The card that spends your crypto balance, with the fees to match

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

AstroCard is a payment card that spends the balance sitting in your AstroPay wallet. It is not a bank account, it is not a credit card, and it is not a way of holding crypto in your own hands. It is closer to a prepaid card that happens to be topped up in crypto and converted as it goes. That single sentence tells you most of what matters about this product: you get ordinary card numbers that merchants accept, you spend only what you have loaded, and every conversion, withdrawal and cross-border purchase carries a fee that the card’s own pages describe only in part.

I scored it 5.3 out of 10. That is a middling number, and it is not a rounding error — it comes from a genuinely good everyday card sitting on top of a cost structure that is expensive where it counts, plus a support and complaints picture that gives me pause. The card itself is fine. What sits behind it is what makes this a decision rather than an obvious yes.

Conditions here are current as of October 28, 2026.

Who this suits, in one line: existing AstroPay wallet users in the Americas, the UK, Spain and Denmark who want a card to spend that balance from, and who can live with the fee schedule. Who it does not suit: anyone building a first bank relationship, anyone who needs to raise a limit or argue with a human, and anyone whose main expense is buying things from another country.

Who will they actually give the card to

The official card page has a country selector, and it lists ten countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. That is the offer as the card states it, and it is a wider map than most crypto cards bother with. It is worth pausing on what it is not, though: the list does not cover the EU as a bloc beyond Spain and Denmark, and it does not cover most of Asia, Africa or Central Europe. If you live somewhere outside those ten, you are not choosing between plans — you are choosing whether the app works for you at all.

The more important caveat sits underneath the list. The card’s own material says conditions vary by country and by level of verification. I went looking for what that means concretely — which documents, which checks, which level unlocks what — and the public pages do not say. The verification levels are referred to, and their benefits and limits are said to vary, but the levels themselves are not described. So I can tell you that Argentina and Australia are both on the list, and I cannot tell you what the difference is in practice for someone in each. You would be finding that out during sign-up, not before it.

That gap matters more than it sounds, because limits and verification level are the same axis (see the cost section), and both are things that shape whether a card is usable for you at all.

Getting hold of it

The card page sells this hard: *“No paperwork, no waiting, no branches.”* Activation happens in the AstroPay app, in the AstroCard section, and the page says it is instant once the steps are done.

What documents that requires is not stated. I want to be plain about that rather than leave you guessing: the card’s public pages do not describe the identity checks, and I am not going to invent a list for you. What I can tell you is what is written — the checks are referred to, benefits and limits “vary by account verification level”, and anything that varies with verification is doing so because someone assessed something about you. Expect to be asked.

There are two cards, and which one you get is not a matter of preference:

• AstroCard — Mastercard, virtual.
• AstroCard Global — Visa, virtual.
• Physical card — shown as “coming soon” on the page in Spanish text, yet the help centre already has an article on a physical-card issuance fee for Argentina and Brazil. The fee exists; the card’s general availability does not read as settled.

The card currency is not stated. I checked for it, and for the reason it matters: what you are billed in, and whether you are being converted once or twice, is a large part of what the fees in the next section actually are.

Delivery: the physical card’s 5 USD fee in Argentina and Brazil covers production and shipping. Delivery time is not stated. Replacement cost is not stated. If you lose a card abroad, you are in undocumented territory.

Fees: what it really costs

This is where the 3 out of 10 comes from, and it is the section I would read twice.

The virtual card is free and, the page says, available in minutes. That is genuinely free — no issuance, no monthly fee, nothing on the public pages for a standing charge. If you only ever spend domestically on a virtual card, the cost story is short.

Everything else is where it turns.

• Purchase fee, international only. Local purchases carry no fee. International purchases do, and the rate depends on which card and which country: Argentina LOCAL card 3.5%, Argentina GLOBAL card 4% on every purchase, and 2.5% in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
• Crypto conversion. The card spends the wallet balance, and the page describes conversion at the “prevailing exchange rate at point of sale”. A cardholder on Infinite is told they get a better rate converting pesos or USDT into dollars; no figure is given.
• ATM. 1.5% per withdrawal in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and that rate applies to withdrawals in any country. A free allowance, if one exists, is not stated.
• Limits. Not published. The app shows daily, weekly and monthly limits, tied to your verification level and country.

The date on that Brazil figure is worth a sentence: the 2.5% was communicated on 30 July 2026 and took effect on 1 September 2026. If you signed up before that and priced the card on the old terms, the number you are holding is wrong.

Now the part that turns a fee table into a decision. Three everyday payments:

A coffee in your own country. No purchase fee. If you top the balance up and spend it without converting on the way, this is cheap and pleasant. This is the card at its best.

A subscription or an app billed from abroad. This is where it bites. 2.5% to 4% on a recurring charge, billed every month, forever, is a subscription fee you did not know you were paying. An online service that bills in a foreign currency will do this quietly. It is the single most common way I imagine people getting hurt by this card — not through one bad purchase, but through a dozen small ones they never itemised.

Cash from an ATM. 1.5%, on top of whatever the ATM operator charges, on top of any FX the ATM itself applies. The card’s own fee does not change, whether you withdraw in Argentina or in a country with a much worse exchange rate. That is a real cost for someone whose cash needs are in a currency they do not hold.

Two more things on limits, because they bite more often than fees do. The card page says plainly: “AstroCard limits cannot be manually increased in the app.” You can request an increase with a stated reason and amount, and approval is not guaranteed. And declines can depend on the per-transaction and daily limits tied to your verification level and country — which means a purchase can fail not because of your balance or your card, but because of a tier you cannot see and cannot raise.

How to top it up

The card spends the AstroPay wallet balance. In the app you opt in to convert your USDT balance into the currency of the transaction. That is the whole described mechanism: hold crypto in the wallet, let the card convert and spend it.

What I could not find is the part that matters most. The coins and networks used for deposit are not stated on the pages I read, and the dedicated top-up answer is not stated either. No coin list, no network list, no minimum, no confirmation time.

That is a bigger gap than it looks, and it links straight to how these things work in general. A stablecoin such as USDT exists on several chains — Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and others — and they are not interchangeable. Sending funds on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can lose the money outright; blockchain transfers are irreversible, and recovery then depends on manual support with no guarantee. A wallet holding USDT on Ethereum but no ETH cannot even send, because the network fee is paid only in ETH. On Tron, fees are met through bandwidth and energy, often by burning TRX. So the network question is not bookkeeping: it is the difference between a deposit that lands and one that does not.

Two further limits on top-ups worth knowing before you need them. Whether you can withdraw money from the card to a bank account is not stated for the card. And the card page is silent on blocked merchant categories — gambling, for instance, is blocked by many issuers by policy rather than by law, and the list varies by issuer — so I cannot tell you which shops will refuse you.

Paying with it every day

This is the 8 out of 10, and it is the reason the total isn’t lower.

• Two virtual cards, two networks. Mastercard as AstroCard, Visa as AstroCard Global. Having both is quietly useful: it means one being declined by a merchant is not automatically the end of the purchase.
• Mobile wallets work. The page says you can add your AstroCard to Apple Pay or Google Pay. In Apple Pay the card number is replaced by a device-specific number stored in the phone’s Secure Element, never on Apple’s servers, and each payment carries a one-time dynamic code.
• Apple Pay in Argentina and Brazil. The physical card exists in those two countries.
• Cash at 1.5%. Available in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
• Security controls. You can pause or freeze the card from the AstroCard section of the app. 3-D Secure prompts arrive as push notifications — the risk check behind your bank’s name, where the issuer either approves silently or challenges you with a code or a biometric. There is a lost-or-stolen reporting article in the help centre.
• Disputes are in the app. Transaction History, pick the transaction, then “Report a problem” or “Dispute transaction”. The amount may be held during the investigation and resolution times vary. Refunds typically run 15 to 30 business days after the merchant approves; for purchases made with an Argentina card, up to 15 days.

That dispute flow is worth a moment’s attention, because it is the part people use only when something goes wrong. A hold on your money while a case is open, with no stated maximum, is the shape of the experience.

There are also two-tier differences. Standard and Infinite. Infinite gives you the Global AstroCard, a better FX rate with a smaller spread, three free IBAN EUR transfers per 30 days and then 2.50 EUR, 4.75% cashback on the USD balance against 3.1% for standard users, the physical card at no cost, priority support, and four times the AstroPoints. It bills recurring and can be cancelled in the app; the price is not stated, only shown in the app. No card cashback is stated for the standard tier.

Two things the pages don’t settle. Whether a purchase counts as local or international is decided by the merchant’s country, not yours — so a shop you use every day billed through a foreign entity can be charged the international rate. And in Argentina there are two cards, LOCAL and GLOBAL, with different rates, which is a distinction you will only understand by reading the fee table above twice.

What can go wrong

The reliability mark is 6 out of 10, and most of that is about what sits behind the card rather than the card itself.

The company. Starting data names AP Global Corporation LLP / AstroPay Global (IOM) Limited, with USDT services through AP Digital (IOM) Limited. I did not re-verify those on the pages I read, and the issuing bank and licences are not stated. You are being asked to hand over money to a programme front-end whose issuing institution is not named on its public card pages.

The complaints. Trustpilot for AstroPay overall, read 21 October 2026: 4.0 “Great”, 9,657 reviews, 227 in the last 12 months, 22% one-star. Reviews from April to October 2026 mention frozen or delayed funds, restricted accounts, bot-only support, account lockouts, verification upload problems, withdrawal restrictions and virtual card declines. I found no official incidents to set against that. One report describes frozen funds lasting weeks to months. I am treating these as user reports from a third-party site, not confirmed by the card — but a 22% one-star share is not noise, and frozen money is the specific failure that would hurt you most.

Why freezes happen at all. This is not only the provider’s discretion. If due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to refrain from the transaction or relationship and, where necessary, to end existing relationships — which is exactly why accounts are closed or frozen pending documents. In the EU, customer due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documentation, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether you are politically exposed. In the US, the customer identification programme requires name, date of birth, address and an identification number, with electronic systems also validating proof of address. And nationality is screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as to your address. So a freeze is often the system working as designed. That does not make it less painful when your money is in it.

Support. There is a help centre, and Infinite gets priority support. Standard support is what the reviews describe as bot-only.

Safeguarding: not stated. I could not find a statement about how funds are held or protected, and that is worth asking about directly before you hold a large balance. The general rule in this sector is that electronic money institutions must safeguard customer funds by segregating them in dedicated accounts or insuring them — but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by deposit guarantee schemes. I am describing the category, not AstroCard’s arrangements, which it does not publish.

Programme risk. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers and can suspend a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Closures typically mean a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw remaining balances. In the EU, the relevant crypto framework is MiCA — Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, which ESMA says took legal effect in June 2023, with rules on stablecoins from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions including crypto-asset service provider rules from 30 December 2024. The transitional period lets providers already operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until a MiCA authorisation is granted or refused. A card, incidentally, is a payment service regulated separately; a crypto card often rests on two licences at once.

Declines and holds. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign cards because the BIN lookup reveals the card type and issuer country. Address verification is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines. And a declined authorisation may leave a hold that stays for several days, typically up to seven.

Taxes, briefly, not as advice. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local currency at the fair market value on the date of the transaction — which means each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. That is a fact about how the tax works, not advice about your position; take it to a professional.

What to take instead

I am not going to pretend there is an obvious winner here. The honest comparison is between three other options and their own gaps.

Whop Cards — 5.2 / 10, essentially level with AstroCard. Visa, accepted anywhere Visa is accepted. It reaches consumers in 31 US states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming) and businesses in 41 states. It explicitly does not support consumers in Belarus, China (Mainland), Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela or Vietnam; unsupported corporate countries include Russia and Belarus. The page says “No extra fees” with no amounts listed, and it spends a Whop balance with a pending balance usable as soon as a payment arrives, backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet. Cashback is 5% at select merchants, currently Uber. Fees, card currency and card type are not stated.

Stella — 6.5 / 10, the highest of the four. Virtual and physical, VISA, said to work at “over 40 million VISA merchants globally”. You deposit crypto and it automatically tops up the card from an in-app custodial wallet. Its terms bar users under economic sanctions programmes and route US and European users through affiliates. Countries are not stated, fees are not stated officially, and the card page states no cashback — its Earn product is a separate yield.

UniFi Card — 4.7 / 10. A prepaid debit Visa issued by Lead Bank, spending a USD balance, with Apple Pay support. You can receive funds via ACH, wire, SEPA or SPEI, and get paid to a USDC wallet. Its App Store listing claims 3% rewards on balances and shows send-money routes to the Philippines, Mexico and the eurozone, with recent release notes mentioning Colombia, Brazil (PIX) and the UK. Eligibility is not confirmed from official pages; fees are simply “may apply”.

The pattern worth naming: every one of these cards publishes its rewards more clearly than it publishes its fees. In this category, the cashback is the marketing and the fee is the fine print, and the fine print is where the money actually goes.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend AstroCard to someone who already keeps a balance in AstroPay and just wants a card to spend it from — someone in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Denmark, the UK, Canada, Australia, Colombia, Uruguay or the US who shops mostly locally, pays in person, and will set up the free virtual card rather than the Infinite tier they would have to price in the app first. To that person this is a reasonable, unremarkable convenience tool.

I would not recommend it as a first banking relationship, and I would not recommend it to anyone whose spending crosses borders. Four percent on every purchase on the Argentina GLOBAL card is not a rounding difference; on a monthly recurring charge it is a real, permanent cost with no visible line item. If your card spend is mostly foreign — subscriptions, SaaS tools, anything billed by an overseas merchant — this is the wrong instrument and the fee table tells you so plainly.

I would also hesitate for anyone who needs to move significant money or needs a human on the other end of the phone. Limits cannot be raised in the app, approval of an increase is not guaranteed, withdrawal arrangements for the card are not stated, and the user-reported pattern is frozen funds answered by a bot.

Check three things yourself, in this order, before you commit: what your verification level actually gives you in limits; which coins and networks you can deposit on; and what the withdrawal route is. All three are unstated on the public pages, all three shape whether the card works for you, and all three are things you can ask about in the app or the help centre before you load anything.

Frequently asked questions

What is AstroCard?

It is a payment card that spends the balance in your AstroPay wallet, rather than a bank account or a card linked to your current account. Two virtual versions exist: AstroCard on Mastercard and AstroCard Global on Visa, with a physical card in Argentina and Brazil. You top the wallet up, opt in to converting USDT into the currency of the transaction, and the card behaves like an ordinary prepaid card — which also means it can only spend what you have loaded.

Is AstroCard a bank?

No, and this is the most important thing to understand before you use it. It draws on a wallet balance, so it behaves like a prepaid card rather than a debit card connected to a bank account. The issuing bank and licences are not stated on the card’s public pages, and the company details I could verify are limited. Treat the balance you load as money held with a provider, not as a bank deposit.

Which countries can get AstroCard?

The official country selector lists Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. The card also says conditions vary by country and by level of verification, and those levels are not described in public material — so what you actually qualify for in your country is something you discover during sign-up rather than beforehand.

Does AstroCard require KYC?

The card’s public pages do not describe its identity checks; they only say no paperwork and instant activation once the steps are done in the app. They do say benefits and limits vary by account verification level, which means an assessment is happening somewhere behind that. If you need to know exactly which documents will be asked for, the only reliable answer will come from the app or the help centre.

How much does AstroCard cost?

The virtual card is free. The physical card costs 5 USD in Argentina and Brazil, non-refundable once created and shipped, and is free on Infinite. Beyond that, international purchases cost 2.5% in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, 3.5% on the Argentina LOCAL card and 4% on every purchase with the Argentina GLOBAL card, while local purchases carry no purchase fee.

What does an ATM withdrawal cost?

1.5% per withdrawal in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and that rate applies to withdrawals in any country. That sits on top of whatever fee the ATM operator charges and on top of any currency conversion the ATM applies itself. Whether there is a free allowance is not stated on the card’s pages.

How do I top up the AstroCard?

The card spends your AstroPay wallet balance, and in the app you opt in to convert your USDT balance into the currency of the transaction. What the card’s pages do not state is which coins and networks you can deposit on, which is the detail that decides whether your money arrives — sending on an unsupported network can lose it entirely, since blockchain transfers cannot be reversed.

Can I use AstroCard in Apple Pay?

Yes. The card page says you can add your AstroCard to Apple Pay or Google Pay, which is the easiest way to pay by phone if you would rather not carry the card. In Apple Pay the card number is replaced by a device-specific number stored in the phone’s Secure Element, never on Apple’s servers, and each payment generates a one-time security code.

Is AstroCard safe?

The card gives you the everyday controls — instant pause or freeze from the app, 3-D Secure prompts by push notification, and a lost-or-stolen reporting route. What I could not find is any statement about how funds are safeguarded, and that is not a small omission. In practice, the bigger risk sits with the provider rather than the card, and the user-reported pattern on Trustpilot includes frozen funds and bot-only support.

Is AstroCard worth it?

If you already hold an AstroPay balance and spend it locally, yes, the free virtual card is a sensible convenience. If your spending crosses borders, no: 2.5% to 4% on international purchases is a heavy, permanent cost, and it is applied per transaction without ever appearing as a line item. And if you need to move real money or reach a human, the limits cannot be raised in the app and the support picture gives me pause.

Content created by the «cryptocardselect» team