A virtual Visa in USD, built for people who can't easily open a bank account

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Cleva is a virtual payment card in US dollars that spends directly from a balance you top up with stablecoins or other methods. It is aimed at people who have trouble getting a normal bank card, particularly freelancers paid in dollars from Nigeria and the United States. In this review I walk through who can actually get one, what it costs to use day to day, how the top-up flow works, where it might fall short, and what alternatives are worth a look.

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

Verdict

Cleva scores 5.8 out of 10. The reason it doesn’t score higher is geography: the country list is not published, the KYC guides in the help centre cover only Nigeria and the United States, and the card itself is virtual-only with no cash access. Where it does work, the setup is straightforward, the licensing story is credible, and the user reviews on Trustpilot and the App Store are strong. The card is best suited to a freelancer in Nigeria or the US who is paid in USD and wants a working Visa without going through a traditional bank. It is less suitable if you need a physical card, an ATM, or a multicurrency card that holds balances in anything but USD.

The audience note that sits behind this verdict: Cleva is built around a freelance or remote-work use case in dollars, mainly for people in Nigeria and the US who can’t easily get a normal bank card.

Who they will give the card to

Cleva does not publish a list of supported countries. The help centre currently walks through identity verification only for Nigeria and the United States, and a site note says the platform lets you receive USD, GBP and EUR “regardless of where you’re based.” Earlier checks suggested Africa (including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya) and the US as the main coverage, but the company has not put a current country list on its public pages.

For Nigeria, the KYC guide asks for an international passport, a voter’s card, a driver’s licence or an NIN number, and a live selfie with the original physical ID. The billing address comes from what the KYC system verifies. For the US, the list is an international passport, an ID card, a driver’s licence or a residence permit, plus an SSN, a US billing address (provided by Cleva and required to match the ID including any unit number), a Stripe Link connection, and a live selfie.

The published rejection reasons are practical and worth knowing before you start: details that do not match the ID, a blurry, cropped or unreadable image, an unsupported ID type or format (expired, photocopied, screenshotted, scanned or digital), or a failed facial check. The site says US verification “takes only a few minutes”; no timeframe is given for Nigeria. Separate proof of address and a stated minimum age are not stated on the pages I read, which is something to confirm in the app if it matters for you.

Because the country list is not public, the honest summary is: if you are in Nigeria or the US, you can be reasonably confident Cleva will at least try to verify you. If you are anywhere else, you only know what earlier coverage suggested, not what the current rules are. The reader in a different country should treat their own case as a question to put to support, not as a confirmed yes.

How to get it

The sign-up flow is the same in shape as most regulated fintechs: you sign up with an email, complete identity verification, open a USD account and then create a card.

The card itself is a virtual Visa. You can have multiple cards at once, and the design is customisable. Cleva describes it as accepted at “150 million+ merchants worldwide where Visa is accepted”, and the card is denominated in US dollars. There is no physical card, so there is no shipping, no delivery and no waiting around for a PIN in the mail. That also means you can’t swipe or dip a physical card at a terminal; your options are online checkout or adding the card to a mobile wallet (covered below).

Cleva runs a single verification level rather than tiered KYC, and re-verification or extra checks can be triggered if usage changes. If your verification is rejected, the published reasons tell you what to fix before you try again, and the help centre has the per-country guides for Nigeria and the US that lay out exactly which documents and what photo quality are expected.

What it really costs

The headline cost story is short: creating a card costs $3 and there is no monthly fee. The detail is in the per-transaction fees and the conversion margin when the dollar balance runs against another currency.

To make those numbers feel like real money, walk through three everyday payments.

A $20 subscription to a US SaaS service: Cleva charges no fee on top because the merchant is in the US, the $0.80 authorization fee still applies per transaction, and your USD balance drops by the same $20 plus that 80 cents. If your balance was funded in USDT and the conversion is essentially 1:1, you have lost $20.80 from your wallet.

A €40 purchase from a European merchant: this is where the 2% + $0.80 kicks in. The card converts euros to US dollars at the card network’s rate, then adds 2% on the euro amount, then adds the flat $0.80. The $0.80 authorization fee is on top of the merchant side fee.

A $200 invoice paid through Upwork: Upwork is one of the named supported merchants, and the Cleva app notes that Upwork deposits are free to credit. The 2% international fee should not apply because the merchant is US-based, but the $0.80 authorization fee is still charged per transaction, so $200.80 leaves your card.

Two other cost points worth noting. The card can be closed automatically after 15 consecutive declines for insufficient funds, though a successful spend of $0.50 or more resets the counter after 24 hours. And the app’s “Classic” label for the card is the only tier; there is no premium or metal version with different fees.

A practical rule: if you spend mostly in USD with US merchants, the fees are small and predictable. Once you start paying in other currencies, the 2% + $0.80 mix is what you should budget around, not the headline “$3 card” cost.

How to top it up

The card spends directly from the Cleva USD wallet, so topping up really means funding that wallet. The options are stablecoins, US debit cards, bank transfer methods and GBP/EUR.

Cleva has not published which blockchains the stablecoin deposit supports, so you don’t know whether you can send USDT on Tron, USDT on Ethereum or USDC on Solana, for example. That matters in practice because sending on the wrong network is the classic way to lose a crypto deposit, and the broader category experience is that once a transfer is sent on a network the provider doesn’t support, recovery is slow and not guaranteed. The minimum deposit amount and who pays the on-chain network fee on a stablecoin transfer are also not stated.

The recent changes are worth flagging. The stablecoin deposit fee is moving to “$2 flat regardless of amount”, with payments under $2 charged $1. The new ACH and FedNow pricing took effect on 7 August 2026. The app’s release notes (v2.3.0) also raised the failed-transaction limit before the card is closed from 3 to 10.

In everyday terms, if you top up by US debit card or by Upwork payout, you pay nothing to Cleva. If you top up by stablecoin, you pay a flat $2 per deposit regardless of size, so the per-cent cost is tiny on large transfers and punitive on small ones. ACH and FedNow are cheap if you don’t mind the 0.8% slice; wire is $10 regardless of size and is only worth it for larger amounts.

For payouts, Cleva advertises transfers to local bank accounts as free. The balance left in the account if you close it is not stated.

Paying with it every day

The card is virtual and denominated in US dollars, so the everyday use case is online checkout, with a mobile wallet as the bridge to in-store contactless where supported.

Cleva explicitly supports adding the card to Apple Pay and Google Pay. The card is Visa, so it works anywhere Visa is taken online, which Cleva puts at “150 million+ merchants”. The named examples include Amazon, Upwork, PayPal, Claude, OpenAI, TikTok and Meta. Some merchant categories are unsupported by merchant category code (MCC), and the actual blocked list is not published, which is the gap to watch if you have a specific subscription or platform in mind.

On rewards, there is no cashback on the card itself. What Cleva does offer are account-level features: Cleva Points, which is a cashback on transactions redeemable for USD, and a USD Savings balance paying up to 3% per year. Those are account features, not card features, so they don’t change what you earn at the till.

The app is available on iOS and Android. The App Store rating is 4.7 out of 5 from 1,500 ratings, read on 21 October 2026. The Google Play rating was not read. The app is where you freeze and unfreeze the card, change the spending limit, top up, and talk to support.

If a transaction goes wrong, Cleva charges a $50 dispute fee per card dispute. The dispute process and time frames are not stated; the contact routes are in-app chat and email at [email protected], with the help centre at help.getcleva.com.

Two practical points on everyday use. First, the spending limit is per-transaction and set by you between $1 and $3,000, and the cap on number of cards is up to 3 within 90 days. Second, the card’s USD balance is the only thing you spend from, and the app notes that the account also offers USD, GBP and EUR accounts, with automatic conversion between the app balances and the card in Naira, Dirhams, Pounds and Euros. That means the card itself is USD, but the wider account can hold and convert several currencies, and the card will use the converted USD balance at the point of sale.

What can go wrong

The risks worth taking seriously are about what is not in writing, more than what is.

The country list is not published, so there’s no public way to confirm in advance whether you can be served. The KYC help guides are only for Nigeria and the US, so anyone outside those two countries is essentially applying on trust. The card is virtual, so there is no physical fallback if your phone is unavailable. There is no ATM access. Daily and monthly limits are not stated, which is unusual for a card product and means you can’t reliably forecast headroom. And the support promise is “24/7” by in-app chat and email, but the published resolution time is not stated.

On the complaints side, the public footprint is mostly positive. Trustpilot shows 4.7 out of 5 from 126 reviews, with 124 of those in the last 12 months and 5% one-star, read on 21 October 2026. The themes from user reviews (dates as the reviewers posted them) are: fees feel high (13 October 2026), verification is thorough and at times challenging (27 September 2026), and support resolution time was raised as a minor issue (14 October 2026). The AI-generated summary on the Trustpilot page mentions balance discrepancies and slow resolution, undated, and a reviewer cited an account being closed without reason, also undated. No official regulatory incidents were found in the search.

The company behind Cleva is Cleva Technologies, Inc., the named seller on the App Store. The site says funds are “securely processed by our licensed U.S-based financial partners”, and that Cleva is registered as a Money Service Business (MSB) with FinCEN. A Cleva blog post, undated, says the company holds an International Money Transfer Operator (IMTO) licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, which is relevant if you are in Nigeria.

On the security side, the model is custodial: your funds sit with Cleva’s licensed US partners, not in your own wallet. You can freeze and unfreeze the card in the app, with unfreezing requiring a security PIN or authentication code, and you can set your own per-transaction spending limit. The failed-transaction limit before the card is closed was raised from 3 to 10 in the v2.3.0 app release. Two-factor authentication is not mentioned on the read pages.

Putting that together, the most likely ways this card can let you down are: you are in a country Cleva no longer serves and find out only at verification; you send a stablecoin on the wrong network and lose it; you need a physical card or cash and there is no path; or you need a specific merchant category and it turns out to be blocked. The risk of an outright company collapse is harder to assess because the issuer and the partners are not named, which is a transparency gap rather than a red flag.

What to take instead

Cleva is one of several cards aimed at the same basic use case, paying online from a crypto balance. Three reasonable alternatives are worth comparing against.

International Visa Card scores 6.7 out of 10. It is a US-issued Platinum Visa in USD, virtual for now with a physical card “coming soon”. Account opening 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 and Vietnam, with FATF grey-list countries reviewed case by case. The published rule is by residence or registration, not by citizenship. Card use in USD is free on all plans; foreign currency uses the Visa exchange rate plus a 2% FX fee. Plans run from a free Classic tier up to a $19/month Max tier, with a $5 one-time virtual card issuance. Funding accepts USDC and USDT into the USD account free at 1:1, plus USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow deposits. No cashback is stated. Compared with Cleva, the main trade-off is a higher monthly cost on the paid tiers in exchange for a published country and sanctions policy and a more transparent pricing structure.

UNi Card scores 6.1 out of 10. It is a multicurrency Mastercard from the UNi.Global account. The fees are simple: no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, and assets are converted at “live OTC (Over-the-Counter) rates” with “no hidden exchange fees”. Rewards run up to 3% on spend through the “Spend-to-Earn” programme. Compared with Cleva, UNi looks cheaper on FX and richer on rewards, but you have less information about who can actually sign up.

Morse scores 7.5 out of 10. It is a fully virtual Visa prepaid debit card that spends from a Morse Balance in any currency, with zero FX fees at the real-time Visa rate and free online and contactless payments. Funding accepts debit card, stablecoin transfer, and Account Details in USD, EUR, MXN, COP and BRL (the last with a Brazilian CPF). USDC, USDG and EURC on Solana are free to deposit; other tokens and blockchains carry a fee. The eligibility rule is by residence, not citizenship: you must be 18 or older and a resident in a supported country, with the app available in over 140 countries for peer-to-peer use and local add/withdraw in over 70. Closed-beta countries that need an invite code include Australia, Hong Kong SAR China, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom and others. The card country list is not published on the card page, and you have to check the app. The card issuer and monthly fees are not stated on the card page. Compared with Cleva, Morse is the strongest on FX and on the breadth of supported countries, but the closed-beta list and the app-only check make it a slightly slower process to confirm you can sign up.

A quick way to choose between them: if you only need a US-dollar Visa in Nigeria or the US and you’re happy with virtual, Cleva is the lowest-friction option. If you want multicurrency and a published country policy and don’t mind paying for a monthly plan, International Visa Card is the more transparent choice. If rewards matter, UNi is the most generous, and if you live outside the US and want the best FX deal, Morse is the strongest on those two points.

Who I would recommend it to

Cleva is worth a look if you are a freelancer in Nigeria or the US who is paid in dollars, you don’t have an easy path to a normal bank card, and your spending is online in USD with the occasional non-US merchant you can plan around. The setup is short, the card works at any Visa-accepting online merchant, and the user reviews are strong. The $3 card creation fee, the $2 flat stablecoin top-up and the $0.80 per-transaction authorization fee are easy to budget.

Cleva is not the right card if you need a physical card, you want to take cash out at an ATM, you need multicurrency balances held on the card itself, you want card-level cashback, or you live outside Nigeria and the US and the help centre doesn’t address your country. In those cases, the alternatives above will serve you better.

The honest summary: Cleva does a narrow job well. That narrow job is giving a working US-dollar Visa to people who otherwise can’t get one, mostly in Nigeria and the US. If that’s you, the card is worth trying. If it isn’t, you’ll be happier with one of the alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Cleva card?

The Cleva card is a virtual Visa card in US dollars that spends directly from a Cleva USD wallet. You can top up that wallet with USDT or USDC stablecoins, a US debit card, ACH, FedNow, wire, or GBP/EUR transfers that are auto-converted to USD, and the card then pays any online merchant that accepts Visa.

How does the Cleva card work?

The card draws on a pre-funded USD balance at the moment of purchase, so it behaves like a prepaid card and cannot overdraw. You verify your identity once, open a USD account, create a card for $3, top it up, and then pay online or through Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Is Cleva a bank?

Cleva is not a bank. The company is Cleva Technologies, Inc., and it describes itself as registered as a Money Service Business (MSB) with FinCEN in the US, with funds processed by licensed US financial partners whose names are not published on the site.

Who owns Cleva?

The named entity is Cleva Technologies, Inc., listed as the seller on the App Store. The site does not publish ownership, investors or a parent company on the pages I read, so individual owners and backers are not stated.

Is the Cleva card available in my country?

Cleva does not publish a country list. The KYC help guides cover only Nigeria and the United States, so the practical answer is “almost certainly yes in Nigeria or the US, ask support elsewhere.” Earlier checks suggested Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya, plus the US, but that earlier list is not the current rule.

Can I use the Cleva card in my country?

The card can be used at any online merchant that accepts Visa, regardless of where you are physically located when you tap or type. The country question that matters is where you can be verified and hold an account, which is the question above; the spending geography is set by where the merchant is and which MCC codes Cleva blocks, the latter not being published.

How do I get a Cleva card?

You sign up with an email, complete identity verification (different documents for Nigeria and the US), open a USD account and then create a card for a $3 fee. US verification is described as taking “only a few minutes”; no timeframe is given for Nigeria.

Does the Cleva card require KYC?

Yes. Identity verification is required to open the USD account, and the published documents and the published reasons for rejection are specific to Nigeria and the US. The platform runs a single verification level rather than tiered KYC.

How do I top up my Cleva card?

You top up the underlying Cleva USD wallet, not the card directly. The cheapest options are US debit card and Upwork deposits (both free); stablecoin deposits cost a flat $2; ACH and FedNow cost 0.8% with a $2 to $5 range; wire costs $10; GBP/EUR deposits auto-convert at 0.8% with a $2 to $10 range.

Is the Cleva card free?

The card has no monthly fee, but it is not free overall. Card creation is $3, each transaction carries a $0.80 authorization fee, non-US international transactions add 2%, stablecoin top-ups cost $2, and a card dispute costs $50. Budget for those line items, not for a subscription.

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