What the LinkPay crypto card actually offers in practice

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

LinkPay is a virtual-only crypto payment card that lets you spend a converted crypto balance at any merchant that accepts Visa or Mastercard, at least in theory. If you have ever tried to open a bank account and been turned away, or you want a card that doesn’t pull from a traditional bank, LinkPay positions itself as an alternative path. The product is real, the service runs, and there are several thousand users already. But the picture you get on the website is uneven: the fee numbers on the pricing page do not match the numbers in the Terms of Service, the issuer is not named, and the user feedback I could find is sharply negative. This review walks through who the card is for, what it really costs to use, how the top-up process works, what everyday spending looks like, and the complaints that keep coming up.

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

Verdict: 5.0 out of 10

LinkPay earns a middling score. The breadth of countries and the four-tier subscription model are genuine strengths, and the onboarding logic is reasonable: a no-kyc tier for very small spending, a Basic tier that unlocks more, and full verification for the heavy users. The card is virtual-only, the issuer behind the BIN is not disclosed, and the public fee tables contradict each other. Trustpilot sits at roughly 2 out of 5 from around 40 reviews, with recurring complaints about frozen cards and withdrawals stuck in “processing” for weeks. For an individual looking for a personal spending card, this is not a product I would push you toward. For an advertiser or agency that needs many disposable virtual cards and can tolerate some friction, the structure is at least workable.

The audience this product actually fits, in my reading, is non-Russian advertisers who run many ad accounts and need a steady supply of virtual cards, where the cost of a Plus or Pro subscription can be written off against media spend. If that isn’t you, the rest of this review explains where the rough edges are.

Who will they give you the card

The headline fact on eligibility is geographic reach. Unofficial sources put the available count at 168 countries with 28 restricted, which is a wide net for a product without a traditional banking licence. The official side of the company tells a narrower story. LinkPay publishes a “Certain Countries” page that lists 27 jurisdictions where the service is not provided, including the Russian Federation, Belarus, Hong Kong, the United States, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea, and the page warns that this list is “not exhaustive.” The Terms of Service bar residents and citizens of those listed countries from opening accounts, and add a specific carve-out: US citizens, US permanent residents and US entities cannot open accounts regardless of where they live.

The language matters here. If you are a citizen of a country like Russia living in a permitted jurisdiction, the Terms may still exclude you, because citizenship, not just residence, is screened. That is standard practice for cards backed by programme managers with US-touching banking, but it means the 168-country figure overstates your real chances if you hold a passport from one of the listed states. Unofficial reporting notes that China is shown on the availability map but does not appear in the body text, which is the kind of small inconsistency worth flagging if your situation depends on it.

For everyone else, the entry barrier is low in practice. You can sign up and receive a limited card without any documents at all, which is a feature for some users and a red flag for others.

How to get it

The signup flow is built around verification levels, and the level you reach controls how much you can spend and which cards you can use. LinkPay does not display the Anti-Money-Laundering policy directly on the signup page, so the detail of what is required at each tier is not public, but the limits and the documents requested are clear from the rest of the site.

The first level is “No verification,” which caps monthly spend at $500 and limits you to advertising cards only. The second is “Basic” verification, which raises the cap to $2,000 per month, unlocks all cards except the Apple Pay and Google Pay options, and requires your full name, address and ID details. The third is the unlimited tier, with no spend cap and no restriction on card type, and it requires a valid ID photo and a live check. The company says verification is generally completed within 24 hours, but it can take longer; rejected documents can be sent to manual review, and the official list of rejection reasons is short, so the edge cases are not predictable from the outside.

The card itself, once you are in, is virtual. The marketing line is “Virtual card for all purchases,” and there is no physical card on offer. The card network and the card’s currency are not stated on the public page, though unofficial sources say cards are issued on Visa or Mastercard networks. For a virtual-only product, that ambiguity about the network is unusual and worth a question to support before you commit to a subscription.

There is no delivery step, because there is no plastic to ship. Once issued, the card details are visible in the dashboard and can be used for online purchases straight away. Activation works through a small top-up, and the dashboard shows an activation minimum, usually around $15, before a card will be issued. If the top-up is below the minimum, the issuance fails, which is a small but useful piece of feedback that prevents you from burning time on a card that cannot be used.

What it really costs: Fees and the contradictions in the numbers

LinkPay runs on four subscription tiers, and the right tier depends entirely on how many cards you need and how much you spend through them. The home page and the Terms of Service do not agree on every number, so I am laying both out below, and I would treat whichever you see in the live dashboard as the one that applies to your account.

That table reflects what the home page shows. The Terms of Service tell a different story on several points. Per the Terms, the free-card allocation is 0 / 5 / 15 / 100 across the four plans rather than 0 / 5 / 15 / 79, team members are capped at 3 / 5 / 20 / 50, and merchant accounts at 1 / 1 / 2 / 3. The decline fee is listed as 0.5% / 0.5% / 0.3% / free rather than 2% / 1.5% / 1% / 1%, the deposit fee as 1% / 0.75% / 0.5% / free rather than 1% / 0.75% / free / free, and the withdrawal fee as “free on all plans” rather than 3% / 3% / 2% / 1%. The Terms also list the Ultra plan as $299/month with 2% cashback and 100 free cards, while the home page shows $209, 79 free cards and 2% cashback.

The contradictions are not subtle. For a paying subscriber, the difference between a 1% decline fee and a 2% decline fee is not academic, and the difference between a 3% withdrawal fee and a free withdrawal is the kind of detail you only notice after the fact. I would not sign a long-term subscription on these numbers without an explicit answer from support, in writing, on which table applies to your account.

To make this concrete, three everyday payments:

A $50 subscription on the Lite plan. Payment fee: 2% with a $2 minimum, so $2, and the deposit fee of 1% is already in the funding step. Total in fees: at least $2.50 to spend $50, on top of the cost of the crypto you converted.

A $300 online purchase on the Plus plan. Payment fee: 1.5% with a $1 minimum, so $4.50, on top of the deposit fee of 0.75% when the money came in. If the transaction is declined and retried, the decline fee is 1.5% per the home page, or 0.5% per the Terms.

A $2,000 media spend on the Pro plan, which is the unlimited-verification threshold. Payment fee: 1%, so $20, with no deposit fee and a 2% withdrawal fee if you later move the balance out. On a $2,000 month, the Pro subscription at $179 starts to look small relative to the running fees, which is the break-even the pricing is designed around.

The cashback structure is part of the cost picture. Per the home page, cashback is 0% on Lite, 0% on Plus, 1% on Pro and 2% on Ultra, with the cap per billing cycle listed in the Terms as $179 for Pro and $299 for Ultra. The home page says “2% cashback for all payments” on the Ultra plan, and the Terms put Ultra at 3% with a $299 cap, which is another mismatch to be aware of. The currency of the cashback payout is not stated, and cashback cannot be withdrawn to a bank, which means it lands back in the in-app wallet.

ATM access is not available. The card is virtual, so there is no cash withdrawal use case to price in.

How to top it up

Topping up LinkPay starts with a transfer to the right network, and the only way to add money is in crypto. The home page says deposit options cover “7+ digital currencies,” and the specific coins and networks are not named on the public material. Unofficial sources name BTC and USDT, and mention TRC20 and BTC networks. The Terms mention confirmations of 20 for TRC20 and from 4 for BTC, which lines up with the unofficial picture, but I would not commit funds without confirming the supported coins and networks in your dashboard before sending.

The mechanics, once you know the network, are standard. You send crypto to a generated address, the platform waits for the confirmations, and the deposit is credited to your in-app wallet. The dashboard shows an activation minimum before a card will be issued, usually around $15, and the Terms say a top-up below that minimum causes the issuance to fail. The activation minimum is small enough to be a non-issue, but it is worth knowing if you are funding the account to test the service.

The fee on the deposit side depends on the plan, and it is one of the numbers that the home page and the Terms disagree on. Per the home page, deposit fees are 1% on Lite, 0.75% on Plus and free on Pro and Ultra. Per the Terms, the figures are 1% on Lite, 0.75% on Plus, 0.5% on Pro and free on Ultra. The deposit fee is paid on top of the on-chain network fee for the transfer itself, and the network fee is charged by the blockchain, not by LinkPay. Who pays the network fee on the receiving side is not stated, so a small test transaction is the only way to know in advance.

Fiat top-up and on-ramp options are “planned,” which is the language the company uses for features that are not yet live. If you do not already hold crypto, LinkPay is not a self-contained path from your bank account to a card. You would need to acquire the crypto elsewhere, then transfer it in.

There is no card-to-card or bank-to-card funding, and the platform does not support direct withdrawals from your LinkPay card back to itself. Withdrawals go through the wallet, and the Terms say the processing window is “during 10 working days,” with the fee being free on all plans per the Terms, or 3% / 3% / 2% / 1% per the home page. Either way, getting money back out is a deliberate, slow step rather than something you do in a single click.

Paying with it every day

Once a card is in your wallet, the everyday use case is straightforward: you enter the card details at a merchant, and the platform converts your crypto balance to fiat at the moment of payment. The cards are described as “for all purchases,” and unofficial sources put them on Visa or Mastercard, so in principle any online merchant that takes those networks should work. In practice, two things limit where you can use the card.

First, mobile wallets are not live yet. Apple Pay and Google Pay are described in the eWallet section as “in final integration, will be available soon,” and the FAQ uses the same language. The unofficial reporting I saw contradicts itself on this point, with one page saying selected virtual cards can already be added and the FAQ still saying “coming soon.” Either way, until you have seen a working add-to-wallet flow in your own account, plan to type the card number in at checkout. The Basic verification tier, which is the realistic tier for most individual users, explicitly excludes Apple Pay and Google Pay access.

Second, blocked merchant categories are not stated on the public pages. Many card issuers block gambling merchants (MCC 7995), crypto purchases, cash advances and similar categories by policy rather than by law, and the blocked list varies by issuer. LinkPay does not publish its blocked MCCs on the public website, so the only way to know whether a specific merchant will accept the card is to try.

The cashback structure is the upside. On the Pro plan, you get 1% cashback per billing cycle, capped at $179, and on Ultra 2% (or 3% per the Terms), capped at $299. On the Lite and Plus plans, cashback is 0%, which is one of the reasons those tiers are positioned for low-volume users. The cashback is paid in the same currency as the underlying card, and it lands in your in-app wallet rather than as a statement credit.

Failed transactions are common enough that the platform spells out what happens. A pending authorization that fails returns the funds in 5 to 10 minutes, which is the most common case. Merchant refunds usually take up to 4 weeks. Holds, the kind that ad platforms place on a card before charging it, typically clear in 10 to 14 days. Unverified card top-ups are auto-cancelled and refunded in 2 to 14 business days, while verified card top-ups are non-refundable, which is an important asymmetry. The cardholder is responsible for chargebacks and disputed transactions, and the complaint review window is 30 days, though no formal chargeback process is described in the FAQ.

The mobile app is available on the App Store and Google Play, with a direct .APK option for users who prefer to install outside the stores. App ratings are not shown on the site. The platform supports English in its support channels and offers a Telegram bot, an email address and a live chat on the website, which is a reasonable spread of contact points for a product of this size.

What can go wrong

The reliability picture is the part of the review I would weight most heavily if I were making the decision. The product works, but the user feedback on independent review sites is sharply negative, and the underlying structure of the business has a few weak points that are worth understanding before you put money in.

The most common complaints cluster into three patterns. The first is cards being frozen before a transaction, with reports that the card was only unfrozen after the user bought a paid plan. That is a specific allegation, and it is hard to evaluate without seeing the underlying tickets, but it is the kind of pattern that should make you cautious about paying for a subscription before you have a real transaction to test with. The second is withdrawals stuck in “processing” for 4 weeks or longer. The Terms say withdrawals are processed “during 10 working days,” so a 4-week wait is a clear miss against the published window, and it is exactly the kind of issue that pushes a reviewer toward a lower score. The third is multi-month waits to issue a card in the first place, which is reported in at least one user account.

The company-level facts are part of the context. LinkPay is registered in Richmond, British Columbia, and the parent entity holds an MSB (Money Services Business) registration in Canada under number M23039048. The card issuer and BIN sponsor are not stated on the public pages, which is unusual for a card product; most providers will name the issuing bank or e-money institution, even if the underlying licence is held by a partner. Unofficial reporting cites a third-party note from a competitor site that LinkPay’s banking partner had issues that froze cards and withdrawals during a move to a new partner, with waits of three months. That source is a competitor and should be read with caution, but it is consistent with the user-side complaints.

On Trustpilot, the company has a score of about 2 out of 5 from roughly 40 reviews, and CryptoCardHub reports a score of 2.3 from 44 reviews. A score of about 4.7 is shown from ten reviews, with the caveat that some were collected via vendor invitation. The pattern in the negative reviews is consistent: long waits, frozen balances, slow and repetitive support. The company’s responses tend to cite security protocols or insufficient verification, which is the kind of answer that is technically defensible but does not solve the user’s problem.

The custody model is the structural risk. LinkPay is custodial, meaning your balance is held in an in-app wallet that the platform controls. The Terms give the platform the right to suspend all wallets without notice if it suspects a violation, and to freeze funds during an investigation. There is no insurance stated. Account lockout triggers after 3 failed login attempts, which is a normal security setting but worth knowing if you are not careful with your password. The platform shows GDPR, ISO and PCI DSS badges, which signal compliance work but are not a guarantee against loss; the custodial risk is a property of the model, not a badge.

The freeze and unfreeze controls for the card are only available on subscription plans, not on the free Lite tier, which means the entry-level user has less control over a frozen card than a paying customer. That is a reasonable product choice from the company’s perspective and a real limitation from yours.

What to take instead

If LinkPay is not the right fit, three alternatives cover different parts of the same use case. I am presenting them on the same axes I used for LinkPay, where I have the data, so you can compare directly.

Cardex has the broadest country list and supports four card networks including UnionPay, which can be useful in regions where Visa and Mastercard are harder to use. The conversion is described as AI-powered, scanning global rates at the moment of payment, and no fee percentage is published. The App Store listing is Naira-focused, which is worth knowing if your spending is in another currency.

TakeCard is the strongest fit if you are in Latin America and can work within its country coverage. The pricing is straightforward: $5 for a virtual card, $20 issuance plus $20 shipping for the physical, no monthly fee, 1% per purchase and a 1:1 USD pricing model. The crypto funding path is through the Takenos balance, and the article names USDC and USDT over Polygon, BNB Chain, Tron and Ethereum, though that detail is not from a page I could fully verify.

OkiCard has the cleanest fee structure of the three: no issuance, no monthly fee, a 3% load fee and 0% transaction fee in USD. The trade-off is that you fund it with USDT on specific networks (BSC, Ethereum, Tron or Solana), the initial deposit is 100 USDT, and the underlying bank or issuer is not disclosed in the same way. The card currency is pegged to USD or EUR.

If your priority is country coverage and a real issuing bank behind the card, none of these three are clearly better than LinkPay on that axis, and the same caveat applies to all of them: the issuer and the underlying licence are not always transparent. If your priority is fee predictability, OkiCard’s flat structure is the easiest to model, and TakeCard’s 1% is close behind. If your priority is a card that actually works on Apple Pay today, none of the four options above will get you there, and you may need to look at more established programmes.

Who I would recommend it to

Putting the moving pieces together, the user LinkPay serves best is the one whose use case lines up with the product’s design. That is an advertiser or small agency that runs many ad accounts, needs a steady supply of disposable virtual cards, and can absorb the friction of a virtual-only product with no mobile wallet integration. For that user, the Plus or Pro subscription starts to look reasonable, the lack of physical cards is not a limitation, and the freeze and unfreeze controls being paywalled is not a concern because the user is paying for a plan anyway.

For an individual looking for a personal spending card, I would not recommend it. The fee structure is hard to predict because the home page and the Terms do not agree, the issuer is not named, the Trustpilot score is low and the recurring complaint about frozen balances is the kind of issue that turns a small inconvenience into a serious loss of trust. The product is real and the service runs, but the risk profile is higher than the alternatives in the same category, and there is no clear upside over a cleaner competitor.

The other hard “no” is a resident or citizen of one of the 27 listed countries, which includes the United States, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. The Terms are explicit that citizenship, not just residence, is screened, so this is not a gap you can work around by signing up while travelling.

If you do decide to try it, my suggestion is to start at the Basic verification level rather than the no-kyc tier, to do a small test transaction before paying for any subscription, and to write to support before paying to confirm which fee table applies to your account. None of those steps remove the underlying risk, but they reduce the chance of being surprised by it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the LinkPay card?

The LinkPay card is a virtual payment card that lets you spend a converted cryptocurrency balance at online merchants. It is sold as a service, not a bank account, and it runs on Visa or Mastercard networks according to unofficial sources. The card is virtual-only, with no plastic issued.

How does the LinkPay card work?

You fund an in-app wallet with crypto, the platform converts the balance to fiat at the moment of payment, and the card spends that converted balance at checkout. The conversion rate and any fees depend on the subscription tier you are on. The card is custodial, which means the platform holds the underlying funds in its wallet rather than connecting to your own self-custody wallet.

Is LinkPay a bank?

No. LinkPay is registered as a Money Services Business in Canada under number M23039048, with a registered address in Richmond, British Columbia. The company has not publicly named the bank or e-money institution that issues the card and holds the BIN, which is a different setup from a card programme run by a regulated bank.

Who owns LinkPay?

The public-facing entity is the company registered in Richmond, BC. The ownership structure beyond that is not disclosed, and the issuer or BIN sponsor is also not named on the public pages.

Is the LinkPay card available in my country?

Unofficial sources say it is available in 168 countries with 28 restricted, but the official list of excluded countries is what the Terms enforce. The list includes the Russian Federation, Belarus, Hong Kong, the United States, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea, and the Terms say the list is not exhaustive. US citizens, permanent residents and US entities are excluded regardless of where they live.

How do I get a LinkPay card?

You sign up on the website, choose a verification level and top up the in-app wallet to at least the activation minimum (around $15) before a card is issued. Verification is usually completed within 24 hours, but it can take longer if documents are rejected and sent to manual review.

Does the LinkPay card require KYC?

The platform supports three levels: no verification, Basic and unlimited. The no-verification tier caps monthly spend at $500 and limits you to advertising cards. Basic verification requires your full name, address and ID details and raises the cap to $2,000 per month. The unlimited tier requires a valid ID photo and a live check, with no spend cap. The Anti-Money-Laundering policy is linked but not displayed on the public pages.

How do I top up the LinkPay card?

You send crypto from an external wallet to a deposit address generated in your dashboard. The supported coins and networks are not all named on the public pages; unofficial sources mention BTC and USDT, with TRC20 and BTC networks. The activation minimum is around $15, and a top-up below that minimum will not result in a card being issued. Fiat top-up and on-ramp options are described as “planned.”

How do I add the LinkPay card to Apple Pay or Google Pay?

As of the material I read, Apple Pay and Google Pay are described as “in final integration, will be available soon,” and the Basic verification tier is explicitly excluded from the mobile wallet features. Unofficial reporting is inconsistent, with one page saying selected cards can already be added and the FAQ still saying “coming soon.” The safe assumption is that mobile wallet support is not live for most users.

Is the LinkPay card safe to use?

The platform shows GDPR, ISO and PCI DSS compliance badges and supports standard 2FA and account lockout after 3 failed login attempts. The structural risk is that the wallet is custodial, the Terms allow the platform to suspend wallets and freeze funds during an investigation, and no insurance is stated. Independent review sites show a Trustpilot score of around 2 out of 5, with recurring complaints about frozen cards and withdrawals stuck in “processing” for weeks. Safety is a property of both the technical safeguards and the operating track record, and on the second axis the public feedback is negative.

Content created by the «cryptocardselect» team