A prepaid Mastercard built for Peru, paid in soles, dollars or crypto

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Tulkit is one of the more unusual entries in the crypto-card market, because it isn’t trying to be a global card at all. It is a prepaid Mastercard, run by a Peruvian fintech called Tulkit Pay, and the only country it names on its own pages is Peru. The card settles only in Peruvian soles, ships free inside Peru, and you can load it with soles through Yape or Plin, by bank transfer, or by sending crypto from your own wallet. There is no monthly fee, no annual fee, and the issuance of both the virtual and the physical card is free. On paper, that combination is genuinely attractive for someone living in Lima or Arequipa. The catch, and the reason the review below ends with a middling score, is that almost everything else about the product sits behind a “not stated” line: the exchange rate it claims is “one of the best on the market” with no number behind it, the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed, the supported coins and networks are not listed, and there is no mention of Apple Pay, Google Pay or ATM withdrawals. So this is a card that works well for a narrow audience and is essentially a non-starter for anyone outside Peru.

The conditions in this article are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Tulkit earns 5.5 out of 10. The score is dragged down almost entirely by the country restriction: the card is built and shipped for Peru, and Tulkit does not name any other market. For a Peruvian resident who already uses Yape or Plin and wants a prepaid Mastercard that can also spend from a crypto balance, the value proposition is real, and the zero monthly and zero issuance fees make it easy to try. For everyone else, there is no path to a card. The cost side is genuinely good, with no monthly or annual charge and free card issuance; the everyday-use side is solid, with a free virtual Mastercard issued instantly, twelve physical designs and free delivery within Peru. But the top-up story is half-told (crypto coins and networks are not listed), the exchange rate is unverified, the e-money licence has no number, and there is no published figure for the crypto conversion fee, the FX margin, ATM access or wallet support. The five-and-a-half reflects that gap between the idea and the disclosure.

If you live in Peru and pay for most things in soles, with crypto as a side habit, Tulkit is a reasonable first prepaid card. If you live anywhere else, look at one of the alternatives at the end of this review.

Will they give you the card

The short answer is: only if you are in Peru. Peru is the only country Tulkit names in its own pages, and the physical card is delivered only inside Peru. The company says registration is open to foreigners as well, but only those who hold a valid Peruvian immigration card. The card itself is a Mastercard, both virtual and physical, with twelve physical designs to choose from, and the prepaid cards settle only in soles. There is no Mastercard-level multicurrency story, no “use it abroad” claim, and no list of supported countries for spending. The decision to grant the card is therefore a two-step question in practice: can you be issued a Tulkit account at all, and if so, will Mastercard be accepted where you want to spend.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the audience the card is built for is small: residents of Peru topping up with Yape, Plin or crypto. Second, anyone reading this from outside Peru who hoped a Tulkit card would let them spend in their own currency can stop here. The card does not promise that, and the published fees would not make it useful if it did, because the only settlement currency is soles.

Identity verification itself is described in deliberately light terms: “takes a few photos”, registration in under two minutes, no paperwork and no credit check. The actual list of documents the company asks for, whether a proof of address is needed, the minimum age, and the verification tiers (for example, how the limits change once a Peruvian immigration card is uploaded) are not stated on the public pages. The age limit and document list are not stated.

How to get it

The signup path is built to be quick. You download the Tulkit Pay app on iOS or Android, you register, and the published description says the identity check “takes a few photos” and the whole flow finishes in minutes. There is no paperwork and no credit check. The virtual Mastercard is issued immediately; the physical card, with twelve design options, is shipped free within Peru. The exact delivery time and the cost of replacing a lost or stolen card are not stated.

Two things are worth knowing before you start. The first is that the published account opening promise is “under two minutes”, but the identity check itself is not actually instant, even where crypto-card companies like to claim it is: the on-screen flow takes a few minutes to complete and any back-office review can take longer. Tulkit’s own pages do not put a clock on that review, so if you are about to travel, the safe move is to register and verify well before you need to spend. The second is that the verification levels are not stated. The public pages do not say whether a basic account has lower limits than a fully verified one, what triggers an upgrade, or whether a Peruvian immigration card is treated the same as a national ID for limit purposes. The only number that is published is a QR-payment cap of S/5,150 a day, and even that is phrased as a payment cap, not a verification-tier cap.

Fees: what it really costs

Tulkit’s headline pricing is genuinely good for a prepaid card, and the company says it in plain Spanish on its own pages: “Sin costo mensual, ni anualidad” (no monthly or annual fee). Opening an account is free, the virtual card is free, the physical card is free, and the physical card is delivered free anywhere in Peru. Soles transfers by Yape, Plin and bank transfer are free as well. That is a strong base, and for someone who is going to spend mostly in soles and load the card in soles, the published cost is essentially zero.

The honest reading of the same facts is that the cards it does not publish are exactly the ones that matter most for a card paid in crypto. The exchange rate is described as “one of the best on the market” without a number, the crypto conversion fee is not stated, the FX margin (the spread between the rate Tulkit uses and the mid-market rate) is not stated, and the network fee for depositing crypto is not the card provider’s, but is also not described. There is a “Tarifario Tulkit Card” PDF referenced on the site, which is the place where a complete schedule would live; without that document in hand, the reader is taking the company at its word.

A few everyday examples make the gap between the published numbers and the real-life cost easier to feel.

Paying S/100 for a coffee with soles loaded from Yape. The transfer into Tulkit is free, the card spend is in soles so there is no FX, and the card fee is zero. The cost is whatever the cafe charges for the coffee. This is the use case where the published numbers match reality.

Paying the same S/100 from a Bitcoin balance you have just deposited. You send BTC to Tulkit, Tulkit converts it to soles and you spend. The cost is the sum of the on-chain network fee for the BTC transfer, the crypto conversion fee Tulkit charges (not stated), and the spread between Tulkit’s rate and the rate you can see on a public exchange (also not stated, hidden inside the “one of the best on the market” claim). The card fee is still zero, but the all-in cost is the part the company does not publish.

Spending abroad on a holiday. The Mastercard network may accept the card, but the prepaid balance is in soles, and the FX margin, the cross-border fee and the foreign-MCC handling are not stated. The card was not built for this use, and the disclosure matches that.

How to top up the card

Top-ups run around the clock. The four published options are Yape (Peru’s dominant mobile wallet, run by a major bank), Plin (the inter-bank instant-transfer service), a regular bank transfer in soles, and crypto. Crypto top-ups are described as instant for both directions, and the card can be funded 24/7, so the rails themselves are not the problem. The deposit fee, the minimum top-up and the network fees for crypto are not stated. Crypto top-ups are said to be available, but the company does not list the supported coins or the supported networks. The starting data the company mentions in passing is BTC, ETH, USDT and similar assets, which is a wide hint rather than a published list.

A short list of the things to check before you send any crypto:

• The exact coin and network. If Tulkit says it accepts USDT, you need to know whether it means USDT on Ethereum (ERC-20), on Tron (TRC-20), on Solana, on Polygon, on Arbitrum, or on another network. Sending USDT on the wrong network is one of the most common ways crypto top-ups go wrong, and the network itself is irreversible.
• The deposit address. The right answer is to copy the address from inside the Tulkit app, never from an email, a DM or a search result. A clipboard-hijacker on your computer can swap an address between the moment you copy and the moment you paste.
• The minimum top-up. Not stated. If you send a small amount below an unpublished minimum, the funds can sit uncredited until you raise a support ticket.
• The wallet holding the ETH for gas. On Ethereum, ERC-20 transfers pay a network fee in ETH, not in the token being sent. A wallet with USDT but no ETH cannot actually send. The same pattern shows up on other EVM networks. Tron uses bandwidth and energy and often burns TRX for fees.

For soles top-ups, Yape and Plin are the everyday path for most Peruvians, and both are free to send into Tulkit; a bank transfer is the fallback when a wallet is empty or for larger amounts.

Paying with it every day

Once a card is loaded, the everyday experience is the part Tulkit has thought about. The virtual Mastercard is in the wallet the moment the account is verified, so online checkout and contactless phone payments work straight away. The physical card, when it arrives, is one of twelve designs. There is a published rewards line: up to 2% back in Bitcoin on each purchase, with no further conditions stated. That is a competitive number for a free prepaid card, and a useful way to put a small slice of everyday spend back into BTC.

A few things to set in the app on day one, before the card is used:

• Card limits. The published app feature is that you can set your own card limits. The exact defaults are not stated, and S/5,150 a day is the only published number, so a lower default is the safer starting point.
• Card lock. The app exposes a lock or freeze toggle. Treat it as a habit: lock the card when you are not using it, unlock for the specific purchase, and lock again.
• 3-D Secure. Online merchants increasingly ask for a one-time code or biometric step. Make sure the phone number or authenticator app the card is tied to is current, because a stuck 3-D Secure challenge is the most common reason an online payment is declined at the very last step.

Two related things to know. Apple Pay and Google Pay support are not stated on Tulkit’s public pages, and ATM access is not stated either. If you plan to rely on a contactless phone wallet or to draw cash from an ATM, neither feature is something Tulkit promises. The Mastercard network may accept the card at an ATM, but the terms, the fees and the per-transaction limits are not published.

What can go wrong

Tulkit has no public incident attached to its name, and there is no third-party complaint thread that has surfaced, which is a small positive. The company structure is also unusually clear for a Latin American crypto card. Tulkit Pay S.A.C. runs the app, holds the customer relationship and handles the fiat-to-crypto conversion. The electronic money itself, the spendable balance the card draws on, is issued by GMoney S.A., which the company says is “authorized and regulated by the SBS” (Superintendencia de Banca y Seguros, Peru’s financial regulator). Two things would be reassuring to see and are not stated: the licence number for GMoney S.A., and a clear description of how customer funds are safeguarded. EMIs typically have to segregate customer money, and Tulkit says it holds 90% of crypto assets offline, but the actual safeguarding arrangement for the soles balance is not stated.

The security story leans on a few standard moves. The company claims “bank-level security” and encryption, the app supports card lock and unlock and freeze, card limits are settable in the app, and there is a report-account-theft form for lost or stolen cards. The support channel is an email address, [email protected]; for issues that sit with the e-money issuer rather than the app, the address is [email protected]. There is also a published “Libro de Reclamaciones” (complaints book) under the “Consultas y Reclamos” section of the site, which is the right channel under Peruvian consumer rules. There is no published phone number, and the WhatsApp link visible on the public pages is a placeholder rather than a working number. Support hours are not stated.

The two structural risks that come with any card of this shape, and that a reader should weigh for themselves, are these.

Counterparty risk. The card is custodial, which means the soles balance and any crypto you have not withdrawn sit with Tulkit and GMoney. A prepaid card balance is not a bank deposit, and it is not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. If the company or its e-money partner ran into trouble, the path to your money would be through Peruvian insolvency and regulator procedure, not through a deposit-insurance backstop. The 90% cold-storage claim is a positive sign, but the same pattern of “most funds held offline” was repeated by several crypto platforms that ended up not having enough.

Sanctions and country rules. Even if you have a Tulkit card in your pocket, Mastercard’s own rules and the issuer’s policy decide where the card can be spent and where it can be funded. Cards issued in Peru under Peruvian e-money rules are not designed for, and are not disclosed to support, spending in sanctioned jurisdictions or for any sanctioned activity. The card cannot be used as a way around sanctions, identity checks or country-of-residence rules, and the same applies to a Peruvian immigration card issued to a foreign national. If your situation changes (a new country of residence, a new citizenship, a sanctions update), the right move is to tell Tulkit and re-verify, not to keep using the card on the assumption the old rules still apply.

Reversibility and disputes. Crypto transfers into the card are irreversible on the blockchain. Card-payment disputes, on the other hand, go through the issuer’s chargeback process, and the company’s own dispute procedure is not stated. Treat a card payment like a card payment, with the usual 3-D Secure and AVS safeguards, and treat a crypto top-up like a wire transfer: the moment you send, the moment it is gone.

What to take instead

Three cards make sense as points of comparison because they answer the same underlying question, how do I spend from a crypto balance, in three different ways. None of them is a direct substitute for Tulkit for a Peruvian resident, because none of them is built for Peru, and none of them is a domestic soles card. The point of listing them is to show what a more globally available crypto card looks like at this point in the market.

International Visa Card is the most fully disclosed of the three on the cost side. The plan tiers are explicit, the FX fee is 2% on top of Visa’s rate, and the country list for both issuance and spending is published, including the FATF grey-list caveat. That disclosure is itself a form of value, because it lets a reader see the real cost before signing up. The downsides are the USD 5 one-time issuance fee, the USD-denominated virtual card, and a long list of countries where the card is not available. The 31-US-state footprint of Whop Cards makes it a US-only product in practice; the published cost is “no extra fees” but no numbers are listed, which is exactly the kind of half-disclosure that the Tulkit review flags. UNi Card has the cleanest cost shape (no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, live OTC rates) and a competitive 3% reward, but neither the country availability nor the funding path is published on the public pages.

Read across the three alternatives, the pattern is the same one Tulkit shows: a free or cheap card at the headline level, a rewards line, and a series of “not stated” lines on conversion, FX margin and funding. The International Visa Card is the most transparent of the four on cost; Tulkit is the only one with a fully domestic delivery and funding story in a single currency; UNi Card is the closest to a multicurrency card in this group; Whop Cards is the only one explicitly limited to the United States.

Who I would recommend it to

Tulkit earns its 5.5 because the use case it serves is narrow and the disclosure around that use case is patchy. The card makes sense for a Peruvian resident who already lives in soles, who wants a prepaid Mastercard for everyday spend, who likes the idea of topping up with Yape or Plin and who treats the crypto side as a small side habit rather than a primary funding source. For that reader, the zero monthly fee, the free virtual and physical cards, the free delivery, the QR cap of S/5,150 a day, the app-level lock and limit controls and the up to 2% back in Bitcoin are all genuinely useful. The honest reading of the published numbers is that you can run the card on a soles-only basis essentially for free, and the only fees you will see are the ones the company has chosen not to publish.

The card does not make sense for a reader who lives outside Peru, because Peru is the only country the company names, and the card is delivered only inside Peru. It does not make sense for a heavy crypto spender, because the crypto conversion fee, the FX margin and the supported coins and networks are not disclosed, and that is exactly the spend pattern where unstated fees hurt the most. It does not make sense as a travel card, because Apple Pay, Google Pay and ATM access are not stated and the balance settles only in soles. It does not make sense as a multicurrency account, because the card was not designed to be one.

If you are in the first group, Tulkit is worth a try. If you are in any of the other groups, one of the alternatives above will save you the cost of finding out the hard way that the card you wanted is not the card you got.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Tulkit card?

The Tulkit card is a prepaid Mastercard issued by Peruvian fintech Tulkit Pay, with a virtual card available immediately and a physical card in one of twelve designs delivered free in Peru. The card settles only in soles and can be topped up with soles (Yape, Plin, bank transfer) or with crypto.

How does the Tulkit card work?

You register in the Tulkit Pay app, complete a short identity check, and the virtual card is issued straight away. You top the card up in soles or in crypto, and the balance is spent through the Mastercard network. A prepaid card like this one cannot overdraw, because the spend is limited to the loaded balance.

Is Tulkit a bank?

Tulkit is not a bank. Tulkit Pay S.A.C. runs the app and handles the fiat-to-crypto conversion, and the electronic money balance that the card draws on is issued by GMoney S.A., which the company says is authorized and regulated by the Superintendencia de Banca y Seguros (SBS) in Peru. The specific licence number is not stated on the public pages.

Who owns Tulkit?

Tulkit Pay S.A.C. is the company that operates the card and the app. The electronic money balance is issued by a separate company, GMoney S.A. The ownership structure of either company, including shareholders and parent entities, is not stated on Tulkit’s public pages.

Is the Tulkit card available in my country?

Tulkit names Peru as the only country it serves, and the physical card is shipped only within Peru. The company also says the card is open to foreigners who hold a valid Peruvian immigration card. The company does not name any other country for issuance or for shipping.

Can I use the Tulkit card outside Peru?

The card runs on the Mastercard network, so a Peruvian-issued card may be accepted at foreign merchants. The prepaid balance settles only in soles, however, and the FX margin, the cross-border fee and the supported countries for spending are not stated on the public pages. The card was not built as a travel card.

Does the Tulkit card require KYC?

Yes. The company describes identity verification as “taking a few photos” and says registration finishes in minutes with no paperwork and no credit check. The exact document list, whether proof of address is required, the minimum age and the verification tiers (and how the limits change at each tier) are not stated.

How do I top up the Tulkit card?

You can top up 24/7 with soles via Yape, Plin or a regular bank transfer, or with crypto. The supported coins and networks for crypto top-ups are not listed on the public pages, and the deposit fee, the minimum top-up and the on-chain network fee for crypto are not stated. Always copy the deposit address from inside the Tulkit app and double-check the network before sending.

Is the Tulkit card safe?

The company says the platform uses “bank-level security” and encryption, holds 90% of crypto assets offline, exposes card lock, freeze and settable limits in the app, and offers a report-theft form. The safeguarding arrangement for the soles balance, the licence number for the e-money issuer and the dispute procedure are not stated on the public pages. The card is custodial, so the usual counterparty risk attached to holding a balance with a card issuer applies.

Is the Tulkit card worth it?

For a Peruvian resident who spends mostly in soles and treats crypto as a side habit, the free virtual and physical cards, the zero monthly and annual fees, the free delivery in Peru and the up to 2% back in Bitcoin make the card worth trying. For anyone outside Peru, for a heavy crypto spender, or for a reader who needs a travel card or a multicurrency account, the unstated conversion and FX figures and the missing wallet and ATM support make one of the alternatives in this review a better fit.

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