An IBAN and Mastercard from a Maltese e-money firm, with a 1.9 Trustpilot score

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you have struggled to get an ordinary bank card — because of where you live, how you earn, or which papers you can produce — a prepaid card tied to a euro account sounds like a practical escape route. Blackcatcard offers exactly that: an IBAN account with a Mastercard, opened online, with a virtual card issued instantly. On paper it is a straightforward euro wallet with crypto on top. So I went through the card’s own pages, the fee tables, and a large body of user complaints, and this is what I found.

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

The short version: a 4.3 out of 10

Blackcatcard scores 4.3 / 10 overall. That is not a rounding of a good card; it is a card whose good parts are real and whose bad parts are documented by hundreds of people who used it this year.

Let me be specific about who this suits and who it does not. The card is built around a euro IBAN account with a Mastercard, aimed at residents of the EEA who want a card they can top up and spend without a traditional banking relationship. If you are in the EEA, you want a euro account and a card that works in shops, and you are comfortable holding e-money rather than a bank deposit, the product is competently built. If you are outside the EEA, the card is the harder part: the account is described as open after registration, but the card itself is positioned for EEA residents. If you need deposit-guarantee protection, day-to-day fiat banking, or a service that has not generated a flood of complaints, this is not the card.

Here is the score broken down, criterion by criterion, with the reason I gave for each mark.

The total is 4.3 / 10. The pattern is obvious: the mechanics are decent, the reliability is the problem, and the reliability is where a card either works or does not.

Will they give you the card?

Start with the eligibility, because this is where a lot of people stop. The card’s own site does not publish a country list. A personal IBAN account is described as available “straight after the successful registration,” and business accounts “from most jurisdictions.” So on paper the account side is open widely.

The card side is narrower. The card file positions the card for residents of the EEA (the European Economic Area), while the account is described as global for people aged 16 and over. That distinction — account open widely, card aimed at EEA residents — is not something I can fully confirm from the pages I read; it comes from the card’s positioning rather than a stated eligibility list. Treat it as the shape of the offer, not a guarantee. If you are outside the EEA and you are banking on the card rather than the account, that is the assumption to test first.

The company behind the account matters here, because an IBAN is a promise about who holds your money. That is Papaya Ltd., at 31 Sliema Road, Gzira GZR 1637, Malta. It is an Electronic Money Institution authorised and regulated by the MFSA, Malta’s financial regulator, under registration number C55146. The loyalty programme is run by Baltic Technology Solutions OÜ. An EMI is a real, regulated category — but it is not a bank, and that distinction will come back when we talk about what your money is and is not protected against.

There is no deposit-guarantee story here. Funds sit in an e-money account, and the card states plainly that they are not covered by the Depositor Compensation Scheme. If a bank deposit feels reassuring to you, this is not the same thing.

How old do you have to be? The account is 16+, which is lower than the 18+ you would expect from most prepaid cards. That is a genuine plus for younger users who can hold a payment card.

How to get it

Registration is online, and the card says a personal IBAN account is available immediately after a successful registration. The card itself is a Mastercard — marketed as a free Mastercard — and a virtual card is issued instantly. So even without the plastic, you have something you can enter into a wallet and spend.

The physical card follows a separate delivery schedule:

• Regular mail is free and takes 15–20 business days.
• Express delivery takes 1–5 business days, with the fee calculated individually.
• A reissued card costs €7 or €12; the card’s own page tables disagree on the figure.

That disagreement is small but worth noting, because it is the kind of inconsistency that tells you the fee documentation is not fully maintained. If you need a replacement card, confirm the current price rather than relying on a figure you read somewhere.

Now the part that trips people up: identity verification. On the pages I read, the KYC requirements are not stated. What documents are needed, whether there are verification tiers, what the review looks like — none of that is spelled out. This is not unusual for a card that markets frictionless signup, and it may simply mean the requirements are light. But “not stated” is not the same as “no checks.” If your situation is one where a compliance review could catch you out, you should expect to send documents at some point and plan for it rather than assuming the virtual card arrives with no questions.

Fees: what it really costs

The headline numbers are friendly: opening the account is free, and the first card is free. Monthly maintenance is free while you hold one card, and €2/month if you hold more. An additional card costs €7, or €12 if you give it a nickname. But the costs that bite in daily use are elsewhere, and one of them is not disclosed at all. Here is the picture in one place.

Two gaps stand out, and both are in the places where you actually lose money. The crypto conversion fee — the rate at which your BTC, ETH or USDT turns into euros — is not stated. The card markets “lowest fees on the market” but publishes no figure, so you cannot work out what a swap costs you before you do it. The FX fee, what you pay when you spend the euro card in another currency, is also not stated. For a card whose whole appeal is spending abroad, an unstated FX fee is a real gap. There is no figure I can give you here, because the card does not publish one.

The €15/month dormancy fee deserves a second look, because it is the fee most likely to catch you off guard. It kicks in from the seventh month of inactivity. If you top the card up rarely, or leave a balance sitting for a long time without moving it, this starts running. It is the single largest recurring number on the fee sheet.

Let me run three ordinary payments through this, so you can see which fees actually bite:

• A €30 lunch in Frankfurt. Your card is in euros and the terminal prices in euros, so there is no conversion and no FX fee. The 3% card top-up fee does not apply, because that is charged when you load the card, not when you spend. This payment is free to you — unless the lunch falls into a merchant category the issuer treats with extra caution, which the card does not publish.
• A €30 dinner in New York. The terminal charges in dollars. Whether this costs you extra depends entirely on the FX fee, which is not stated. This is the payment where you are least able to predict the cost, and it is exactly the use case people open a euro card for. Check the current FX terms before you rely on it.
• Taking €150 out of an ATM in Warsaw. You are inside the EU, so the first €200/month is free — this withdrawal costs nothing. Take €400 instead, and €200 is free while the remaining €200 is charged at 1%.

So the pattern: euro spending inside the euro area is genuinely clean, cash inside the EU is clean up to a monthly allowance, and anything involving crypto conversion or a foreign currency is where the missing fee figures hurt you.

How to Top up the card and the account

Topping up comes in two flavours, and it helps to keep them apart: loading the account, and loading the card itself.

Into the account. You can buy BTC, ETH and USDT with euros through the card’s integrated crypto service, which per the card file runs through a partner, Manerio UAB. The minimum crypto purchase is 5 EUR. Separately, incoming SEPA transfers into the account are free with no amount limit, and internal transfers are free with no limit. So the account can be filled from ordinary bank rails at no cost.

Into the card. Loading the card itself, or sending card-to-card, costs 3%. That is the number to remember, because it is the one you will pay most often if you keep the card loaded in small amounts.

One practical warning about the crypto route. The card states that BTC, ETH and USDT can be bought for euros through its integrated service, but it does not name the networks those coins move on. That matters more than it sounds. Blockchain transfers are irreversible: a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or sent to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. If you buy through the integrated service rather than sending coins yourself, the provider is choosing the network for you. If you ever send crypto to the account yourself, you need to be certain the network matches, because there is no undo.

What you cannot yet do is check that the coins and networks you already hold are supported. That is not published, and it is a reasonable question to ask before you move funds.

Paying with it every day

Day-to-day use is the card’s strongest area, and it is the one that earns it 7 out of 10.

The virtual card is issued instantly, which means you can start spending within minutes of registering without waiting for post. The physical card arrives in 15–20 business days by free standard mail, or 1–5 business days by express at an individually calculated fee. That is a normal, unremarkable delivery window, and having both options is a genuine convenience.

Cash withdrawals are well-designed for the EU: free up to €200 per month, then 1%, with daily and monthly ceilings of €5,000 and €10,000 respectively. Outside the EU it is 1% with a minimum of €1.50. Spending limits, unlike cash limits, are not stated — so I cannot tell you what daily or monthly cap applies to card purchases themselves. The cash figures are generous for ordinary use, which tells me the intended customer is someone spending day to day, not someone using this as a cash machine.

Now the features that are advertised, and what I can and cannot verify:

• Cashback is advertised as “up to 5% cashback,” a separate reward of “up to 4% p.a.,” and “2% cashback on Amazon.” The currency these are paid in and the conditions attached are not stated.
• The iOS app is called “Blackcatcard – My prepaid card.” Its rating was not read, so I cannot vouch for it either way.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay support are not disclosed. If adding the card to your phone wallet is essential to you, this is an open question.

The rewards deserve a sceptical read. “Up to” figures, with the paid-in currency and the qualifying conditions not published, are the weakest kind of offer. I would not count any of it in a budget until you have seen a real statement showing what was credited and in what currency.

One more everyday-use detail. If you need to dispute a transaction, the card charges a €10 fee for a “transaction claim without grounds.” The time frames for raising a claim are not stated. Ten euros for a claim the issuer considers groundless is a fee that will make you think twice before disputing a small charge — fair enough, but worth knowing it exists.

What can go wrong

This is the section that decides the score, so I want to be direct rather than diplomatic.

The reliability picture is the problem. On Trustpilot, as read on 21 October 2026, the card holds a TrustScore of 1.9 out of 5 across 744 reviews, of which 56% are one-star. That is not a normal amount of noise — it is a broad, consistent negative signal about a service in current use.

Reading the complaints, the recurring theme is this: users top up their account or card, and then outgoing transfers and card payments are declined or cancelled. The reports carry specific dates through 2026 — 8 May, 27 June, 28 July, 4 September, 25 September, and 2 October 2026 — which suggests the problem has been happening repeatedly over several months rather than as one isolated outage. Alongside that: withdrawals suspended, difficulties with account closures, and allegations of scam behaviour. Support replies are described as generic. I found no official incident notice from the card acknowledging any of this.

Two things about that pattern are worth pausing on. First, it is precisely the failure mode the fee sheet cannot warn you about: no fee causes it, and no limit prevents it. Second, “payments blocked after funding” is a very specific complaint, and its specificity is what makes it credible. It also points at the mechanism these cards actually run on — a card like this is usually a pre-loaded balance, so the moment funds arrive, the balance is what the merchant and the issuer are evaluating. If that balance is being frozen or the account is being reviewed, the money is technically present and functionally unusable.

I should be clear about what I can and cannot establish. The Trustpilot figures and the complaint themes are unofficial — they come from users on a third-party site, not from the card, and the card’s own pages do not confirm them. But a 1.9 rating across 744 reviews is a factual measure of what users report, and it is the single most important input to the 4.3 score. I found no official incident notice to balance against it.

On security, a few structural points. The arrangement is custodial — the funds sit in an e-money account, not a deposit-guaranteed bank account. The private keys are described as protected by “a licenced institution,” and PIN recovery runs through 24/7 in-app support, and support is advertised as 24/7 live chat. Those are reasonable-sounding arrangements, but they mean you are trusting the provider with your money and your access to it. E-money balances are not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme, so the usual bank backstop for something going wrong does not apply here.

On the regulatory side, worth knowing how this category is governed. An EU electronic money institution can issue e-money, payment cards and wallets but cannot lend. The card itself is regulated as a payment service under e-money and payment-services law, separately from the crypto side — which means a crypto card often rests on two licences. And under the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, MiCA (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114), which took legal effect in June 2023, e-money tokens like stablecoins may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. There is a transitional period that lets providers operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first. None of this tells you whether Blackcatcard will have a problem; it tells you what framework it operates in, and where to look if you want to verify a provider.

I want to give you the context for why a 1.9 is not an unusual thing to find on a crypto card. Custodial platforms have a documented history of failure: Mt. Gox (roughly US$350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (roughly US$400 million, 2018), and Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022). And the card networks themselves do not issue these cards to consumers — they license issuers, and they can pull a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022, and the FTX US debit card was wound down. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes. These are category facts, not predictions about this card. They explain why “who holds my money” and “what happens if they stop” are the questions to ask of any card in this space — and why a card whose users report blocked withdrawals deserves a hard second look.

What to take instead

If Blackcatcard’s mechanics appeal but the reliability does not, there are three alternatives I looked at, each with its own trade-offs. None of them is a recommendation; they are the comparison set, with their own scores and their own gaps.

International Visa Card — 6.7 / 10. This is the strongest of the alternatives by score, and it takes a different approach: a US-issued Platinum Visa that pays in USD. It is explicit about who it is not for. The account and card are not available to residents or legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela or Vietnam, and FATF grey-list countries are reviewed case by case with compliance approval. Purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Notably, the rule is by residence or registration, not citizenship.

On cost and fees: the virtual card is $5 one-time with no maintenance fee, and there are plans — Classic free, Pro $9.00/month, Max $19.00/month. Card use in USD is free on all plans. Foreign currency carries “Visa exchange rate + 2% FX fee.” Deposits of any kind are free. You fund it with USDC or USDT into the USD account at 1:1, or with USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT or FedNow deposits. No cashback is stated. The physical card is listed as “coming soon,” so this is a virtual-only option today. Its advantage over Blackcatcard is that it names its FX fee and its exclusions openly. Its disadvantage is the long restricted-country list and that you spend in dollars, not euros.

UNi Card — 6.1 / 10. A multicurrency card on the Mastercard network that spends from a UNi.Global account balance. Its fee story is the cleanest of the three: “no annual fee,” “no annual fee or foreign transaction fee,” assets converted at “live OTC rates,” and “no hidden exchange fees.” Rewards are “spend-to-earn” up to 3% with the card. The gaps are the same size as Blackcatcard’s: who can get it is not stated, funding is not stated, whether it is physical or virtual is not stated, and the issuance fee is not stated. So this is the option to look at if the fee structure is what you care about most — but you would be buying on a thinner public description.

Whop Cards — 5.2 / 10. A Visa card that works anywhere Visa is accepted, online and in stores, spending from a Whop balance. A pending balance becomes usable as soon as a payment arrives, and standard withdrawals use settled funds; the balance is backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet. Rewards are 5% cashback at select merchants, currently Uber, with more planned — though the payout currency and conditions are not stated. Coverage is by US state: 31 states for consumers (including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming) and 41 states for businesses. Unsupported consumer countries include Belarus, mainland China, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam. The page says “no extra fees” but lists no issuance or monthly amounts, and the conversion and FX fees are not stated. The coin and network details are not stated either. This is the option if you are US-based and already inside the Whop ecosystem; the state-by-state coverage and the missing fee figures are the things to weigh.

Pulling the comparison together:

The honest takeaway from this table is that no option in this category publishes everything. Blackcatcard’s problem is not that it hides a fee; it is that its users report the money stops working. That is a different kind of risk from a bad exchange rate.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend this card to a narrow and specific person: someone in the EEA, aged 16 or over, who wants a euro IBAN and a Mastercard they can get today without a traditional banking relationship, who is comfortable that their money sits in e-money rather than a guaranteed deposit, and who will not be caught out by an unstated crypto conversion or FX fee.

I would not recommend it if any of these are true of you:

• You need your money to be available on demand, full stop. The pattern of blocked payments and suspended withdrawals in the reviews is the whole problem, and no fee saving compensates for it.
• You depend on the crypto conversion rate and want to know it in advance. That fee is not published.
• You plan to spend heavily in a foreign currency and need the FX cost known up front. That fee is not published either.
• You leave money idle for months. The €15/month dormancy fee from the seventh month will cost you more than almost anything else on the schedule.
• You need bank-grade deposit protection. E-money funds are not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme.

If you read the complaints section and felt your stomach drop — if you have been blocked before and are trying to work out whether it will happen again — trust that instinct. The 1.9 across 744 reviews is not a rounding error, and the specific, repeated dates in the complaints suggest an ongoing pattern rather than a resolved glitch. For that situation, my honest advice is to look at one of the alternatives above, each of which at least publishes its FX fee or its exclusions, and choose based on your currency rather than on a headline cashback figure.

Frequently asked questions

What is Blackcatcard?

Blackcatcard is a euro e-money account with a Mastercard attached, issued by Papaya Ltd., a Malta-based Electronic Money Institution regulated by the MFSA under registration C55146. You get an IBAN, a virtual card instantly, and an optional physical card by post. It also has an integrated service for buying BTC, ETH and USDT with euros. It is an e-money account, not a bank, so your funds are not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme.

How does Blackcatcard work?

It works like a prepaid card rather than a debit card. You top up the account by SEPA transfer, internal transfer, or by buying crypto through the integrated service, and the card spends the resulting balance. Because the balance is pre-loaded, the card cannot overdraw it. Under the hood, the crypto part is custodial — the provider holds the keys, and your money sits in an e-money account rather than in your own wallet.

Is Blackcatcard a bank?

No. It is issued by an Electronic Money Institution, Papaya Ltd., not a credit institution. An EMI can issue e-money, payment cards and wallets but cannot lend. This matters for your money’s protection: e-money balances must be safeguarded by the institution, but they are not bank deposits and are not covered by the Depositor Compensation Scheme. The card states this explicitly.

Who owns Blackcatcard?

The account and card are run by Papaya Ltd., at 31 Sliema Road, Gzira GZR 1637, Malta, authorised and regulated by the MFSA under registration number C55146. The loyalty programme is operated by Baltic Technology Solutions OÜ. The integrated crypto service runs through a partner, Manerio UAB. So the card is a programme from a licensed firm, not a product of Visa or Mastercard themselves.

Can I use Blackcatcard in my country?

The card is aimed at residents of the EEA, while the personal IBAN account is described as available after registration worldwide for people aged 16 and over. The card does not publish a country list, so there is no definitive table to check. If you are outside the EEA and plan to rely on the card rather than just the account, treat the EEA positioning as the real limit and confirm with the card before you move money.

How do I get and activate the card?

Register online and, once registration is successful, your IBAN account is available and a virtual Mastercard is issued instantly — you can use it without waiting for anything to arrive. The physical card takes 15–20 business days by free standard mail, or 1–5 business days by express at an individually calculated fee. The card’s pages do not state what identity checks apply at signup, so expect to provide documents if asked rather than assuming none are required.

How do I top it up?

Into the account, SEPA and internal transfers are free with no amount limit, and you can buy BTC, ETH or USDT with euros through the integrated service from a minimum of 5 EUR. Into the card itself, the card top-up and card transfers cost 3%. Note that the networks for the crypto are not named by the card, so if you send coins yourself, be certain the network matches — blockchain transfers are irreversible.

What are the fees?

Opening the account and the first card are free. Monthly maintenance is free with one card, €2/month with additional cards, and an additional card costs €7 (or €12 with a nickname). A €15/month dormancy fee applies from the seventh month of inactivity. Card top-up and card transfers are 3%. EU cash withdrawals are free to €200/month then 1%; outside the EU, 1% with a €1.50 minimum. The crypto conversion fee and the FX fee are both not stated by the card.

Is it safe to use, and can I add it to Apple Wallet?

On security, the arrangement is custodial, private keys are protected by “a licensed institution,” and PIN recovery is via 24/7 in-app support. Funds are safeguarded as e-money but are not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. Apple Pay and Google Pay support are not disclosed, so I cannot confirm wallet add-on. Separately, safety in the practical sense is complicated by the Trustpilot record — 1.9 out of 5 across 744 reviews, with users reporting blocked payments and suspended withdrawals in 2026.

Is Blackcatcard worth it?

For someone in the EEA who wants an instant euro card and a clean IBAN without a bank relationship, the mechanics are good enough that it can be worth it. But weigh that against three things: the crypto conversion and FX fees are not published, the €15/month dormancy fee can bite, and the user reports of payments being blocked after top-ups are a real and repeated pattern. Read the complaints, and if blocked payments would be a serious problem for you, choose an option that publishes its fees and restrictions instead.

Content created by the «cryptocardtested» team