OrbitX in plain English: the card you spend against, and the gaps you should check first
Available in US
The OrbitX card is a Visa you spend by having crypto collateralised in your own wallet, with the stablecoin liquidated at the point of sale. That single sentence tells you most of what matters, and also most of what is hard about it. The idea is attractive if you already hold USDT or USDC and do not want the chain of custody that comes with leaving money on a platform. It is harder if you just want a reliable piece of plastic for a holiday, because the public pages are patchy in exactly the places where a shopper cares: which countries are served, whether the plastic card exists today, what a foreign-currency purchase really costs.
I scored it 5.7 out of 10. That is not a rejection; it is a card with a real idea behind it and a public disclosure record that has not caught up. My verdict is below, then the sections in the order you will actually need them: who gets one, how you get it, what it costs, how you fund it, how it behaves day to day, what can go wrong, and what to compare it against.
The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 5.7 out of 10, aimed at people who already hold stablecoins
The score of 5.7 is not a rounding of something better. It is a card that does the thing it says on a narrow path and leaves a lot of ordinary questions unanswered in public. If you are self-custody, already holding USDT or USDC, and you want to spend that balance directly without handing it to a platform, this is a card built for you, and the score reflects that fit. If you are looking for something to replace an ordinary bank card in a country you can name, the same score tells you to keep looking.
| Criterion | Mark | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 7 / 10 | International users under international consumer terms, US citizens under separate terms; no country list is published |
| Cost | 4 / 10 | Annual fee Neo $12, Lux $30; card prices $100 plastic and $350 metal; ATM Base charge + 2% + $2; corporate FX 1.50% |
| Top-up options | 5 / 10 | Self-custodial wallet collateralised with USDT or USDC, liquidated at the point of sale; networks not named |
| Reliability and complaints | 5 / 10 | OrbitX Network Group Pte. Ltd in Singapore, “not a bank”; issuer Third National; App Store 2.5 out of 5 from two ratings |
| Everyday use | 8 / 10 | Virtual Visa available, plastic and metal listed, physical “coming soon”; Apple Pay and Google Pay; cash machine access |
| Total | 5.7 / 10 | A workable mechanism wrapped in an incomplete public record |
The highest mark is everyday use, and it is deserved in a narrow sense: virtual card, mobile wallets, a cash machine, and a clear promise of plastic. The lowest is cost, because there is a fee here that people will feel before they feel anything else, and because the comparison points are not all disclosed.
Two things I want to say before the details. First, the audience is narrow and the card’s own marketing leans into that: it is for people who hold their own keys. That is a real advantage, not a caveat. Second, the things I could not find are genuinely not stated on the public pages, and I am not going to fill them in with guesses. Where a section says not stated, that is the honest answer.
Will they give you the card?
The card is issued to international users under international consumer terms, and to US consumers under separate US terms. The international application requires you to attest that you are not a United States citizen, and that you are not sanctioned under OFAC rules. There is no published country list, so you cannot check eligibility from the card’s own pages before you try; the terms are framed around who you are rather than where you live.
That framing matters more than it sounds. Nationality is screened separately from residence in this industry generally, because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are usually applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as to your address. An address-based check would not have caught the attestations this card asks for.
You may see claims about country coverage on third-party sites. Those are unofficial and not confirmed by the card. The company’s own pages give you no list to check them against.
So the honest answer to “will they give me the card” is: if you are not a US citizen, not sanctioned, and comfortable with the terms you are attesting to, the card’s terms contemplate you. Whether your specific country works is something you find out by applying, not by reading.
How to get it
The card is Visa. A virtual card is available now. Plastic and metal are listed on the fee page, though the table there is garbled and reads only as “Neo: Visa Platinum” and “Lux: Visa Signature”, and the app says physical cards are “coming soon”. That gap between a fee page listing a price and an app saying the product is coming is the single most important thing to hold on to in this section.
There is a KYC process. The app release notes mention it, including resubmissions, so it exists and it can ask you twice. Which documents you need and whether proof of address is required is not stated on the public pages. The app carries an 18+ age rating, which matches the general pattern that prepaid and debit cards go to adults.
Delivery, if you get a physical card, is stated as “1 to 4 weeks depending on user location”. The cost of a replacement card is not stated, and with annual fees and metal prices on the table that is a gap worth asking about. Verification tiers, if there are more than one, are also not stated.
Two tiers exist: Neo, described as Visa Platinum with 10 add-on cards, and Lux, Visa Signature with unlimited add-on cards. Beyond that the differences are not clear.
Fees: what the card really costs you
Here is the honest ledger. Some of these are consumer prices, some are corporate prices, and I have marked which is which, because the card’s pages publish both and do not always say which applies to whom.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Annual fee, Neo | $12, paid annually only |
| Annual fee, Lux | $30, paid annually only |
| Card price, plastic (Neo) | $100 |
| Card price, metal (Lux) | $350 |
| ATM | Base ATM charges + 2% + $2 |
| FX fee, non-USD spend, corporate cards | 1.50% |
| Deposit fee, corporate cards | 0.50% |
| Transaction fee, corporate cards | $0.20 |
| Consumer FX fee | not found |
Two everyday payments, to make the numbers real rather than abstract.
Buying coffee in a city where the dollar is not the local currency: if your collateral is USDT or USDC, the card converts at the point of sale, and non-USD transactions are converted by the card association. For a corporate card that carries a 1.50% forex fee on non-USD spend. For a consumer card, the consumer FX figure was not found on the public pages, so I cannot tell you what you would pay, only that the conversion happens and that you should ask.
Paying for a subscription in your own currency, from your own balance: that is the case the mechanism is actually built for. The costs that do not apply are the interesting ones. You are not charged a card-network fee for spending a stored stablecoin balance at point of sale; there is no overdraft because the balance is what it is. The costs that do apply are the annual fee if you want either tier, the card price if you ever receive plastic or metal, and any ATM fee if you take cash out.
The $100 and $350 card prices deserve a second look. That is a lot of money for a card that the app describes as coming soon, paid in advance to a programme that markets itself as “not a bank or regulated financial institution”. The tier table is garbled, so I cannot tell you from the public pages whether the card price replaces the annual fee or sits on top of it.
Top up: the mechanism, and the part that needs care
There is no fiat top-up route described. What there is, instead, is a self-custodial wallet collateralised with USDT or USDC, where the stablecoins are liquidated at the point of sale. The app shows a “Cash Account” and a “Card Account”, and collateral is measured in USD. Which networks to send on is not stated, and for consumer cards the top-up route itself is not stated either.
That last pair of gaps is the practical danger in this section, so let me be direct about why. Blockchain transfers are irreversible. If you send on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, the funds can be lost, or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. If the card’s pages do not tell you which networks are supported, the only safe answer is that you do not move anything until support confirms it in writing. On-chain network fees are charged by the blockchain, not by the card, so that is another cost you carry.
Two more things about the collateral. OrbitX states that it and the issuer will not, in any circumstance, hold custody of your collateral. And any unencumbered collateral balances shall remain freely accessible. Both of those are good words to read carefully: unencumbered is doing work, and I would want to know what encumbers it.
Worth knowing about the coins themselves. USDT and USDC are dollar-pegged, and the BIS put about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation in these 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. Tether describes USDT as built on multiple blockchains with reserves intended to back it 1 to 1. Neither of those is a guarantee, and stablecoins do depeg: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis.
Paying with it every day
The everyday picture is the strongest part of this card, and it is still the part with the most asterisks.
- Apple Pay and Google Pay terms are published, which means both wallets are supported.
- The virtual Visa card is available today.
- Plastic and metal are listed on the fee page; the app says physical cards are “coming soon”.
- Cash machine access exists, with Base ATM charges + 2% + $2.
- The card is USD-based, and non-USD transactions are converted by the card association.
The merchant restrictions are worth reading before you assume you can pay anywhere. Prohibited merchants include cash-like transactions, cryptocurrency purchases, wire transfers and betting, and the card may deny “internet gambling”. A card that will not buy crypto back is worth knowing about before you plan to.
Rewards are not stated.
The app is OrbitXPay on iOS. It sits at 2.5 out of 5 from two ratings, read on 2026-10-21, and I could not find a Google Play listing. Two ratings is not a meaningful sample, but it is also not nothing, and a low score with almost no sample is exactly the situation where you should form your own view in the app store rather than take anyone else’s.
Disputes have a stated process: report a disputed charge within 60 days of posting, the issuer has 10 business days to respond to a Notice of Dispute, and unresolved cases may go to arbitration after 30 days. Those are real numbers and they are in your favour compared with nothing. Keep them.
Two things that catch people out with cards like this, in general terms. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards, because the issuer identification number at the front of the card tells the shop who issued it and from which country, and a mismatch with the billing address invites extra scrutiny. And a declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds that stays for days.
What can go wrong
The company is OrbitX Network Group Pte. Ltd, at 3 Fraser Street, #04-23A, Duo Tower, Singapore, UEN 202448623M. It describes itself as not a bank or regulated financial institution. The card issuer is named as Third National, under licence from Visa. So the card comes from a Singapore programme manager fronting a licensed issuer, and you should hold both facts at once: nobody in that chain is a deposit-taking bank in the sense you might assume from the word “card”.
On controls, the card is non-custodial by design, which is the good news and also the whole risk. Liquidation happens if a payment is unpaid within one calendar day, or if collateral falls below the charges. Card freeze and two-factor authentication are not stated, which for a self-custodial wallet app is a question to ask rather than a gap to accept.
On complaints: I found no official incidents, and there is no Trustpilot page. What there is is a single App Store review from a user who warns that a bank transfer showed as failed in the app even though it had completed on the sender’s side, and that support replied from an email address that was not the official one. One review is one review. But the shape of it, a transfer that looks failed on one side and completed on the other, is precisely the failure mode that matters in a system where money is collateralised rather than stored.
Support is [email protected]. Languages and opening hours are not stated, which is the practical limit on how much you can lean on it.
General category risks that apply to any card of this kind, so you are not relying on one company’s record alone: Visa itself terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down; WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018 and all its Visa programmes closed. Programme closures typically mean a notice period, then loading stops, then spending stops, then you are asked to withdraw. Card numbers can also be restricted by the issuer for specific channels, so a card that works in a shop may be declined online.
Taxes are worth one line because a card turns spending into taxable events in some jurisdictions. In the US the IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local currency at fair market value on the day. Each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. I am not giving tax advice here; I am telling you that the transaction exists and that a disposal may attach to it.
What to take instead
If OrbitX does not fit, the comparison is not with bank cards, it is with other self-custodial and stablecoin cards. Three worth reading, with their own gaps noted honestly.
Sponge scored 4.9 out of 10, lower than OrbitX. It offers a virtual card, described as a credit card issued by Rain, a Visa Principal Member, accepted wherever Visa is accepted. Funding is USDC moved from the Sponge wallet with a card fund command, with base shown as an example chain and the SDK mentioning base or solana as optional. Costs and fees are not stated, the country list is not stated, and there is no country list on the card pages at all; the platform terms only set a minimum age of 13.
Xplace scored 7.7 out of 10, the highest of the group. It is a Visa with an instant virtual card and a physical one, Silver live while Gold and Platinum are coming soon with delivery in 7 to 14 business days. It has a Cash mode that spends a stablecoin balance and a Credit mode that borrows against your holdings, with no origination fee on borrowing. Fees are the most transparent of the three: Basic is free, Silver $99 a year, Gold $249, Platinum $999; 0% FX on Platinum; stablecoin spending described as having no hidden spread. Cashback in Credit mode runs by tier, 0.5% on Basic up to 2% on Platinum, paid in USDC to the wallet at settlement, with Cash-mode cashback not stated. Deposits include BTC, ETH, SOL, USDC and USDT on Solana. Its country list is not stated, and it says plainly that services are not available in all jurisdictions, while claiming Visa acceptance in 160+ countries.
ether.fi scored 6.7 out of 10. Its edge is the clearest eligibility picture of the three: a named list of jurisdictions, plus 31 US states, and it says outright that if your jurisdiction is not listed you cannot apply. It has both virtual and physical cards. One virtual card is normally free for Core members, or $10 in regional-pricing countries. FX fee is by tier, 0.5% on Core, 0.25% on Luxe and none on Pinnacle and VIP, with EUR purchases at 0% FX. Cashback is paid in ETHFI, locked for 7 days and then claimable, with tiered monthly caps. Funding is any supported token to your own Safe, spent through Direct Pay. The list of supported coins and networks is not stated, and citizenship rules are not stated either.
| OrbitX | Xplace | ether.fi | Sponge | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 5.7 / 10 | 7.7 / 10 | 6.7 / 10 | 4.9 / 10 |
| Card | Visa, virtual now, plastic and metal listed | Visa, virtual instant, physical Silver live | Visa, virtual and physical | Virtual Visa card |
| Lowest tier cost | $12 a year, Neo | Free (Basic) | Free virtual card for Core | Not stated |
| FX | Consumer FX not found; 1.50% corporate | 0% on Platinum, other tiers not stated | 0.5% Core, 0.25% Luxe, none higher | Not stated |
| Eligibility | No country list; not a US citizen on the international terms | No country list; not available in all jurisdictions | Named jurisdiction list plus 31 US states | No country list |
| Rewards | Not stated | 0.5% to 2% by tier, credit mode, paid in USDC | Cashback in ETHFI, locked 7 days | Not stated |
Read that table with the missing cells still missing. The honest summary is that Xplace publishes the most and ether.fi publishes the clearest eligibility, while OrbitX’s own numbers are the thinnest of the three and Sponge publishes almost nothing. That is not a judgement on quality, it is a judgement on what you can verify before you commit.
Who I would recommend it to
I would recommend the OrbitX card to someone who already keeps USDT or USDC in a wallet they control, who is not a United States citizen and not sanctioned, who wants to spend that specific balance without giving it to a platform, and who is comfortable with the published numbers being incomplete and will ask support the awkward questions in writing before moving funds.
I would not recommend it as a first crypto card, as a travel card for a country you have not tested, or as anything you are planning to lean on for a subscription you cannot cancel.
The single question to settle before you deposit anything is which networks the wallet accepts. The second is whether the plastic card is shipping and what it costs you if it is not. Everything else on this page can be worked around with a little effort. Those two can cost you money outright.
Frequently asked questions
Is OrbitX a bank?
No. OrbitX Network Group Pte. Ltd describes itself as not a bank or regulated financial institution. The card is issued by an entity named Third National under a Visa licence, so the card comes through a licensed issuer while the company you deal with is a Singapore programme manager, not a deposit-taking bank.
How does the OrbitX card work?
You collateralise a self-custodial wallet with USDT or USDC, and when you pay, the stablecoins are liquidated at the point of sale and the card spends the resulting value. OrbitX states it never takes custody of your collateral, and any unencumbered collateral stays accessible to you.
Does OrbitX require KYC?
Yes, there is a KYC process, and the app release notes mention resubmissions, so it can ask for information more than once. Which specific documents you need and whether proof of address is required is not stated on the card’s public pages.
Is OrbitX available in my country?
There is no published country list. Eligibility is framed around who you are rather than where you live: the international card asks you to attest you are not a United States citizen and are not sanctioned. Any country lists you see elsewhere are unofficial and unconfirmed by the card.
How much does the OrbitX card cost?
The annual fee is $12 for Neo and $30 for Lux, charged annually. Card prices are listed at $100 for plastic and $350 for metal, though the table on the fee page is garbled. ATM withdrawals carry Base ATM charges plus 2% plus $2, and the consumer FX fee is not found on the public pages.
How do I top up the OrbitX card?
By moving USDT or USDC into your own wallet as collateral, in the app’s Cash Account and Card Account. The card’s pages do not state which blockchain networks are supported, which matters a great deal because transfers are irreversible and a wrong network can mean lost funds.
Can I add it to Apple Wallet and Google Pay?
Both Apple Pay and Google Pay terms are published, which indicates both mobile wallets are supported. The card issuer can still restrict a tokenised number for specific channels, so a card that works in a shop can still be declined for an online subscription.
Is OrbitX safe?
The card is non-custodial by design, which means your collateral is not held by the company, but it also means you carry the risk of key loss and irreversible transfers. Card freeze and two-factor authentication are not stated. The iOS app is rated 2.5 out of 5 from two ratings, and one review reports a transfer that looked failed in-app but had completed.
Is OrbitX card free?
Not exactly. There is no monthly fee, but the annual fees of $12 and $30 apply, and a plastic or metal card is listed at $100 or $350. The App Store listing claims no spending limits, though that is vendor marketing rather than something the card’s own terms confirm.
What should I compare OrbitX against?
Xplace scored 7.7 out of 10 here and publishes the clearest fees, ether.fi scored 6.7 out of 10 and publishes the clearest jurisdiction list, and Sponge scored 4.9 out of 10 with a virtual card funded by USDC. Compare them on published fee numbers and eligibility lists, since those are what you can actually verify.
Credit and cashback cards: your questions answered – cryptocardanswers
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