A crypto card with a quiet public page and a loud complaint record

Updated October 2026

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Available in US

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18+ Only

hi is one of those crypto cards that arrived with a splash — a card, an app, rewards paid in crypto, and the promise of spending without touching an exchange. Five years on, the card is still here, and so am I, writing about whether it deserves your money. My honest summary: the service works as a product, the paperwork behind it is remarkably thin, and the review record on Trustpilot is bad enough that I would not put money I could not lose on it. This is a card for someone who already has an hi account and already trusts the platform, not for someone shopping for a first card.

Conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

The verdict: 4.9 out of 10

Four point nine. Not zero, not a disaster — a middling card with a great deal of unfinished business around it. The number is not one figure I invented; it is the aggregate of six criteria, each scored separately, and the two weakest criteria drag the whole thing down hard.

Two things pull in opposite directions and you should hold both. The upside: if you already bank in euros or pounds through hi, the card spends from a real IBAN balance, and third-party reviews suggest that costs you nothing per transaction. The downside: nothing about your money’s safety is confirmed on the card’s own pages — no fees, no limits, no ATM terms, no security documentation — and the people who have used it in public have not had a good time.

Who suits it: existing hi app members in Europe who pay from an IBAN and already hold crypto at hi. Who it does not suit: anyone whose daily spending depends on it, anyone who needs a physical card, anyone who needs Apple Pay or Google Pay, and anyone who wants published fees and limits before committing money. If you cannot name your country and currency without reading the card’s site, this is the wrong card for you right now.

Will they give you the card

Short answer: probably, if you are in Europe — but the card’s own public page does not name a single country, so I cannot tell you from official material which countries are open. The starting data on the official side is the EEA. That is as far as the official page goes.

What circulates unofficially, and you should treat it as exactly that: at launch in 2022 the card was offered to members in 25+ EEA countries and the UK, per Mastercard and press coverage from that year. Trustpilot reviews indicate the UK later dropped out, with members told to withdraw. So the unofficial picture is “Europe, and Europe minus the UK now.”

Nothing I have seen on the official page tells you whether eligibility follows your address, your citizenship, or both. That is an unusually large gap, and it is worth reading as a signal rather than an oversight: providers that welcome a broad audience tend to say so. Before you apply, the honest move is to open the app and see whether your country appears in it. If it does not, no one reading a review can tell you what happens next.

How to get it

The card is virtual, and that word is doing a lot of work here. The official page says virtual debit cards are now available and that the card works wherever Mastercard is accepted — which the card describes as more than 90 million merchants. That is real coverage, and it is the one thing this card does unambiguously well.

The sequence the card describes is short: once your address has been verified, you can activate the card, and activation happens in the app’s Card section. That is genuinely all it says. Documents required, minimum age, whether the verification is automated or manual — none of it is stated on the card page. The help centre does have an “Identity verification (KYC)” section; I did not open it, and I would not assume what is in it.

A few practical notes for the reader. First, there is no physical card option mentioned on this page at all — I can only tell you that physical is not stated, which is not the same as “there is none,” but it is certainly not something to count on. Second, the card draws on an IBAN in EUR or GBP, so the currency is a property of your account rather than something you choose freely at signup. Third, the account has to exist before the card does; this is not a card you can get standalone.

If you are weighing this against a card whose application page tells you the documents, the age and the countries, the difference in friction is real. That is the pattern: everything after you have an account is fine; the part before, where a provider normally tells you the rules, is blank.

Fees: what it really costs

The short version is that the card does not publish its fees. Issuance fees, monthly fees, conversion fees, FX fees, ATM fees, daily limits and monthly limits — all of it is not stated on the official page. For a product whose entire pitch is spending cheaply, that is the central problem, and I want to be plain about it rather than reassuring.

What you can find is unofficial, from a blog review of the card that is undated: no transaction fees, no FX fees and no issuance fee, with issuance free for eligible users who complete KYC — and the same source warning that fees may apply later. Two thirds of the second sentence matters as much as the first. A fee-free card that can start charging later is not the same product as a fee-free card.

Here is the honest costs table, with blanks where the card is silent:

Now let me walk you through three ordinary payments, because that is where the unknowns actually bite.

Buying coffee for four euros. If your IBAN is in euros, this is the cleanest case: the payment draws on euro funds and, on the unofficial numbers, costs you nothing beyond the four euros. This is the scenario the card is built for.

Paying for a subscription billed in dollars while your balance is in pounds. Here the conversion rate and any markup apply, and the card tells you neither. If the unofficial “no FX fees” line is accurate, you eat the network’s exchange rate; if it no longer is, you eat that plus a percentage you were never told about. This is the payment to think hardest about before you commit.

Paying for something in a second currency you hold as crypto at hi. The card lets you pay from crypto held on the platform, one secondary currency at a time, set in the app. If your balance runs out you top up or choose another secondary currency. What converts your crypto into the right money, at what rate, and what it costs — the card does not say. Nor does it name which coins or which networks.

There is one more thing about cost that is not a fee but behaves like one. The card offers “hi Benefits,” a tier-based membership keyed to how much HI you hold — the section exists in the help centre, though I did not open it. Tier systems are where the complaints come from: users report cashback cut from 8% to 1% in July 2023, and tier changes generally. A card whose rewards depend on your holdings gives the platform an incentive to move the goalposts, and users say it did.

Top up options

The card is linked by default to your personal IBAN currency — EUR or GBP — and transactions are covered by the funds in that IBAN. On top of that you can pay with crypto you hold at hi, one secondary currency at a time, which you set in the app as your secondary payment currency.

That is the whole picture, and it is thin in a specific way. Which coins are supported and on which networks: not stated. Whether you can top up by card transfer, by bank transfer, or by card payment: not stated. How to withdraw money: not stated. Fees on topping up: not stated.

This is the section where I would push you hardest to look before you act, and not because I have found a trap. The reason is the irreversible nature of blockchain transfers. If you send funds on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, the money can be gone or can need manual recovery with no guarantee. A card that will not tell you which networks it supports cannot tell you whether your transfer was a good idea, and neither can I. Send a small test amount and confirm receipt before sending anything you care about. That is not a trick to get around a rule; it is the ordinary care anyone takes with an irreversible transfer.

One more caution specific to this corner of the market: Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity. Stablecoins are widely described as censorship-resistant, and this is a concrete example of why that word needs care. It is also a reminder that a frozen address is a possibility, not a hypothetical.

Paying with it every day

Virtual only, on the evidence of the official page. Mastercard acceptance, which the card puts at more than 90 million merchants. That is the honest summary: excellent theoretical coverage, one piece of plastic you cannot lose because you never had one.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are not officially named on the card page. In user reviews, Google Pay reportedly did not work. If tap-to-pay on your phone is how you normally pay — and for most people it is — this is close to disqualifying, because the workaround is typing your card number into every online checkout. Ask yourself honestly whether that is a life you want, because for the price of one coffee a day it becomes a real one.

Cash machines: not disclosed. Withdrawal fees: not stated. If you need physical cash, this card does not tell you what it costs.

Wallets: not stated. Dispute handling: not stated, which matters more than it sounds. When something goes wrong with a payment, the process by which you get the money back is usually a short paragraph in the card’s terms, and here there isn’t one. In the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, with prepaid-card coverage varying and not something to assume. Whatever hi is, you should find out what its dispute route is before you need it.

Rewards work the other way round. The card says you can “earn rewards in cryptocurrency” with it, but gives no rates and no conditions. Unofficially, 1–10% back on spending depending on tier, from 2022 launch coverage. That range is so wide it is nearly meaningless, and the July 2023 cut from 8% to 1% suggests the top of it was not a promise so much as a setting.

The app is called hi, with a Card section for activation. I could not identify its listing in the App Store, and there is no store rating to quote. The help centre exists in English and French, with a “Contact hi” section; the channels, languages and hours in it I did not read.

What can go wrong

This is the section that decides my score, and I want to give you the record rather than a summary of it.

Trustpilot, as of 21 October 2026: 1.8 out of 5 from 587 reviews, with one review in the last twelve months. That last detail cuts both ways — it means the volume of complaints is historical rather than current, and it means almost nobody is leaving new reviews, which is its own kind of quiet. The themes users report, by period:

• 2022–23: rewards cut and tier changes, including cashback falling from 8% to 1% in July 2023
• 2023–24: withdrawal problems and the UK exit, with members told to withdraw by January
• 2023: card blocked for two months, with Google Pay not working, August to September
• 2023–25: losses on the HI token, and allegations of fraud or a rug pull

Read those in order and a pattern emerges. This is not one broken thing; it is a company that changed the terms of the reward, then lost access to a market, then blocked cards without an explanation. Every one of those is a decision someone made about your money.

On the company itself: the starting data is hi Technology Limited. Press coverage from 2022 says the card was issued by Moorwand Ltd, a Mastercard principal member, with a Contis partnership announced for the debit card and fiat accounts. The official page is silent on the issuer, which for a card product is an unusual thing to be silent about. When you cannot tell from the card’s own material who is liable for your balance, you are being asked to take that on trust.

Security features: not stated. Not “we have none” — not stated. In a category where the norm is an app-based two-factor login, an instant card freeze, spending limits, 3-D Secure confirmation and tokenised mobile wallets, silence is information.

What happened recently: on 30 June 2026, a help article states that virtual debit cards are “now available.” In September 2022, Mastercard and the press covered the launch of an NFT-customisable card. And in December 2023, UK members were reportedly told to withdraw by January.

That last item deserves a moment of your attention, because it is the category’s standard failure mode, not a quirk of this card. When a card programme winds down, the sequence is always the same: a notice period, then loading and spending stop, then you are asked to withdraw whatever is left — and by then you are dependent on the company’s goodwill and its staffing. One 2026 closure reported by a single secondary source had new loads ending 8 July 2026 and spending stopping 8 August 2026, which I flag as unconfirmed but which shows the timetable is short. Trustpilot users describing difficulty withdrawing is exactly the shape of this problem, and it is why withdrawal risk belongs in the same breath as fees.

What to take instead

I want to be careful here. These are alternatives on the same scorecard, not endorsements, and I have not reviewed them to the same depth. But if you want a comparison in front of you, here is one.

Three differences stand out if you are choosing on paper. Morse publishes its exchange-rate policy and its top-up methods, and its wallet is self-custodial, which means your crypto stays in a wallet you control until the moment of payment — where a custodial arrangement means you must trust the provider completely. The International Visa Card publishes the things hi does not: a $5 issuance fee, a 2% FX fee, three priced plans. UNi publishes its fee philosophy. Whether any of them is right for you is a separate question, and I would not advise you to move your money without checking residence rules yourself.

On eligibility, note that these cards draw the line differently. The International Visa Card is not available to residents or legal registrants of a long list including 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, and purchases are blocked in several of those — and the rule follows residence or registration, not citizenship. Morse goes by residence too: you must be at least 18 and resident in a supported country, the app is available in over 140 countries, and certain countries including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Türkiye and the UK are in closed beta behind an invite code. Morse also cannot serve customers subject to US sanctions, and to UK, EU and UN sanctions.

That last point is worth sitting with. Whatever your country, the practical eligibility test is your address, and country lists change without announcement. If you are outside the EEA entirely, none of these is a real option until you have read the provider’s own terms — and if you are in a country under sanctions, none of them will serve you, and that is the rule rather than a judgement.

Who I would recommend it to

If you already hold an hi account in Europe and pay from a euro or pound IBAN, and you treat the card as a small convenience rather than your main card, the fundamentals hold: real Mastercard acceptance, a clean app flow, and possibly no per-transaction fees. For that person it works.

I would not recommend it to you if any of the following is true. You need a physical card. You pay with your phone. You rely on cash. You are considering moving a meaningful balance onto it. You want published fees, limits and ATM terms before you commit. Or you are reading the 1.8 on Trustpilot and wondering why you should be the exception. On that last point, be honest: the complaints are not about one broken month. They span four years and cover terms changed without warning, a market exit, unexplained card blocks and token losses.

The sensible way to test it, if you test it at all, is small. Keep your existing card as the card you rely on. Use this one for a modest balance you can afford to see stuck. Do your own withdrawal early, while it is easy, and see how it goes — that is the exact step the 2023–24 reviewers describe as painful. And decide in advance what would make you close the account, because a card that only works while things go well is not a card you can rely on.

One last piece of housekeeping that applies to this whole category rather than to hi alone. Crypto is treated as property for tax purposes in the US, where exchanging it for goods or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local currency at the fair market value on the date of the transaction — so each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. I am not giving you tax advice and you should not take this as such; but if you are about to use a crypto card heavily, that conversation with a professional is worth having before the spending, not after.

Frequently asked questions

What is the hi card?

The hi card is a virtual Mastercard debit card linked to an account you hold with hi, an app-based crypto platform. The card spends in EUR or GBP against the currency of your IBAN, and can also draw on crypto you hold at hi, one secondary currency at a time. The card’s own page says it works at more than 90 million merchants. It is virtual only, at least on the evidence of the official page.

How does the hi card work?

It works as a prepaid-style card: funds sit in your hi account, and each payment draws them down. By default it is tied to your personal IBAN currency, either EUR or GBP, and your IBAN funds cover transactions. If you hold crypto at hi you can set a secondary payment currency in the app and pay from that instead. The card does not disclose conversion mechanics or rates.

Is hi a bank?

No — and this distinction matters. hi is a crypto platform that offers a card through an issuing partner, not a bank you hold a deposit with. Press coverage from 2022 names Moorwand Ltd as issuer, with a Contis partnership announced for debit and fiat accounts; the official page is silent. In the EU, an electronic money institution can issue e-money and payment cards but cannot lend, and such funds are not the same as bank deposits.

Who owns hi?

The starting data is hi Technology Limited. Press from 2022 names Moorwand Ltd as the card issuer and a Mastercard principal member, plus a Contis partnership for the debit card and fiat accounts. None of that appears on the official card page, which is itself worth noticing: the page does not tell you who stands behind your balance.

Can I use the hi card in my country?

You will have to check the app. The official page names no countries at all; its starting data is the EEA. Unofficial coverage says 25+ EEA countries plus the UK at launch in 2022, with the UK later exiting and members told to withdraw. Acceptance at the till depends on Mastercard, but eligibility depends on your country and that list is not published.

Is the hi card free?

Unofficially yes, officially unknown. A third-party blog review describes no transaction, FX or issuance fees, with issuance free for eligible users who complete KYC, and adds that fees may apply later. The card itself states nothing about issuance, monthly, conversion, FX or ATM fees, nor about daily or monthly limits. Treat the free claim as unofficial and time-limited.

How do I top up the hi card?

The card draws on the IBAN in EUR or GBP linked to your account, so topping up is largely a matter of funding that IBAN balance. You can also pay from crypto held at hi with one secondary currency set in the app. Which coins and which networks are supported, whether direct top-ups by card transfer work, and what withdrawal costs are all not stated. Send a test amount first — blockchain transfers cannot be reversed.

Is the hi card safe?

I would not describe it as safe, and that is a judgement, not a fact. Security features are not stated anywhere on the card’s pages, support is a help centre with a contact section I did not read, and Trustpilot shows 1.8 from 587 reviews spanning withdrawal problems, blocked cards, changed rewards and token losses from 2022 to 2025. Nothing is promised here about anonymity or protection; check terms yourself.

Is it worth it?

For an existing hi member in Europe paying from an IBAN, the underlying product is sound and possibly free to use. For anyone else, the reasoning runs the other way: costs are unpublished, the card is virtual only, Apple Pay and Google Pay are not officially named, ATM terms are absent, and the complaints span four years. I would not make it your primary card, and I would not add to it before you have tried a small withdrawal.

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