What the Payth card actually does, and what it doesn't tell you

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Payth card is a virtual crypto-to-fiat card that promises “zero transaction fees” and accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT as funding. It runs through Sumsub for KYC, offers an ATM withdrawal at 2%, and presents itself as available globally, with a list of excluded countries that includes Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and Syria. So far, that is a familiar shape for a crypto card: pre-load a wallet, convert at the till, spend anywhere a regular card is taken.

What makes Payth harder to assess is how much of the basics the company simply does not say. There is no disclosed monthly fee, no published issuance price, no named card network, no FX rate, and no mention of who actually issues the card or under which licence. The App Store listing has no rating yet, the operator is POPPO LLC with no country of registration, and the available support surface is an in-site FAQ. If you can live with that, the product itself is functional. If you cannot, the verdict below explains where that 6.2 out of 10 comes from.

This review’s conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Payth scores 6.2 out of 10. That is a middling grade that reflects a product that does the basic job of converting crypto to a spendable card balance, paired with a company that publishes very little about itself, its pricing, or its regulatory standing. It is best understood as a tool for a crypto holder who already has BTC, ETH, or USDT in a personal wallet, wants a quick virtual card with ATM access, and is comfortable trading transparency for convenience. It is a worse fit for anyone who needs a physical card, a well-known card network, mobile-wallet tokenisation, cashback, or the kind of detailed fee schedule a regular bank card provides out of the box.

The audience that fits Payth is a crypto holder who wants a virtual card and ATM access, accepts a custodial wallet, and is willing to forgo the details a regulated bank would publish. The audience that does not fit is anyone who needs a physical card, a named card scheme, mobile-wallet integration, or a clearly disclosed fee and regulatory profile.

Will they give you the card

Payth is sold as a global product, but “global” comes with a list the company keeps and updates. The site states that Payth “cannot serve residents of the following countries and regions” and names Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine, Iran and Syria among them. Belarus is also on the restricted list. The exact wording of the restriction is residence-based: it is where you live that is checked, not where you were born, so a citizen of a restricted country living elsewhere may still be eligible, and the inverse can be a problem if the card issuer decides it is not.

The company reserves the right to update that list “periodically based on issuer policies,” which means your eligibility today is not a permanent guarantee. The list itself, and the rule that it can change, are written down on Payth’s pages. What is not written down is the licence the operator holds, the country where POPPO LLC is registered, or the bank or e-money institution that actually issues the card. For most readers, that is the bigger uncertainty than which countries are excluded at the moment.

In practical terms, your KYC goes through Sumsub, which is named on the site. Sumsub is a third-party identity-verification vendor used across the industry, and Payth notes that it “only accepts IDs or passports issued by the same country as your ID” — meaning the document you upload has to be from a country where Sumsub can verify it, and the review is “typically” 5 to 10 minutes. The site does not require proof of address or a minimum age in writing, but regulated card programmes almost always require both, and a refusal can come back as a “high-risk flag” without further detail.

What you do not see on the public pages:

• A citizenship-versus-residence rule beyond the residence-based restriction.
• A second KYC tier or any progressive limits based on how much information you provide.
• A statement of the sanctions or issuer-policy framework behind the country list.

For the reader, the takeaway is that the door is open for most countries but not all, the document requirements are stricter than they first look, and the company reserves room to tighten the rules later.

How to get it

Payth sells itself as a four-step flow. You register in the app, verify your identity, deposit crypto into the Payth wallet, and get a virtual card. That is the whole path, and it is short because the card is virtual. There is no physical card, no metal option, and no delivery timeline, because there is no card to ship.

The signup is built around the app, which is available on iOS and Android. The iOS listing in the App Store shows version 1.0.6, released on 20 September (the year is not shown on the store page); the version before that, 1.0.5, was listed on 15 September, which means the app is being updated actively. The Google Play listing exists, but no star rating was available at the time of this review. The App Store currently shows no overview score because the app “hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display” one, so the public track record of the app in app stores is essentially unproven.

Inside that flow, the KYC step is the part that can slow you down. Sumsub’s review window is given as 5 to 10 minutes when it works, but the practical experience of document review is that it can take longer, that a request for a clearer photo can reset the clock, and that a “high-risk” outcome is final. Payth does not publish an appeals process, so a refusal leaves the reader with the option of contacting support, which is reachable only through the in-site FAQ.

What the public pages do not state:

• The card network (Visa or Mastercard) and the card’s base currency.
• Whether the same person can hold more than one virtual card, and what “multiple virtual card options” actually means in product terms.
• Whether a physical card is planned, and at what price.

For a reader, the practical advice is straightforward: install the app from the official store, use a passport or ID issued by the same country whose documents Sumsub can verify, and be ready to wait longer than 5 to 10 minutes if a manual check is triggered.

What it really costs

The pricing story for Payth is half-told. The two things the site says clearly are that transaction fees are “zero” and that ATM withdrawals cost 2%. Everything else — the cost of issuing the card, any monthly or annual maintenance charge, the spread baked into crypto conversion, the foreign-exchange fee, the daily or monthly spending limits — is not stated. The fee table below uses the published facts and marks the rest as “not stated.”

A few everyday payments make the implications clearer. Imagine you spend the equivalent of €40 on a card payment at a domestic merchant: Payth says the transaction itself is free, but the price of that euro in your crypto is set by Payth’s “competitive” conversion rate, which is a spread the company does not publish. The same purchase abroad, say a $50 dinner in a country that does not use your card’s base currency, would in theory also be free at the transaction level, but the FX margin the issuer charges on top of the interbank rate is also not stated. And a $100 ATM cash withdrawal would have a clear 2% fee attached, which is $2, on top of any FX spread if the local currency is not the card’s base currency.

The honest version of “zero transaction fees” is therefore: no percentage is added on top of the spend, but the company has not published what it earns on the spread between the crypto you send and the fiat you spend. In a market where a 1% spread is common for crypto cards, that unstated margin is where most of the cost will sit, even when the headline fee is zero.

A few more things to keep in mind:

• The 2% ATM fee is in addition to any fee your own ATM operator charges, which is usual for cash withdrawals.
• The site does not say what happens to a balance you never spend, so it is not clear whether there is an inactivity fee, a dormancy rule, or a balance expiration.
• Network fees for the on-chain transfer you make to load the card are charged by the blockchain, not by Payth, and depend on the network and the congestion at the time.

Top up options

Payth describes topping up as: “Top up your digital assets and get spending credit instantly.” The list of accepted coins is short and specific: BTC, ETH, and USDT. The App Store listing widens that slightly to “multiple cryptocurrencies” with USDT and BTC as examples, but the official site narrows it back to the three. None of the public pages name the networks you can use to send them, which is the kind of detail that matters a great deal in practice.

In crypto, a coin is not the same as a network. USDT exists on Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and a long list of other chains, and a transfer sent on the wrong network to an address that expects another is, in most cases, irreversibly lost. The site does not say whether Payth accepts ERC-20 USDT, TRC-20 USDT, USDT on Solana, or all of the above. It also does not say what the minimum top-up is, who pays the network fee, or whether a fiat top-up (a bank card or a bank transfer) is possible.

What the public pages do not state:

• The supported networks for BTC, ETH and USDT.
• The minimum and maximum top-up.
• Whether a fiat top-up is possible alongside the crypto one.
• The time it takes for a top-up to clear and become “spending credit.”

The practical advice is to start small on your first top-up, send a test amount that you are willing to lose in the worst case, confirm it lands and converts, and only then send a larger balance. The absence of named networks is the single biggest operational risk in the funding flow.

Paying with it every day

Payth positions the card as usable “at millions of merchants and ATMs worldwide,” which is what a Visa or Mastercard BIN typically delivers, but the card network and BIN are not named. The card is virtual, so it lives in the app, and what “multiple virtual card options” means in product terms is not spelled out: it could mean several cards issued in parallel, or one card with several balance currencies, or simply the option to reissue a new number on request. The site does not say.

What the everyday-use section does not say is at least as long as what it does:

• Apple Pay and Google Pay support: not stated.
• Blocked merchant categories: not stated (gambling, crypto purchases, cash advances and similar categories are commonly restricted; the specific list is not published).
• Cashback or rewards on spending: not stated.
• In-app card controls: “freeze card” and per-merchant spending limits are not stated.
• ATM withdrawal limits per day and per month: not stated.
• Online payment behaviour with 3-D Secure: not stated.

The FAQ includes topics regarding refund delays and transaction failures, but answers to those questions are not publicly documented. The time it takes to get a refund or to release an authorised hold is not stated. Authorisation holds, where a declined payment temporarily reserves a balance, can stay in place for several days, and an unanswered FAQ on the topic is a gap.

For the reader, the daily-use picture is: a virtual card you can use where a card is accepted, with ATM cash access, and with a number of unspecified controls and limits that you discover only by using the card.

What can go wrong

Most of the risk around Payth is the risk of not knowing. The company is operated by POPPO LLC, which is the name that appears as the App Store developer; the country where POPPO LLC is registered, the bank or e-money institution that issues the card, and the licences the operator holds are all not stated on the public pages. A search for a Trustpilot or Reddit thread on “Payth” turned up no public complaint trail for this product, which is partly a function of how new the app is and partly a function of how small the user base appears to be in indexed review sites.

The custodial model is itself part of the risk picture. Payth describes a wallet (“deposit… in your wallet”, the “Payth Wallet”) that the user does not own the private keys to, which means the operator holds the funds and is the only party that can authorise a withdrawal. That is convenient and it is the standard arrangement for custodial crypto cards, but it also means that if POPPO LLC fails, is hacked, or has its banking relationships disrupted, the balance a user sees in the app is at risk in the same way a balance at any other custodian is at risk. The site mentions “built-in risk controls” but does not describe what those are, and it does not state whether two-factor authentication, biometric login, or device binding are available.

Other risks worth naming:

• A card programme can be closed by the card network or the issuer. The history of crypto cards includes the FTX debit card, wound down in November 2022 after Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX, and the WaveCrest suspensions in Europe in 2018, which closed every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme at once. There is no reason to think Payth will face the same fate, but a reader should know that programme closures happen and typically give a notice period, stop loading, then ask users to withdraw any remaining balance.
• The country list can be updated “periodically based on issuer policies,” which means eligibility today does not guarantee eligibility tomorrow, and a card that worked in your country this month may stop working next month.
• A crypto transfer to the wrong network, or to an address the provider does not support, can be lost with no built-in recovery, because blockchain transactions are typically irreversible.
• A decline in a foreign currency or at a foreign BIN can happen for reasons the merchant does not always explain, including address-verification mismatches and risk-based blocks from the issuer, and the only recourse is to contact the card’s support, which is reachable only through the in-site FAQ.
• App store version 1.0.6 with no public rating means the app is new and not widely reviewed, so you are an early user, with the bugs and the rough edges that come with that.

For the reader, the practical conclusion is that the product looks low-risk for small, day-to-day spending, but you should not park a large balance in the Payth wallet for a long time, and you should treat the card as a spendable balance, not as a savings account.

What to take instead

If Payth does not fit, three alternatives cover the same crypto-to-card space in different ways. None of them is a perfect match; each one is closer to a particular combination of cost, transparency, and access.

CardFlow

CardFlow is a virtual USD Mastercard aimed at “Nigerians and global users.” The card is created in 3 minutes, the site says creating a virtual card is “completely free,” and the funding options are Bitcoin, USDT, ETH, or a Naira bank transfer. The monthly fee is not stated, and the wider fee schedule and country list are not stated on public pages. The score is 4.9 out of 10. The trade-off is speed and a free issuance versus a thinner public record and a less transparent fee structure.

HyperCard

HyperCard is a prepaid card that App Store pages say works in “more than 176 countries” (the figure is for acceptance, not eligibility, so it is not the same as the country list you can apply from). The card balance is in USD or EUR, the funding flow is USDT, BTC, or ETH, and the App Store listing carries no fees at all. The country list, the card network, and the fee schedule are not stated. The score is 4.7 out of 10. The trade-off is a low-fee, multi-coin funding flow against a product that is not very forthcoming about its own terms.

Card.fi

Card.fi is the most fully priced of the three, and the most expensive at the entry tier. The headline numbers: a Virtual Classic is a one-time $49, a Virtual Premium is a one-time $249, and the physical and metal versions are priced higher. There is no monthly, annual, inactivity, or minimum-balance fee. The funding flow supports 32 coins across 5 networks — Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Solana, and Kaanch — including USDT, USDC, ETH, BNB, SOL, and KAANCH, with a per-card deposit address and a market-rate conversion on arrival. Fees on the top-up: 1.5% plus $1.00 on Classic, 1% on Premium; FX 3.5% on Classic, 2.5% on Premium. Cashback: 0.8% on Classic (capped at 10 USDT per month), 1% on Premium, 1.2% or 2% on Metal, plus a 10%-at-coffee-shops headline capped at 10 USDT per month, and an “up to 18%” yield on Metal balances. The score is 6.6 out of 10. The trade-off is a transparent, multi-network product with a meaningful one-time cost and a fee schedule that, while disclosed, is not the lowest in the category.

A quick comparison:

The honest summary is that Card.fi is the only one of the four with a fully published fee schedule, and it is also the most expensive to start. HyperCard and CardFlow are cheaper to begin with and less transparent at the same time. Payth sits in the middle: cheaper than Card.fi at the start (because the start cost is not stated), more transparent than HyperCard on the ATM fee, less transparent than Card.fi on the rest.

Who I would recommend it to

Payth is a fit for a specific reader. If you are an existing crypto holder with BTC, ETH, or USDT, want a virtual card for everyday spending, and value ATM cash access over a published fee schedule, Payth is a reasonable choice for small, frequent use. You will get a card that converts crypto to fiat at the till, an ATM withdrawal at 2%, and a card that, for the moment, works in most countries outside the restricted list. You will not get a physical card, a named network, mobile-wallet tokenisation, a cashback programme, or a clearly disclosed fee and regulatory profile.

If you are a reader who needs any of those things — a physical card, a known network, Apple Pay or Google Pay, a cashback rate, a transparent fee schedule, a clearly licensed issuer, a published monthly limit — Payth is not the right product for you. Card.fi, at a higher upfront cost, is the more transparent of the alternatives above. CardFlow and HyperCard are cheaper to start with, but they are even less forthcoming about their own terms.

The single piece of advice for anyone considering Payth is to start small. Top up an amount you would be comfortable leaving in a custodial wallet, use the card for a few weeks, and only then decide whether to keep a larger balance. The product is functional; the transparency is the weak point, and the only way to find out how the weak point matters to you is to use the card.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Payth card?

The Payth card is a virtual payment card that converts crypto held in a Payth wallet into fiat at the point of sale. You register in the app, verify your identity through Sumsub, deposit BTC, ETH, or USDT, and get a virtual card. The card is operated by POPPO LLC, with a stated “zero transaction fees” policy and a 2% ATM withdrawal fee.

How does the Payth card work?

You load crypto into a custodial Payth wallet, and the card spends from a balance that the app converts at the time of purchase. Card payments go through the standard card-acceptance rails, and ATM withdrawals are available at 2%. The card network (Visa or Mastercard) is not named on the public pages, so the technical routing is not disclosed in detail.

Is Payth a bank?

No. Payth is a card programme run by POPPO LLC, with KYC handled by Sumsub. The bank or e-money institution that issues the card is not named on the public pages, and the licences POPPO LLC holds are not stated. A reader should treat Payth as a payment service, not as a bank, and should not expect deposit-guarantee protection for the balance.

Who owns Payth?

Payth is operated by POPPO LLC, which is the developer name on the App Store listing. The country where POPPO LLC is registered, its ownership, and the regulatory licences it holds are not stated on the public pages. The company behind the card has a name but not a profile.

Is the Payth card available in my country?

Payth is sold as a global product, but with a restricted-country list that the company keeps and updates. The public list includes Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Syria, and Belarus. The restriction is residence-based, so the country you live in is what is checked, and the list itself can change “periodically based on issuer policies.” The clearest way to know is to install the app and try the KYC step.

Does the Payth card require KYC?

Yes. The KYC partner is Sumsub, which “only accepts IDs or passports issued by the same country as your ID” and which states that reviews are “typically” 5 to 10 minutes. Payth does not publish the documents it asks for beyond the ID, and does not state whether proof of address or a minimum age is part of the requirement. A refusal can come back as a “high-risk flag” with no published appeal route.

How do I top up the Payth card?

You deposit BTC, ETH, or USDT into the Payth wallet. The supported networks for each coin are not named, and the minimum, maximum, and clearing time are not stated. The safest approach is to send a small test transfer first, confirm it lands and converts, and only then send a larger balance. On-chain network fees are paid by the sender and depend on the network used.

Is the Payth card free?

Payth says the card has “zero transaction fees” and a 2% ATM withdrawal fee. The cost of issuing the card, the monthly fee, the foreign-exchange fee, the spread baked into the crypto conversion, and the daily and monthly spending limits are not stated. The honest reading is that there is no percentage on top of the spend, but the margin on the crypto-to-fiat conversion is what pays for the product, and that margin is not published.

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

The public pages do not say. Apple Pay and Google Pay support is not stated, so it should not be assumed that tokenisation into a mobile wallet is part of the product. If mobile-wallet support matters, the answer is to ask support through the in-site FAQ before signing up, because the public material is silent on the topic.

Is the Payth card safe?

Payth uses a custodial wallet, which means the operator holds the funds, and the operator’s “built-in risk controls” are not described in detail. Two-factor authentication, biometric login, instant card freeze, and per-merchant limits are not stated. There is no public complaint trail for Payth on Trustpilot or Reddit, which is partly a reflection of how new the app is (App Store version 1.0.6, no rating) and partly a reflection of how small the indexed user base is. A small balance kept in the app for a short time is a reasonable use; a large balance kept in the app for a long time is not.

Content created by the «cryptocardpicker» team