A Nigeria-first crypto card that promises zero fees but publishes almost no numbers

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Zerocard is a crypto-linked payment card built around one idea: keep your money in a self-custodied wallet on the Base network, spend USDC from it, and pay in local currency wherever the card is accepted. That is a genuinely attractive shape for someone who has a stablecoin balance and a normal amount of shopping to do. But when I went through the card’s own pages line by line, I kept hitting the same wall: the promises are clear and the numbers are missing. There is no fee schedule, no list of eligible countries, no card network, no limits table, no named issuer. I scored it 6.3 / 10 — mid-table, with real promise and real unfinished business.

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

I write for people who have trouble getting an ordinary bank card, or who simply want their crypto spendable without opening a bank relationship first. If that is you, the sections below are ordered so you can stop reading as soon as you have your answer.

The verdict: 6.3 out of 10

Here is the breakdown, criterion by criterion.

Who this suits: someone who already holds USDC, already has a Base or Ethereum wallet, and wants to convert that balance into everyday spending without handing over custody or opening a conventional bank account. The audience note on this card is simple — spending USDC from a non-custodial Base wallet — and if that sentence describes your setup, you are the person the product was designed around.

Who it does not suit: anyone who needs certainty before spending. If your decision depends on knowing the exact conversion rate, the daily limit, or what happens when the provider freezes your account mid-month, this card cannot give you that today, because those numbers are not on its public pages. It is also a poor fit for someone who wants to hold many currencies, travel with a card that works everywhere without surprises, or avoid KYC altogether — KYC is mandatory here, and not optional.

Let me be fair about what pulls the score up. The category it sits in is young and full of failures, and this card gets two things right that many do not: it points at a real regulatory framework (an EMI-style model rather than pretending to be a bank), and it keeps the private keys with the user. Both matter. But the score cannot go higher while the terms that govern your money are, in several places, blank.

Will they give you the card?

Short answer: probably, if your country is not on the restricted list, but you cannot confirm that from the card’s own pages, because the eligible-country list is not published.

The site says the card “works in 150+ countries” — that is a claim about reach, not about who can sign up. What the Terms do is publish the other direction: a list of restricted jurisdictions where the card will not be offered. That list is Belarus, Burundi, Central African Republic, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar (Burma), North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. A third-party verification provider may add more on top of that.

What is not stated is the important half. There is no eligible-country list, and the card does not say whether it decides on citizenship, on residence, or on both. That gap matters more than it first appears. Across the industry, nationality is recorded and screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are often applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as to country of address. So a card can be open to residents of a country and still refuse someone on the basis of the passport they hold. Zerocard does not tell you which rule it uses.

For context on why this is normal rather than negligent: regulated businesses are required to verify customers and assess risk under anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing law, with ongoing monitoring and reporting of suspicious activity. In the EU, due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documents, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether the customer is a politically exposed person. In the US, the customer identification programme requires name, date of birth, address and an identification number. None of this is optional anywhere. If a provider tells you it can skip it, that is a warning, not a feature.

So: the honest answer to “will they give me the card” is that it depends on screening you cannot read. Ask support directly, and get the answer in writing, before you move any money.

How to get it

You cannot get this card without passing KYC first — the card’s policy requires identity verification before both withdrawal and a card request. The process is short on paper:

1. Register an account.
2. Pass KYC.
3. Request a virtual or physical Zerocard debit card.

For documents, the accepted set is a valid International Passport, a Driver’s License or a National Identity Card. You will also need your residential address plus proof of address, for example a utility bill no older than 3 months. The minimum age is 18.

On the shape of the card: you choose between a virtual and a physical Zerocard debit card, and you can choose after your identity check rather than before it. That is a small but real convenience — plenty of people want a usable card number in minutes and will order plastic later if the card proves itself.

What the card does not tell you is not small. The card network — Visa or Mastercard or something else — is not stated. The currency the card is denominated in is not stated. Delivery time and cost for the physical card is not stated. And there are no tiers: no basic, plus or premium level that changes your limits or fees. The policy defines only risk categories — High, Medium, Low — and processing time is not stated either.

The consequence is that you cannot tell, before applying, whether your application will take an hour or a week, whether the plastic will arrive next week or next month, or what limits you will start with. Those are all things you would reasonably want to know.

One more thing to read before you start: the policy states that a failure to provide the requested information blocks transactions for new users, or suspends the account. Sanctioned persons cannot open accounts. That is normal, and it is the reason why “no KYC, no questions” and “crypto card” do not go together.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is the honest picture, and it is a thin one. Zerocard’s Terms describe its core services as a “zero-fee experience”. That is a real claim and it is the card’s main selling point. But the same Terms say that optional services may carry fees, and they name two of them explicitly: card issuance and express processing. Neither has a published amount.

There is a second layer of cost the Terms name without pricing. Currency conversion and cross-border transactions are listed as possible optional-service fees. So if you spend crypto and the conversion happens at the point of sale — which is how the card says it works — that conversion may be where the cost lives, not in a monthly subscription.

Notice the two rows that say “not stated” at the bottom. They are not a detail — they are the rows that decide whether a card is usable for you. A card with no published daily or monthly limit is a card you will learn the ceiling of by hitting it.

Let me take three everyday payments and walk you through which fees apply, so you can see the shape of the cost rather than a number you cannot verify.

Buying coffee in your own currency, from USDC sitting in your wallet. You spend; the crypto is converted to local fiat at the point of sale. The card names that conversion as a possible fee. Whether it costs you anything on this particular purchase depends on whether your provider treats that conversion as a chargeable optional service or as part of the core experience — and the Terms do not say which.

Paying for something priced in a currency other than your local one, say a foreign website or a trip. Here you have the conversion layer and the cross-border layer named as separate possible fees. This is exactly the payment where an unstated 0.5%–1.75%-style FX charge, common across this category, would live — and Zerocard publishes no rate to compare it against.

Withdrawing cash from an ATM. The card’s own pages say nothing about ATM fees. Unofficial reporting, from TechCabal in July 2025, describes ATM fees existing and treats them as separate from a ₦5 per-transaction charge, though the amount was not visible in the available summary. Treat that naira figure as third-party reporting about a Nigerian launch, not as a published Zerocard price, and not as something to rely on in your own country.

Two practical takeaways. First, if you are outside Nigeria, do not borrow the naira pricing in your head — that launch context is not your context. Second, the blockchain network fee on your top-up is charged by the blockchain itself, not by the card provider, so it is a real cost of funding but it is not a Zerocard fee.

And before you compare this card to anything else on price, do the arithmetic the card will not do for you: what is the conversion spread on a €40 purchase? Because that is the number that decides whether “zero-fee” is a saving or a rounding error.

Top up: how to get money onto the card

You fund the wallet, not the card. Zerocard says you can fund your wallet with USDC or USDT on the Base or Ethereum networks, and that the crypto is auto-converted to local fiat at the point of sale when you pay. That is the whole mechanism: crypto in, fiat out, conversion at the moment of spend.

There is a discrepancy you should know about, because it decides whether you can actually use the card. Unofficial reporting from TechCabal in July 2025 says the app supports only USDC on Base, not USDT, and that each user gets a non-custodial wallet on Base. If that is right, then the “USDT on Ethereum” option in the marketing does not match the shipped app, and planning around the wider list could leave you waiting on a deposit the app cannot see.

Network choice is not a detail here. A transfer sent on a network the card provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee — blockchain transfers are irreversible. The reverse case is subtler and worth knowing: ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum charge gas in ETH only, so a wallet holding USDT but no ETH cannot send at all; on Tron, fees are paid via bandwidth and energy resources, often burning TRX. Choose the network you are actually equipped to pay on, not the one that sounds cheapest.

What the card does not state about funding is as important as what it does. Minimum top-up amounts are not published. Withdrawal fees are not addressed. And the KYC must be completed before you can withdraw funds — so if you top up first and fail verification, you will discover that constraint at exactly the wrong moment. Top up after KYC, not before.

One more reassurance, and one more caveat. The unofficial account of the Base wallet being non-custodial is good news if true: it means your keys are yours, and no provider can quietly move the balance. The caveat is that Tether disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity, so stablecoins are not censorship-proof. Stablecoins are also not necessarily stable in the way the name promises — USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. Treat the balance you load as money you are spending, not as savings.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, this is a card you request after KYC and then use like any other debit card, converting from crypto as you spend. That is the whole pitch, and it is a good one for the person it targets.

Two things to know before you rely on it. First, the founder has claimed “zero fees” and free transactions, and no cashback is stated anywhere. This is not a rewards card; do not model it as one. Second, the app exists — there is a “Download app” button on the site — but no store URL and no ratings were found. I could not verify an app-store presence, so I would install it from a link the official site gives you rather than searching for a similarly named app.

Support is the part to test early. The stated process for a disputed transaction is to contact customer support first with your transaction reference and date. Beyond that there is no timeline, no refund policy, and no stated process. Support is reachable through an in-app channel or email, with the address obscured on the page, and languages and hours are not stated.

Let me put that in context, because “no refund policy stated” sounds alarming until you know what the norm is. 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. In the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z; prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. So a crypto card’s real recourse is the issuer’s — and Zerocard does not name its issuer on the public pages, which is precisely the door you would need to knock on.

Some everyday mechanics worth knowing, since they apply to any card in this category. A payment can be declined at a shop that dislikes foreign-issued card numbers: merchants can look up the issuing institution and country from the number and apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from your billing address. Address Verification, which checks the numeric parts of your billing address against issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards — a common cause of declines at checkout. Some merchants also block prepaid or foreign-issued numbers outright. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven. And gambling merchants, which fall under a specific merchant category code, are blocked by many issuers on specific cards by policy rather than by law, with the blocked list differing by issuer.

None of that is Zerocard-specific, but it is what “every day” looks like for this kind of card, and it is worth weighing before you depend on it for anything time-sensitive.

What can go wrong

The single biggest risk here is the one the Terms state plainly: accounts may be suspended or restricted “at its sole discretion and without prior notice”. Read that clause as a person who might have money loaded, not as boilerplate. Two-factor authentication and a card freeze feature are not stated, so I cannot tell you what controls you would have if it happened.

The second is custody structure. If the Base wallet is genuinely non-custodial, control of the crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key, and that is you. A seed phrase — typically 12 to 24 words — is an unencrypted form of the private key, so anyone who obtains it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, and a stolen key has no built-in recovery: the network cannot freeze or return what is gone. With self-custody, the upside is that no provider can lose your balance in a corporate failure. The trade is that phishing, key loss, and clipboard-hijacking malware that swaps copied addresses are entirely yours to manage. Cryptographic transfers are the least forgiving context imaginable for a mistake.

The third is the provider itself. The provider is Notzero Technologies Limited. The Terms name only “Zerocard”, the registration is not stated, and no issuer is named; a founder blog refers to a “card infra partner” in Nigeria. Timeline: a founder post on 17 May 2025 announcing a launch first in Nigeria with a global plan, and a TechCabal beta review in July 2025. A young beta-stage programme in one market is not the same as a scaled product, and it is worth remembering that the same card number that fails at a foreign checkout is often the first sign of an underbuilt issuing arrangement.

The fourth is the industry’s own track record, which is not hypothetical. Custodial platforms have failed repeatedly: Mt. Gox (about US$350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (about US$400 million, 2018), and the Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022). Card programmes have been switched off underfoot — in November 2022 Visa said it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX”, and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes. Visa and Mastercard themselves do not issue crypto cards to consumers; they license issuers and can suspend a programme. When a scheme closes, the pattern is a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source had new loads ending 8 July 2026 and spending stopping 8 August 2026 — a single unconfirmed source, but the shape of it is the shape to plan for.

On the positive side of this section: I found no official incidents and no Trustpilot or Reddit pages for this card. That is genuinely neutral rather than reassuring. In this category, the absence of complaints usually means a young product with few users, not a clean record. The searches that surfaced complaints were about an unrelated US card called “Zero”. If you are the sort of person who reads reviews before spending, read the age of this thing as the explanation.

What to take instead

Three alternatives came up in my comparison, and each of them publishes numbers Zerocard does not. Scores on the same 10-point basis: MetaMask 7.1, KAST 6.1, Zerocard 6.3, TokenPocket 5.8.

MetaMask is the clearest improvement on paper. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories — Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Uruguay among them — with other regions on a waitlist, proof of residency required, and the helpful principle that “ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending”. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed. The virtual card is free with no annual or maintenance fee; metal is $199/year. It spends directly from your connected wallet on Linea, Base, Monad or Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT named. Rewards are published precisely: cashback in mUSD into the Money Account, 1% on virtual and 3% headline on metal, with a footnote limiting 3% to the first $10,000 spent and 1% after, plus a $FLY bonus via the Blackbird dining app. Its card currency is not stated, and one card per user.

KAST is the one that publishes the most, which is why it is instructive. It has three tiers — Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium), Visa Infinite gold plated (Private), with other designs in Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin, and up to 10 cards per user. Pricing runs from 0 USD to 1,000 USD/year to 10,000 USD/year, billed annually upfront with no monthly option; Standard physical is 0 USD plus 40 USD delivery, and an inactivity fee of 1 USD/month applies after 12 months. The fee schedule is complete: stablecoin top-up 0%, card spend in USD 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple/Google Pay 0%, non-USD FX 0.5%–1.75% depending on residence and transaction country, non-USD transactions under 25 USD 0.10 USD, and a 0.50 USD declined-transaction fee. Cashback is USD — 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD/month, 2% on the first 10,000, 3% on the first 40,000 — plus KAST Points. Its residency rule is stated where Zerocard’s is not: if your country is not listed, KAST is not available, and holding only an ID from a restricted region can make you ineligible even when you live in a supported country.

TokenPocket, at 5.8, is the one to look at mainly for contrast. It issues Visa debit cards across a list of European countries and territories and Mastercard across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK, with the Americas “planned for Q2 2025”. It runs on Arbitrum, with Fiat24 cards described as virtual and no physical card mentioned. Its one clear number is a 1% fee on depositing cryptocurrency, which it says is later refunded through rewards and reduced transaction fees; FX is not stated, and extra fees can arise from inter-institution settlement. It has no cashback beyond that refund mechanism.

Take from this comparison the thing that matters for your decision: Zerocard is not beaten on the shape of the idea, only on disclosure. If you are the person who reads a fee schedule before signing up, MetaMask and KAST give you more to read. If you specifically want USDC from a non-custodial Base wallet, Zerocard may still be the best fit for you — just do it with your eyes open.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend this card to a person who already lives in stablecoins. Specifically: someone who holds USDC, keeps it in a wallet they control, has Base available, wants to spend without opening a bank relationship, and treats the balance as spending money rather than savings. For that person the design is right — non-custodial, no monthly fee claimed, conversion at the point of sale, and KYC done once.

I would not recommend it to someone spending their first month with a crypto card, to anyone whose budget depends on a known monthly figure, to anyone in a currency whose FX treatment is not published, or to anyone who needs to file a chargeback. The absence of an issuer name, a fee schedule and a limits table is not a small gap; it is the three things you would use if the card went wrong.

If you want a card that publishes its numbers, this one does not qualify yet — and you should check back, because the arguments for it are real and this category moves fast. In the meantime, verify three things in writing before you load any money: whether your country and passport are eligible, the actual conversion and cross-border costs, and what happens to a loaded balance if the account is restricted.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Zerocard card?

Zerocard is a crypto-linked payment card from provider Notzero Technologies Limited. You fund a wallet with stablecoins, and the card converts them to local fiat as you spend, rather than drawing on a bank account. It comes as a virtual or physical debit card, requested after identity verification. The site says it works in 150+ countries.

How does the Zerocard card work?

You load USDC or USDT into your wallet on the Base or Ethereum network, then spend. At the point of sale the crypto is converted to local fiat and the card pays the merchant normally, the way an ordinary card does. Conversion and cross-border transactions are named in the Terms as possible optional-service fees, though no rates are published.

Is Zerocard a bank?

No — and this matters for what you can expect. The Terms name only “Zerocard”, with no issuer or registration stated, and a founder post refers to a card infrastructure partner in Nigeria. In this category the licensed institution is usually an electronic money institution, which can issue e-money and payment cards but cannot lend.

How do I get a Zerocard card?

Register, pass KYC, then request a virtual or physical card. You need a valid International Passport, Driver’s License or National Identity Card, your residential address with proof such as a utility bill no older than three months, and you must be 18. Delivery time and cost for a physical card are not stated on the public pages.

Does Zerocard require KYC?

Yes, and it is not optional. KYC must be completed before you can request the card and before you can withdraw funds. Under anti-money-laundering law, regulated providers must verify identity and screen for sanctions, which is why nationality and residence are handled separately. Plan to finish verification before you load any money.

Is the Zerocard card free?

The Terms describe a “zero-fee experience” for core services, but optional services — including card issuance and express processing — may carry fees, and no amounts are published. There is no stated cashback. ATM fees are not addressed on the card’s pages, though unofficial reporting mentions them alongside a ₦5 per-transaction charge in Nigeria.

How do I top up the Zerocard card?

You fund the wallet, not the card, with USDC or USDT on Base or Ethereum. Unofficial reporting from July 2025 says the app in fact supports only USDC on Base and gives each user a non-custodial Base wallet. Pick the network you can actually pay gas on — Ethereum transfers cost ETH, so USDT alone cannot be sent.

Where can I use the Zerocard card?

The card’s site claims 150+ countries, and a card from this category is normally accepted wherever its network is accepted. But the card network itself is not stated. Foreign-issued card numbers can be declined: merchants can read the issuing country from the card number, and address verification is largely unavailable for such cards.

Is Zerocard card safe?

Safer than a custodial wallet, if the non-custodial Base wallet claim holds — your keys stay with you. But the Terms allow accounts to be suspended or restricted “at its sole discretion and without prior notice”, and two-factor authentication and a card freeze are not stated. No card network, issuer, fee schedule or limits are published. I found no complaints, which for a young beta product means few users, not a clean record.

How do I withdraw money from Zerocard?

You cannot skip verification to do it — KYC must be completed before any withdrawal. Beyond that, withdrawal fees and the handling of a leftover balance on closure are not addressed in the public Terms. Given the age of the product, I would not load more than you are willing to hold while those questions are unanswered.

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