A solid self-custody crypto card that free customers use for less than most, weighed against support complaints and a per-transaction fee with no number on it

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you have been reading about crypto cards as if they were all the same thing, this one will stand apart for a simple reason: MetaMask’s card does not hold your money. It draws on the wallet you already control, and your keys stay with you. That is its real strength, and for anyone in Europe or Latin America who already lives in a self-custody wallet it is a genuine day-to-day card. The same design is also why the rough edges are rough: support is handled by a partner company, not by the wallet you have used for years, and several people who have actually used the card report the experience of refunds landing somewhere they did not expect and tickets going in circles. On my scale this comes out at 7.1 out of 10 — a card I would not regret recommending, provided you read the fee and support sections below before you move money.

The conditions described on this page are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 7.1 out of 10

Let me put the score on the table first, criterion by criterion, so you can see exactly where the strong points and the weak ones sit rather than taking a single number on trust. The reasoning after each mark is mine; the marks themselves are the score the card earned.

Who this suits, plainly: people in the 45 listed countries who already hold a self-custody wallet, who want a card that spends from that wallet without pre-loading it, and who are comfortable handling a slightly higher support burden in exchange for keeping custody of their funds. The cashback and the Apple Pay and Google Pay integration make the free tier genuinely usable daily.

Who this does not suit: anyone who wants a bank-like experience with a phone number to call and a person who answers. If your priority is that a refund reliably returns to you and a support agent resolves the issue the first time, the reliability mark of 4 is the number to weigh, and it is the lowest here for a reason. It also does not suit residents of countries outside the list, and residents of the United States and the United Kingdom, where sign-ups are temporarily closed.

Who can actually get the card

Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories, and other regions join a waitlist. The examples the card itself gives include Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay. The line I want you to hold onto, because it is often misread, is the card’s own: ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending. In other words, living somewhere outside the list may stop you opening an account, but it is not by itself a reason your card would decline abroad.

There is a citizenship rule to consider too, and it is not stated on the public pages I read. What is stated is a residency requirement: proof of residency is required to sign up. Because nationality is screened separately from residence in the wider regulatory picture — sanctions lists and issuer risk policy often key on citizenship and country of birth, not just your address — I would not read the residency requirement as the whole gate. If your situation is unusual on that front, ask before you commit time to the application.

The United States and the United Kingdom are an odd case: the FAQ says sign-ups there are temporarily closed, yet the same pages describe the Metal card as available in the US. The card’s own pages contradict each other here, so treat US and UK availability as something you verify in the app rather than assume.

For reference, the full official list of the 45 sign-up countries and territories is: Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guatemala, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Uruguay. Russia, Belarus and Turkey are not on it.

How to get it

The path is short on paper. Sign up in the app, prove residency, get the KYC handled by Crypto Life — the card provider — and there is no credit check anywhere in it. That last point matters for anyone who has been declined by a bank; this is not a credit product.

The first card you receive is a virtual Mastercard, issued instantly. The physical Metal card is something you pre-order inside the app after the virtual one is approved, and there is one card per user. The virtual card activates straight away, and no physical card is mailed at sign-up. The Metal card “ships securely to a verified address,” which means you need a verified address for shipping. There is MetaMask Card Support available 24/7 for an assisted replacement in your region.

Some things the public pages simply do not say, and I would rather name them than fill the gaps. The specific KYC documents are not specified. Your age requirement is not stated. The delivery time, delivery cost and replacement cost for Metal are not stated. The KYC levels, the processing time and the reasons a check can be rejected are not stated either. On fees I will get to the important omission in the costs section.

Unofficial material adds colour that the official pages do not. A third-party site reports that email, phone and ID are required while address proof and a selfie are not, and that KYC approval is fast or near-instant — but treat that as that site’s account, not a promise from the card. In the same vein, one App Store reviewer reportedly was promised a two-week delivery that took over a month; again, that is a single reported experience, not a pattern the card confirms.

So if you are asking “does MetaMask card require KYC?” — yes, proof of residency is required and a credit check is not. The rest of the detail is thinner than you would like, and it is worth having your documents ready before you start.

Fees: what it really costs you

Here is the cost picture in one table, drawn from the card’s own pages, with “not stated” marked honestly wherever the card does not give a number.

Two rows deserve a second look because they are the ones most people get wrong.

First, the per-transaction fee. The card describes a “minimal fee for each transaction” but, on the pages I read, does not put a number on it; a fee table is linked, and the limits-and-fees support page returned no figures. A small fee you cannot size is hard to plan around. If you pay for coffee daily, you will feel it; if you make larger, less frequent payments, you will feel it less. The card also states there are no additional MetaMask fees and no foreign-transaction fee, with the Mastercard rate used for conversion — that part is genuinely clean.

Second, the limits row. The card page gives $15,000 a day on Virtual and $30,000 a day on Metal, and an older FAQ version cites 8,750 EUR or 10,000 USD a day; the versions conflict, so I would use the card page figures and treat the older ones as stale. The ATM picture has a similar wrinkle: the card page lists a $1,000/day (Virtual) and $5,000/day (Metal) allowance, while an older FAQ version says ATM is only for Metal and US Virtual users. The versions conflict on that point as well. You can also set your own daily, weekly and monthly limits, which is the practical answer to any uncertainty here — set them lower than the published ceilings and you are insulated from both versions.

Let me walk three ordinary payments through, because that is where fees become concrete.

• Paying for a coffee. This is a small everyday purchase. The only fee in play is the unquantified “minimal fee for each transaction.” On Virtual, the 1% cashback is credited in mUSD into the Money Account, so the fee and the cashback pull against each other at roughly their stated rates, and the fee wins or loses depending on how large it actually is.
• Paying for a flight abroad. There is no foreign-transaction fee and the conversion uses the Mastercard rate, which is the part of this card’s cost structure that compares well with most rivals. The per-transaction fee applies again. The spend limits are high enough ($15,000 or $30,000 a day) that a flight will not strain them.
• Withdrawing cash from an ATM. The daily ATM ceiling is $1,000 on Virtual and $5,000 on Metal, and there is a free ATM allowance of “up to $1,200/mo,” though which tier that applies to is unclear on the pages. Whether ATM is available to you at all depends on which FAQ version is live, so confirm in your app before you rely on it.

Worth flagging one piece of noise: an unofficial third-party site lists monthly, issuance, ATM, FX, top-up and decline fees all as free. That directly contradicts the card’s own “minimal fee for each transaction” and the $199/year for Metal, so I would not plan around it.

How to Top up the card

There is no pre-loading here, and once that clicks, the funding model is easy. Spending draws on tokens delegated to the card from your connected wallet. There is no step where you convert fiat into a stored card balance; the card spends what your wallet already holds.

The networks are Linea, Base, Monad and Solana. The tokens named are mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT, and the page says nine in total. The card balance shows the highest-priority token set under Manage.

One real constraint in this section: a wallet that is Solana-only cannot withdraw. If your funds sit only on Solana with no other network in the wallet, that is a genuine limitation to know about before you rely on the card for anything urgent.

The usual practical warning applies and it belongs here, not in a footnote. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the card does not support, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost or need manual recovery through support with no guarantee. Check the network, then check it again.

Withdrawals go out as mUSD. Money Account holders receive Monad mUSD to their vault; others receive Linea mUSD to a priority EVM address. Monad withdrawals have sponsored gas. To close the card you contact Crypto Life support, and your funds stay in your own wallet when the card is frozen or deactivated. The withdrawal fee is not stated.

A few things here are not stated and I will say so once rather than guess: no fiat top-up is described, and the network fee or deposit fee and any minimum top-up are not stated. The linked limits-and-fees support page returned no figures for them either.

Paying with it every day

Day-to-day this is a strong card, and this is where it earns its 9. The virtual card arrives instantly and works in Apple Pay and Google Pay right away; the Metal tier is the one with the higher limits and the higher headline cashback.

The rewards are worth understanding properly, because the Metal number is slightly softer than it looks. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account. It is 1% on Virtual. On Metal the headline is 3%, but the footnote limits that 3% to the first $10,000 spent and then drops it to 1%. There is also a $FLY bonus — 5X on Virtual, 7X on Metal — accessed through the Blackbird dining app. Metal holders can also opt into a 90-day Club Regular trial.

The card is managed inside the MetaMask app itself. Store ratings are not stated on the card page or FAQ, so I have no official sense of how users rate it day to day. Blocked merchant categories are also not stated, which is a small gap if you are the kind of person who needs to know what the card will not touch.

Spending mechanics worth carrying in your head: withdrawals come out as mUSD, the card currency itself is not stated, and the conversion uses the best rate Mastercard allows with no added fee.

If a payment goes wrong, the order of operations is: ask the merchant for a refund first, and if that fails, request a chargeback from Crypto Life support. Refunds go to the Credits balance. That last detail is the one to sit with — more on it in the risks section — and the time frames are not stated.

What can go wrong

The reliability mark here is 4 out of 10, and it is the mark that pulls this card’s total down more than any other. Let me be specific about what drives it, because “complaints” on its own tells you nothing useful.

The first thread is where refunds go. Refunds go to the Credits balance, and there are card-specific complaints that refunds get trapped in that Crypto Life “Credits” balance. A refund that lands in an internal balance rather than back in your wallet is a materially different experience from a refund that returns to your card.

The second is the support loop. Card-specific reports describe tickets circling through automated replies without a human resolving them. Unofficial accounts describe slow responses, copy-paste email replies and no live chat. One thread is slower support and slower resolution as a theme.

The third is frozen cards. There are complaints of cards frozen at lifetime-transaction limits until a manual upgrade, and of account closure for inactivity. Freezing the card from your own app is a feature and not a complaint — the point is that a card you did not freeze can be frozen for you, and the path back is support, which is the thread above.

The fourth is slow physical delivery. Unofficial, one physical card was reported arriving after a month against a promised two weeks. One report is one report, but it lines up with a pattern in this section: things that are not stopped by you move slowly.

The broader context, which is not about this card but is the ground this category stands on: card programmes do close. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022 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 its Visa programmes. Closures typically run in a familiar order — notice, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw what is left. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source ended new loads on 8 July 2026 and spending on 8 August 2026; that is a single unconfirmed source, so treat it as a shape rather than a fact.

Who is behind the card is worth being precise about. The issuer is Monavate (spelled that way on the FAQ) and the card provider is Crypto Life. The site footer reads “Copyright 2026 Consensys, Inc.” but the FAQ does not say Consensys provides the card. Unofficial, a community post names Monavate Limited as the FCA-regulated entity handling UK complaints. The issuer’s registered country and licences are not stated on the pages I read. KYC is handled by Crypto Life, and there is no credit check.

Two more things on the risk side. Non-custodial is the security story and it is a real one: your private keys stay with you, you can freeze or replace the card instantly in the app, your funds stay in the wallet even when the card is frozen, the virtual card stays active for your subscriptions, and you get transaction alerts and activity monitoring, with your own spend limits. Insurance is not stated, so do not assume any. And a wide Trustpilot picture, for context, is that MetaMask the wallet overall scores 1.4/5 from 647 reviews on one review site (rfp.wiki, read 2026-10-20), with poor support and slow resolution as the themes — that is the wallet’s reputation, not the card’s specifically, but it is the same ecosystem you are relying on.

What to take instead

If you want a second opinion before committing, here are the three I would weigh against MetaMask, with their own scores, so you can compare like for like.

Two patterns stand out when you lay them beside MetaMask. KAST publishes hard numbers — 0% here, 0.50 USD there — where MetaMask’s per-transaction fee is described but not sized. Zeal publishes no extra FX fee the way MetaMask publishes no foreign-transaction fee, but it also publishes no cost schedule at all. TokenPocket charges a stated 1% on deposit rather than an unspecified per-transaction fee.

The trade-offs run the other way too. MetaMask’s per-transaction fee, whatever it is, sits against 1% to 3% cashback, so the net can favour you. And MetaMask is the one of the four that lets you hold your own keys and spend straight from your wallet with no pre-loading — the others run closer to a stored-balance model. If custody is the reason you are here, that is worth more than a tidier fee table.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend the MetaMask card to someone who already keeps their money in a self-custody wallet, lives in one of the 45 listed countries, and wants a card that spends from that wallet rather than from a pre-paid balance — with the understanding that they are the one handling a slightly higher support burden. For that person the instant virtual card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, the 1% cashback on the free tier, $15,000 daily spend limits and no foreign-transaction fee add up to a card that genuinely works every day, and the non-custodial design means freezing the card is a button in your own app rather than a phone call.

I would not recommend it as a first crypto card, and I would think twice if any of these apply to you: you need human support you can reach quickly, you are in the United States or the United Kingdom, you are outside the listed countries, or you are planning to lean on cash withdrawals and the ATM version of the FAQ does not match your region. I would also weigh it carefully if you are the kind of user for whom a refund sitting in an internal “Credits” balance is a dealbreaker, because that is the most repeated complaint I found, and it sits on top of a provider whose own reported support is slow.

Between the tiers, the free virtual card is the easy recommendation; Metal at $199 a year is worth it mainly if you use the higher limits and the higher ATM ceiling, since the 3% cashback is capped at the first $10,000 spent.

Frequently asked questions

What is MetaMask card?

MetaMask card is a Mastercard you manage inside the MetaMask app that spends directly from your own self-custody wallet rather than from a pre-loaded balance. The virtual version is free and issued instantly; the Metal version costs $199 a year and offers higher limits. Because your private keys never leave your wallet, a lost or frozen card does not mean lost funds — but the card is provided by Crypto Life, with Monavate as the issuer, which is why support runs through them.

How does MetaMask card work?

You delegate tokens from your connected wallet to the card, and each purchase draws on them across the Linea, Base, Monad and Solana networks. Named tokens include mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. There is no pre-loading step; the card balance shows the highest-priority token set under Manage. A “minimal fee” applies per transaction, though the card does not put a number on it.

Is MetaMask a bank?

No — MetaMask is a wallet company, not a bank, and the card sits under the same structure. The issuer is Monavate and the card provider is Crypto Life; the site’s footer reads “Copyright 2026 Consensys, Inc.” but the FAQ does not say Consensys provides the card. Your funds stay in your own wallet, and a card issuer’s own regulatory position is separate from the wallet’s.

Is MetaMask card free?

The virtual card is free, with no annual and no maintenance fee. Metal costs $199 a year and buys higher limits — $30,000 daily spend and $5,000 daily ATM, versus $15,000 and $1,000 on Virtual — plus a 3% headline cashback capped at the first $10,000 spent. Both tiers carry the unquantified “minimal fee for each transaction.”

Does MetaMask card require KYC?

Yes. Proof of residency is required and KYC is handled by Crypto Life, but there is no credit check — which is often the point for people banks have declined. The specific documents, the processing time and the rejection reasons are not stated on the public pages. Unofficial sources report email, phone and ID are required while address proof and a selfie are not.

Is MetaMask card available in my country?

Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories, including much of Europe, Canada and much of Latin America — Spain, Germany, France, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay among them. Other regions join a waitlist. Crucially, ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending. The United States and the United Kingdom are temporarily closed, though the pages contradict themselves on that point.

Is MetaMask card safe?

The security design is genuinely strong: non-custodial, instant freeze and replacement in the app, funds stay in your wallet, transaction alerts and limits you set yourself, and the virtual card stays active for subscriptions. The caveats are on the service side rather than the key side — a third party handles support, refunds reportedly go to an internal “Credits” balance, and insurance is not stated. Custody is your safety; support quality is theirs.

How do I top up the card?

You do not top it up in the traditional sense. Spending draws on tokens already delegated to the card from your connected wallet, so the “top up” is simply holding supported tokens in a wallet on Linea, Base, Monad or Solana. Note that a Solana-only wallet cannot withdraw credit. No fiat top-up is described, and any deposit fee or minimum is not stated.

How do I withdraw money from MetaMask?

Withdrawals go out as mUSD — Money Account holders receive Monad mUSD to their vault, everyone else Linea mUSD to a priority EVM address, and Monad withdrawals have sponsored gas. If you close the card you contact Crypto Life support. Your funds stay in your own wallet if the card is frozen or deactivated. The withdrawal fee is not stated, and a Solana-only wallet cannot withdraw at all.

What should I do if a payment goes wrong?

Ask the merchant for a refund first, and if that fails request a chargeback from Crypto Life support. Be aware that refunds go to the Credits balance rather than straight back to your wallet — that is the most reported pain point with this card. The time frames for both routes are not stated, and a declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds for several days, so it is worth checking your balance after a failed payment.

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