A closer look at the KAST card — who it suits, what it really costs, and where the rough edges are

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The KAST card is a Visa payment card tied to a USD stablecoin balance inside the KAST app. You fund it with USDT, USDC, PYUSD or RLUSD across several networks, the app converts the deposit at a 1:1 rate with no spread, and the card then spends that balance wherever Visa is taken. On paper it looks unusually cheap: zero membership at the Standard tier, no conversion fee on USD spending, and a flat 0% stablecoin top-up. The catch, and it is a meaningful one, is the legal and operational picture around the company itself. KAST describes itself as a financial technology company rather than a bank, the card issuer and BIN sponsor are not named on the public pages, and the entity behind the terms is KAST Tech, registered in Anjouan in the Comoros, with arbitration seated in Singapore. That matters because the regulatory protection you get from a licensed bank or e-money institution is not obviously present here, and the user reviews I read reflect that uncertainty.

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

Verdict

KAST earns a 6.1 out of 10 in this review. The score reflects a genuinely strong product surface — a Visa card that spends from a stablecoin balance across five networks, with Apple Pay and Google Pay support, low core fees and a rewards programme that pays cashback in USD — paired with structural weaknesses that anyone choosing the card for real money should not ignore.

Here is the breakdown by criterion, with the mark and a short reason for each:

The card is a reasonable fit for a stablecoin holder who already lives in USDT or USDC, wants to spend that balance in shops without first moving it to a bank, and is comfortable taking on a fintech that sits outside the usual banking licences. It is a poor fit for anyone who needs the protection of a regulated bank, who cannot tolerate the possibility of a frozen account while documents are reviewed, or whose country of residence is not on the list the app shows during sign-up.

Will they give you the card

KAST does not publish a list of supported countries. The company says the list is shown when you start KYC, and that “if your country isn’t listed, it means KAST is not available there.” There is also a Restricted Locations list referenced in the terms, but no specific countries are named on the pages I could read. That ambiguity is the first thing to be aware of: you cannot, before downloading the app, confirm with certainty that the service will work where you live.

Two further rules narrow things further. First, citizenship and ID matter separately from residence. KAST says that if you currently live in a supported country but only hold an ID from a restricted region, you may still be ineligible to pass KYC. Second, dual citizens with an ID from a supported country can pass, but only the account holder’s own ID is accepted, and using a VPN does not bypass the check. You can create an account in an unsupported country, but KYC stays locked and you cannot order a card.

The card itself is Visa. KAST states the card is accepted in 170+ countries and at more than 150 million merchants. That is the network’s reach, not KAST’s own footprint, so the limit on where you can use it is really the limit on where you can sign up and pass KYC.

How to get it

Sign-up is through the KAST mobile app. The first level is account creation: phone number, one-time code, PIN, email and country of residence. At this stage the app is unlocked but you cannot yet send or receive funds or order a card.

Level 2 is identity verification. You provide a government-issued ID — passport, national ID card or driver’s licence, valid and not expired — plus a selfie and a liveness check. Passing Level 2 unlocks the ability to send and receive funds and to order a card. Level 3 adds proof of address and, where relevant, proof of citizenship, and unlocks USD and EUR accounts as well as global payouts. Source-of-funds documents may be requested at any level. US residents are asked for an SSN. The minimum age is the legal age in your country, which is 18 in most places.

Once Level 2 is passed you can order a card. KAST offers up to 10 cards per user, in three tiers: Standard (Visa Platinum, free), Premium (Visa Infinite metal, 1,000 USD a year) and Private (gold-plated Visa Infinite, 10,000 USD a year). Other designs — Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin — sit within the same programmes. Account balances are denominated in USD, and stablecoin deposits are converted 1:1 with no spread.

Physical card delivery takes 7 to 10 business days. The Standard tier pays 0 USD for the card itself but 40 USD for delivery, while Premium and Private physical cards include shipping. The list of countries KAST ships physical cards to is not stated on the pages I could read, and neither is the replacement cost if a card is lost. Processing time for KYC is not stated, nor are the official reasons a verification might be rejected, beyond expired IDs and unsupported or restricted countries.

Fees and what it really costs

The fee structure is competitive on the basics and punishing on the edges, which is worth understanding in full before you commit. The table below sets out the headline costs, and the scenarios after it walk through what they mean at the till.

Three everyday payments illustrate how the numbers land. First, a 60 USD lunch in New York paid with Apple Pay in USD: 0% conversion, 0% transaction fee, no FX fee. The cost is the 60 USD itself, no fee on top. Second, a 40 EUR dinner in Berlin paid by tapping the physical card: the card converts USD to EUR at Visa’s wholesale rate and then adds the FX fee, which lands somewhere in the 0.5%–1.75% band depending on your residence and the card programme. On 40 EUR that is roughly 0.20–0.70 EUR. Third, a 200 USD cash withdrawal from a Visa ATM in London: 3 USD flat plus 2% of 200 USD (4 USD) plus the FX fee because the ATM pays out in GBP. Expect somewhere in the region of 8–10 USD in fees on top of the 200 USD you want to walk away with, before any fee your own bank charges on the receiving side.

Two further fees are easy to miss. The 0.50 USD declined-transaction fee applies when the card is refused because the balance is too low — and a recurring complaint in user reviews is that repeated small declines can push a balance negative. The 1 USD monthly inactivity fee kicks in after 12 months with no activity. There are also renewal and reactivation fees, but the amounts are not stated on the public pages.

The three tiers above the table are worth comparing. Standard is free and earns 1.5% USD cashback on the first 2,000 USD of eligible monthly spend. Premium charges 1,000 USD a year, includes shipping on the physical card, raises cashback to 2% on the first 10,000 USD a month, adds a 1% Points component on eligible spend and unlocks Visa Infinite benefits (travel, purchase protection, lounge, eSIM after registration on the Visa Benefits portal). Private costs 10,000 USD a year, ships a gold-plated Visa Infinite plus two cards from the other tiers, pays 3% cashback on the first 40,000 USD a month, adds 2% in Points and includes a VIP Concierge. The Reserve programme (extra rewards on balances held in the app) is advertised as running until 1 July 2027. SOL staking is paid in Points, roughly 0.25 per 1 SOL every two days at Standard and 0.5 at Premium and Private.

Top up options

Topping up starts with transferring a supported stablecoin to a deposit address the app generates. The headline set is USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD, with USDT and USDC supported across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and TRON. The current list of networks is shown inside the app, and it can change.

The fee on the stablecoin side is 0%, with no stated cap. The catch, and it is not a small one, is the network fee: on-chain gas or bandwidth is charged by the blockchain itself, not by KAST, and on Ethereum that can easily be a few dollars during busy periods. Sending USDT on TRON or Solana, or USDC on Arbitrum, is cheaper.

Bank deposits are also supported. USD via ACH costs 2 USD, FedWire costs 15 USD and SWIFT costs 30 USD. EUR via SEPA costs 0.5%. The minimum top-up amount is not stated on the pages I could read.

A few warnings are worth flagging now, before we go further. First, the Terms of Service say the acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”, which conflicts with the marketing pages that also list PYUSD and RLUSD. If a token gets delisted, existing balances in it could be frozen or required to move. Second, transfers are irreversible. Sending USDT to the wrong network, or to a deposit address for a different token, can mean the funds are lost or stuck pending manual support recovery with no guarantee. Third, the card spends directly from your balance: each purchase is deducted at the moment of authorisation, so the card behaves like a prepaid card rather than a credit line and cannot overdraw.

For withdrawals, the same stablecoins are supported on the same networks, with fees that vary by chain: Solana (USDT, USDC) 1 USD plus 0.1%, Arbitrum (USDC) 0.20 USD plus 0.1%, Ethereum (USDT, USDC) 6 USD plus 0.1%, TRON (USDT) 5 USD plus 0.1%. The minimum is 5 USD. The treatment of any balance remaining on the account when it is closed is not stated.

Paying with it every day

In day-to-day use the card behaves like a regular Visa. Apple Pay and Google Pay work with both virtual and physical cards, and there is no fee for adding the card to a mobile wallet. Samsung Pay is not mentioned in the materials I could read. The card works wherever Visa is taken, which KAST puts at more than 150 million merchants across 170-plus countries.

Cashback is paid in USD when a transaction is authorised. The tier rates are 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD a month at Standard, 2% on the first 10,000 USD a month at Premium, and 3% on the first 40,000 USD a month at Private. KAST Points are an additional layer: none at Standard, 1% of eligible spend at Premium, 2% at Private. Points are separate from the cashback; on Premium and Private you receive both.

The app is “KAST: Global USD Account” on iOS, published by Troia Limited, with a rating of 3.97 from 276 ratings as of the latest update on 8 October 2026. The Google Play rating was not available at the time of writing. The Terms of Service prohibit a defined list of merchant categories, including weapons, controlled substances, Ponzi, pyramid or MLM schemes, counterfeit goods, Darknet or Tor purchases, adult content and pseudo-pharmaceuticals. Gambling is not mentioned in that list, so it may be permitted under card policy, but issuers can still add their own blocks. Some merchants place pre-authorisation holds on the card, and a declined authorisation can leave a hold on the balance for several days, which matters when the balance is small.

If you have a dispute, the Terms require you to contact KAST within 90 days of the transaction. The company’s liability is capped at 500 USD. The chargeback process itself is not described in detail.

What can go wrong

This is the section the score of 3 out of 10 for reliability and complaints is built on, and it is the part to read carefully if you are considering putting meaningful funds on the card.

On the regulatory side, KAST describes itself as “a financial technology company, not a bank”. Cards, custody and on-ramp and off-ramp services are “provided by licensed partners”. The entity in the Terms is “KAST Tech” (Reg No. 16223), incorporated in Anjouan in the Comoros, with governing law in Seychelles and arbitration at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre. The app developer on the App Store is Troia Limited. The card issuer and BIN sponsor are not named on the public pages — KAST refers only to “one of our Partner”. Named partners in the terms include Tazapay and BitGo, and the homepage carries logos for Stripe, Privy, Fireblocks, Visa, Sardine and Elliptic. No licence numbers appear on the pages I read. KAST states that availability is “subject to regulatory approval”; no regulatory action was found in search results.

The user reviews paint a particular picture. Trustpilot scores range from about 2.5 on regional pages to 2.7 on the main page, from roughly 170 reviews at the time of writing. The recurring themes in negative reviews are frozen or restricted accounts with deposits placed on hold soon after they are made, repeated 0.50 USD declined-transaction fees pushing a balance into the negative (a cluster of complaints in April 2026), failed ATM dispensing where the cash never appears but the balance is debited, repeated document requests on what the user describes as self-transfers, and slow support. KAST has replied to most of the negative reviews, attributing account restrictions to the platform’s security and compliance systems. Positive reviews praise the low fees and the ability to spend stablecoins directly.

On security, KAST positions itself as a stablecoin money app with custody by licensed partners. Users can set lower spending limits inside the app. Two-factor authentication, card freeze and insurance are not described on the pages I could read; Visa Infinite benefits (which include travel and purchase protection) are only available at the Premium and Private tiers and require registration on the Visa Benefits portal. Support runs through a KAST Concierge help center, with 24/7 availability at every tier and a VIP Concierge at Private. The membership page is available only in English, with no Russian language option offered.

Two further points belong here. First, the Terms of Service place the company outside any single national regulator’s consumer-protection regime, with disputes resolved by SIAC arbitration in Singapore. That limits the avenues for complaint if something goes wrong. Second, the fact that the card issuer is not named publicly means you cannot, before signing up, look up the issuing bank or e-money institution in its home regulator’s register. You have to take KAST’s word that the partner is appropriately licensed.

What to take instead

If the KAST picture does not feel right for your situation, three alternatives are worth a look. Each has its own trade-offs.

TokenPocket (TP Card) scores 5.8 out of 10. It is a Visa or Mastercard debit card (the brand depends on the region) that runs on Arbitrum. Sign-up is open for a defined list of European countries and territories — Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland are named — and a different list for Mastercard: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK among them, with the Americas “planned for Q2 2025”. The card is virtual only, balances are in EUR24 and USD24, and a 1% fee is charged on cryptocurrency deposits to the card, with the company saying this will be refunded later through rewards or reduced transaction fees. FX fees are not stated. No cashback programme is described. TP Card is a reasonable option if you already live inside the TokenPocket ecosystem and your country is on the published list, and if a 1% deposit fee that may be refunded later is acceptable.

MetaMask Card scores 7.1 out of 10. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories (Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay are among them); other regions join a waitlist. Proof of residency is required, and sign-ups in the US and UK are temporarily closed per the FAQ. The card is a Mastercard, virtual first and issued instantly, with a Metal version that can be pre-ordered in the app after the virtual card is approved; one card per user. The issuer is Monovate, the card provider is Crypto Life. The virtual card is free, with no annual or maintenance fee, and the Metal version costs 199 USD a year. MetaMask says there is “no additional MetaMask fees” and no foreign transaction fee; the exact per-transaction fee is not stated on the pages read. The card spends directly from a connected wallet, with networks including Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, and tokens including mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. Cashback is paid in mUSD: 1% on the Virtual card, 3% on Metal on the first 10,000 USD of spend, then 1%, plus a $FLY bonus via the Blackbird dining app. MetaMask is a strong alternative if you already self-custody in MetaMask and your country is on the list; the trade-off is that the fee table is not fully published.

Zeal scores 6.1 out of 10. The card is a Visa, virtual for online use and addable to Apple Pay. The underlying programme is Gnosis Pay, which is live in the EU, the UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, with Zeal-specific update notes mentioning Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia. Spend is accepted in 150-plus countries, with issuance depending on eligibility and regional availability. A physical card is not stated. Costs are not published on zeal.app or in the App Store. Zeal charges no additional FX fee, with conversion at the Visa wholesale rate, though Gnosis Pay fees (such as ATM) may still apply. Cashback is up to 4%, paid in GNO on Gnosis Chain, and you must hold GNO in the card Safe to qualify; the rate can change. The app also advertises up to 5% variable APY on EUR and USD balances. Zeal is worth considering if the Visa route matters and you want a card programme with named underlying partners, but the lack of a published fee schedule is a real gap.

Who I would recommend it to

KAST is worth serious consideration if you already hold stablecoins and want to spend them directly, if you live in a country that the app confirms as supported when you start KYC, if you are comfortable with a non-bank fintech structure, and if you keep balances modest enough that a possible account freeze is a nuisance rather than a disaster. The Standard tier is genuinely free to hold, the on-ramp from USDT or USDC is genuinely free, and the card works in Apple Pay and Google Pay at any merchant that takes Visa. For a freelancer or remote worker paid in stablecoins, or for someone whose banking access is restricted for reasons of geography, the convenience is real.

It is harder to recommend for anyone who needs the protections that come with a regulated bank or e-money institution, anyone whose country of residence might fall on the restricted list, anyone carrying balances they cannot afford to have locked up while a compliance review runs, or anyone who would be unable to use a Singapore-seated arbitration forum if a serious dispute arose. The dual non-publication of the supported country list and the card issuer’s identity means you have to make the decision under uncertainty, and the user reviews suggest that the uncertainty is not theoretical.

The clearest test is the size of the balance you are willing to leave on the card. If the answer is “a few hundred dollars for spending this month”, KAST is a reasonable tool. If the answer is “a meaningful share of my working capital”, you should probably look at a card with a named, regulated issuer, even if the headline fees are higher.

Frequently asked questions

What is the KAST card?

The KAST card is a Visa payment card issued through the KAST mobile app, tied to a USD balance that is funded by stablecoin deposits. The app converts USDT, USDC, PYUSD or RLUSD into the balance at a 1:1 rate with no spread, and the card then spends that balance wherever Visa is accepted. KAST offers a free Standard tier, a 1,000 USD-a-year Premium tier and a 10,000 USD-a-year Private tier, with cashback paid in USD and additional points at the higher tiers.

How does the KAST card work?

You create an account in the KAST app, pass identity verification (a government ID and a selfie at Level 2, proof of address at Level 3 for USD and EUR accounts), top up the balance with a supported stablecoin, and order a virtual or physical card. Each purchase debits the balance at the moment of authorisation. There is no credit line, so the card cannot overdraw. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported at no extra cost.

Is KAST a bank?

No. KAST describes itself as a financial technology company, not a bank. Cards, custody and on-ramp and off-ramp services are stated to be provided by licensed partners, but the card issuer and BIN sponsor are not named on the public pages. The Terms of Service name the entity as KAST Tech, registered in Anjouan in the Comoros.

Who owns KAST?

The Terms name KAST Tech (Reg No. 16223), incorporated in Anjouan in the Comoros, as the contracting entity. The app developer on the iOS App Store is listed as Troia Limited. Named partners in the terms include Tazapay and BitGo. The ownership of the parent group is not stated on the public pages I could read.

Is the KAST card available in my country?

KAST does not publish a list of supported countries. The list is shown only when you start the KYC process, and the company says that if your country is not listed, KAST is not available there. There is also a Restricted Locations list referenced in the terms, but no specific countries are named. Citizenship and ID matter separately from residence, so a person living in a supported country but holding an ID from a restricted region may still be ineligible.

How do I get a KAST card?

Download the KAST app, create an account with a phone number, email and country of residence, then complete Level 2 KYC by submitting a government-issued ID and a selfie. Once verified, you can order a virtual card immediately or a physical card, which takes 7 to 10 business days to deliver. The Standard tier has no annual fee but charges 40 USD for physical card delivery.

Does the KAST card require KYC?

Yes. Level 1 is account creation only. Level 2 requires a government-issued ID (passport, national ID card or driver’s licence) and a selfie or liveness check, and unlocks the ability to send and receive funds and to order a card. Level 3 adds proof of address and enhanced checks, and unlocks USD and EUR accounts and global payouts. US residents are asked for an SSN. Source-of-funds documents may be requested at any level.

Is the KAST card free?

The Standard tier has no annual membership fee, no fee for the card itself and no fee for spending in USD or topping up with stablecoins. The Standard physical card costs 40 USD for delivery. An extra virtual card costs 2 USD. There is a 0.50 USD fee on declined transactions for insufficient balance, a 1 USD monthly inactivity fee after 12 months idle, and FX fees of 0.5% to 1.75% on non-USD spending.

Where can I use the KAST card?

Anywhere Visa is taken, which KAST puts at more than 150 million merchants across 170-plus countries. The card works for online purchases, in-store tap or chip payments, ATM withdrawals on the Visa network, and through Apple Pay and Google Pay on a mobile device. The Terms prohibit a list of merchant categories including weapons, controlled substances, Ponzi or pyramid schemes, counterfeit goods, Darknet or Tor purchases, adult content and pseudo-pharmaceuticals.

Is the KAST card safe?

Safety here is a layered question. The card itself uses standard Visa security, and tokenised mobile wallets add device-specific numbers. The custody of the stablecoin balance is handled by partners KAST describes as licensed, including BitGo. The open questions are about the regulatory framework: no licence numbers appear on the public pages, the entity behind the terms is in Anjouan, and the user reviews on Trustpilot include recurring complaints about frozen accounts and repeated document requests, with KAST attributing the freezes to its compliance and security systems. The Terms cap KAST’s liability at 500 USD per dispute.

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