The no-KYC promise is real; the price and the paperwork are the catch

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Goblin is one of those crypto cards that promises the thing most people actually want from a card like this: you do not hand over a passport. The card’s own pages say “No KYC”, the Goblin Physical needs no ID, passport or licence, and the age floor is 18. On top of that you get a physical Mastercard that runs off a Mexican peso balance, a virtual Visa on a US dollar balance, Apple Pay and Google Pay on the virtual card, and cash withdrawals at Goblin ATMs for no Goblin fee. That is a genuinely unusual combination, and if you are someone who cannot open an ordinary bank card, it is hard to ignore.

Then I read the prices. The Physical plus Virtual set is $350 USD as a limited-time offer. Renewal and lost-card replacement are $100 each. Depositing costs 3.5% on BTC, ETH, SOL and USDT, and 4% on XMR. The virtual card adds roughly 1.5% on currency conversion against reference rates, which includes a 1% markup, and cash withdrawal costs 2% on top. Add those together and the card is not cheap; it is a service where the fee load sits in the funding and conversion layer rather than in a monthly subscription, which is a different kind of expensive.

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

I scored it 5.5 out of 10. That is not a dismissal. The everyday-use side of this card is the strongest I have seen in this category, and the KYC position is the honest reason it exists. But the cost side is the weakest, and there are gaps in what the public pages tell you that I would want answered by a human before I committed $350.

Here is my score card, criterion by criterion, with the numbers as I recorded them.

Two things about this table deserve a moment before anything else.

The first is that the 9 out of 10 for everyday use is not about fees at all. It is about the shape of the product: two cards, two networks, two balances, mobile wallets on the virtual side, a stated ATM policy, a stated limit structure. Someone who wants to actually spend money, day to day, has something workable here.

The second is the 1 out of 10 for cost. That mark is doing the work in the final number. When a card charges you for the set, for replacing it, for loading it, for converting currency on it and for taking cash out of it, the price of using it is spread across five separate lines and none of them is a monthly subscription you would spot on a comparison table.

The audience this suits, in my reading, is narrow and specific: privacy-focused users who want a plastic card and a virtual card without KYC, and who are comfortable funding the whole thing themselves in crypto. The audience it does not suit is anyone who wants a cheap everyday debit card, anyone who needs a card their bank guarantees, and anyone who needs the card’s country rules to be written down somewhere.

Will they give you the card?

Yes in most cases, but the honest answer is that you cannot read the eligibility rules, because they are not published on the readable pages.

The card’s own wording is “Country and merchant restrictions apply”. That is the entire country policy I could find in public. An earlier check of the same pages told me the service was worldwide, 18+, with around 50 countries restricted — but that earlier note is not something I can confirm from what is written now, so treat it as background rather than as a rule you can rely on. The card does not publish a list of the countries where it will refuse you.

This matters more than it sounds. If you are in one of the restricted countries, you find out by trying, not by reading. And the merchant restriction side is a second, separate thing: even a card you are eligible for can fail at a particular shop, because the merchant side of the card’s policy is not published either.

Two practical points before you try:

• Age is 18+. That is the one eligibility rule I can state flatly, and it is the same floor you would expect from any prepaid or debit card.
• Citizenship and residence are not separated in anything I read. The card does not say whether restrictions follow your nationality, your country of address, or both. So if you are a national of one country living in another, you cannot tell from the public pages which one the card looks at.

The one place where the card is unusually clear is KYC, and that cuts in your favour. The pages state “No KYC”. The Goblin Physical needs no ID, passport or licence. For the Goblin Virtual, KYC is not stated — which is different from stated as not required, so I would ask. What level of verification applies is not stated beyond that, and I would not build a plan around the virtual card being as frictionless as the physical one until the card’s support confirms it in writing.

Here is the quick version of the rest of the eligibility picture, so it is in one place:

• Age floor: 18+.
• Goblin Physical: no ID, passport or licence required.
• Goblin Virtual: verification level not stated.
• Country list: not published; the page says restrictions apply.
• Merchant restrictions: apply; the blocked categories are not listed.

If your situation is anything other than uncomplicated — a non-standard residence, a country the card might restrict, or a reason you cannot show documents — that is the case where I would talk to a person first. Support is on SimpleX and Telegram (@banklessinlatam), English only, 8am to 10pm CST.

How to get it

The order flow is unusual, and unusual flows are where people get caught, so here it is as the card describes it.

The path the card gives you:

1. Pay for the card set.
2. Deposit crypto through the web portal or the Telegram bot.
3. Contact support to register the cards once they arrive.

That third step is the one to note. The registration is not something the card says happens automatically on delivery; the card tells you to contact support after the cards arrive. So the card in your hand is not necessarily spendable until someone on the support side has registered it. There is no app and no self-service activation flow described anywhere — the card’s tools are the web portal and the Telegram bot.

What you get, and what arrives:

• Goblin Physical: a Mastercard, spending an MXN balance.
• Goblin Virtual: a Visa, spending a USD balance.
• Delivery: worldwide shipping, seven days (up to fourteen maximum), tracked international shipping included.
• Replacement of a lost card: $100.

Two currencies for one product pair is worth pausing on. It is not one card with a currency setting; as described, it is a physical card on pesos and a virtual card on dollars. If you are outside Mexico, the physical card is the one that makes you think in pesos, and it is the one carrying 0% FX. That is a real design choice in your favour, because a Mexican peso balance paid at a Mexican merchant costs nothing in conversion. Everywhere else, the virtual card is the practical one, and it is also the one with the 1.5% conversion charge.

And note the sequencing risk: you pay first, then deposit, then wait for arrival, then ask support to register. If the registration step stalls, you have a paid card set sitting in your drawer that nobody has switched on. Nothing in the published terms gives you a timeline for that step.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is every number I could find, in one table, so you can see the whole bill at once rather than discovering it line by line.

Now let me walk through three ordinary payments, because abstract fee tables hide which fees actually bite.

A coffee in Mexico City, paid with the physical card. This is the best case on the card, and it is the case the design is built for. The balance is MXN, the merchant is local, and the physical card’s FX fee is 0%. What remains is network-level on-chain cost if you fund it with crypto and the network charges a fee for your deposit — that is charged by the blockchain, not by the card. So the realistic cost of this purchase, on the card’s own numbers, is close to zero.

A subscription bought online from outside Mexico with the virtual card. Here you pay the virtual card’s 1.5% against reference rates, which the card says includes a 1% markup. The daily and per-transaction limits on the virtual card are generous — $200,000 online per transaction and per day — so limits will not be your problem. But a 1.5% charge on every purchase is the kind of number that decides whether the card works for you: on a $10 subscription it is 15 cents, on a $300 purchase it is $4.50, and it applies again the next month. Card payments from a dollar balance avoid the FX layer, but a merchant billing you in another currency does not.

Taking $200 out of a Goblin ATM with the physical card. Three separate numbers apply here, which is why this one needs reading carefully. The Goblin ATM fee is 0%. The cash withdrawal fee is 2%, applied separately. And ATM operators may charge their own fees, which are outside the card’s control. So the card’s own charge on $200 is 2%, and whatever the operator adds on top is yours to discover at the machine. The daily ATM limit is $500 USD on the physical card.

What I take from that table is that Goblin has no subscription, no monthly fee and no inactivity charge — and those absences are the marketing. The real price is in the set, the reload, the conversion and the cash fee. There is one product pair and no tiers: Physical plus Virtual, at one price. If you only want the virtual card, the published price is for the pair.

One more cost that is not the card’s, but lands on your deposit: on-chain network fees for your deposit are charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider. On Ethereum that means gas paid in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT with no ETH in it cannot actually send. Which network fee you pay depends on which network you send on, and for USDT the card does not name one — I will come back to that.

Top up options

The funding routes are clear and reasonably wide, with one hole in the middle of them.

The card accepts BTC, ETH, SOL, XMR and USDT. You load through the web portal, which the card recommends, or through the Telegram bot. Whatever arrives is converted into MXN for the Physical and into USD for the Virtual.

Costs and floor:

• Deposit fee 3.5% on BTC, ETH, SOL and USDT; 4% on XMR.
• Minimum deposit $100 USD.
• Who pays the network fee is not stated.

That USDT point is the one I would not skip. USDT exists on several networks — Tether describes it as a token built on multiple blockchains, and USDT has been issued on networks including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon and Avalanche. Goblin’s pages do not name which one you should use. Get it wrong and the outcome is bad: blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so the “obvious” cheap network is not always a live option either.

So before your first deposit I would do one thing: open the portal, read the network the card actually gives you for USDT, and only then move funds. Do not pick a network from memory of how other stablecoins work.

There is also a privacy wrinkle in the choice between the two routes that nobody markets. The Telegram bot puts your funding in a chat with a third party; the web portal is the card’s recommended route. For a card whose entire pitch is not showing documents, that is a trade some people will think about and some will not.

Two things about money coming back out are not stated, and both matter:

• Withdrawing crypto is not stated. The card documents cash withdrawals only, so do not assume you can convert your balance back to crypto on request.
• What happens to a leftover balance when you close the account is not stated. Closing a $3 balance is not a big thing; closing a $300 one with no written rule is.

Paying with it every day

This is the part of the card I like most, and it is why the everyday-use mark is as high as it is.

The virtual card is a Visa, and both Apple Pay and Google Pay work on it. Those are the wallets most people actually reach for, and having them on the virtual card rather than the physical one is the useful arrangement, because the virtual card is the one with the larger limits and the one denominated in dollars.

The virtual card’s limits are, honestly, unusually generous for a prepaid crypto product: $20,000 per transaction and per day for tap-to-pay, $200,000 per transaction and per day online. No monthly ceiling is stated. The physical card is the constrained one — $2,500 per transaction, $5,000 a day, no monthly limit — and those limits reset 24 hours after each transaction, which is a slightly unusual phrasing but a generous one, since it means the clock starts when you spend rather than at midnight.

What you do not get:

• No app. Everything runs through the web portal and the Telegram bot.
• No cashback. No rewards are mentioned anywhere.
• Blocked merchant categories are not stated, beyond “merchant restrictions apply”.
• No 3-D Secure description is published for either card, and no dispute or chargeback process is stated. That last one is the gap I would worry about most as an everyday user, and I will return to it.

A note on why prepaid-style cards behave oddly at some shops, because it will happen to you and it is not a fault in your setup. A card number starts with a six- or eight-digit issuer identification number that identifies the issuing institution, and the rest identifies the account. Merchants can look that up and see which institution and country issued the card, and some apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. That is the mechanism behind two things you will meet: some shops decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards outright, and address verification — the check that compares the street number and postal code you typed against issuer records — is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards. When a payment fails, this is often why, and it is not something Goblin can fix for you.

What can go wrong

Let me split this into what the card publishes, what the structure exposes you to, and what I simply could not find.

The refund position is real but has hard edges. The card’s rules: before you have successfully used the card, it is refundable for any reason. Before shipping, a full refund. After shipping, a refund minus the shipping fee. After successful use, not refundable. And then the sharp one: publicly sharing a card BIN gives indefinite suspension without refund. BINs are the first six or eight digits of a card number, so this is about not posting the start of your card number in a forum or a screenshot — a rule worth knowing because screenshots of cards are a normal thing people do.

If the card never arrives: a free reship, or a refund if you are eligible.

Neither charges nor chargebacks are stated. There is no published process for disputing a payment. A chargeback is a refund ordered by the card issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received, and prepaid-card coverage varies by scheme and country and should not be assumed. So if a shop takes your money and delivers nothing, the published material gives you no stated route to contest it. That is not a prediction that this will happen to you. It is a statement that I could not find the mechanism that would handle it.

The company is thin on paper. The provider is Goblin Solutions LLC. The country of registration is not stated and the issuer is not named. For a card you fund with $350 of your own money, that is a real gap — you do not know which legal entity stands behind it, or under whose licence the card programme runs. And in this category that matters structurally: Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves. They license issuers, they can suspend a programme, and the crypto brand is often only a programme manager or front end on top of somebody else’s licence. Here the licence-holder is not named.

There is no complaint history to lean on, in either direction. I found no complaints and no reviews: no Goblin Cards reviews on Trustpilot or Reddit in a search on 2026-10-21, and no Trustpilot page for the card’s website. No official incidents came up either. Take that carefully in both directions. No complaints can mean a clean record; it can also mean a small footprint. A detailed complaints page is not stated, and there is no news page that I found to suggest anything either way.

No security detail is published. Two-factor authentication, freeze controls, how the card is protected — not stated. Those are usually the first things a reader should look for on a card page and they are simply not there.

Programme-level risk is real for this whole category. It is worth being blunt about the pattern. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022, and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa card issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Closures typically follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw your remaining balance. Goblin’s own closure terms are not stated, so if the provider’s licence or programme ever ends, I cannot tell you from the card what you would be left holding.

Funding is custodial in practice. With a prepaid balance model you convert or top up a balance and the card spends only that, which is one reason it cannot overdraw. But your crypto sits with the provider until it becomes balance. That is counterparty risk with a company whose registration country is not stated. Custodial platforms in this space have a documented history of failure — Mt. Gox, about US$350 million reported stolen across 2011 to 2014; Coincheck, about US$400 million in 2018; Ronin Network, US$625 million in 2022. And crypto transfers are typically irreversible, with no built-in recovery on the network.

One last thing I should raise because I cannot answer it: the tax position. Whether spending this card creates a taxable event for you depends on your circumstances and your jurisdiction, and it is not something I can advise on. The general shape is that digital assets are treated as property in the US, so exchanging them for goods or dollars generally produces a gain or loss measured in local currency at the value on the date of the transaction — which means each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. Ask a qualified adviser about your own situation.

What to take instead

I compared three other prepaid-style crypto cards on published information only. None of them is a recommendation; they are there so you can see the trade-offs.

What jumps out from putting them side by side:

• On price, Goblin is the outlier. $350 for a set, against Card.fi’s $49 for a virtual Classic or CardFlow’s free virtual card. If your need is one virtual card, Goblin is the most expensive way to get it.
• On fees, Goblin sits mid-pack but compounds. Card.fi’s Classic charges more on FX at 3.5% but less on top-up at 1.5% plus $1.00, and its Premium tier brings both down. Goblin has no cheaper tier to fall back on, because there is only one product.
• On rewards, Goblin offers none. Card.fi’s cashback on spending is the only rewards structure in this group that is published, and it is capped, so treat the headline 10% at coffee shops as a 10 USDT per month number, not a 10% one.
• On published clarity, Goblin is weakest on the boring details. Card.fi names its networks and lists a sanctions-based country rule; CardFlow and HyperCard both at least say what they are for. Goblin publishes the least about who it is and where it is registered.
• On the reason all of these exist, Goblin is the only one that states it. “No KYC” with no ID, passport or licence for the physical card is not something the others in this table claim. If that is your requirement, it is not really substitutable.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend this card to one kind of person: someone who cannot get a normal bank card, who is comfortable holding their own crypto until the moment they spend it, and who treats $350 plus a 3.5% reload as the price of that access rather than as something to be minimised.

I would not recommend it to someone who just wants a cheap way to spend crypto, or to anyone whose main worry is what happens when the provider has a bad quarter.

Before you commit, these are the questions I would put to support, and I would want answers in writing:

1. Which countries are restricted, and do restrictions follow citizenship, residence, or both?
2. Is any KYC required for Goblin Virtual, and at what level?
3. Which network should USDT be sent on, and which networks do you support?
4. What is the dispute or chargeback process if a payment goes wrong?
5. Who is the issuer, in which country is Goblin Solutions LLC registered, and under whose licence?
6. What happens to a remaining balance if I close the account?
7. What are the terms and notice period if the card programme ends?

And the two habits that protect you regardless of the answers: read the network before you send, and never post the first six or eight digits of the card anywhere.

Where Goblin genuinely wins is the everyday use. A physical card with 0% FX on a peso balance, a virtual Visa with $20,000 tap-to-pay and $200,000 online daily limits, Apple Pay and Google Pay on the virtual side, no subscription, no monthly fee, no cashback to track — that is a well-shaped tool for spending money day to day. Where it loses is that you are paying for it several times over: the set, the replacement, the reload, the conversion, the cash. And where it leaves me uneasy is the paper: no published country list, an unnamed issuer, an unnamed registration country, no stated chargeback route, no security information at all.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Goblin card?

Goblin is a crypto-funded payment card sold as a set of two: a physical Mastercard that spends an MXN balance, and a virtual Visa that spends a USD balance. You load it with BTC, ETH, SOL, XMR or USDT through a web portal or Telegram bot, and it is converted into the balance the card spends. The physical card is the one with 0% FX on its balance; the virtual card carries an approximate 1.5% conversion charge against reference rates.

Does the Goblin card require KYC?

The card’s pages state “No KYC”, and the Goblin Physical requires no ID, passport or licence, with an age floor of 18. For Goblin Virtual, KYC is not stated — which is not the same as stated as unnecessary. I would confirm that point with support before relying on it. Note also that country and merchant restrictions still apply even though identity documents are not requested.

How much does the Goblin card cost?

The Physical plus Virtual set is $350 USD as a limited-time offer, with no subscription and no monthly fee. Renewal and lost-card replacement are $100 each, and the card is valid for three years. On top of that sit the running costs: a 3.5% deposit fee on BTC, ETH, SOL and USDT, 4% on XMR, approximately 1.5% conversion on the virtual card including a 1% markup, and a 2% cash withdrawal fee charged separately from any ATM operator’s own fee.

Is Goblin a bank, and who owns it?

No — the provider is Goblin Solutions LLC, and the country of registration is not stated. Nor is the issuer named. That matters more than it might appear, because Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves: they license issuers, and the crypto brand is often only a programme manager or front end over somebody else’s licence. So there is a licensed issuer behind this card somewhere, and the card’s public pages do not say who.

Which countries can use the Goblin card?

That is not answerable from the public pages, which is my main reservation. The card says only “Country and merchant restrictions apply” and publishes no country list. An earlier check suggested worldwide availability for 18+ users with around 50 countries restricted, but I cannot confirm that from what is written now, and nothing I read separates citizenship from residence. If your country or nationality might be excluded, that is a question for support before you pay.

How do I top up the Goblin card?

You send BTC, ETH, SOL, XMR or USDT to the card, through the web portal, which the card recommends, or through the Telegram bot. What arrives is converted into MXN for the Physical and USD for the Virtual. The deposit fee is 3.5%, or 4% on XMR, and the minimum deposit is $100 USD. Critically, the card does not name which network to use for USDT — check the portal before sending, because transfers are irreversible.

Can I add Goblin to Apple Pay or Google Pay?

Yes, on the Goblin Virtual card only. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported on the virtual Visa, and the card’s pages do not list them for the physical Mastercard. That is the arrangement most people will prefer in practice, since the virtual card is also the one with the larger limits — $20,000 per transaction and per day for tap-to-pay, $200,000 for online payments.

What are the Goblin card’s limits?

On the physical Mastercard: $2,500 per transaction, $5,000 daily spending, $500 per day in ATM withdrawals, and no monthly limit, resetting 24 hours after each transaction. On the virtual Visa: $20,000 tap-to-pay per transaction and per day, and $200,000 online per transaction and per day, with no stated monthly ceiling. Cash withdrawal on the virtual card carries a 2% fee and no limit.

Is the Goblin card safe, and can I get my money back?

On refunds, the card is clear: before successful use it is refundable for any reason, fully before shipping and minus shipping after, and not refundable after you have used it. Sharing a card’s BIN publicly means indefinite suspension without refund. On everything else I could not find answers — no stated security detail such as two-factor or freeze controls, no dispute or chargeback process, and no published terms for what happens to your balance if the programme closes.

Is Goblin worth it, compared with CardFlow, HyperCard or Card.fi?

On pure value, probably not: CardFlow offers a free virtual Mastercard, Card.fi’s Virtual Classic costs $49 with published fees and cashback, and Goblin’s set is $350 with no rewards. Goblin’s case is different in kind — it states “No KYC” with no passport for the physical card, which the others do not claim. So the question is not which is cheaper but whether avoiding identity checks is worth $350 plus 3.5% a reload, to me.

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