A tiered crypto Visa card for non-US users, with cheap entry tiers and fees that quietly add up at the checkout

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

SPay is a virtual Visa card that spends a balance you feed it from crypto. It is run by NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C, a company that states plainly it is not a bank, and the card itself is issued by Third National under a licence from Visa. That split matters: the brand you download is a front end and programme manager, while the institution standing behind the card number is someone else. If you are evaluating this because an ordinary bank card is hard to get in your country, the pitch is real. If you are evaluating it because you want cheap everyday spending, the numbers are not as friendly as the tier names suggest.

My score: 5.5 / 10. That is not a dismissal. It is a card with three genuinely appealing tiers, a clean self-serve onboarding flow and a reward rate that outruns most debit cards, weighed against a fee structure that hits you hardest exactly when you use the card abroad — which is the main reason to have it — and a public page set that leaves several important things unsaid.

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

Who gets the card

What this card is, in one paragraph

A prepaid-style Visa number created in the app, drawn against a US-dollar balance, funded with USDT, USDC, ETH or TRX. Apple Pay works. Google Pay is described inconsistently by the card’s own pages. A physical plastic card for tap-to-pay and ATMs is listed at $99 one-time but marked “Coming soon”. Points accrue on spending and convert to USDC. If you are a US citizen, the card’s terms do not apply to you — it is built for people outside the United States, and the terms require you to attest that you are not one.

Short answer: the card does not publish a country list, so there is no table I can print telling you yes or no. The page says “For current country coverage” and sends you to its Contact page. That is an unusual way to handle eligibility, and it is the first thing I would ask about before depositing anything.

What the terms do state is narrow and firm. You must not be blocked or sanctioned by the United States under OFAC, and you must attest that you are not a US citizen. The card is explicitly intended for people outside the US. Whether the rule turns on citizenship alone, or on residence as well, is not stated — and that distinction is the one that catches people out, because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are typically applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as to your address. If you hold a passport from a sanctioned jurisdiction but live and pay bills somewhere else, the question is not one the public pages will settle for you.

Here is how the criteria broke down for this card.

The App Store rating deserves a caveat rather than a boast. Five out of five, from one rating, read on 21 October 2026. That is not evidence of a well-used product; it is barely evidence at all. I searched for a complaint history — Trustpilot, Reddit, general search — and found no Trustpilot page for SPay and no dated incidents in official announcements. No news of that kind is stated either: the app listing is new and I found no dated events to report. When a company is this young and this quiet, absence of complaints is weak evidence. It may mean nothing has gone wrong. It may also mean nobody has written about it yet.

The company itself: NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C, which says it is not a bank, with the card issued by Third National under licence from Visa and the terms governed by Puerto Rico law. A Puerto Rico governing-law clause is worth noting if you ever need to read the contract closely.

Getting the card

Onboarding starts with verification during sign-up. That is the short version, and it is genuinely all the public pages describe: the documents you will need, any proof of address and the age requirement are not stated, and neither are the verification tiers. What the app does describe is how you get in afterwards — the unlock uses Face ID or a 6-digit passcode.

The card itself is created in the app as a virtual Visa. It spends in US dollars and was issued by Third National under a Visa licence. A teal physical plastic card is advertised for tap-to-pay and ATM withdrawals, but the page marks it “Coming soon”, and the physical card’s delivery countries and timing are not stated either — so I cannot tell you how long it would take, or whether it would reach you.

So the sequence is straightforward: download, verify, create the virtual card in-app, add it to Apple Wallet if you want tap-to-pay. If you were expecting to order plastic and wait three weeks, that is not this card today.

Fees: what it really costs to spend from this card

The headline fees are low and the running fees are where the cost lives. Here is everything the card’s own pages state about money, with the gaps marked as gaps.

The line that should make you stop is the pair of 3% fees. Foreign exchange up to 3% and cross-border up to 3% are separate items in the terms, and both apply to exactly the use case that would drive you to a card like this: paying somewhere other than home. Add them together in the worst case and a foreign purchase has surrendered six points of its value before the shop sees anything.

Three everyday payments, priced with those numbers in mind:

• Coffee abroad, about $5. Pay in euros or dirhams on a Platinum card: up to 3% on the currency conversion, and if the merchant or the network treats it as cross-border, up to 3% more. That is roughly $0.30 in fees on a $5 coffee — before we even count the network conversion rate the merchant’s own acquirer applies, which is not this card’s fee and not something the card controls. The one number I can put on it is the card’s own.
• A $120 online subscription billed in US dollars while you live in a dirham market. This is the friendliest case: same currency, so no FX fee. But Address Verification Service compares the numeric parts of your billing address with issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK, and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards — which can cause declines. A subscription that renews quietly is also a subscription you cannot pause with one tap.
• A $2,400 flight with the Infinite card. Inside the cap, so no limit problem, but it is a cross-border payment and a currency conversion at once if priced in anything other than dollars. At 3% plus 3% the fees are up to $144. That is the scenario where the tier’s benefits start to look cheap by comparison, though the Infinite tier does carry travel accident insurance up to $1,500,000.

I want to be careful not to invent a sum the card does not state, so I will say the flat thing: the published figures are 3% and 3%, and what you actually pay depends on which of them apply to a given transaction and on what rate the network gives you. The card does not publish a worked example, so neither will I.

Also worth knowing: the crypto conversion or deposit fee is not listed at all, and network fees on the blockchain are charged by the blockchain, not by the card — who pays that on a deposit is not stated. And cash advances are unavailable per the terms, so the ATM route is withdrawals from your own balance, not an advance.

Top up: how money actually gets onto the card

You deposit crypto into the SPay wallet, then move it from your balance onto the card. The deposit options are specific:

• USDT on Tron (TRC-20) and on Ethereum (ERC-20)
• USDC on Ethereum (ERC-20)
• Native ETH and TRX, deposited to the SPay wallet

From there, you move funds to the card from your USDC balance in amounts from $10 to $500, with credit described as happening in minutes. Quick amounts run from $10 to $500. What is not stated: the deposit fee, who bears the network fee, and whether you can top up with fiat at all.

The network detail deserves a second look because it is where people lose money in this category. ERC-20 is the Ethereum token standard, and gas on Ethereum is paid only in ETH — a wallet holding USDT with no ETH cannot send it. Tron prices its transactions through bandwidth and energy, often burning TRX, so a TRC-20 deposit can require a little TRX to move. And blockchain transfers are irreversible: a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. The card is explicit that funds sent to the wrong network cannot be recovered.

One more asymmetry: Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option on this card either. USDT on TRC-20 and USDC on ERC-20 are the two stablecoin routes, on different networks, and mixing them up is expensive.

Withdrawals run the other way as USDC on Base to any self-custody wallet. The withdrawal fee is not listed and the balance treatment on closure is not stated.

Paying with it day to day

Apple Pay works. That is the live answer to how you would actually use this card, since it is virtual and there is no plastic. Google Pay is the mess: the site says “in development”, while the card page says both Apple Pay and Google Pay work with virtual cards on creation. I would plan for Apple Pay and check the app yourself before relying on the second one.

Some categories may be limited. Crypto purchases, gambling and money transfers are described as cash-like transactions that “may be limited”. That is the card’s policy, and it is worth knowing that gambling merchants are separately identifiable — MCC 7995 covers casinos, betting and lotteries — so blocks on specific cards are common practice rather than something happening to you by chance.

Rewards are the strongest part of the offer. Points accrue on card purchases, up to 1.5% back depending on tier. Two hundred points equal $1 in USDC, redemption starts at 1,000 points, and the credit lands on the card balance. Bonus points exist for referrals, for completing verification and for your first card. Read that carefully: on a $20 monthly spend, the cashback is a rounding error, and the bonus points tied to referrals and verification are a one-off.

Three tiers, and what the extra money buys:

Platinum is where the value is. For $10 more you get concierge and lounge access, which is where the real utility sits. The jump to Infinite costs $30 more again and mostly buys a bigger number on an insurance certificate.

Support runs through an in-app AI assistant that hands off to a human, with 24/7 support on Platinum and priority 24/7 concierge on Infinite. There is a phone number, +971 55 947 6972, and the app is fully localised in Arabic — a detail that tells you something about where this is aimed.

If a charge goes wrong: try the merchant first, then report the disputed charge within 60 days after it posts to your statement. Card-network chargeback rules apply, and chargebacks you win are credited to the SPay account. Note the word prepaid. US debit reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, prepaid-card coverage varies, and it should not be assumed. A virtual prepaid Visa is not the same protection as a credit card.

What can go wrong

The honest list starts with the things the card does not tell you.

No country list. Coverage runs through the Contact page. If your country is not on it, you find out late.

No custody disclosure. Passcode and Face ID unlock, push notifications for card activity, your own spending limit — reasonable safeguards. But the custody model is not stated, and that is the single most important unanswered question in this category. Whoever holds your private keys can spend your money. A seed phrase is typically 12 to 24 words in unencrypted form; anyone who gets it can restore the wallet. And blockchain transfers are irreversible — the network cannot freeze or return funds. Custodial platforms have a real record of failure: Mt. Gox around US$350 million, Coincheck around US$400 million in 2018, Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022.

Programme risk is not zero. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers and can suspend a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 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 WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. A closure typically means a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw what is left. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source had new loads ending 8 July 2026 and spending stopping 8 August 2026 — single source, unconfirmed, but the shape of it is worth recognising.

Declines and holds. A merchant can decline a prepaid or foreign BIN because the BIN lookup reveals the card type and issuer country. Declined authorisations may leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to 7. If your income arrives in crypto and a payment holds for a week, that is a liquidity problem, not a technicality.

Your limit can move without you. The terms say the limit is set by SPay based on collateral and can be reduced to $0 at any time. That is a meaningful clause for anyone whose balance is volatile. Your own limit can be set from $0 up to the tier cap.

Wrong network, gone money. Wrong-network funds cannot be recovered. This one is not a risk in the abstract; it is the most common way people lose funds in this category.

Stablecoins are not what the name says. Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC are dollar-pegged, and the BIS put about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation in these two. But stablecoins can depeg: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022, and USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. And they are not censorship-proof — Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity.

Taxes are on you. This is not advice, just the shape of it: the IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss. For personal holdings that is a capital gain, short-term if held a year or less, measured in local fiat currency at fair market value on the transaction date. Each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. If this is a meaningful amount of money to you, take your own advice on it.

Where the card sits under EU rules, if that is you. MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, took legal effect in June 2023. Its rules on asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens applied from 30 June 2024, with the remaining provisions including crypto-asset service provider rules from 30 December 2024. Under it, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. The transitional period lets providers operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first. A card itself is a payment service regulated separately, so a crypto card often depends on two licences. ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised providers you can check. Nothing on SPay’s public pages told me which bucket it sits in, so I am not going to guess — if you are in the EU, that is a question for them before you deposit.

The app has one rating. A new listing, no complaint history, no dated announcements. I searched and found nothing. That is what I found; I am not going to dress it up as a track record.

What to take instead

The alternatives in this category are not obviously better. Here is how they compare, on what each publishes.

CardFlow is cheaper at the start and clearly aimed at Nigeria, with a Naira bank transfer option that SPay does not offer and no country list or exclusions stated. HyperCard says the card works in more than 176 countries, though that is acceptance rather than eligibility, and its App Store page lists no fees at all — which is information and a warning in equal measure. Card.fi is the strongest alternative on paper: it publishes 32 coins across 5 networks including Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Solana and Kaanch, names its top-up and FX fees precisely, states no monthly, annual, inactivity or minimum-balance fee, and scores highest of the four. Its catch is the entry cost — $49 for a Virtual Classic — and its warning: sending on the wrong chain risks permanent loss.

Two things all three alternatives share with SPay: the customer-due-diligence reality, and the wrong-network trap. In the EU, due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documentation, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship and whether you are a politically exposed person — and if it cannot be completed, rules require the institution to decline or end the relationship. That is why accounts close pending documents. In the US, customer identification requires name, date of birth, address and an identification number. Nationality is screened separately from residence precisely because sanctions and issuer policy apply to citizenship and country of birth as well as address. Prepaid and debit cards are generally available to adults 18 and up; some issuers set higher limits.

If none of these fits, the honest answer may be that you want a different product. A regulated e-money account in your own country, with a standard debit card and disclosed fees, will beat every one of these on cost and on recourse — provided you can open one.

Who I would recommend it to

If you are outside the United States, you already hold USDT, USDC or ETH and understand that you are converting at a spread rather than getting a bank rate, and you mostly want a clean virtual Visa that taps in Apple Wallet for spending you would otherwise struggle to pay for — this card does that job for $9.99 and a small number of points. The tiers are well constructed, Platinum alone is arguably worth the money, and the support setup is unusually serious for a company this young.

I would not recommend it if you are a US citizen, because you are attesting you are not. I would not recommend it if your country is not on whatever the Contact page tells you, because you will find out after you have funded a wallet. I would not recommend it as your primary card, because the FX and cross-border fees are capped at 3% each and apply precisely when you are abroad, because prepaid dispute protection is weaker than a credit card’s, and because the terms let the limit be cut to zero at any time. And I would not recommend it if you are in the EU and cannot confirm which regulatory bucket it sits in.

The version of this card I would want to see in a year: a published country list, a physical card that actually ships, Google Pay resolved one way or the other, an ATM fee and a deposit fee stated rather than omitted, and an App Store rating built on more than one person.

What I would check first, before depositing

• Whether your country is covered — via the Contact page, in writing, before you transfer anything.
• Whether your own national situation conflicts with the OFAC and non-US-citizen attestations, and whether the rule turns on citizenship or residence.
• The exchange rate you will actually get at the moment of conversion, against the headline 3% ceilings.
• What happens to your balance if the programme pauses, and how a withdrawal would be executed.
• The tax position in your country, taken to someone qualified, because each payment may be a disposal.

Frequently asked questions

What is the SPay card?

SPay is a virtual Visa card you hold in a phone app, drawn against a balance you load yourself from cryptocurrency. It is operated by NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C, which states it is not a bank, and the card is issued by Third National under licence from Visa. It spends in US dollars and behaves more like a prepaid card than a debit card linked to a bank account.

Is SPay a bank?

No. The operator says so itself. NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C runs the app and markets the card as a programme manager; Third National is the institution behind the card number under a Visa licence. The card terms are governed by Puerto Rico law. That structure is common in this category, but it means your contractual counterparty for the card is the issuer, not the brand on your screen.

Who owns SPay?

SPay is operated by NOVARA TECH L.L.C S.O.C. Beyond that name, the public pages I could read do not lay out an ownership structure, parent company or funding history. The card itself is issued by Third National under licence from Visa. If ownership matters to your decision, that is a direct question for them rather than one these pages answer.

Is the SPay card available in my country?

The card publishes no country list. Its page says only “For current country coverage” and points to the Contact page. What the terms do say is that you must not be blocked or sanctioned by the US under OFAC and must attest that you are not a US citizen, since the card targets people outside the United States. Whether citizenship alone decides it, or residence too, is not stated.

How do I get the SPay card and does it need KYC?

Download the app, complete verification during onboarding, and the virtual Visa is created in-app. Verification is required, but the documents, any proof of address and the age requirement are not described, and neither are the verification tiers. The app unlock uses Face ID or a 6-digit passcode. A physical plastic card is advertised at $99 one-time but marked “Coming soon”, with delivery countries and timing not stated.

What does it cost, and is the card free?

The virtual card is not free: a one-time fee of $9.99 for Platinum, $19.99 for Signature or $49.99 for Infinite, and $99 for the physical card. No monthly fee is stated. On the running costs, the foreign exchange fee on non-USD spend is up to 3% and the cross-border fee is up to 3%. A crypto conversion or deposit fee is not listed, and no ATM fee is published.

How do I top up, and can I use any crypto?

You deposit USDT on Tron or Ethereum, USDC on Ethereum, or native ETH and TRX into the SPay wallet, then move funds to the card from your USDC balance in amounts from $10 to $500, credited in minutes. Fiat top-up is not stated, and neither is the deposit fee or who pays the network fee. Note that Circle dropped USDC support on Tron in February 2024.

Can I use the SPay card with Apple Pay and Google Pay?

Apple Pay works, and that is the practical way to use a virtual card day to day. Google Pay is described inconsistently: the site says it is in development while the card page says both wallets work with virtual cards on creation. I would treat Apple Pay as the reliable option and verify the second one yourself in the app before relying on it. The physical card for contactless and ATM use remains “Coming soon”.

Is the SPay card safe and is it worth it?

It has the usual safeguards: app unlock via passcode or Face ID, push notifications on card activity and a spending limit you can set yourself. The custody model is not stated, which is the question I would want answered first, and blockchain transfers are irreversible. Whether it is worth it depends on why you need it: at $9.99 with up to 1.5% back, reasonable for spending you cannot otherwise pay for; poor value as a primary card once 3% FX and 3% cross-border fees apply.

How do I withdraw money and what happens if something goes wrong?

Withdrawals go out as USDC on Base to any self-custody wallet, with no fee listed and no balance treatment on closure stated. If a charge is wrong, try the merchant first, then report the dispute within 60 days after it posts to your statement; chargebacks you win are credited back to the SPay account. As a prepaid card, its dispute protection is not the same as a credit card’s, so do not treat it as your only card.

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