The card that costs $9.99, converts at 3% and has no cash yet

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

SPay is a virtual Visa card you create inside an app, load with stablecoins or native crypto, and spend like an ordinary payment card. There is no country list on its public pages, no published price sheet for its crypto conversion fee, and no Trustpilot page I could find. In exchange you get a tiered structure with purchase protection and points, and an issuer that answers to a real bank.

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

I read the card’s own terms, its app listing and the pages that explain the plans, then lined them up against the three closest alternatives. What follows is what I could verify, what I could not, and where the gaps are large enough that you should decide with them in mind.

Verdict: 5.5 out of 10

Total: 5.5 / 10.

That total is not a verdict on whether the technology works. It is a verdict on how much of the card is finished. The strongest number is the top-up one, and it deserves credit: named networks, a stated range, and credit “in minutes” is more specificity than most cards in this category publish. The weakest is cost, and not because the fees are high — 3% is unremarkable — but because the card’s own terms never list the crypto conversion fee, which is the one number that would tell you what a purchase actually costs you.

Who does it suit? Someone outside the US who cannot get a normal bank card, or who wants a card whose balance comes from crypto rather than from a salary account, and who is comfortable with an app-only product that is still shipping features. Someone who wants cash machines today, or a Google Pay button that behaves, should look elsewhere.

Who does it suit less? Anyone treating this as a travel card with tiered insurance and lounge access, because the tier benefits are described while the physical card that would use them is “Coming soon”. Anyone who needs to hold a balance and trust the operator with it. And anyone who wants a points system with a published earn rate — the headline is “up to 1.5% back depending on tier”, which is a ceiling, not a rate.

Will they give you the card?

There is no country list on the card page. Where a country list would normally sit, the page points to the Contact page and says “For current country coverage”. That means eligibility is decided case by case, and the practical answer to “is SPay available in my country” is: you have to ask.

What the terms do say is narrower. You must not be blocked or sanctioned by the United States under OFAC rules, and you must attest that you are not a US citizen. The card is described as intended for people outside the US. Whether that rule runs on citizenship, on residence, or on both is not stated, and the difference matters if you are, for instance, a citizen of one country living in another.

Two other things are unstated that you will notice: the customer due diligence level, and whether the card distinguishes citizens from residents at all. The card’s public pages simply do not describe it.

How to get it

Verification is part of onboarding. Which documents are required, whether proof of address is asked for, and what minimum age applies are not described on the public pages. Once you are through, unlocking the app uses Face ID or a 6-digit passcode.

The card itself is virtual and created in the app. It is a Visa, issued by Third National under licence from Visa, and it spends in US dollars. A physical teal plastic card exists on the roadmap for tap-to-pay and ATM withdrawals, priced at $99 one-off and marked “Coming soon”; the plan is for it to be delivered to your address and activated on arrival. Which countries it would ship to, and how long that would take, is not stated.

So the honest answer to “how do I get a SPay card” is: register in the app, pass verification, create the virtual card. If what you actually wanted was plastic in your hand, that part is not available yet.

Fees: what it really costs

Three everyday payments, so the fees are concrete rather than abstract.

Buying coffee in Dubai for the equivalent of $10, charged in US dollars, means your bank or network converts dirhams to dollars and the foreign exchange fee applies, up to 3% — call it up to $0.30 on $10. Add the cross-border fee of up to 3% if the merchant’s country and your billing country differ, and the same coffee could cost up to $0.60 in total, excluding any crypto conversion charge the card does not publish.

Booking a $300 flight in a currency other than dollars hits the same two percentages, potentially up to $18, again on top of whatever conversion happens between your crypto and the balance. Whether that conversion is free, flat or variable is the number I could not find.

Withdrawing $200 in cash is not possible at all right now: the physical card is “Coming soon”, cash advances are unavailable per the terms, and the ATM fee is not listed for a day when it may become relevant.

Two features sit in the same place. Your own spending limit can be set anywhere from $0 to your tier cap — which is genuinely useful if the card ends up in the wrong hands. But the terms also say SPay sets the limit based on collateral and can reduce it to $0 at any time. Those two statements sit together without explanation, and if your plan depends on a large monthly limit, that is a clause to ask about.

How to top it up

This is where the card is most concrete, and it is worth understanding the shape of it.

You deposit USDT — on Tron (TRC-20) or Ethereum (ERC-20) — or USDC on Ethereum (ERC-20), plus native ETH and TRX, into the SPay wallet. From there you move money to the card out of your USDC balance, in amounts from $10 to $500, with credit described as taking minutes. Quick amounts from $10 to $500 are offered in the app. The deposit fee is not listed, and who pays the network fee is not stated.

Two details from general crypto knowledge apply directly to those two networks, and they are the reason I would not rush a first transfer. ERC-20 fees — gas — are paid only in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT with no ETH cannot send. And on Tron, fees are paid through bandwidth and energy resources, often by burning TRX. Neither is a SPay rule, but both are the difference between a deposit arriving and a deposit stalling.

Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, which is why the card lists USDC only on Ethereum ERC-20 while USDT can arrive on either Tron or Ethereum. Getting that pairing wrong is the single easiest way to lose a deposit, and blockchain transfers are irreversible — 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 recovery with no guarantee.

Withdrawing works the other way: funds go out as USDC on Base to any self-custody wallet. The withdrawal fee is not listed, and what happens to a leftover balance when you close the account is not stated. Fiat top-up, by card or bank transfer, is not stated either — this is a crypto-to-card card, not the reverse.

Paying with it every day

Apple Pay works, and that is the main reason to pick this over raw card numbers at online checkouts. Google Pay is the awkward one: the site marks it “in development”, while the card page says both wallets work with virtual cards on creation. I would plan on Apple Pay and treat Google Pay as unproven.

Points accrue on card purchases, up to 1.5% back depending on your tier. 200 points equals $1 in USDC, redemption starts at 1,000 points, credited to the card balance. There are bonus points for referrals, for completing verification and for your first card. Read “up to 1.5%” as a ceiling that only the top tier approaches.

Categories are restricted. Cash-like transactions — crypto purchases, gambling, money transfers — “may be limited”. That language is softer than a block, and gambling is one of the categories most often blocked by policy rather than by law, with the list varying by issuer. If crypto purchase or betting is a reason you wanted the card, read this section twice.

Where the card is accepted is not something the card controls. A prepaid card issued in one country and used in another can look foreign to the merchant, and some shops decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards as a result. Address verification, which compares the billing address a buyer types against issuer records, is mostly a US, Canada and UK service and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines. A declined authorisation can also leave a hold on your funds for several days, sometimes up to seven.

The app itself: 5.0 out of 5 on the iOS App Store from one rating, which is not a sample size. iPhone with iOS 15.1 or later. A Google Play listing exists; its rating was not read. Support is an in-app AI assistant handing off to a human, the app is fully localised in Arabic, the phone number is +971 55 947 6972, and Platinum carries 24/7 support while Infinite adds a priority concierge.

If a charge goes wrong, the card’s own route is: ask the merchant first, then report the disputed charge within 60 days of it posting to your statement. Card-network chargeback rules apply, and money you win comes back as a credit to the SPay account. 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 — I am not giving you legal advice here, only telling you which rules to look up.

The tier benefits, for completeness, since they are the reason the plans differ:

• Platinum — purchase protection and extended warranty up to $10,000, price protection up to $2,000, worldwide auto rental insurance, 24/7 support.
• Signature — everything in Platinum plus concierge, Luxury Hotel Collection, airport lounge access, higher limits.
• Infinite — adds travel accident insurance up to $1,500,000, baggage cover, priority concierge, purchase protection $20k, warranty $25k.

What can go wrong

The scariest thing I found is what I could not find. No official incidents surfaced, and a search for reviews of SPay on third-party complaint and forum sites returned no SPay results at all. No Trustpilot page exists for SPay. That cuts both ways: there is no record of harm, and there is also no public body of users describing what the card is like after six months. Absence of complaints on a product with one App Store rating is weak evidence, not strong evidence.

The company behind it is NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C, which says outright that it is not a bank. The card is issued by Third National under licence from Visa, and the terms are governed by Puerto Rico law. That structure is normal for this category — the crypto brand is often only the front end, with a licensed issuer holding the actual card programme — but it means your contract is with an issuer in one jurisdiction under a legal system you may not know.

Security features are decent on paper: passcode or Face ID to unlock, push notifications on card activity, and your own spending limit. What is not stated is the custody model — whether your crypto is held in a wallet the provider controls, or whether keys sit with you. Given that deposits land in “the SPay wallet” and withdrawals leave as USDC, the answer matters, and it is the first question to ask support before you send anything of value.

Wider category risks worth weighing, because they apply to this kind of card generally:

• Custodial platforms have failed before — Mt. Gox (about $350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (about $400 million, 2018), Ronin Network ($625 million, 2022). Holding funds with a custodian carries counterparty and hack risk.
• Card programmes get switched off. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022, and WaveCrest, a supplier of crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes.
• A closure typically means a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source ended new loads on 8 July 2026 and spending on 8 August 2026 — a single unconfirmed source, but the pattern is what to watch for.
• Stablecoins are not stable in the way the name promises. They can and have depegged.
• On taxes, I will not advise you, but the structural point is public: if you hold digital assets as property, each payment funded from crypto may be a separate taxable disposal measured at the value on the date of the transaction. Take your own advice on this.

There is also no dated news for SPay I could find. The app listing is new. That fits with a young product, and it means there is no track record either way.

What to take instead

If the deciding factor is cash and a card you can hold, a custodial or self-custody card from an exchange with a long public record is the safer pick, even if the fees are higher on paper. If the deciding factor is crypto variety — more coins, more networks — the alternatives below cover more ground. If it is rewards, one of them pays a published cashback rate rather than a ceiling.

Three things stand out in that table.

CardFlow is the cheapest to start — a free virtual Mastercard — but it is built for Nigeria, its networks are not stated, and its App Store score of 4.9 on my scale reflects how little is published about it. It is a sensible pick if you are Nigerian; a thin one otherwise.

HyperCard’s “more than 176 countries” is the number most likely to be misread. It describes where the card is accepted, not who can sign up. Its network is not stated on the page I could read, and it lists no fees at all.

Card.fi is the only one of the four with published conversion mechanics and a real rewards ladder — 0.8% cashback on Classic rising through the tiers, a 10% headline at coffee shops capped at $10 a month, and a stated percentage earned on balances on Metal that varies. It also supports the widest coin and network range, across Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Solana and Kaanch. Against that, its entry price is $49, its FX fee is the highest of the three at 3.5% on Classic, and it carries the same wrong-chain risk as any card that accepts many networks. Cards under licence from “the relevant card schemes” with Visa or Mastercard unnamed is a thinner guarantee than a named issuer.

Who I would recommend it to

Recommend SPay to someone in this position: you are outside the US, crypto is where your money is anyway, a normal bank card is either unavailable or unwanted, and you would rather pay up to 3% in fees than spend an afternoon at a branch. You will use Apple Pay, you will spend from a balance you top up yourself, and you are at peace with an operator that says it is not a bank.

Do not recommend it to someone buying their first card and expecting the tier perks to work on holiday. The benefits are written down; the plastic they are attached to is not shipping.

Two things would move my score. The first is publishing the crypto conversion fee and a real country list — both are absences, and absences are cheap to fix. The second is shipping the physical card, which is what turns a virtual card into a card.

Frequently asked questions

What is SPay card?

SPay is a virtual Visa card created inside a mobile app and funded from crypto rather than a bank account. You deposit supported coins into an SPay wallet, move value to the card, and spend it in US dollars. It is operated by NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C, which states it is not a bank, and the card is issued by Third National under licence from Visa. A physical card is listed as “Coming soon”.

How does SPay card work?

You register, pass identity verification during onboarding, and a virtual Visa appears in the app, spending in US dollars. You fund it by depositing USDT on Tron or Ethereum, USDC on Ethereum, or native ETH and TRX, then move money from your USDC balance to the card in amounts from $10 to $500, with credit described as taking minutes. Points accrue on purchases and can be redeemed into USDC from 1,000 points.

Is SPay a bank?

No. The operator says so itself. What you are dealing with is a crypto platform in front of a bank that holds the card programme: NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C operates the app, Third National issues the Visa under licence, and the terms are governed by Puerto Rico law. Read that structure as a contract with an issuer under a legal system you may not know.

Who owns SPay?

The card is operated by NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C, with the card itself issued by Third National under licence from Visa. No parent company is stated on the public pages I read, and no dated corporate news about SPay surfaced. The app listing is new, so there is little public history to judge it by — which is a reason for caution, not an accusation.

Does SPay card require KYC?

Yes, verification is part of onboarding and the app unlocks with Face ID or a 6-digit passcode. Which documents are needed, whether proof of address is required, and what minimum age applies are not described on the public pages. Separately, the terms require you not to be sanctioned by the US under OFAC rules and to attest that you are not a US citizen.

Is SPay card available in my country?

There is no country list on the card page. Where one would be, it points to the Contact page and says “For current country coverage”, so eligibility is handled case by case. The terms describe the card as intended for people outside the US, and it is unclear whether the rule runs on citizenship or residence — so if either matters to you, ask before you upload documents.

Is SPay card safe?

It has sensible controls: Face ID or a 6-digit passcode, push notifications on card activity, and your own spending limit from $0 to your tier cap. What is not stated is the custody model — whether the provider holds your crypto keys. There is also no public complaint history either way, and no Trustpilot page, so you have almost no independent user evidence to lean on.

How much does SPay cost?

Plan fees are one-off: $9.99 for Platinum, $19.99 for Signature, $49.99 for Infinite, and $99 for the physical card when it ships. No monthly fee is stated. Foreign exchange on non-dollar spending is up to 3% and the cross-border fee is up to 3%. The crypto conversion and deposit fees are not listed, which is the number you most want and the one you will have to ask for.

Can I use SPay at ATMs and with Google Pay?

Not yet, officially. ATM withdrawals need the physical card, which is marked “Coming soon”, and cash advances are unavailable under the terms, so no ATM fee is listed either. Apple Pay works. Google Pay is described inconsistently — “in development” on one page, working with virtual cards on another — so treat it as unverified and check before you rely on it.

Can I withdraw money from SPay?

Withdrawals go out as USDC on the Base network to any self-custody wallet. The fee is not listed, and what happens to a remaining balance if you close the account is not stated. Because transfers are irreversible, sending to the wrong network or address can mean the funds are lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee.

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