Crypto card marketing is built around a single number — cashback — and cashback is the only charge in this category that works in your favour. The other nine work the other way, and most of them are documented somewhere other than the page you were shown.
The nine charges
| Charge | When it applies | Typical scale | Matters? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuance | Once, for a physical card | Free to about €30 | Minor |
| Subscription | Monthly or annually, by tier | $0 to $29.99+ per month | Significant |
| Top-up | Funding the card | 0% by crypto or transfer, 1–3% by card | Moderate |
| Crypto-to-fiat conversion | Every crypto-funded purchase | 0% on stablecoins to about 1% over spot | Largest recurring cost |
| FX margin | Merchant currency differs from card currency | 0%–2.5% by region and weekday | Significant when travelling |
| ATM withdrawal | Above a monthly allowance | About 2%, minimum charge applies | Moderate |
| Inactivity | Dormant accounts | Monthly charge or closure | Minor, but avoidable |
| Replacement | Lost or stolen card | Similar to issuance | Minor |
| Spread inside the rate | Every conversion, invisibly | Unknown where undisclosed | Potentially the largest |
Conversion: the charge that matters most
Every crypto card that spends a crypto balance must sell crypto at the moment of authorisation. That sale is priced two ways: an explicit conversion fee, and the rate used to value your asset.
The explicit fee is the honest part. Bybit documents 0.9% above its own spot rate in the EEA, which is a figure you can verify against an independent market price. Gnosis Pay reports 0% conversion with on-chain gas applying instead. Several providers advertise 0% conversion on stablecoins.
The rate is where disclosure breaks down. When a provider says 0% conversion but does not publish the rate it uses, the margin has simply moved from a fee line to a price. There is no way to measure it from outside, which is why we rate transparency as a scoring criterion in our method rather than as a stylistic preference.
The setting that removes most of this
Set your card's settlement asset to a stablecoin. Conversion is usually 0% or the lowest tier, there is no price movement between authorisation and settlement, and the tax record for each disposal is trivial rather than a gain calculation. It takes thirty seconds and it is the highest-value change available in any crypto card app.
FX margins and the weekend problem
If the merchant's currency differs from your card currency, a margin is applied over the network's published rate. Rates vary more than people expect, and a few providers charge differently at weekends because card networks settle on business days and the provider carries the price risk in between.
Nexo publishes 0.2% on weekdays for EEA, UK and Swiss residents and 2% for other regions, rising to 0.7% and 2.5% respectively at weekends. Bybit documents 0.5% over the Mastercard rate in the EEA. Gnosis Pay charges 0% on euro transactions.
Read those numbers against how you actually travel. A weekend city break spending in a foreign currency is precisely the pattern that hits the highest rate on several cards. If most of your foreign spending happens Friday to Sunday, model the weekend figure, not the headline one.
One more travel cost has nothing to do with your provider: dynamic currency conversion. When a foreign terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline it. That rate is set by the merchant's acquirer and stacks on top of everything above.
Subscriptions and the break-even calculation
Subscription tiers convert a percentage into a spending threshold, and the threshold is easy to calculate but almost never presented.
Crypto.com's entry paid tier costs $4.99 a month and pays 1.5%. The next tier costs $29.99 a month and pays 2.5%. The extra $25 a month buys an extra one percentage point, so you need $2,500 of additional monthly spending just to cover the difference — meaning you need roughly $1,200 a month in total before the higher tier is ahead at all, and considerably more before it is meaningfully ahead.
Then apply the monthly reward cap. Rewards are capped at a published monthly value per tier, after which the rate drops sharply. A high spender can therefore pay for a tier, exceed its cap, and end up with a blended rate close to what the cheaper tier would have paid. Our cashback analysis works through those numbers card by card.
The mistake that costs the most
Choosing a tier for the reward rate and then discovering the FX schedule. We have seen people pay for a premium tier to get an extra percentage point of cashback, then spend a two-week holiday paying 2.5% weekend FX on every transaction.
Cashback applies to your spending. FX applies to your foreign spending, at a rate that is often larger. If you travel at all, the FX schedule is the more important number, and it is on a different page from the one you were shown.
ATM withdrawals, fully stacked
Five layers apply to a cash withdrawal abroad: the free monthly allowance, the provider fee above it, the ATM operator's surcharge, the crypto conversion, and the FX margin. Allowances vary widely — Bybit documents 100 EUR a month in the EEA before a 2% fee, while Nexo's top tier allows free withdrawals to €2,000 or £1,800 a month before a 2% charge with a minimum.
Stack those and a €100 withdrawal outside your allowance can cost several euros before conversion. Crypto cards are reasonable for occasional cash and poor as a primary cash tool. If you withdraw regularly, a conventional multi-currency account is cheaper.
A worked year
Take someone spending €1,500 a month domestically and €2,000 on two weeks of foreign travel, withdrawing €400 in cash across the year, on a card charging 0.9% conversion, 0.5% FX and 2% on ATM withdrawals above a 100 EUR monthly allowance.
Domestic conversion: €18,000 at 0.9% is €162. Foreign spending: €2,000 at 0.9% plus 0.5% is €28. ATM: assuming most withdrawals fall inside the allowance, a few euros. Total running cost roughly €195 before any subscription.
Now switch the settlement asset to a stablecoin with 0% conversion. The €162 largely disappears, and the annual cost falls to well under €50. That single change is worth more than the difference between any two cashback rates in this market — which is the central point of this entire page.
How to compare two cards in five minutes
Open both fee schedules — the real ones, for your country, not a summary — and find six numbers. The monthly cost. The conversion charge and whether the rate is published. The FX margin, including any weekend rate. The ATM allowance and the charge above it. The top-up cost for your funding method. And whether you can set the settlement asset.
If a provider does not publish one of those six, treat the gap as information. It is not usually an oversight; a company that has found a favourable number tends to display it. That is the reasoning behind our lower score for Wirex despite a strong feature list, and the higher score for Bybit despite a cashback rate that was cut.
Only once those six are settled should you look at rewards. Fees are certain, universal and applied every time. Rewards are conditional, capped and revisable — and in this market, revised downward more often than up.