. The account is euro-denominated, and the card network is Mastercard.

Is Blackcatcard a bank?

No. It is an electronic money institution, not a bank. That is a meaningful distinction for your money: the funds sit in an e-money account with no deposit-guarantee scheme, so they are not covered by the Depositor Compensation Scheme the way bank deposits up to a limit can be. The company behind it is Papaya Ltd. in Malta, authorised and regulated by the MFSA.

Who owns Blackcatcard?

The card names Papaya Ltd., 31 Sliema Road, Gzira GZR 1637, Malta, as the issuer, authorised and regulated as an Electronic Money Institution by the MFSA under registration number C55146. The loyalty programme is run by Baltic Technology Solutions OÜ, and the built-in crypto service is described in the card’s file as run with a partner, Manerio UAB.

Is Blackcatcard card free?

Partly. Opening the account and the first card are free, and monthly maintenance is free as long as you hold one card. Additional cards cost €7 (€12 with a nickname), €2/month applies if you hold more than one card, and a dormancy fee of €15 a month starts in your seventh inactive month. But top-ups and card transfers cost 3%, and the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed.

Does Blackcatcard card require KYC?

The card’s public pages do not state what identity verification is required, and the verification level is not stated on the pages I read. That is unusual for a regulated e-money provider, where EU due-diligence rules normally cover name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documents, sanctions screening and politically-exposed-person checks. If verification cannot be completed, EU rules require the provider to hold off — which is often what lies behind a frozen account.

How to top up Blackcatcard card?

Three ways. SEPA transfers into the account are free with no amount limit, as are internal transfers. You can also buy BTC, ETH or USDT with euros through the app’s built-in service, with a minimum purchase of 5 EUR. Loading the card directly from crypto costs 3%. One thing to check before you send crypto: the card’s pages do not name the networks used, and a transfer on an unsupported network can be lost.

How to withdraw money from Blackcatcard?

SEPA transfers out of the account are free five times a month and then €0.20 each. From an ATM, withdrawals in the EU are free up to €200 a month and then 1%; outside the EU they cost 1% with a €1.50 minimum. Cash withdrawal limits are €5,000 daily and €10,000 monthly. Crypto withdrawal fees are not stated. Closing the account is free, but €50 a month is listed on closed accounts that still hold funds.

Is Blackcatcard card safe?

It is licensed rather than careless, but it is not risk-free. It is custodial — the provider holds the credentials — and the funds sit in an e-money account with no deposit guarantee. Users report on Trustpilot, where the card scored 1.9 out of 5 across 744 reviews, that payments and transfers were blocked after funding and withdrawals were suspended. That is why the reliability mark in my score is 2 out of 10.

Is Blackcatcard card worth it?

Worth it for a narrow person: someone in the EEA who wants a quick euro account and Mastercard, is comfortable with an e-money institution rather than a bank, and can absorb the unknown crypto conversion and foreign exchange fees. Not worth it if you are saving on it, living outside the EEA, or relying on the balance being available on a particular day. Before deciding, read the fee page for the two unstated fees and the user reviews in full.

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