Comparison sites in this category have a credibility problem, and it is deserved. Tables are frequently ordered by commercial relationship rather than merit, figures are copied between sites until nobody knows the original source, and rates that changed eighteen months ago are still being quoted as current.
We are trying to do something narrower and more useful: publish figures we have actually checked, say clearly when we could not check something, and score cards on the costs that apply to everybody rather than the rewards that apply to almost nobody.
The six criteria
| Criterion | Weight | What we look at |
|---|---|---|
| Total cost of ownership | Highest | Subscription, conversion, FX including weekend schedules, ATM allowances, top-up and inactivity charges, modelled over a realistic year |
| Fee transparency | High | Whether costs are published in a comparable schedule, whether the conversion rate can be verified against a market price |
| Custody and safeguarding | High | Who holds funds, which entity issues the card, which regulator supervises it, what happens in an insolvency |
| Country coverage | Medium | Which markets can actually apply, including exclusions within regions, and whether coverage claims match the application flow |
| Rewards after conditions | Medium | Effective rate after lock-ups, caps, subscription cost and the volatility of the reward asset |
| App and interface quality | Medium | Whether fees are visible before you confirm, freeze speed, transaction detail, and whether exports are usable for a tax return |
Why transparency is a scoring criterion
This is the part of our method that most often produces a score people find surprising, so it is worth explaining properly.
A card's fee schedule is the only part of the proposition that applies to every transaction you will ever make. Rewards are conditional, capped and revisable — Bybit cut its standard EU rate to a flat 1% in August 2026, and Gnosis Pay's current cashback programme carries a stated end date. Fees are certain.
When a provider publishes those certain costs clearly, three things become possible: we can verify them, you can plan around them, and any change is visible. When they are distributed across regional documents or folded into an unpublished conversion rate, nobody outside the company can state the running cost with confidence — including the comparison sites that do it anyway.
So a provider that documents 0.9% over its own spot rate scores better on this criterion than one advertising 0% conversion with no published rate, even though the second number looks better. That reasoning is why our Wirex review scores below its feature list and our Bybit review scores above its cashback rate.
Sources
In order of preference: the provider's own fee schedule and terms and conditions for the relevant country; the card network's published rules and reference rates; the regulator's public register for the issuing entity; official tax authority guidance for tax questions; and primary legislation or the regulator's own announcements for regulatory questions.
We use secondary sources — news reports, industry analysis — for context and for events such as programme changes, and we attribute them as reported rather than confirmed. Where a claim rests only on secondary reporting, we say so in the text, which is why several pages contain phrases like "reported" rather than a flat statement.
What we will not do
We will not publish a specific fee figure we could not find in a provider's own materials, even when several other sites publish one confidently. If a figure matters to your decision and we could not verify it, the honest thing is to tell you that and point you at the terms — which is what we do.
How we test the interface
App quality is treated as a cost rather than an aesthetic. The specific questions we try to answer are practical.
Can you see the exact conversion rate and fee before confirming a transaction, or only after? Can you freeze the card in one action, and how fast does it take effect? Does a declined transaction show a reason or a generic error? Can you set or change the settlement asset without contacting support? And can you export a complete transaction history that shows both the crypto disposed of and the fiat received?
That last question has become the most important one. In markets with broker reporting and per-disposal capital gains treatment, a card whose export omits the crypto side leaves you reconstructing a year of transactions by hand. We have marked otherwise good products down for this, and we would rather say so than pretend it is a minor inconvenience.
What our scores are not
They are not investment advice, and they are not a statement that a product is safe. A card can score well on cost and disclosure and still be issued by a company that fails, or hold an asset that falls by half. Our scores compare products against each other on the criteria above; they do not underwrite the outcome.
They are also not permanent. Everything in this category — fees, coverage, rewards, custody arrangements, even which entity issues a card — changes without announcement. A score reflects a specific review date, which is printed on every page.
Independence
We do not sell placement. Providers cannot pay to appear, to be excluded, or to be reordered. External links on this site carry rel="nofollow", and where we link to a provider it is so you can verify a figure on their own site — which is genuinely what we would like you to do.
We also link to regulators, tax authorities and card networks throughout, for the same reason. A claim you can check is worth more than a claim you have to trust, and the whole method described here is an attempt to make as many claims as possible checkable.
What we cannot promise is that every figure is current at the moment you read it. Card terms change faster than any publishing schedule, which is why every review carries a review date and every table carries a note telling you to confirm at source.
Corrections
If a figure here does not match what a provider currently publishes, if a card's availability in your country differs from what we describe, or if your own bank's behaviour contradicts our issuer policy page, please tell us through the contact page. Reader reports about bank behaviour in particular are valuable, because issuers rarely publish these decisions and the only reliable evidence is what actually happens at checkout.
We correct errors openly rather than quietly. A comparison site that is never wrong is a comparison site that is not checking anything.