A virtual card built for ad spend and subscriptions, not for everyday banking

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Zambulay card is not a bank account with a card attached. It is a virtual payment card sold by a Costa Rica company, funded with USDT on the Tron network, and offered in two versions: a Black card aimed at advertising platforms, and a Platinum card aimed at Apple Pay. There is no physical card, no ATM access and no published list of countries you are eligible from. If you came here because you cannot get an ordinary bank card, or because you want to spend crypto without touching an exchange, those are the two situations this card is built around — and the price of that convenience is a set of fees and open questions that the company’s own pages leave unanswered.

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

My score for the card is 6.2 out of 10. It is a competent narrow tool with a real weakness in the one place that matters most for this kind of product — the transparency of what you pay and who stands behind it.

Who the Zambulay card is for, and who it is not

Zambulay splits cleanly into two audiences. The Black card is described by the company as having “No country or spend limits” and as compatible with Google and Meta advertising accounts — that is, paying for ad platforms is its designed purpose. The Platinum card is described as working worldwide and connects to iPhone and Apple Watch in seconds, which makes it the Apple Pay option.

That is a narrow pair of use cases, and it is worth being honest about who will not benefit. If you want a debit card you can hand to a waiter, use at a terminal that dislikes prepaid or foreign cards, or draw cash from, this is the wrong product — there is no plastic and no ATM function stated anywhere in the public material. If your main worry is earning rewards, nothing about a rewards programme is stated. If you hold Bitcoin or Ether and want to spend it, this card is not for you: the only funding route described is USDT on TRC-20.

On eligibility, the picture is thin in both directions. The Black card’s “No country or spend limits” line tells you about spending, not about who may sign up; no list of eligible or excluded countries is published. KYC is not mentioned on the official pages at all — only a contact-details form is described. A Trustpilot reviewer praises quick sign-up with no complicated verification, but that is a third-party account and not something the card itself confirms. Whether you are eligible is something you can only find out by asking them.

Will they give you the card?

Nobody at Zambulay publishes an eligibility list, so the honest answer is: I cannot tell you from the public pages, and neither, I suspect, can the company’s sales team give you a straight one.

What the card does state is the scope of each tier. Black carries the promise of “No country or spend limits”. Platinum is described as working worldwide. Neither line tells you which citizenship or residence countries are accepted, and there is no exclusions list. Both cards are virtual: a card that exists only as a number and wallet token, with no physical delivery step at all.

The identity side of the question is the murkiest. KYC is not mentioned on the official pages, and the only sign-up step described is a contact-details form. In practice that usually means the checks live somewhere behind the scenes — with whoever supplies the card programme — rather than on the page in front of you. Treat that as unknown, not as absent. Under EU anti-money-laundering rules a regulated provider is expected to verify name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documents, run a sanctions check and establish the purpose of the relationship, and nationality is normally screened separately from residence because sanctions lists are applied to citizenship and country of birth. A card that mentions no KYC has not thereby avoided any of that; it has simply not told you about it.

Where the company sits: the site states that Zambulay “is not a bank, credit institution, financial intermediary or financial advisor” and that the offers are “provided by third-party companies”. The registered entity behind it is 3-102-944750 SRL in Costa Rica, at Provincia Puntarenas 06, Canton 11 Garabito, Jaco, 61101, with Stanislav Mickevic named as the beneficial owner. The card issuer itself is not named on the public pages. That gap matters: when something goes wrong, the party that actually holds your balance and issues the card is the party that has to put it right, and you are not told who that is.

How to get it

The path is short, and short is the selling point. You sign up through a contact-details form in the web workspace at client.zambulay.com — there is no standalone mobile app. After sign-up the choice is which tier you want:

• Black — the ad-spend card, described as compatible with Google and Meta ad accounts and as having “No country or spend limits”.
• Platinum — the consumer-facing card, described as working worldwide and built around Apple Pay.

What you get either way is a virtual card. Black is compatible with Google and Meta ad accounts; Platinum is built for Apple Pay. The card network and the card currency are not stated for either tier, which is a genuine problem: the network determines which terminals and which online merchants will take the card, and the currency determines what exchange rate you are exposed to when you spend. Neither is published.

There is no price and feature table to compare the two tiers, so you are choosing on the basis of a single phrase for each. As for activation, the card does not describe a separate activation step — the card number is the thing you use, and in the Platinum case the connection to iPhone and Apple Watch is described as happening in seconds. No KYC levels are stated, and no identity documents are listed as required.

One practical thing worth checking before you commit: the KYC requirement in this category usually arrives later than the sign-up form. Under EU rules, if due diligence cannot be completed, the institution is required to refrain from the transaction or relationship and, where necessary, end existing relationships. That is why accounts get frozen pending documents. Ask support, in writing, what documents will be needed and at what stage — before you load money, not after.

Fees: what the Zambulay card really costs

This is the weakest part of the card, and the reason it did not score higher. Zambulay publishes two numbers and leaves the rest blank.

The costs table, exactly as published:

Two things follow from that table. First, the 1.5% card top-up figure is a floor, not a rate — “from 1.5%” tells you the cheapest case and nothing about the case you will actually hit. Second, and more seriously, the conversion fee is not stated, and conversion is the operation every single payment depends on. You hold USDT; the merchant charges dollars, euros or naira; something has to turn one into the other. Neither the conversion charge nor the FX charge is on the public pages, so you cannot compute what a purchase will cost. For a card whose entire reason for existing is spending, that is the wrong thing to leave blank.

Set against that, the user complaints are worth taking seriously because they are specific. A Trustpilot reviewer reported in May 2026 that the commission was “several times higher than that of competitors” — giving $100 as costing about $20 — and that the first card did not work, so a second one was bought. Another review notes that support is sometimes slow. One report of this kind is an anecdote; a report with a number attached is at least a starting point for a question. Before you load anything substantial, ask support directly what a $100 purchase costs end to end, and get the answer in writing.

Now three everyday payments, and what each one actually costs:

• A $20 subscription paid with the Platinum card. You hold USDT on TRC-20 and the card spends down a loaded balance. The card top-up charge applies — from 1.5% — on the way to the card. On top of that, whatever the conversion and FX charges turn out to be, which are not published. The realistic cost is 1.5% plus an unknown.
• A $200 ad spend on Google or Meta through the Black card. Same structure: card top-up from 1.5%, plus unstated conversion, plus whatever the ad platform applies on its own side. The card’s “No country or spend limits” line says nothing about price.
• A €15 lunch anywhere the card is accepted. The most expensive version of the same arithmetic, because the smallest payments absorb a percentage fee worst. Nothing on the public pages covers whether there is a minimum card top-up that makes small spends impractical.

For context on what “conversion fee not stated” means in this category: on-chain network fees for your deposit are charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider — so a TRC-20 transfer may cost you in TRX, and the card does not say who pays it or what the minimum top-up is. Neither of those is a Zambulay charge, but both come out of the same money when you transfer in.

How to top up the card

Top-up is the one part of the cost story the card is clear about, and the mechanism is narrow: USDT on TRC-20, instant. That is the funding route the card describes, and it is the only one.

Two fees apply on the way in, and they are not the same fee. Topping up your account is at 0%. Loading the card itself is charged from 1.5%. The distinction matters if you are planning to hold a balance: money that sits in the account is free to hold, and money that moves onto the card costs you. Neither a minimum top-up amount nor who pays the TRC-20 network fee is stated, so work out the minimum yourself before you plan around a small top-up.

The network choice is the sharp edge. USDT exists on many chains — Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and others — and this card takes one of them. Blockchain transfers are irreversible. A deposit 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 attached. There is no way back from a transfer; support can only try. Before your first deposit, read the top-up screen and confirm the network and the address character by character. If you are used to Ethereum, this is the single most expensive mistake available to you.

One related detail worth knowing: Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option — that combination is not something you can rely on. USDT on Tron is the pairing this card actually names, and Tether describes USDT as a token built on multiple blockchains with reserves intended to back it one-to-one.

Withdrawals are also offered, with the platform stating “Withdrawals within 30 minutes”. Fees for that are not stated. If your plan involves moving money out as well as spending it, ask what that costs before you rely on it.

Paying with the card every day

Day to day, the Zambulay card is an Apple Pay object and an advertising budget tool. Everything beyond that is unstated.

What works, per the card:

• Platinum with Apple Pay — it “Connects to iPhone and Apple Watch in seconds”. Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific number stored in the phone’s Secure Element, never on Apple servers, and each payment carries a one-time dynamic code, so this is the best-protected way to use the card.
• Black for ads — compatible with Google and Meta advertising accounts, which is a genuine niche: funding ad platforms from a crypto balance, without an exchange sitting in the middle, is a real need that ordinary bank cards cannot meet.

What does not exist or is not stated:

• No physical card. There is no plastic to freeze, hand over, or use at a terminal that wants a magstripe.
• No ATM function stated. You are not drawing cash with this.
• Google Pay is not available — only Apple Pay.
• Rewards are not stated. There is nothing to earn.
• Blocked categories are not stated. This is a real gap. In this category, issuers commonly block whole categories by policy — gambling is the classic one, under MCC 7995 — and the blocked list varies by issuer, so you cannot assume you will be allowed where others are refused.
• Disputes and chargeback handling are not stated. 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. Whether Zambulay handles them, and how, is not described.
• Declines may leave holds. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds that stays for several days, typically up to 7. With a prepaid balance model, that money is simply unavailable to you for a week.

Two structural reasons explain most of the friction you would hit in real shops. A card number begins with a 6 or 8 digit issuer identification number that a merchant can look up, revealing the issuing institution and country; if that country differs from your billing address, the merchant may apply extra scrutiny. That is why a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another. And some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards outright for exactly that reason. None of this is Zambulay-specific, but with no stated issuer country and no stated currency, you cannot predict which side of that line you land on.

Support is live chat from 10:00 to 19:00 Moscow time, described as handled within 1 minute, with Telegram and email at [email protected]. Note the hours: outside that window, an evening or weekend problem means email or a wait.

What can go wrong

Three failure modes, in the order I would worry about them.

The card you paid for does not work. This is the most concrete complaint in the record. A May 2026 Trustpilot review reports that the first card did not work and a second had to be bought. With issuance from $3, that is a small direct loss, but if it happens on a Black card mid-campaign, it is a campaign that cannot run. Test the card on something trivial before you depend on it.

The fee turns out to be worse than the headline. The published floor is 1.5% on card top-up, with conversion and FX unstated, and a reviewer reports paying about $20 on $100 — several times what they considered competitive elsewhere. If the unstated conversion charge is a second percentage on top, the true cost of a card payment could be several percent. That is the difference between a tool worth using and one worth paying for only at high volume.

The programme disappears or the company is unreachable. No official incidents of that kind came up. But the structure of this card leaves you exposed to it. The card issuer is not named; the site says the offers are “provided by third-party companies”; the registered company is a Costa Rica SRL, not a bank or an e-money institution. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves — they license issuers and can suspend a programme. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down. Closures typically follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. If that happened here, your recourse would be against a Costa Rica company whose balance sheet you know nothing about.

What nobody has told you, and you should ask about: what happens to your loaded balance if the card programme ends; whether customer funds are safeguarded in a way you can rely on, and by whom; and whether prepaid-style reversal rights apply to you at all — coverage varies and should not be assumed.

Support and complaints record, for completeness: the Trustpilot figure is not consistent across what is visible — 4.1 out of 5 from 10 reviews in one place, 5/43 in another, and the sources disagree. Treat any single number as approximate. The recurring themes are high fees, a non-working first card, and slow support.

What to take instead

Three alternatives came up in this category. None of them is obviously better; they trade the Zambulay situation for different ones, and the honest summary is that all three score lower.

How I read the comparison:

• Cardex is the one that answers questions Zambulay does not. It names its networks — VERVE, VISA, Mastercard, UnionPay — and offers physical as well as virtual cards, which Zambulay does not. It also states a conversion mechanism. Against that, “200+ countries” with no exclusions list is a marketing line rather than an eligibility rule, and its App Store listing is Naira-focused, with the card currency shown as Naira. Unstated fees are the same problem as here.
• CardFlow is cheaper on paper — creating a virtual card is “completely free” — and its virtual USD Mastercard is created in about 3 minutes. It is aimed at Nigeria, and its monthly fee and transaction fees are not stated either. If you are Nigerian and want a Mastercard number with USDT, it is worth a look; if you are not, the targeting is the first thing that tells you something.
• HyperCard is the vaguest of the three. It is described as a prepaid card with a balance in USD or EUR, funded with crypto such as USDT, BTC or ETH, and its App Store listing claims acceptance in “more than 176 countries” — which is a statement about where the card is accepted, not who can hold it. No network, no fees, no country list. I would not open it expecting to learn anything the page does not say.

The pattern across all four is the same and it is the point of this comparison: in crypto cards, the country list, the network, the fees and the issuer are all routinely left unstated. Anyone who tells you this category is transparent is selling something.

Who I would recommend this to

I would recommend the Zambulay card to a specific person: someone who pays for advertising on Google or Meta from a USDT balance and cannot or will not route that through a bank, and who has tested a small top-up and confirmed the real cost of a purchase first. For them the Black card does a job nothing else in this comparison does. The same goes, more narrowly, for someone whose Apple Pay is their only working payment method and whose alternative is nothing.

I would not recommend it to anyone planning ordinary spending, cash withdrawals, or travel with a physical card. I would not recommend it to anyone whose main asset is not USDT. And I would not recommend loading meaningful money before you have, in writing, three answers: what a $100 purchase costs end to end including conversion and FX, what documents will be required for verification and when, and who the card issuer is.

Above all I would recommend that you treat the missing numbers as missing. Issuance from $3 and a 1.5% floor sound cheap. A card with an unstated conversion fee, an unnamed issuer, a voluntary-looking sign-up and no published country list is not a cheap card — it is a card whose price you have not been shown. Ask until you have it, or walk away.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Zambulay card?

Zambulay is a virtual payment card sold by a Costa Rica company, 3-102-944750 SRL. You fund it with USDT on the TRC-20 network and spend from a loaded balance. It comes in two versions: a Black card described as compatible with Google and Meta advertising accounts, and a Platinum card built around Apple Pay. There is no physical card, no ATM function stated, and no published list of eligible countries. The company says it is not a bank or financial institution.

How does the Zambulay card work?

You sign up, choose Black or Platinum, transfer USDT on TRC-20 to the address the platform gives you, and the balance loads onto the card instantly. You then pay with the card number or, on Platinum, through Apple Pay on iPhone or Apple Watch. Because it works like a prepaid card, it can only spend what you have loaded. Account top-up is free; loading it onto the card costs from 1.5%.

Is Zambulay a bank or a regulated financial institution?

No, and it says so itself. The site states that Zambulay “is not a bank, credit institution, financial intermediary or financial advisor” and that offers are “provided by third-party companies”. The registered entity is 3-102-944750 SRL in Jaco, Costa Rica, with Stanislav Mickevic as beneficial owner. The card issuer is not named on the public pages, and no licence is presented for review.

Does the Zambulay card require KYC?

The official pages do not mention KYC at all — only a contact-details form. That is not the same as no verification: in this category checks are commonly run by whoever supplies the card programme, and EU rules require name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documents and a sanctions check. A Trustpilot reviewer praises quick sign-up with no complicated verification, but that is a third-party account, not the card’s own statement.

How much does the Zambulay card cost?

Issuance is from $3, topping up your account is 0%, and loading the card costs from 1.5%. What is not stated is at least as important: the monthly fee, the conversion fee, the FX fee, any ATM fee, and any daily or monthly limits. Because conversion is what every payment depends on, and its charge is unpublished, you cannot calculate the true cost of a purchase from the public pages.

What is the difference between the Black and Platinum Zambulay cards?

Black is the advertising card: the company describes it as compatible with Google and Meta ad accounts and as having “No country or spend limits”. Platinum is the consumer card: described as working worldwide and as connecting to iPhone and Apple Watch in seconds for Apple Pay. No price or feature table compares the two, and the card network and currency are not stated for either.

Can I add the Zambulay card to Apple Wallet?

Yes, on Platinum. The card is described as connecting to iPhone and Apple Watch in seconds, so it is built for Apple Pay use. Google Pay is not supported. Apple Pay replaces your card number with a device-specific number in the phone’s Secure Element and uses a one-time code per payment, which makes it the safest way to use this card.

Where can I use the Zambulay card, and is it available in my country?

Platinum is described as working worldwide and Black as having no country or spend limits — but both statements are about spending, not about who may sign up. No country list and no exclusions are published, so eligibility is not something you can check in advance. You would need to ask the company directly. Some merchants also decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards after looking up the issuer country, so acceptance is not guaranteed even where the card nominally works.

Is the Zambulay card safe?

Nobody can answer that for you. The company describes safeguards only indirectly — live chat from 10:00 to 19:00 Moscow time, handled within about a minute, plus email. Nothing is stated about fund safeguarding, two-factor authentication, freezing a card, or what happens to your balance if the programme ends. The card issuer is unnamed and the offers come from third parties, which is the structure to be careful with in this category.

Is the Zambulay card worth it?

For paying Google or Meta ad bills from USDT, possibly — that is the use case it is built for and the one thing the comparison alternatives do not offer. For ordinary spending, cash or travel, no: there is no physical card, no ATM, no rewards and no stated country or category restrictions. Given unstated conversion fees and a 4.1-from-10 Trustpilot showing focused on fees and a card that did not work, test a small top-up first and get the true cost of a purchase in writing before committing money.

Content created by the «cryptocardtested» team