Brighty card review — a virtual crypto Mastercard for people the banks keep turning away

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Brighty is a financial technology company that pairs a virtual payment card with a crypto balance and a European IBAN. The company itself says it is not a bank; cards, custody and the on- and off-ramp run through licensed partners whose names are not published on the pages I read. If you have ever been refused a card by a regular bank, the idea is appealing: a single app that holds euros and crypto, lets you spend either, and comes with a real bank-grade account number. After spending time with the official pages, the help center and third-party trackers, the picture I ended up with is more mixed than the marketing suggests.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Brighty earns 5.6 out of 10 in my scoring, and that number reflects a product that does one thing well, one thing passably, and a few things not at all. The card is reasonably priced to issue, the IBAN is genuinely useful if you are an EEA resident, and the in-app currency exchange has a free monthly allowance. What drags the score down is the opacity around who actually issues the card, the absence of working physical cards at the time of writing, the complaints about accounts being closed without explanation, and a rewards program that is described in marketing terms but not spelled out in the official fee schedule.

It suits EEA residents who want a crypto-funded IBAN and a virtual Mastercard for online spending, and who do not need a physical card or Apple Pay. It does not suit anyone who needs to withdraw cash often, anyone outside the EEA, or anyone who is uncomfortable with a fintech that does not name its issuing partner on its own pages.

Who can actually get the Brighty card

The single most important thing to know before you read any further is the geography. The official card page is labelled “EEA only”, which means the European Economic Area, the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The app has since been extended to two non-EEA European microstates, Montenegro and Andorra, and the company adds a caveat that availability “may vary by jurisdiction”. There is no full country list on the public site. One unofficial tracker lists 36 supported countries, including the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova, but you should treat that count as third-party data, not something Brighty itself confirms.

The rule is by residence, not by citizenship. While residency is the primary criterion, the company notes that availability “may vary by jurisdiction” and specifies that there are regulatory restrictions for certain nationals residing in Montenegro and Andorra. This confirms that the company screens nationality in addition to residency in certain regions. For the general applicant, the default requirement is EEA residency.

This is the kind of fine print that catches people out. Two practical consequences fall out of it. First, if you live in the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, the Gulf, Latin America, Africa or most of Asia, the card is not for you, regardless of how the app is marketed. Second, the absence of a published country list means the only way to know for sure is to download the app and start the sign-up flow; if the flow blocks your address, you have your answer. That is a poor user experience, but it is the current state of things.

How to sign up

Brighty runs its sign-up inside the app, and the app is where identity verification happens. The help center names Sumsub, a well-known verification vendor, as the KYC provider, which is a normal arrangement for a fintech of this size. What I could not find on the official pages is a clear description of the verification tiers: the help center references source-of-funds and source-of-wealth articles as well as an “additional information” article, but the contents of those articles are not on the page I read, and the processing time is not stated. If the automated check bounces your documents, the fallback is an email to [email protected], and there is no published live chat, phone line or office hours in the FAQ I reviewed.

The documents Brighty asks for are conventional. For proof of identity you need a clear photograph, your full name, date of birth, place of birth and citizenship. For proof of address you need a utility bill or bank statement as a PDF no older than three months, and screenshots are explicitly rejected, which is a small but telling detail; an official registration confirmation is also accepted, as is a second official ID that carries your address. The rejection reasons the help center lists are the usual ones: ambiguous, unclear, contradictory or incomplete documents, an address that does not match the one you signed up with, old or damaged documents, and blank fields including the signature line. None of that is unusual, but it does mean you should have your PDFs ready before you start, and you should not try to sign up from a hotel or a temporary address.

The card itself comes in two flavours. The card page describes a virtual card on the Mastercard network, with Visa “wherever accepted”, which is a slightly confusing sentence that I read as: the network is Mastercard by default, and Visa is also supported where the merchant’s setup allows. The help center adds more detail: there is a physical Visa, a virtual Visa without a PIN, and a virtual Mastercard. The card currency is not stated on the official pages I read. One third-party tracker reports that the Mastercard is issued by UAB Monavate, a Lithuanian electronic money institution, and lists the supported fiat and crypto currencies as EUR, USD, GBP and AED on the fiat side, and USDC, EURC, BTC, ETH, ADA, XTZ, TON and SOL on the crypto side. That detail is useful but unofficial, and Brighty’s own pages do not name Monavate.

On the question of whether you will actually receive a physical card, the news is bad at the time of writing. A help article dated 26 May 2026 states that Apple Pay is unavailable for Mastercard cards and available for Visa; separately, third-party coverage from August 2026 reports that physical Mastercard orders are “currently unavailable” and that the help center indicates they “will not be fulfilled”, with no published cost or timeframe. If you are choosing Brighty for a physical card, the safe assumption is that you will only be issued a virtual card for now, and the rest of this review is written with that assumption.

Fees: what it really costs

The headline cost of Brighty is the 2.99 EUR one-off fee to issue a virtual card. There is no monthly service fee on any plan. Balance inquiries are free, and you can issue up to ten cards per month, which is more generous than most competing products.

The interesting part is the in-app currency exchange. The company runs three subscription tiers, One, Plus and Pro, and the pricing changes between them. A help article dated 15 September 2026 sets out the differences. On One you get no free FX allowance, on Plus you get 2,000 EUR a month, and on Pro you get 5,000 EUR a month. Above the free allowance the FX fee is 0.6% on One, 0.5% on Plus and 0.4% on Pro. Outgoing SEPA and Faster Payments cost 3 EUR plus 0.3% on One (with a 10 EUR minimum) and 0.5 EUR plus 0.3% on Plus and Pro. SWIFT outgoing transfers cost 0.9% with a 50 EUR minimum, dropping to a 30 EUR minimum on Pro.

The card-level limits scale the same way. The daily card purchase limit is 50,000 EUR on One, 75,000 EUR on Plus and 100,000 EUR on Pro; the monthly limit is 75,000, 100,000 and 100,000 EUR respectively. Outgoing fiat transfers are capped at 30,000 EUR a day and 250,000 EUR a month on One, scaling to 500,000 EUR a month on Pro. The maximum fiat account balance is 100,000, 250,000 and 500,000 EUR. The subscription prices for those tiers and any metal card option are not stated on the help article itself; a third-party tracker reports Plus at 9 EUR a month and Pro at 18 EUR a month, with One free, but the official fee schedule does not confirm that, and the same tracker gives card limits that contradict the official help article, so I am treating the unofficial prices as a hint rather than a fact.

What the official page does not state matters too. There is no published fee for paying in a foreign currency at the point of sale, so I cannot tell you whether a coffee in Tokyo will trigger an extra charge on top of the in-app FX rate; the ATM fee and free ATM allowance are not stated either, and the card page only claims “acceptance at ATMs worldwide” without giving numbers. One unofficial tracker cites legacy Visa rates (3.50 EUR in the EEA, plus 3.5% outside, with a 3 EUR in-EEA rate on Pro) but describes the current Mastercard ATM feature as “no dependable current ATM feature”, which is a polite way of saying “don’t rely on it”. The minimum top-up amount and the card top-up fee are not stated, and the cost of replacing a lost card is not stated either.

To put three concrete payments side by side: a 50 EUR online subscription paid from a euro balance costs you nothing beyond the subscription price, because there is no FX and no card fee. A 100 EUR purchase in a foreign currency, converted in-app, is free if you are on Plus or Pro and still inside your monthly allowance, or costs 0.50 EUR at the Plus rate and 0.40 EUR at the Pro rate if you are over it. A 200 EUR cash withdrawal from an ATM, assuming you can find one that accepts the card, would be free of card-issuer fees only up to whatever the unpublished ATM allowance turns out to be, and the unofficial tracker suggests a 3 EUR to 3.50 EUR fixed fee plus a percentage. None of those numbers is a deal-breaker on its own, but the lack of a published foreign-currency card fee is.

How to top it up

Topping up Brighty is where the product is most genuinely useful, and the design is sensible. You can fund the account in two ways: by sending cryptocurrency from an external wallet, or by sending fiat to the IBAN. The IBAN gives you a real European bank account number, which means a regular bank transfer, a salary, or a refund from a friend all land in the app without a third-party exchange in the loop.

Incoming crypto is free on every plan, with no monthly cap, which is a competitive offer. The supported list, as far as the official pages state, includes Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC held inside the app, and one unofficial tracker extends the list to ADA, XTZ, TON, SOL and others. The networks for outgoing crypto are published and broad: Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, Cardano, Tezos, Islamic Coin, TON, Arbitrum, Solana, Polygon and BEP20. The networks for incoming crypto are not stated on the pages I read, which is a real gap; you have to know which network your deposit is coming from, and getting that wrong is the most common way people lose money on crypto on-ramps. The help center has articles titled “Refund Policy for Unsupported Crypto Deposits” and “Wrong Network and Unsupported Cryptocurrency”, which suggests the issue is common enough to warrant a policy.

Incoming fiat is more expensive. SEPA costs 0.3% with a 10 EUR minimum, Faster Payments the same, and SWIFT 0.7% with a 50 EUR minimum. The monthly cap on incoming fiat is 100,000 EUR, which is well above what most retail users will need. Card top-up fees and minimum top-ups are not stated.

When you send crypto out, the fees are flat and depend on the network rather than the plan. On Ethereum (ERC-20) the outgoing fee is 3 EUR, on Tron (TRC20) it is 3 EUR, on Bitcoin it is 20 EUR, on Cardano 1 EUR, on Tezos 1 EUR, on TON 3 EUR, on Arbitrum 3 EUR, on Solana 3 EUR, on Polygon 3 EUR, and on BEP20 3 EUR. The list matches what the outgoing-crypto help article sets out and the same on every plan with no monthly limit. If you want to keep costs down, sending USDC on Polygon or Arbitrum is roughly an order of magnitude cheaper than sending BTC on the Bitcoin network, and that is before you count the underlying blockchain fee, which is on top.

One thing the official page does say is what happens when you close the account: it is “scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days”. What happens to any remaining balance during that 30 days is not stated, and the help center is the place where you would find the answer.

Paying with it every day

Brighty presents itself as a card you can tap at a shop or use for an online subscription, and the day-to-day mechanics are mostly there. The app is published on the App Store under the title “Brighty: Crypto Card & IBAN” and, at the time of writing, carries a 4.9 rating from 9 ratings on the Turkish storefront I read. The Google Play rating was not found on the page I looked at.

The mobile wallet story is uneven. The help article dated 26 May 2026 says Apple Pay is unavailable for Mastercard cards for technical reasons and is available for Visa, while Google Pay works for Mastercard. In practice that means if you are issued a virtual Mastercard, which is the default, you cannot add it to Apple Pay at all, and you will fall back on entering the card details manually for online purchases or using Google Pay on Android. For an EEA user with an iPhone, that is a meaningful gap, and it is the kind of thing you only discover after signing up.

The marketing on the card page leans on the line “Keep earning on your crypto while using it”, which is a way of describing yield or rewards without specifying either. The rate, the payout currency and the mechanism are not stated in the official fee schedule, and there is no description of a cashback program in the help articles I read. One unofficial tracker fills the gap: a base 0.5% cashback in USDC on all tiers, 1.25% to 1.75% in selected categories, monthly caps of 20, 60 and 100 USDC on One, Plus and Pro respectively, paid the following month into a “Reward Box”. That is a useful picture if true, but it is third-party data, and the official pages do not confirm it.

The blocked merchant categories and the dispute process are not stated either. The help center has articles on unsupported crypto deposits and wrong-network transfers, which suggests the support team has been stretched by those two issues, but there is no visible card-dispute or chargeback article. One unofficial tracker reports that cashback can be reversed if a purchase is refunded or charged back, which is standard, and that “no dispute or chargeback process is described”, which lines up with the gap in the help center. In practical terms, if something goes wrong with a purchase, your only visible recourse is the support email.

What can go wrong

The two risks that show up repeatedly in user reports are account closure and slow transfers. On Trustpilot, the nl-be page I read shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews; the review dates were not visible, but the recurring themes are consistent. Several users report accounts being closed without explanation, with the company citing policy or regulation. Others report a referral bonus not being paid, with the company citing suspected referral abuse. Others report “instant” transfers taking hours. There is some praise for the cashback. I did not find card-specific complaints, and I did not find a Reddit thread that was clearly about Brighty.

The structural reason these complaints keep coming back is that Brighty is a fintech, not a bank, and the official FAQ is explicit about that. “Brighty is a financial technology company, not a bank”, the FAQ says, and accounts, cards, custody and the on- and off-ramp are provided through “licensed partners” whose names are not on the page I read. A September 2024 press release cited by StreetInsider describes Brighty as Switzerland-based and says it holds crypto-exchange and digital-asset custodian licences, but that is not confirmed on Brighty’s own pages. If you are the kind of person who wants a banking licence number before you send money, the absence of one on the official site is a real shortcoming.

Custody is by Brighty, not self-custody, which is the standard custodial model. The official FAQ says “Brighty keeps user funds in segregated accounts that are specially secured” for both fiat and crypto, and the company works with penetration testers; there is no mention of insurance, and there is no mention of two-factor authentication on the page I read, although the app will almost certainly offer it in practice. The card can be frozen and terminated in the app; freezing is temporary, termination cannot be reversed.

The official offboarding reasons are listed in the help center and are worth reading in full. They include suspected fraud, unclear source of funds, partner-provider concerns, and PEP (politically exposed person) or sanctions status. That is a normal list for a regulated fintech, but it does mean the burden of proof sits with the user, and the bar can change without notice. Combined with the lack of a published dispute or chargeback process, it means a user whose account is closed has limited official recourse beyond email support.

The other category of risk is operational. Apple Pay does not work for the default Mastercard. The physical card is not reliably available. The customer support channel is email only, with no published phone, live chat or office hours. The help center is available in English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Spanish, but not in Russian. If your English or French is limited and you do not speak any of the other five, your safety net is thin.

What to take instead

Three alternatives cover the most common reasons people consider Brighty in the first place: an EEA card, a multicurrency Mastercard, and a US-based Visa.

International Visa Card is a US-issued Platinum Visa that scores 6.7 out of 10. It is aimed at people the regular US banking system rejects, and the eligibility list is the opposite of Brighty’s in one important way: it blocks residents of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, and it reviews FATF grey-list countries case by case. The rule is by residence, not citizenship, and purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. The card is virtual, pays in US dollars, and the issue fee is $5 with no maintenance fee. Plans run from a free Classic to Pro at $9 and Max at $19 a month, and there is no FX fee when you spend in US dollars; foreign-currency transactions are charged at the Visa rate plus 2%. Top-ups are by USDC or USDT into a US dollar account, and the help pages list USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow as well. There is no published cashback.

UNi Card is a multicurrency Mastercard on the UNi.Global account, scoring 6.1 out of 10. The official pages state there is “no annual fee or foreign transaction fee” and assets are converted at “live OTC rates”, with “no hidden exchange fees”. The card supports a “Spend-to-Earn rewards” program of up to 3%. The residency list, the issuance fee and the funding options are officially not stated.

Whop Cards is a Visa issued on the Whop platform, scoring 5.2 out of 10. Consumers can be signed up in 31 US states (the list is long and includes California, New York, Texas and Florida) and businesses in 41; Belarus, mainland China, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam are blocked for consumers. The card spends from a Whop balance, and pending balance is usable as soon as a payment arrives, with standard withdrawals from settled funds; the balance is backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet, and the cashback is 5% at selected merchants (currently Uber, with more planned). “No extra fees” is the only fee claim on the page I read.

Who I would recommend Brighty to

If you are an EEA resident who already holds crypto, wants an IBAN to receive euros in, and is happy to use a virtual Mastercard for online payments, Brighty is a reasonable fit. The 2.99 EUR issue fee is competitive, the in-app FX has a meaningful free allowance on Plus and Pro, and the IBAN makes it easy to move money in from a salary or a regular bank. The app is clean, the support email is responsive in the experience of the reviewers I read, and the product is more transparent about its tier structure than some competitors.

I would not recommend it if you need a physical card you can hand to a waiter, if you live outside the EEA and Montenegro or Andorra, if Apple Pay is essential to your daily spending, if you want a published dispute process, or if you are not comfortable with a fintech that does not name its card-issuing partner on its own pages. The 3.2 out of 5 on Trustpilot, the lack of a published ATM fee schedule, and the absence of a working physical card at the time of writing are the three reasons I am holding the score at 5.6 rather than nudging it higher.

The honest summary is this. Brighty is a useful tool for a narrow group of users, and the IBAN is the part of the product that delivers the most value. As a pure crypto card it is mid-pack: the in-app FX is fair, the rewards are murky, the mobile-wallet support is half-broken, and the complaints data is a real warning sign. Treat it as a tool for a specific job, not as a replacement for a bank account, and check the help center for the latest on Apple Pay and physical-card availability before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Brighty card?

The Brighty card is a virtual payment card issued by Brighty, a financial technology company, that lets you spend from a balance held in the Brighty app. The balance can be funded with euros via a European IBAN or with cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC. The card runs on the Mastercard network by default, with Visa also supported where the merchant accepts it, and Brighty says it is not a bank — cards, custody and the on- and off-ramp are provided through licensed partners whose names are not published on the company’s pages.

How does the Brighty card work?

You download the Brighty app, complete identity verification through the in-app flow (the help center names Sumsub as the verification vendor), and issue a virtual card for a 2.99 EUR one-time fee. You then top up the card balance either by sending euros to your IBAN or by sending supported cryptocurrency from an external wallet. When you pay, Brighty converts the balance at the in-app exchange rate, and the merchant sees a normal Mastercard or Visa transaction. The card cannot overdraw, because it spends a pre-loaded balance rather than a linked bank account.

Is Brighty a bank?

No. Brighty describes itself as “a financial technology company, not a bank”, and the accounts, cards, custody and on- and off-ramp are provided through licensed partners. The company does not publish the names of those partners on the pages I read, although a third-party tracker reports the Mastercard is issued by UAB Monavate, a Lithuanian electronic money institution. Funds held in Brighty are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme.

Where is the Brighty card available?

The official card page is labelled “EEA only”, and the app has been extended to Montenegro and Andorra, with availability noted to “may vary by jurisdiction”. One unofficial tracker lists 36 supported countries including the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova. There is no full official list, and the only way to confirm eligibility for a given address is to start the sign-up flow in the app. Russian nationals residing in Montenegro or Andorra are explicitly excluded.

Does Brighty require KYC?

Yes. Sign-up runs an in-app identity check, and the help center names Sumsub as the verification vendor. You will need a clear photo of an identity document with your full name, date of birth, place of birth and citizenship, and a proof of address such as a utility bill or bank statement as a PDF no older than three months; screenshots are not accepted. The verification tiers and processing times are not described in detail on the public pages.

How do I top up the Brighty card?

You can top up by sending euros to your IBAN via SEPA, Faster Payments or SWIFT (fees 0.3% with a 10 EUR minimum for SEPA and Faster Payments, 0.7% with a 50 EUR minimum for SWIFT), or by sending supported cryptocurrency from an external wallet, which is free on every plan. The supported cryptocurrencies listed on the official pages include Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC, and a third-party tracker extends the list to ADA, XTZ, TON, SOL and others. The networks for incoming crypto are not stated on the official pages, which is the most common source of lost deposits.

Can I add the Brighty card to Apple Pay?

It depends on the network. A help article dated 26 May 2026 states that Apple Pay is unavailable for Mastercard cards for technical reasons and is available for Visa. Because the default Brighty card is a virtual Mastercard, in practice this means most users cannot add the card to Apple Pay. Google Pay works for Mastercard, so Android users do not face the same restriction.

Is the Brighty card free?

The virtual card has a 2.99 EUR one-time issue fee, but there is no monthly service fee and balance inquiries are free on every plan. In-app currency exchange has a free monthly allowance of 0 EUR on One, 2,000 EUR on Plus and 5,000 EUR on Pro, and costs 0.6%, 0.5% and 0.4% respectively above the allowance. Incoming SEPA costs 0.3% (minimum 10 EUR), and outgoing SEPA on the One plan costs 3 EUR plus 0.3% (minimum 10 EUR). Physical cards are not reliably available at the time of writing.

Is the Brighty card safe?

The official FAQ says customer funds are kept in segregated accounts that are specially secured, and the company works with penetration testers. There is no mention of insurance on the page I read, and there is no mention of two-factor authentication in the FAQ, although the app will almost certainly offer it in practice. Trustpilot shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews on the nl-be page I read, with recurring themes of account closure without explanation, unpaid referral bonuses and slow transfers. Custody is by Brighty itself, not self-custody, so the user relies entirely on the company and its unnamed partners.

How do I delete my Brighty account?

The help center states that an account closure initiated by the user is “scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days”, and what happens to any remaining balance during that period is not stated on the page I read. You can also freeze the card temporarily in the app; freezing is reversible, while termination cannot be reversed.

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