A Card That Went Quiet: What the Fiat24 Shutdown Means for You

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you were considering the Fiat24 card, the first thing you need to know is not about fees or limits. It is that the programme is closed to new customers. The site sits in maintenance mode, the card product page still carries the status line “Coming soon in December 2024”, and nobody is being let in. That changes what a review can even be. There is no longer a question of whether this card suits your spending; there is a question of what happened, what to do if you are already inside, and what to look at instead.

I have gone through the card’s own documentation, the operator’s regulatory position and the public complaint record, and I will give you the picture as it stands. The short version of my mark is 3.3 out of 10. That is not a low score for a product with a bad interface or thin limits. It is a low score for a financial service that is not currently operating, and for a support record that is thin and unhappy.

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

My verdict: 3.3 out of 10, and the number is mostly about closure

The score has to be read the way the score was built. Every criterion below is marked out of 10, and the marks are not evenly distributed. Cost and top-up options sit in the middle at 5 because they are simply undocumented rather than bad. Everyday use is the highest at 6, because a virtual Mastercard with mobile wallet support is a genuinely usable instrument on paper. Reliability and complaints sits at 2, and that is the criterion that does the real damage, because it is the one that affects your money and your ability to get it back.

Who this suits now: existing holders who want to withdraw their remaining balance and close out. That is the entire shortlist. Anyone who has been reading about crypto cards as a way to get ordinary payment instruments should look elsewhere, and I have put three alternatives at the end of this review with their own numbers, so you can see what a live option looks like next to this one.

Who it does not suit: anyone who needs a card this month. There is no application to submit. It also does not suit someone who plans to hold a balance on the platform in the hope that things improve, because the same documents that tell you the site is closed also tell you that the accounts and balances are not a savings product and are not covered by a deposit guarantee.

One more thing about the score, because it is easy to misread. The two zeros and the two would-be zeros are not a judgement on the product’s design. The card concept — spend a crypto-funded balance through a virtual Mastercard, no PIN, mobile wallets — was not obviously a bad idea. It is a judgement on whether you can rely on this to be there next month, and on whether you can get an answer when something goes wrong. That is the standard that matters.

What happened to the programme

The timeline is the story here, and it is not tidy. The card was announced for “December 2024” on the products page, and that status line is still there. There are also user documentation pages that describe activating the card in the dApp and say it is usually ready in seconds. Both things are on the same site. In other words, the public face of the product contradicts its own documentation, and neither has been reconciled in public.

Alongside that, the site has been in maintenance mode for long enough that it is clearly a state rather than an outage. No new applications are being accepted, and no dates are attached to that. The documentation adds three more facts that together paint the picture of a business winding down rather than pausing:

• New clients from 5 June 2026 are given a USD 30,000 monthly limit. That number conflicts with a USD 100,000 per 30 days figure stated elsewhere on the same page, which is exactly the kind of internal inconsistency you should treat as a signal about the state of the operation rather than as a perk.
• A refund processing fee applies from 15 May 2026: 1 USD, 1 EUR or 1 CHF per refund, or 7 CNH, deducted from the refund and capped at the amount of the refund itself.
• There are forced-exit rules covering sanctions, politically exposed persons, suspected fraud and recalls. The phrasing is important: these are not instructions for leaving, they are the operator’s rules for how it removes accounts.

The issuer is named as SR Saphirstein AG in Switzerland, with BIN 5481 0849. That matters more than it might look. The card network routes the messages, but the entity standing behind the card is a named company in a named jurisdiction, and that is who a claim would be against.

Let me say the obvious thing plainly, once: the card’s public pages do not state a country list or a citizenship and residence rule for new customers, do not describe the identity documents required, do not publish any card fee, and do not publish any conversion or FX fee. I will not fill those gaps with guesses later in this review. Where the official documentation is silent, I say so; where I have unofficial third-party information, I label it as unofficial and unconfirmed by the card.

One final note on what is not gone. Even in maintenance mode, the account architecture is described in detail: balances in EUR, USD, CHF and RMB, a “Direct Pay” setting per currency that spends the matching balance first to avoid FX fees, and a Default Card Currency that covers shortfalls by converting the whole amount, with no split payments. Refunds in USD, EUR, CHF or RMB return to the same-currency balance; refunds in other currencies convert to the default currency. That machinery is what makes the next section’s advice straightforward.

If you already have the card: get your money out

This is the practical section, and if you hold an account, it is the only one you need. The instruction the documentation gives is essentially this: bring your balances to zero, then close the account.

The mechanics are laid out, and they are worth following in order.

Withdraw to your own bank account. Payouts go to a bank account in your own name, in EUR or CHF. The first step is a small deposit from that bank account by IBAN, which links it; you can link up to 10 accounts per currency. The minimum payout is 100 EUR or 100 CHF. Timing is stated: a payout is booked the same business day if requested before 15:00 CET, otherwise the next business day, and after a weekend it is the next business day. A successful payout is free; a returned payout costs 10 EUR or 10 CHF.

Move the balance first. The card itself is funded through the dApp, and activation needs a minimum balance of 10 EUR in the Eurozone, 10 CHF in Switzerland or 10 USD in the rest of the world. A payout minimum of 100 EUR or CHF applies. So if your remaining balance is below the payout minimum, you cannot yet send it to your bank, and that is exactly the situation where a closed programme gets uncomfortable.

Close the account. Balances to zero, then go to id.fiat24.com, Profile, Close Account. This is final. No second account is allowed afterwards, and your KYC data is retained in line with Swiss anti-money-laundering law, which is normal but worth knowing before you click.

Three practical warnings sit alongside those instructions.

• There is no dispute or chargeback procedure described anywhere in the documentation. No procedure means no documented route to reversing a transaction through the issuer. This is a large hole for anyone who is still spending.
• A declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds for up to seven days. In a programme that is not accepting new business, a pre-authorisation left hanging is a real way to lose access to money you have already decided to withdraw.
• The refund fee now applies, from 15 May 2026, and it is deducted from the refund. If a merchant refunds you, you receive less.

What is not stated, and which I would want answered before I moved a large balance: ATM terms, whether card spending is still possible at all while the site is in maintenance mode, and what happens to a balance that cannot reach the 100 EUR or 100 CHF payout minimum. If you cannot get a clear answer on those, that uncertainty is itself an argument for moving whatever you can, now, rather than waiting for clarity.

Support is thinner than you would want in this situation. The documented channels are a Telegram bot at t.me/fiat24bot labelled “General inquiries”, a status page at status.fiat24.com, and social accounts on X, LinkedIn, Medium and Telegram. No email address and no phone number appear on the site, and no languages or working hours are stated. “General inquiries” through a bot is the front line of a service that is closing. Start there, but do not treat the bot’s answer as the last word on your money.

What can go wrong, and what has already gone wrong for people

Two different kinds of evidence sit here, and I want to keep them apart. The official record and the complaint record are not the same thing, and conflating them is how reviews go wrong.

What is documented officially. The site is in maintenance mode and takes no new applications. The card launch announced for “December 2024” did not happen as announced. The documentation contains forced-exit rules, a refund fee introduced mid-2026, and limit-upgrade requests that are not being accepted.

What Trustpilot shows (Fiat24, read on 20 October 2026): 2.2 out of 5 from 8 reviews, every one of them one star, the earliest dated 26 April 2024 and the most recent 13 May 2026. The themes users describe are specific and consistent: support that does not answer on email, Telegram or Discord, and a bot that loops instead of resolving; a pre-authorisation held on the card or funds not released; a SEPA transfer arriving weeks late and then roughly 50 EUR taken as a fee after re-routing; and scammers posing as support in community channels.

That last one deserves emphasis because it is the risk that grows when a service is winding down. When real support goes quiet, impersonators move into the gap. Anyone who messages you claiming to be Fiat24 support in a community channel is not the operator, and the operator’s own site lists no support email or phone number for that reason.

A third layer is unofficial and unconfirmed by the card: a third-party aggregator (cryptocards.so, no linked reviews, so I weight it lightly) carries user reports of intrusive identity checks, fees charged on crypto top-ups, support slow enough that funds were reportedly frozen with emails unanswered for 90 days or more, and a January 2025 restriction on third-party bank deposits for standard users. I found no Reddit thread and no independent Fiat24 review page to widen the sample. Eight reviews is a small body of evidence, and I am not going to pretend otherwise — but every theme in those reviews points the same direction, which is why the complaints criterion is marked 2.

On the safety architecture itself, the design was not careless. Sign-in is a self-custody wallet connection, and the account is an NFT in your own wallet. Card payments use 3-D Secure with a one-time password by email. Unusual activity triggers an automatic block, and you can lock and unblock the card in the dApp — with the catch that each such action locks card changes for 24 hours. Deposit insurance is not stated. The general lesson of self-custody applies with full force here: if the private key is stolen, move funds quickly, because a blockchain transfer is irreversible and the network cannot freeze or return it.

The refund mechanic is another quiet cost. Refunds are usually up to 7 days and up to 30 days cross-border, and since 15 May 2026 a processing fee of 1 USD, 1 EUR, 1 CHF or 7 CNH is taken out of each one, capped at the refund amount. Paying a fee to get your own money back is the sort of detail that tells you which way a business is moving.

There are operational limits inside the product as well. Daily and monthly card limits were tiered by the number of digits in the account NFT:

A tier rose when the NFT was upgraded, with the Premium NFT purchased in the dApp. Since limit-upgrade requests are not being accepted and new clients from 5 June 2026 are on USD 30,000 monthly, that table is now largely historical.

Some merchant categories were restricted: public transport, utility bills, in-flight shopping, and fine dining in the USA. Payments were refused for OFAC-sanctioned countries and entities, and some transaction types were limited in certain countries. From 5 June 2026 some emerging countries were capped at CHF 1,000 per 30 days.

And the KYC rules, for completeness, because people ask whether this card required identity checks. The documented criteria: biometric ID or a passport, age over 18, not a US Person, not a politically exposed person, not on OFAC or EU sanctions lists, GPS location captured, tax identification number collected, one account per person, and account opening in under one business day during CET hours. Grounds for rejection included domicile, risk profile or background not matching the business focus, duplicate registration, and failing any criterion. Unofficially, residence had to be in an eligible country, and nationals of Iran, North Korea and Russia were excluded.

I want to be plain about the limits here, because this is where a review is most tempted to overreach. The card’s public pages do not state the eligible country list, the citizenship or residence rule, the documents required, the age rule, the application steps, any card fee, or any conversion or FX fee amount. Where third parties fill those gaps, they are filling them, not the card.

Background: how crypto cards work, and why closures look like this

Since the programme is closing, it is worth being explicit about what was being closed, because these mechanics apply to whatever card you move to next.

A payment card number starts with a six- or eight-digit issuer identification number, the BIN or IIN, followed by an account identifier and a check digit. Merchants can look up that BIN and see which institution and country issued the card, and some apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. That is the mechanical reason a Swiss-issued card can look foreign to a shop in another country — a real source of declines that has nothing to do with you.

A prepaid card draws on a stored balance, while a standard debit card asks the holder’s bank to withdraw from a linked account at purchase time. Many crypto cards behave like the first kind: crypto is converted and loaded as a fiat balance, and the card spends only that balance, so it cannot overdraw. Fiat24 was built that way, which is why the “Direct Pay” and Default Card Currency settings existed.

Three parties are involved in any card payment: the network (Visa or Mastercard) routes messages and sets the rules, the issuer is the bank or e-money institution licensed under that network, and the crypto brand is often only a programme manager or front end. Fiat24’s issuer is SR Saphirstein AG, a Swiss entity holding a fintech licence under Article 1b of the Swiss Banking Act and supervised by FINMA. Being FINMA-supervised is a genuine positive and I do not want to understate it. It is also not the same thing as a deposit guarantee, and deposit insurance is not stated here.

Networks do not issue consumer crypto cards themselves; they license issuers, and they can suspend a programme. Visa said in November 2022 that it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX”, and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Closures tend to follow a pattern: a notice period, then loading and spending stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source ended new loads on 8 July 2026 and spending on 8 August 2026, though that is a single unconfirmed source and I cite it as a shape, not as a fact about this card.

Two more background points that bear directly on your money. Digital wallet payments are safer than they look: Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific Device Account Number stored in the Secure Element, never on Apple’s servers, and each payment uses a one-time dynamic security code. But issuers can restrict a tokenised number, for example blocking it on phone or website use. And an EMI must safeguard customer funds by segregating or insuring them, which is protection but not bank-deposit protection.

If you are in the EU, the crypto side is governed separately from the card side: MiCA, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, took legal effect in June 2023, its rules on asset-referenced and e-money tokens applied from 30 June 2024, and the remaining provisions including crypto-asset service provider rules applied from 30 December 2024. Under MiCA, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. The grandfathering period for providers already operating under national law runs until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first. A card is a payment service regulated under e-money and payment-services law, so a crypto card often depends on two licences. ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised providers that you can check.

And stablecoins, since they are what most of these cards are denominated in. Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC are dollar-pegged, and the BIS put about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation in those two as of July 2025. Circle says USDC is redeemable 1:1 for USD and fully backed by cash and cash equivalents, mostly in an SEC-registered government money market fund, with monthly reserve attestations by a Big Four firm, and lists USDC as natively supported on 38 networks as of 16 September 2026. Tether describes USDT as a token on multiple blockchains with reserves intended to back it 1-to-1, and says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list. Stablecoins are not censorship-proof and they are not always stable: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC lost its peg briefly in March 2023.

The practical consequence for a Fiat24 holder is about networks. Fees on Ethereum-based transfers are paid only in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT but no ETH cannot send. Tron prices transactions with bandwidth and energy, often burning TRX, and Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address of another network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. On-chain network fees are charged by the blockchain, not by the card company.

What to take instead

Three live options, with their own scores, so you can compare them honestly against a 3.3.

Young Card — 5.7 / 10. The clearest reward structure of the three: cashback paid in YNG tokens at a rate that depends on your club tier — Essential 0.1%, Gold 1.8%, Platinum 3.6%, with Bronze and Silver not stated. What I cannot tell you from public information: who can get it, what the card is officially, what it costs, any conversion fee, or how the card itself is funded. That is a lot of silence for a reward you cannot yet value, but the rewards are at least specific in a way Fiat24’s were not — no cashback, staking, welcome bonus or referral scheme was listed unofficially, though one undated Chinese-language user mentions cashback up to 3% offset by fees.

Cardex — 5.6 / 10. Claims “One crypto card, 200+ countries”, with no country list and no exclusions stated. It is a debit crypto card on the networks VERVE, VISA, Mastercard and UnionPay, with virtual and physical cards per its App Store listing, and that listing is Naira-focused — you pay in Naira. Funding is from USDT, USDC and BTC wallets, networks not stated. The distinctive feature is conversion: real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion at the moment of payment, with an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchange rates and picks the best one when you spend. No fee percentage is published. Cost is not stated, and rewards are not stated.

International Visa Card — 6.7 / 10. The most fully specified of the three, which is itself worth something. It is a “U.S.-issued Platinum Visa card”, virtual, paying in USD, with the physical card marked “Coming soon” — a phrase I would read very carefully after Fiat24. It is 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. Note the basis of the rule: residence or registration, not citizenship.

Its numbers are published, which is rare and welcome: virtual card issuance is $5 one-time, there is no maintenance fee, and the plans are Classic free, Pro $9.00 per month, Max $19.00 per month. Card use in USD is free on all plans; in a foreign currency the cost is “Visa exchange rate + 2% FX fee”. Deposits of any kind carry no fee, and USDC or USDT can be deposited into the USD account at 1:1, with USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow also available. No cashback is stated.

The honest summary: none of these replaces what Fiat24 was pitched as. What they replace is the practical need — a virtual card you can load and spend. And whichever you pick, the lesson from Fiat24 is the same. Check who the issuer is, because the network is not the one who owes you money. Check whether the payout minimum is below your balance before you rely on it. And check that the service is taking applications at all before you plan around it.

Who I would recommend it to

To exactly one group: existing Fiat24 holders who want to withdraw the remaining balance and close the account, and who are comfortable doing it through a Telegram bot and a web interface without a phone number or published support email.

To nobody else. If you do not hold an account, there is nothing to review any more — the programme is not accepting applications, the documentation contradicts itself on whether the card was ever live, and the refund fee and forced-exit rules both point the same direction.

If you hold an account and the balance is above 100 EUR or 100 CHF, withdraw it now. Read the payout timing — before 15:00 CET for same-business-day booking — and link your bank account with a small inbound deposit first, because that is the step people miss. If your balance is below the minimum, that is the case to raise with the bot immediately and in writing, and to escalate through the social channels the site does list, because a balance you cannot withdraw is the exact scenario this review exists to prevent.

If you hold crypto in a self-custody wallet connected to Fiat24, remember that the account is an NFT in that wallet and the operator never held the key. That is the one genuinely good structural fact in this whole story. It also means your withdrawal route runs through your own wallet, not through the operator’s balance — so a slow support desk does not stand between you and the funds. Move them somewhere with a working payout rail.

And a last word on tax, because this is where a lot of people get surprised. I am not giving you tax advice and you should talk to a professional about your situation. What is worth knowing is the general framework: digital assets are generally treated as property, so converting them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in your local fiat currency at fair market value on the date of the transaction, and each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. Turning a balance back into euros through a card payout is not obviously outside that.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Fiat24 card?

It was a virtual Mastercard debit card funded from a crypto or fiat balance rather than a bank account, with no PIN, mobile wallet support and tiered limits tied to an NFT account. It is issued by SR Saphirstein AG in Switzerland, BIN 5481 0849, under a Swiss fintech licence with FINMA supervision. The programme is now closed to new applications, so it is of historical rather than practical interest.

Why can I not apply for a Fiat24 card anymore?

Because the site sits in maintenance mode and is not accepting new applications, and the card product page still carries the status line “Coming soon in December 2024” without any new date. Documentation adds that limit-upgrade requests are not being accepted and that clients from 5 June 2026 get a USD 30,000 monthly limit. The public pages give no timeline for reopening.

Is Fiat24 a bank?

No. The operator described is SR Saphirstein AG, holding a fintech licence under Article 1b of the Swiss Banking Act and supervised by FINMA — that is a Swiss fintech authorisation, not a banking licence. Customer funds held by an electronic money institution are safeguarded by segregation or insurance, which is not the same as a bank deposit guarantee, and deposit insurance is not stated here.

What should I do if I still have money on Fiat24?

Withdraw it. Bring balances to zero, then close the account at id.fiat24.com under Profile, Close Account. Payouts go to your own EUR or CHF bank account, linked by a small inbound deposit by IBAN, up to 10 accounts per currency, minimum 100 EUR or 100 CHF, booked the same business day if requested before 15:00 CET.

How long does a Fiat24 withdrawal take?

The documentation says a payout is booked the same business day when requested before 15:00 CET, and the next business day after 15:00 CET, on weekends or across a weekend. It is booked, not necessarily received in your account. A successful payout is free; a returned payout costs 10 EUR or 10 CHF, so check your IBAN before you send.

What are the Fiat24 card fees?

The card’s public pages do not state any fee — not the monthly fee, issuance, ATM, FX, top-up or decline. Unofficially, and unconfirmed by the card, a third-party aggregator lists issuance, monthly, ATM, FX, top-up and decline as free, with 1 to 1.75% charged on crypto deposits plus gas. Refunds carry a processing fee of 1 USD, 1 EUR or 1 CHF (7 CNH) from 15 May 2026.

Is Fiat24 safe to use?

The design had real safeguards: self-custody wallet sign-in, 3-D Secure one-time passwords by email, automatic blocking on unusual activity, and manual lock and unlock in the dApp. But the programme is closed, Trustpilot shows 2.2 out of 5 from 8 reviews that are all one star, and users report silent support and funds not released. Scammers posing as support in community channels are a live risk when real support goes quiet.

Can I add the Fiat24 card to Apple Wallet?

The official user documentation lists Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay and most digital wallets as supported. One third-party aggregator says Apple Pay and Google Pay are not available, which contradicts the official line and which I have not been able to resolve. Apple Pay itself replaces the card number with a device-specific number in the Secure Element, so the token never reaches Apple’s servers.

Is Fiat24 worth it, and should I move my balance or my crypto?

If you hold a Fiat24 balance, move the balance — withdraw it to your bank and close the account, because the platform is not accepting new business and pays no interest or guarantee. If your crypto sits in a self-custody wallet connected to Fiat24, it is yours independently of the operator, so move that to an exchange or card with a working payout rail. Keep in mind network fees are paid in the chain’s own token and transfers are irreversible.

What are the alternatives to the Fiat24 card?

Three live options in this review: Young Card at 5.7 out of 10, with tiered YNG cashback; Cardex at 5.6 out of 10, with real-time conversion across VERVE, VISA, Mastercard and UnionPay networks; and the International Visa Card at 6.7 out of 10, a U.S.-issued virtual Platinum Visa with $5 issuance, plans from free to $19.00 a month, and a published 2% FX fee on foreign-currency use.

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