A cheap way to spend crypto, with numbers that disagree and a low trust score

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you have trouble getting an ordinary bank card where you live, a crypto card looks like a practical way to keep spending: you load money from a crypto balance, and a card number turns it into purchases at ordinary shops. LinkPay is one of the services built for exactly that, and on paper it is cheap — the entry plan has no monthly fee at all. That is the appeal, and it is real.

It is also where the problems start. When I went through LinkPay’s own pages and its terms of service line by line, the same fee appears at two different values in two places, the top plan is priced two different ways, and the public pages do not say who issues the card. Users on Trustpilot rate it 2 out of 5 from around 39 to 40 reviews, with card freezes and withdrawals stuck in processing for weeks appearing repeatedly. For someone whose fallback is spending their last balance, that combination is the deciding factor, not the headline number.

So this page is written for the person who has no ordinary card and is weighing LinkPay against other crypto cards. Below I walk through who gets one, what it costs at the till, how you load it, what can go wrong, and three alternatives worth comparing. If you just want the number, it is 5 out of 10. If you want to know whether the low fee will still be the thing that matters when the money is stuck, keep reading.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 5 out of 10, and the weaknesses are not cosmetic

LinkPay scores 5.0 out of 10 in my assessment. That is not a rounding of a good card with a bad launch — it is a service with genuinely attractive pricing attached to genuinely weak evidence about whether the money comes back when you need it.

Here is how the score breaks down.

The two ends of that table are the story. Eligibility is unusually wide — that is exactly the person this service is built for. But daily usefulness is the weakest category here, because there is no physical card and the mobile wallets are not live.

Who it suits: someone in a country where a normal bank card is hard to get, who already holds crypto, and who mainly pays online at merchants that accept a virtual card. The Lite plan’s zero monthly fee matters a great deal to that person, and the free cards each month on the paid plans add real value if you are running advertising accounts.

Who it does not suit: anyone who needs a physical card, wants to withdraw cash at an ATM, needs Apple Pay or Google Pay today, or is putting their last funds through a provider whose own pages disagree on what it charges. It is also a poor fit if you plan to hold a balance for weeks — that is precisely the situation the complaints describe.

One audience the service clearly courts is non-Russian advertisers who need many virtual cards at once, with team members and merchant accounts on the higher plans. If that is you, the tier numbers in the cost section are the part to read twice, including the discrepancy.

Will they give you the card

The official answer is: from a very wide list of countries, and no from 27 of them.

The public pages do not spell out the full eligibility list. They link to a page called “Certain Countries” that I did not read, so treat what follows as the summary the terms themselves carry.

The terms bar residents and citizens of the listed countries. The list of 27 includes the Russian Federation and Belarus, and also Hong Kong, the United States, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. The card’s own wording says the list is not exhaustive, which means more places can be refused than those named. Separately, US citizens, permanent residents and US entities cannot open accounts at all.

Note the second half of that rule, because it is the part people miss. It is not about where you live. A US citizen living in Mexico is excluded by citizenship; a citizen of an allowed country living in the United States faces the address rule.

Unofficial figures, not confirmed by the card, put availability at 168 countries with 28 restricted. That third-party count also flags Russia as restricted, and notes China appears on the map but not in the body text. Treat the 168 number as an outside estimate; the 27-country exclusion is the official statement.

What the card does not state is anything about your industry, your employer, or your other accounts. Those judgements, when they happen, appear to arrive later — see the risks section.

How to get it

You download the app, create a wallet, and pass one of three verification levels. That third point is the one that surprises people: this card is not “no KYC” in the everyday sense, it is a tiered ladder where each step raises what you can spend.

The three levels, as the card publishes them:

• No verification — $500 a month, and cards limited to advertising use only.
• Basic — $2,000 a month, all cards except Apple and Google Pay; needs full name, address and ID details.
• Unlimited — no spending or card-type limits; needs a valid ID photo and a live check.

The card says verification is generally completed within 24 hours, but can take longer. Rejected documents can be routed to a manual review, and the only official reason given for rejection is “valid documents with clear photos”.

Two things are worth pausing on. First, at Basic you still cannot use the mobile wallets, so the level that unlocks real card utility is the third one, which requires the live check. Second, what exactly counts as verification is not stated on the page — it links to an Anti Money Laundering page whose content I did not read. If the reason you want this card is to avoid handing over documents, check that page yourself before you rely on the Lite plan being enough.

On the card itself: the page advertises a “Virtual card for all purchases” and does not offer a physical one. An unofficial source, CryptoCardHub on 11 August 2026, says the cards run on Visa or Mastercard networks. The card’s own public pages do not name the network, the card currency, or who issues it.

What it really costs

This is the section I would print and take to a café, because the numbers are not stable.

The homepage and the Terms of Service publish different figures for the same fees. I am not going to pick a winner — you should assume the higher number is the one that can land on your statement until the company says otherwise in writing.

Take two rows from that table seriously, because they are the ones that change what a purchase actually costs you.

The withdrawal fee is the big one. The homepage charges 3% with a $5 minimum on Lite and Plus, falling to 1% with a $1 minimum on Ultra. The terms say withdrawal is free on every plan. Getting money out is precisely the operation you will want when something goes wrong, so this is not a rounding difference — it is the difference between closing an account cheaply and paying five dollars to do it.

The per-card issue price on Lite is not stated at all. Lite includes zero free cards per month, so the price of your first card on the free plan is simply unknown from the public pages. If you are going to try this card at all, that is the first number to ask for, because it is the number the free plan hinges on.

The Ultra discrepancy is worth spelling out too. The homepage prices Ultra at $209 a month with 79 free cards and 2% cashback. The Terms of Service price Ultra at $299 a month, give it 100 free cards, and put its cashback cap at $299 per billing cycle against $179 for Pro — while the homepage cashback figure for Ultra is 2% against Pro’s 1%. Same plan, four different numbers.

The card currency is not stated either. The FAQ says USD cards are “planned to release soon” and names no other currency, and no FX fee is published. For someone spending outside the dollar zone, that means the cost of a foreign purchase is genuinely unknown before you make it.

Limits, for completeness: there are no spend limits on the page itself, monthly spend is governed by your verification tier as above, and users with more than 100 cards can request custom limits through support. No ATM fees exist, because there are no physical cards — though an unofficial source, CryptoCardHub on 11 August 2026, states directly that no ATM and no physical card are available.

Three ordinary payments

Concretely, at the free Lite plan, where the transaction fee is 2% with a $2 minimum:

• A $4.50 coffee. The fee is the 2% floor, $2, so you pay $6.50 of value for a $4.50 purchase. Small payments are where the minimum bites hardest: under $100 of spending, the 2% never clears the floor.
• A $120 train ticket. Fee $2.40, total $122.40, plus whatever the merchant adds for a foreign-issued virtual card — and declines are charged too, at 2% on the homepage or 0.5% in the terms.
• Getting $200 back out. Homepage fee 3% with a $5 minimum, so $6. Terms say free. That single row is the clearest example of why I would not deposit more than I need to spend.

Top up methods

Crypto only, and that constraint is the card’s own plan rather than a temporary gap.

The homepage advertises deposit options for 7+ digital currencies without naming any of them, and an unofficial source names Bitcoin and USDT while stating there is no bank transfer. The terms describe fiat and on-ramp as “planned”.

The mechanics of a top-up are worth understanding, because this is where money most easily disappears:

• A minimum you must clear. The dashboard shows the activation minimum before issuance, “usually around $15”. Send less and the card is not issued.
• Confirmations are not equal. Twenty confirmations are needed on TRC20, four or more on Bitcoin. A transfer that feels finished is not always credited yet.
• The network must match. Blockchain transfers are irreversible. Money sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost outright or need manual recovery with no guarantee attached. One detail that catches people: USDC is not natively available on Tron, since Circle stopped supporting it there in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a route into this or any similar card.
• Who pays the network fee is not stated. The on-chain gas or bandwidth cost for your deposit is charged by the blockchain rather than the card provider, and the card does not say whether it passes that on or absorbs it.

Two further rules from the terms that are easy to miss. Deposits come from your Wallet, and withdrawals cannot go directly to a LinkPay card. Internal transfers between users work by recipient email.

Paying with it every day

Day-to-day use is where this card is weakest, and the score of 2 out of 10 comes from three facts rather than one.

There is no physical card, so anything that needs a plastic card in a reader is out. There is no ATM. And the mobile wallets are not available: the card says Apple Pay and Google Pay are in “final integration, will be available soon”. That promise conflicts with itself across sources — an unofficial note from CryptoCardHub on 11 August 2026 points out that one page says selected virtual cards can be added to an e-wallet while the FAQ says “coming soon”. Where the card’s own pages contradict each other on a feature, the conservative reading is the one to plan around.

The apps are available on the App Store, Google Play and as a direct .APK. No ratings are shown on the site itself.

Cashback is 0% on Lite and Plus, 1% on Pro and 2% on Ultra, though a headline on the site promises “2% cashback for all payments” and does not say what currency it is paid in. Note again that the terms put Ultra’s cap at $299 per billing cycle.

Then there are the timing rules, which matter more to a daily spender than any fee:

• A failed transaction that left a pending authorisation returns within 5 to 10 minutes.
• Merchant refunds usually arrive within four weeks.
• Holds — ad platforms are the usual example — usually sit for 10 to 14 days.
• Top-ups to an unverified card are auto-cancelled with refunds in 2 to 14 business days; top-ups to a verified card are non-refundable.
• You are responsible for chargebacks and disputed transactions, and the card describes no chargeback process in its FAQ.
• Complaints are reviewed within 30 days.

That combination is the everyday-use problem in miniature: small amounts return fast, large amounts can be held for two weeks, and money you put onto a verified card does not come back at all.

What can go wrong

I want to be plain here, because this is the part that decides the recommendation.

The card’s public pages do not say who the issuer or BIN sponsor is. What is stated: LinkPay is registered at Richmond, BC, Canada, with MSB registration M23039048. An MSB registration is a money-transmitting registration under US rules — it is not a banking licence and it is not the same as the licence an issuing bank holds. The company itself has not published anything further about its status, and the only third-party account of partner trouble comes from Halocard, a competitor, with no date shown.

The user record is the more useful evidence:

• Trustpilot: 2 out of 5 from around 39 to 40 reviews.
• Cards frozen before a transaction, reportedly unfrozen only after buying a paid plan.
• Withdrawals stuck in “processing” for more than four weeks.
• Waits of months to receive a card.
• The company’s replies cite security protocols and insufficient verification.

Trustpilot shows about 2.3 out of 5 from 44 reviews, and other review platforms show about 4.7 out of 5 from ten reviews — some of which came via vendor invitation — while support is often described as slow and repetitive.

Three structural risks sit underneath the complaints:

• The balance is custodial. Crypto in the Wallet is held by the provider. The terms let the Administrator suspend all wallets without notice on suspicion of violation, and funds can be frozen during an investigation. Control of the money belongs to whoever holds the keys, and here that is not you.
• Freezing is a subscription feature. Freeze and unfreeze only exist on subscription or custom plans. On Lite you cannot lock a card from the app at all.
• No insurance is stated. Badges for GDPR, ISO and PCI DSS appear on the site; these are compliance marks, not a promise that your balance is protected if something fails.

The failure history of this category is not reassuring either, and it is not specific to this card: Mt. Gox (about $350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (about $400 million, 2018) and the Ronin Network ($625 million, 2022) are all custodial failures. Card programmes themselves have been switched off — WaveCrest was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes, and Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022, after which the FTX US debit card was wound down.

There is one concrete, single-source example of a 2026 programme closing that I would treat as a pattern rather than a fact: new loads ended 8 July 2026 and spending stopped 8 August 2026, according to one unconfirmed secondary source. The sequence is the part to understand, because it is the sequence you would face too: loading stops first, spending stops next, and only then are you asked to withdraw what is left.

Two smaller risks worth your attention. Declined authorisations can leave holds on funds for several days, typically up to seven, and you may be charged the decline fee in the meantime. And because merchants can look up the card’s issuing country and BIN, a virtual card from a different country than your billing address may attract extra scrutiny or be declined outright — prepaid and foreign-issued cards are refused by some merchants as a category, not because of anything you did.

Alternatives to compare

If the reason you are here is no ordinary bank card, you are not short of options. These three scored better than LinkPay in my assessment, and each fails in a different way — which is the point of comparing them.

Kemy — 6.0 out of 10

The most complete everyday offering here, and the most expensive to hold physically.

• Eligibility: 190+ countries, with “a few restrictions apply” and eligibility checked at sign-up.
• Cards: unlimited virtual cards (Visa shown) plus one physical Mastercard with contactless, one card per user, valid three years.
• Pricing: virtual $15 issuance and $2/month; physical $250 issuance with DHL Express included and $10/month. No separate consumer and business pricing.
• Fees: virtual top-up $1.5 under $100 or 1.25% from $100 (minimum $5), transaction fee 3.5% plus $1, failed transaction $0.8. Physical carries the same top-up with a $10 minimum and the same $0.80 failure fee. No FX fee listed. The main-account deposit fee appears as 8% in a summary and 5% in a section — an internal conflict of the same kind as LinkPay’s.
• Funding: USDT and USDC on the main networks, plus BTC, ETH and SOL through an on/off ramp, and fiat through mobile money and virtual bank accounts.
• Cashback: not mentioned.

Kemy’s 3.5% plus $1 transaction fee is well above LinkPay’s 2% floor, but it is the only one of these four with a card you can hold.

Bitrefill — 6.8 out of 10

The highest-scoring option, and the one with the broadest funding routes.

• Eligibility: no country list published; the terms say access is “subject to eligibility criteria” set and verified by its partners.
• Cards: virtual and physical Visa, with the currency implied as EUR by terms that describe crypto converted into euros.
• Cost: the page says the card is free through the app; issuance and monthly amounts are not stated. An inactivity fee applies after 12 months without spending or cash-out, amount not stated.
• Fees: a deposit spread on crypto-to-euro conversion (percentage not stated), SEPA pay-in fee 1.99%, spreads added by payment processors and ATM operators, FX fee not stated.
• Funding: the card page lists Bitcoin, Lightning, Ethereum, USDC, USDT, Solana, BASE, Polygon, Li.Finance, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa and Mastercard, plus SEPA transfers per the terms. Not every entry is explicitly a card funding route.
• Cashback: 2% total, uncapped — 1% on each crypto deposit and 1% on each purchase, payout currency not stated on the page.

Bitrefill is the one to look at first if your priority is being able to load without touching a blockchain.

UPay — 6.1 out of 10

The broadest stated reach, and the vaguest about money.

• Eligibility: no country list; the page says UPay does not serve residents of certain countries and that the list may change with regulatory or issuer policy, while claiming support in 180+ countries. Its KYC partner accepts only ID documents issued by the same country as the user — a real constraint for anyone whose documents and residence do not match.
• Cards: virtual and physical, personal and business, network not named, payments convert to USD, EUR, AED and others.
• Cost and fees: not stated. The card page says conversion may occur during payment depending on network and settlement.
• Funding: wallet top-up with BTC, ETH or USDT, with USDC also listed; networks not stated.
• Cashback: none stated on the card page.

Read UPay carefully rather than quickly — “not stated” appears more often in its published material than in any of the others.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend LinkPay to someone specific, and I would not recommend it to everyone else.

Recommend it if you are in one of the large number of countries where it is available and where an ordinary card is hard to obtain; you already hold crypto and are comfortable sending an on-chain transfer to an address; you mostly pay online at merchants known to accept virtual cards; and you keep only a working balance there rather than savings. For that person the free Lite plan and the 9 out of 10 for eligibility are a genuine, practical fit — and running several advertising cards is exactly the use the higher tiers are priced for.

Do not recommend it if any of the following is true: you need a physical card, you need cash from an ATM, you need Apple Pay or Google Pay now, you would be depositing money you cannot afford to have frozen for weeks, or you are the kind of person who will not rest until a withdrawal completes. On the last point, read the reviews first — 2 out of 5 on Trustpilot with four-week withdrawal complaints is not a rounding error, and the two figures published for that page do not even agree.

Before you send anything, I would ask support three questions in writing and keep the answers: what does the first card cost on Lite, what withdrawal fee will actually be charged to my account, and which currency will my card be in. The public pages answer none of these consistently, and a written answer is the only version that helps you later.

And one thing worth saying plainly, because it applies whatever card you pick: every payment funded from crypto is a disposal for tax purposes in many systems, with the gain measured in local currency at the value on the date of the transaction. I am not advising you on what you owe — I am flagging that a few hundred small card payments can add up to a set of records worth keeping.

Frequently asked questions

What is the LinkPay card?

LinkPay is a service that turns a crypto balance into a virtual payment card. You deposit supported digital currencies, and the balance is loaded as spendable value on a card you can use online. The company is registered in Richmond, BC, Canada, with MSB registration M23039048. The card’s public pages do not name the issuing bank or BIN sponsor.

Is LinkPay a bank?

No — it does not present itself as one. What is published is a Canadian MSB registration, which is a money-transmitting registration, not a banking licence and not an issuing-bank licence. The issuer behind the card is not named on the public pages. That gap matters if you assume deposit protection, because no insurance is stated.

How much does LinkPay cost to use?

On the free Lite plan the transaction fee is 2% with a $2 minimum, so small purchases pay the minimum rather than the percentage. Paid plans run $59, $179 and $209 a month according to the homepage, with the terms listing Ultra at $299 instead. Decline, deposit and withdrawal fees are published, but the homepage and the terms give different values for several of them.

Does LinkPay require KYC?

There is no single yes or no — the card has three verification levels. With none you can spend $500 a month on advertising cards only; Basic allows $2,000 and all cards except Apple and Google Pay; full verification lifts spend and card-type limits. Verification is generally completed within 24 hours but can take longer.

How do I top up the LinkPay card?

With crypto, and only crypto: the page advertises 7+ digital currencies without naming them, and an unofficial source names BTC and USDT. Transfers need 20 confirmations on TRC20 and from 4 on BTC. You must clear an activation minimum, “usually around $15”, or the card is not issued. Sending on the wrong network is irreversible.

Can I add the LinkPay card to Apple Wallet?

Not right now, on the card’s own account. Apple Pay and Google Pay are described as in “final integration, will be available soon”, and an unofficial source notes the pages contradict each other — one says selected virtual cards can be added, the FAQ says coming soon. At Basic verification they are excluded even in future. Plan without them.

Is the LinkPay card safe?

That depends on what you mean by safe, and the honest answer is mixed. The balance is custodial — the provider holds it, and the terms allow all wallets to be suspended without notice and funds frozen during an investigation. Trustpilot shows 2 out of 5 from around 39 to 40 reviews, with reports of frozen cards and withdrawals processing for 4+ weeks. Compliance badges for GDPR, ISO and PCI DSS appear on the site, but no insurance is stated.

Why did my LinkPay card get declined?

Four likely reasons. The card is virtual and foreign-issued, and some merchants decline that category after a BIN lookup. A declined authorisation can still leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven, and a decline fee may apply. Address verification is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes failures. And the card has been reported frozen before a transaction, in at least one case released only after a paid plan was bought.

Can I withdraw money from LinkPay?

Yes, from the Wallet, but expect it to be slow: the terms say requests are processed during 10 working days, and user reports describe withdrawals stuck in processing for more than four weeks. You cannot withdraw from the platform directly to a LinkPay card. On closure, remaining funds go to the payment details you specified, minus fees. The withdrawal fee itself is listed as 3% with a $5 minimum on the homepage and free in the terms.

Is a LinkPay card worth it?

For one narrow case, yes: no ordinary bank card available, crypto already in hand, mostly online spending, and a working balance rather than savings. Outside that case the free Lite plan does not rescue it, because there is no physical card, no ATM, no working mobile wallet and a complaint record that suggests slow withdrawals. Read the reviews before the deposit, not after.

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