Banqa card review: paying from your own USDC wallet, on a Visa Infinite

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Banqa sits in an unusual corner of the crypto card market. You do not deposit funds into a Banqa account; instead, the card spends directly against USDC held in a self-custody smart-contract wallet that you control. That single design choice changes the risk profile, the top-up flow and the kind of person the card is built for. I went through Banqa’s own pages, the fee schedule, the KYC wording and the on-chain mechanics, and the picture I came away with is a card that does one thing well, asks for a few trade-offs in return, and leaves a lot of practical detail (country list, issuer name, exact ATM limits) unstated.

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

Verdict

Banqa earns 7.1 out of 10 in my scoring. The card works, the fee structure is reasonable for a USDC-heavy user, and the self-custody angle is genuinely different from most crypto cards. What drags the score down is a published country list that I could not find, an unnamed card issuer, a single Trustpilot review, and a fee schedule with a few “not stated” gaps that anyone trying to budget would want answered before signing up.

Banqa is built for people who already hold USDC, keep their own keys and want a card that spends straight from that balance without first converting into a custodial account. If that describes you, the card is genuinely useful. If you want a wide country list, a clear published fee for every eventuality, or a brand that operates under a well-known banking licence, you will probably want to look at one of the alternatives I cover further down.

Who can get a Banqa card

Banqa does not publish a list of supported countries. The official wording is that “eligibility depends on residence and applicable rules” and is confirmed during the application and KYC process. A supported-countries page is linked from the site but I could not read it, so I cannot tell you whether your country is on it. The honest answer is: you will not know for sure until you start the application.

There is no published age limit, but as with most regulated cards the practical floor is 18. Citizenship and residence are both relevant; sanctions and issuer policy are usually applied to citizenship and country of birth, not only to the country you currently live in, so a clean residence does not by itself guarantee approval.

A further point worth flagging up front: Banqa is not a bank, and the cards are issued by “a Visa Principal Member pursuant to a license from Visa”. The issuer’s name is not disclosed on the pages I read, which is a gap that anyone comparing cards on regulatory standing will want to weigh.

How to sign up

You sign up through the Banqa web or app dashboard. The process is the standard KYC flow you would expect from a regulated card programme, and the steps run roughly as follows.

You will need a government-issued ID, either a passport, a national ID card or a driver’s licence, plus a proof of address dated within the last three months. The address proof can be a utility bill, a bank statement or a similar document. Higher tiers can ask for source-of-funds paperwork on top, so the longer you intend to use the card, the more prepared you should be to dig out payslips or bank statements if asked.

Automated checks usually complete in minutes. If the system cannot clear you automatically, a manual review takes 24 to 48 hours. If a check fails, you can retry it from the dashboard rather than start over, which is a small but useful touch.

Limits are tied to your verification tier. Daily, weekly and monthly limits depend on which tier you reach, but the specific tier names and amounts are not published. You can also set your own per-transaction caps inside the dashboard, which is a sensible control if you only want the card to spend small amounts at a time.

The card you receive is a Visa Infinite, available as a virtual card and a physical card, and in USD. Non-USD transactions carry a 1.99% FX fee, so the card behaves like a USD account and any spend in another currency picks up that surcharge. The physical card costs $39.00 for issuance and shipping; delivery time and country-by-country shipping windows are not stated.

Fees: what Banqa really costs

The cost picture is one of the more honest parts of the offering. There is no annual fee on the Standard tier, the physical card is a one-off $39, and topping up in USDC is free. The fees that do exist cluster around FX, ATM cash and a few corporate or closure fees that most retail users will not hit.

Here is the cost picture as published, with the gaps marked.

A few everyday scenarios help translate this into real money.

Buying coffee in London for £4.50 with a USDC-funded card. You are spending in a currency other than USD, so the 1.99% FX fee applies. The card itself does not charge a flat conversion fee; the cost is the FX margin alone, plus whatever the merchant acquirer does. You do not get a “manual conversion” step because USDC is spent against the card’s collateral in the background.

Withdrawing £100 from a UK ATM. The fixed fee is $1.50, the percentage fee is 1% of the amount plus $1, and the FX fee is 1.99% on top. On £100, you are looking at roughly $1.50 fixed, $2.00 (1% + $1) and the 1.99% FX layer. There is no published free allowance, so even the first withdrawal of the month is not free.

Paying a $50 invoice in USD online. The card is in USD, there is no conversion and no FX fee, and USDC top-ups were free at the deposit stage. If you keep your account funded in USDC and spend in USD, the cost of using the card is essentially the network gas you paid to send USDC in the first place.

The corporate and closure line items matter if you are a business customer or you decide the card is not for you. The account residency fee on the Visa Corporate product is $3.00, corporate card issuing is $5.00 per card, and closing the account costs $10.00. None of these are large individually, but they are not signposted in the marketing, so factor them in.

Top up: how to fund the card

This is the section that makes Banqa different. You do not transfer money from a bank account or buy USDC through the app. You hold USDC in a self-custody smart-contract wallet on Base, Arbitrum or Ethereum, and the card spends against that balance.

The flow is closer to “your wallet, with a card attached” than to “an account, with crypto loaded in”. You keep the private keys, the USDC sits in a smart-contract wallet that you control, and the card is effectively a permissioned spender on that wallet. When you tap to pay, the authorisation pulls the relevant USDC from your wallet as collateral, and the merchant is settled in fiat through Visa.

Network and asset support. USDC on Base, Arbitrum and Ethereum is the supported top-up path. The site says “Hold USDC on Base and Arbitrum” and “Send only USDC on Base” in the user-facing copy, so Base is the network the team most actively points users to. Sending USDC on the wrong network is a common way to lose money on crypto cards generally, so it is worth double-checking the chain before you confirm a transfer.

Fees on the way in. USDC top-ups are zero deposit fees as published. Other assets and other networks cost between 0% and 1% depending on the route, which means if you hold something other than USDC, you will pay a small conversion to get there. The blockchain itself still charges network gas for the deposit; that gas is paid by the sender in the native asset (ETH on Ethereum and Arbitrum, ETH on Base), not by Banqa, and it is on top of the figures above.

Minimums and time to credit. The minimum top-up is not stated. Time to credit is effectively the block confirmation time of the network you used, plus any internal checks; on Base and Arbitrum that is usually seconds to a couple of minutes.

Moving USDC back out. The withdraw flow sends USDC from the card collateral back to your self-custody wallet through an on-chain authorisation. An example offramp fee of “1% + $3.00” appears on the home page, and account closure costs $10.00 on top. The offramp is the inverse of the deposit: instead of funding the card, you are pulling USDC back to your own wallet.

Paying with Banqa day to day

The card itself is a Visa Infinite, with the usual array of features that label implies: contactless, online, mobile wallet. The fee schedule does not list a separate fee for in-store, online or contactless transactions, so the everyday cost is the FX fee when you spend in a non-USD currency and nothing when you spend in USD.

Mobile wallets. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported. Adding the card to either wallet tokenises it through the wallet provider’s flow, so the card number never sits on Apple’s or Google’s servers and a one-time dynamic security code is used per transaction. The card issuer can still restrict a tokenised card, for example blocking magnetic-stripe or website use, but the standard out-of-the-box behaviour is full tokenisation across in-store, in-app and web.

ATM use. Cash withdrawals are available, at $1.50 fixed per withdrawal plus 1% of the amount plus $1 for end users. The fixed $1.50 + percentage structure is unusual; the $1 add-on on top of the 1% is the part that bites on small withdrawals, and there is no published free allowance, so even the first withdrawal of the month carries cost.

Online payments and 3-D Secure. The Visa network applies 3-D Secure under the Visa Secure brand. For most online checkouts you will see an approval flow or a one-time code, depending on the merchant and the risk score Visa assigns to the transaction. Address Verification Service (AVS) is mainly a US, Canada and UK tool and often does not work for cards issued abroad; if a US merchant uses AVS and your card looks foreign to them, you can see a soft decline.

Blocked merchant categories. Banqa does not publish a list of blocked merchant category codes. As a general rule for the category, gambling (MCC 7995) and a handful of other high-risk MCCs are restricted by issuer policy rather than by law, and the exact list varies by card. If a specific category matters to you, the practical test is to ask support before you sign up, or to make a small test transaction after you do.

Rewards. No cashback is published. There is a referral programme that pays 0.15% of friends’ spend and a $10 bonus per friend once they reach $500 of spend. If you do not have a network of friends to refer, the headline economics of the card are the free USDC top-up and the no-annual-fee structure, not a rewards earn rate.

App and dashboard. Banqa runs on a web and app dashboard for card management, top-ups, limits and freeze. Specific platform support and app store ratings are not published.

Disputes. A chargeback fee is in the fee schedule, but the process and time frames are not described in detail. If you need to dispute a transaction, expect the standard issuer-led flow rather than a Banqa-mediated one.

What can go wrong

No complaints about Banqa showed up in my checks. The Trustpilot page has 3.7 out of 5 from a single five-star review posted in July 2026, and Trustpilot notes the company has not invited reviews, so this is a very thin signal rather than a track record. The absence of complaints is good news, but it is also the absence of evidence.

A few specific risks are worth your attention.

The card issuer is unnamed. Banqa says cards are issued by a Visa Principal Member under a Visa licence, but the issuer’s name, the licence jurisdiction and the regulatory standing are not on the public pages. Crypto cards have been suspended before; the WaveCrest suspension in 2018 closed every Visa programme WaveCrest had issued across Europe, and in November 2022 Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX. The pattern is that the card network holds the power, the issuer is the legal counterparty, and the crypto brand is the marketing front. Banqa’s self-custody design reduces the direct counterparty risk on the funds, but it does not remove the issuer risk on the card itself.

Self-custody means you own the failure modes. Recovery phrases are shown once and are not recoverable by Banqa. If you lose your phrase, lose your device and have no other backup, no support team can restore access to your wallet. The card is also exposed to common crypto theft patterns: phishing sites that imitate Banqa, clipboard-hijacking malware that swaps wallet addresses you copy, and fake support staff asking for your seed phrase. None of these are Banqa-specific, but they are the practical cost of holding your own keys.

The country list is not published. If your country is not supported, you only find out at the KYC step. The application is reversible in the sense that you can simply not finish it, but the time you spend uploading documents is gone.

FX adds up on non-USD spending. At 1.99% on every non-USD transaction, the card is more expensive for European cardholders than many local alternatives. If a large share of your spending is in euros, pounds or another non-USD currency, that 1.99% compounds quickly.

Stablecoin peg risk is real. USDC has held its peg in normal conditions, and Circle publishes monthly reserve attestations, but stablecoins are not guaranteed. The 2023 USDC depeg during the US banking crisis is the standing reminder that even large, well-attested stablecoins can move. The funds in your self-custody wallet are USDC, not dollars in a bank account.

ATM economics are unfriendly for small withdrawals. The $1.50 fixed fee plus 1% plus $1 means small ATM withdrawals are expensive compared to the amount withdrawn. Use the card for small in-store purchases and online payments, not for cash.

Security controls. The upside worth flagging: instant card freeze in the app, card details shown for 60 seconds, email OTP or Google 2FA, passkeys rolling out, and the underlying operator runs penetration tests and operates under SOC 2 controls. The recovery phrase is shown once and is not recoverable by Banqa, so write it down somewhere safe.

Support. Email support, replies usually within 24 hours, plus a help centre and a contact page. There is no published live chat or phone support.

What to take instead

Banqa is not the only crypto card, and it is not the right card for everyone. The three alternatives below each solve a different part of the same problem.

TokenPocket (TP Card), 5.8/10. TokenPocket issues a Visa or Mastercard debit card from inside its own wallet. Sign-up is country-specific: a Visa debit for a list of European countries and a Mastercard debit for countries including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK, with the Americas “planned for Q2 2025”. The card runs on Arbitrum and holds balances in EUR24 and USD24. Costs are mostly covered by TokenPocket, with the user paying “a small portion” of the NFT creation fee (amount not stated) and “apart from these, TP Card does not charge any additional fees”. A 1% fee is charged on crypto deposits to the card, with the promise that it will be refunded through rewards or reduced fees. FX fees are not stated on the pages read. The card is virtual only.

MetaMask Card, 7.1/10. The MetaMask Card is a Mastercard issued by Monovate, with Crypto Life as the card provider. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories (Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Uruguay and others); other regions go on a waitlist. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ. The card spends directly from the connected wallet on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT among the supported tokens (nine in total). The Virtual card is free with no annual or maintenance fee; the Metal card is $199 a year. There is a “minimal fee for each transaction” (amount not on the public page) and “no additional MetaMask fees” or foreign transaction fee, with the Mastercard rate used. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual, 3% on Metal headline, limited by a footnote to 3% on the first $10,000 of spend and then 1%, plus a $FLY bonus through the Blackbird dining app.

KAST, 6.1/10. KAST is a multi-currency card programme with a residence-based country check at KYC (“If your country isn’t listed, it means KAST is not available there”) and a separate Restricted Locations list, with citizenship and ID also part of the check. The card is Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium) or Visa Infinite gold plated (Private), plus themed designs (Pengu, Solana, Bitcoin), with up to 10 cards per user. Annual membership is $0 for Standard, $1,000 for Premium and $10,000 for Private, billed annually upfront. Fees: 0% on stablecoin top-up, 0% on card spend in USD, 0% on transaction fee, 0% on Apple/Google Pay, 0.5%–1.75% FX on non-USD depending on residence, transaction country and card programme, 0.50 USD on declined transactions, and auto-conversion on non-stablecoin tokens at an in-app fee. Cashback is in USD: 1.5% on first $2,000/month for Standard, 2% on first $10,000/month for Premium, 3% on first $40,000/month for Private, plus KAST Points on Premium and Private.

How to choose between them. If you want the self-custody angle and USDC-only spending, Banqa is the closest fit. If you want a published country list and a clear cashback rate, MetaMask Card and KAST both give you more transparency, with MetaMask leaning into wallet-native spending and KAST leaning into a traditional card programme with stablecoin funding. TokenPocket is the option if you are already inside the TokenPocket wallet and want a virtual card bolted on.

Who I would recommend Banqa to

Banqa is a card I would recommend to a specific kind of reader, and a card I would steer away from for everyone else.

I would recommend it to you if:

• You already hold USDC, you keep your own keys in a self-custody wallet, and you want a card that spends straight from that balance without you converting into a custodial account first.
• You mostly spend in USD, online or through Apple Pay and Google Pay, and you are comfortable paying 1.99% on non-USD transactions as an occasional cost.
• You are comfortable with the operational burden of self-custody: a written-down recovery phrase, a hardware wallet or equivalent, and discipline about phishing and clipboard-hijacking malware.
• You are happy to find out at KYC whether your country is supported, because the country list is not public.

I would steer you elsewhere if:

• You want a clear, published list of supported countries before you start the application.
• You want to see the issuer’s name and regulatory standing on the front page rather than as “a Visa Principal Member”.
• You spend most of your money in a currency other than USD and would feel the 1.99% FX fee every week.
• You want a cashback rate or other rewards on every transaction, since Banqa’s headline economics are free USDC top-ups and no annual fee rather than an earn rate.
• You want a card programme that is also a stablecoin-funded debit with a clear fee table, a country list and a published cashback rate; MetaMask Card and KAST both fit that description.

The score of 7.1 out of 10 reflects a card that does its core job well and asks for a few trade-offs in return. The trade-offs are honest, the fee schedule is short, and the self-custody model is genuinely different. The gaps that cost points are the missing country list, the unnamed issuer and the very thin public track record. None of those is a deal-breaker on its own, but together they keep Banqa short of the cards that publish everything up front.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Banqa card?

The Banqa card is a Visa Infinite debit card that spends from a USDC balance held in a self-custody smart-contract wallet. The card is a payment front-end; the funds stay in your own wallet on Base, Arbitrum or Ethereum until the moment of payment.

How does the Banqa card work?

When you pay, the card authorisation pulls USDC from your self-custody wallet as collateral, and the merchant is settled in fiat through Visa. There is no manual conversion step inside the app, and USDC top-ups are free.

Is Banqa a bank?

No. Banqa is a brand of Codego Group and is not a bank. The cards are issued by a Visa Principal Member under a Visa licence, but the issuer’s name is not disclosed on the public pages.

Who owns Banqa?

Banqa is a brand of Codego Group. The cards are issued by an unnamed Visa Principal Member pursuant to a licence from Visa, and Banqa itself is the programme manager and front-end.

Is the Banqa card available in my country?

Banqa does not publish a supported-country list. Eligibility depends on your residence and the applicable rules, and is confirmed during the application and KYC process, so the only way to find out is to start the application.

How do I apply for a Banqa card?

You apply through the Banqa web or app dashboard. You submit a government ID and a proof of address, automated checks usually complete in minutes, and manual reviews take 24 to 48 hours. A failed check can be retried from the dashboard.

Does the Banqa card require KYC?

Yes. KYC requires a government ID and a proof of address dated within the last three months, and higher tiers can ask for source-of-funds documents. Limits are tied to your verification tier, but the specific tier names and amounts are not published.

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

Banqa supports Apple Pay and Google Pay. Adding the card to either wallet tokenises it through the standard wallet flow, so the card number is replaced by a device-specific number and each transaction uses a one-time dynamic code.

How do I top up the Banqa card?

You top up by sending USDC to your self-custody smart-contract wallet on Base, Arbitrum or Ethereum, and the card spends against that balance. USDC top-ups are free, and other assets or networks cost 0% to 1% by route, plus any blockchain gas.

Is the Banqa card safe?

The card uses a self-custody wallet, instant in-app freeze, 60-second card detail display, email OTP or Google 2FA, with passkeys rolling out. The operator runs penetration tests and operates under SOC 2 controls. The risks you carry are self-custody risks: lost recovery phrase, phishing and clipboard-hijacking malware, plus stablecoin peg risk on the USDC itself.

Content created by the «cryptocardtested» team