Fiat24 card review: the programme has stopped, so what do you do with the money?

Fiat24 is a card that people who have trouble getting an ordinary bank card were interested in for a simple reason: it turned crypto into a spendable balance and attached a Mastercard to it, without a plastic card, without a PIN, and without asking the shop at the till whether your nationality was acceptable. That is exactly the appeal. And that is exactly what is gone. The site’s card page still carries the line “Coming soon in December 2024”, the whole site sits in “maintenance mode”, and new applications are not being accepted. The docs go further and say that clients registering from 5 June 2026 get a monthly limit of USD 30,000 — a sentence that contradicts a USD 100,000 monthly figure elsewhere on the same page, which is the kind of detail that tells you how carefully this documentation is being maintained now.

So this is not a “should I sign up” page. There is nothing to sign up for. What this page is for is the two groups of people who still care: existing holders with a balance they cannot get rid of, and everyone who was planning around this card and needs to pick something else. I score it 3.3 out of 10, but read that number as a verdict on a closed programme rather than on a card you could still get.

The conditions described here are current as of 21 October 2026.

The verdict: 3.3 out of 10, and the score is really about closure

The average of those five marks is where the 3.3 comes from, and the distribution is the story. Nobody scores a 2 or a 3 here on the quality of the product design; they score that low because the thing does not function for new customers. A 6 on everyday use is almost generous, and it rests entirely on documentation from a period when the card was supposed to be running — a virtual Mastercard, no PIN, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, most digital wallets supported. Even that picture is contested: cryptocards.so, which is not the operator, says Apple Pay and Google Pay do not work at all. When two sources disagree about the central feature of a card, and one of them has gone into maintenance mode, believe the second one.

Who does this suit, then? Two very small groups. First, someone who already has a Fiat24 balance and who needs to understand exactly how to empty it — that is a genuine service to them, and I cover it step by step below. Second, someone who wants to know what this card’s collapse teaches them about picking the next one, which is why I spend a section on alternatives rather than on features.

Who it does not suit: anyone starting out. Anyone who read about a crypto card with no country restrictions and a “coming soon” label and assumed the label was a date. Anyone who needs a card next week. And, plainly, anyone who would have been reading this page in June 2026 as a shopping guide — that reader has been redirected to the wrong article and should read the alternatives instead.

What actually happened to the programme

The timeline is short and unambiguous, and it is worth reading carefully because “coming soon” and “closed” are separated by less than a year of silence.

The card was announced with the status text “Coming soon in December 2024”. December 2024 came and went. The user documentation later described the card as live — activate it in the dApp card icon, usually ready in seconds — so for a while it did work for some people. The products page kept its original line. Meanwhile the Trustpilot page for the site carries reviews from 26 April 2024 through 13 May 2026, every one of them one star, on a scale showing 2.2 out of 5 from 8 reviews. Those are the reviews of people who had the thing and were not happy.

Then the site moved to “maintenance mode” and stopped accepting applications. No dates are given for either the start of maintenance or the end of it. The documentation that remains contains several signs of a programme being wound down rather than paused:

• New clients from 5 June 2026 receive a USD 30,000 monthly limit, which contradicts the USD 100,000 per 30 days stated elsewhere on the same page.
• A refund processing fee applies from 15 May 2026: 1 USD, 1 EUR or 1 CHF per refund, or 7 CNH.
• Forced-exit rules now exist for sanctions, PEP and fraud situations and for recalls.
• Requests to upgrade a card limit are not accepted.

The last two points are the ones to sit with. Forced-exit rules are what a programme writes when it expects to have to move money back out. A refund fee dated three months before the maintenance notice is a fee for processing money coming back to you, not a fee for spending.

There is one more piece of official detail that is easy to miss and matters if you hold a card: the card issuer is named as SR Saphirstein AG in Switzerland, with BIN 5481 0849. The operator site says SR Saphirstein operates under a Swiss fintech licence under Art. 1b of the Banking Act and is supervised by FINMA. That is a real regulated entity on paper. It does not tell you how fast a support request will be answered — and on the evidence of the reviews, it does not promise much.

What the card’s public pages do not say, and I want to be plain about this rather than fill the gaps: the card documentation page names no countries, no citizenship or residence rule, and nothing about Russian or Belarusian persons; it is silent on what documents are required, on proof of address, on age, and on the verification steps; it carries no fee schedule; it states no conversion or FX fee; it says nothing about restricted merchant categories, about rewards, or about ATM withdrawals. So if you have been trying to work out “is Fiat24 available in my country” from the card page, that page will not answer you. The one country-related statement that does exist is in the user documentation, and it is a restriction rather than an invitation: residence must be in an eligible country, with the list at info.fiat24.com/overview and not reproduced in the docs; nationals of Iran, North Korea and Russia are excluded, as are US Persons.

That last exclusion is worth pausing on for readers who are Russian citizens living abroad. The rule as documented excludes nationals of Russia. It is not a statement about where you live. A Russian citizen residing in an eligible country and holding no Russian passport-based nationality pathway is, on the documented wording, in the excluded group regardless of residence. I am not going to speculate about how this would be applied, because the honest answer is that the card’s own pages do not say, and the programme is closed. But you should not read “eligible country of residence” as a workaround for the citizenship exclusion. There is nothing to work around here anyway — there are no new accounts.

If you already have a card or a balance: a step-by-step exit

This is the only part of the review where being concrete is a kindness. If you have a Fiat24 balance, the documentation gives you a route out, and it runs through bringing balances to zero and closing the account. Note what the docs do not offer: no dispute or chargeback procedure is described at all, no physical card and no PIN were ever issued, and there is no email address or phone number on the site — support is a Telegram bot at t.me/fiat24bot marked “General inquiries”, plus a status page at status.fiat24.com and social channels on X, LinkedIn, Medium and Telegram. Support hours and languages are not stated.

First, what you are actually holding. Balances are held in EUR, USD, CHF and RMB. Each currency has a “Direct Pay” setting that spends the matching balance first to avoid FX fees. Your “Default Card Currency” covers any shortfall: the whole amount is converted, there are no split payments, and the amount of the FX fee is not stated anywhere on the card pages. Refunds in USD, EUR, CHF or RMB return to the same-currency balance; refunds in other currencies convert to your default currency.

Second, paying a balance out to your own bank. The process, per the docs:

• Make a small deposit from your bank account by IBAN first — that is what links the account. Up to 10 accounts can be linked per currency.
• The minimum payout is 100 EUR or 100 CHF.
• A successful payout is free. A returned payout costs 10 EUR or 10 CHF.
• Payouts are booked the same business day; after 15:00 CET or at weekends, the next business day.
• A minimum balance is needed to activate: 10 EUR in the Eurozone, 10 CHF in Switzerland, or 10 USD in the rest of the world.

Third, closing the account. Bring balances to zero, then go to id.fiat24.com, Profile, Close Account. It is final, and no second account is allowed afterwards. Your KYC data is kept as required by Swiss anti-money-laundering law.

Now the two things that will cost you money as you leave. The refund processing fee applies from 15 May 2026 — 1 USD, 1 EUR or 1 CHF per refund, 7 CNH, deducted from the refund and capped at the refund amount. Refunds to a card payment usually arrive within up to 7 days, and cross-border within up to 30 days. And there is the wallet structure: your Fiat24 account is an NFT in your own wallet, signed in through wallet connect. If the private key is stolen, the docs’ own advice is to move funds quickly. When you close the account you should think about what happens to the asset itself, not just the balance.

What nobody tells you, and what holders have complained about: pre-authorisations that were held and not released, and funds not released at all. The Trustpilot reviews describe unresponsive support across email, Telegram and Discord, bot loops, a SEPA transfer weeks late with about a 50 EUR fee after re-routing, and scammers posing as support in community channels. The unofficially reported figure of a EUR 50 fee on a SEPA transfer routed as TARGET2 matches what the reviewers say. One aggregator site reports users describing funds frozen and emails unanswered for 90 days or more, and a January 2025 ban on third-party bank deposits for standard users — that last item is a single unofficial report, not a documented change, but it fits the pattern of a programme narrowing what it does for most users.

Card limits, because you may need them to plan the last few payments. They are tied to the digit length of your NFT account number, which is an odd design but a real one:

A tier rises when the NFT is upgraded. Premium NFTs are bought in the dApp, priced on the pricing page, payable in Ether or Fiat24 native token, and the upgrade is done within 1 business day. Given that limit-upgrade requests are not being accepted and the site is in maintenance mode, I would not plan on any upgrade.

Two more exit details worth knowing. Unofficially, ATM withdrawals are listed as unlimited — and unofficially daily spend is reported as 9,800 (one page says 9,800 EUR, another 9,800 dollars) with unlimited monthly spend, which contradicts the official Standard tier of 10,000 EUR daily and 20,000 EUR monthly. Trust the official table. Finally, your card’s security setup: 3-D Secure with a one-time password by email, automatic blocking on unusual activity, and a lock or unlock you control in the dApp — where each action you take locks changes for 24 hours.

What can go wrong, and what already has

Let me split this into what happened to other people and what is a structural risk for anyone who reads about cards like this.

What has already happened, in the public record:

• The card was announced as “Coming soon in December 2024” and the products page still says so.
• The site is in maintenance mode with no new applications and no dates.
• Trustpilot: 2.2 out of 5 from 8 reviews, all one-star, between 26 April 2024 and 13 May 2026, on unresponsive support, held pre-authorisations, unreleased funds, a late SEPA transfer with a fee, and fake support accounts in community channels.
• Users have reported, unofficially through an aggregator with no linked reviews: invasive ID checks, fees on crypto top-ups, frozen funds with unanswered emails beyond 90 days, and a January 2025 restriction on third-party bank deposits for standard users.
• There is no dispute or chargeback procedure described — meaning if money is held or a payment goes wrong, the documentation gives you no route.
• There is no email or phone on the site. Support is a bot and social channels, which is also exactly the setup that lets scammers impersonate you in a Telegram group.

The structural risks, which apply to any crypto card and are worth understanding before you pick the next one:

• Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards themselves. They license issuers, and they can suspend a programme. In November 2022 Visa said it had terminated its global agreements with FTX, and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. That is the clearest precedent for what a card shutdown looks like, and it is why “which BIN is this” matters: a card in maintenance mode is a programme whose network relationship can lapse.
• A crypto card usually depends on two licences, not one. The card is a payment service under e-money or payments law; the crypto side falls under MiCA in the EU, which took legal effect in June 2023, with rules on asset-referenced and e-money tokens from 30 June 2024 and the remaining service-provider provisions from 30 December 2024. Under MiCA, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. EMIs must safeguard customer funds, but those are not bank deposits and may not sit under a deposit guarantee scheme. Deposit insurance for Fiat24 is not stated on its pages.
• Most of these cards behave like prepaid cards. A prepaid card draws on a stored balance; a debit card asks your bank to withdraw from a linked account at the moment of purchase. In the pre-loaded model the card cannot overdraw — which is convenient — but it also means your “account” is a balance held by someone else, and closing it means withdrawing.
• Being able to move your own crypto is a double-edged fact. Transfers are typically irreversible and a stolen private key has no recovery path. On the self-custody side, control belongs to whoever holds the key, and a seed phrase of 12 to 24 words in the wrong hands restores the wallet and spends the funds. Custodial platforms have a documented failure history — Mt. Gox at about US$350 million, Coincheck at about US$400 million, Ronin Network at US$625 million — so holding funds with a custodian carries counterparty and hack risk, while self-custody puts the risk on you.
• Merchants can look up the BIN to see which institution and country issued the card, and may apply extra scrutiny if the issuer country differs from your billing address. A foreign-issued card can look foreign to a shop. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs for exactly that reason. Address Verification is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines.
• A declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for up to 7 days. This is the single most common practical complaint about these cards, and it is the thing the Fiat24 reviews describe.
• Charges back only exist in a designed framework. A chargeback is a refund ordered by the issuer with a reason code such as fraud or goods not received; in the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, and prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. If the issuer’s docs never describe the process, you have no framework.
• Watch the network you send on. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. Gas is paid by you on the chain, not by the card provider. Stablecoins are not censorship-proof: Tether says it disables tokens on OFAC-listed wallets and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity. USDC is 1:1 redeemable for USD and cash-backed per Circle, but stablecoins depeg — TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC briefly lost its peg in March 2023.

And then the tax point, once, without advice: in the US the IRS treats digital assets as property, so converting them for goods or services generally produces a taxable gain or loss measured in local fiat at the value on the transaction date. Each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. Whether that applies to you, and how, is a question for a professional in your own jurisdiction, not for a card review.

What to take instead

Four alternatives came through the same evaluation and score considerably higher. I am not recommending any of them blindly — each has its own country rules that can exclude you outright — but each is a functioning programme rather than a closed one. Here is the honest comparison, including the parts that are not flattering.

RedotPay — 6.9 out of 10. Virtual and physical cards, Visa in the Singapore terms. Two official lists word the eligibility rule differently, and you should read both: the KYC list says citizens of listed countries cannot complete verification or use the service, while the card-issuance list, dated August 28, 2026, says residents of 47 listed places are ineligible for both virtual and physical cards and cannot be billing addresses, with citizenship not mentioned. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia are on both lists; India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Singapore and Turkey are on the card-issuance list; Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the UAE are on neither. Cost: virtual card application 10.00 USD, physical 100.00 USD non-refundable, virtual replacement 5.00 USD first and 10.00 USD after; no monthly or annual maintenance fee; Pro tier 12.90 USD monthly or 129.00 USD annual. Fees: 1.00% transaction fee, 1.20% for non-default currency, small amounts of 1 USD or less cost 0.2 USD after the first 5 per month, declines 0.5 USD after the first 3, and some merchants add 1.5% with a 0.50 USD minimum. Funding: on-chain deposits, or buying ETH, USDC or USDT with a credit card in the app; USDT-TRC20 minimum 1 USDT after network fees; deposit to card balance is free. Reward: a 5 USD welcome credit usable only on spending, valid 30 days.

Bybit Card — 6.0 out of 10. Virtual and physical, in phases, across Argentina, AIFC (Kazakhstan), Georgia, Kazakhstan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Asia Pacific; the application asks your country of residence and will register your interest if unsupported. It explicitly says it is not for European Economic Area customers and that EEA participation is prohibited. Networks and products vary by region: Mastercard prepaid in Argentina, Mastercard credit in AIFC, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Australia and Mexico, Visa prepaid in Brazil and Peru, Visa credit in Asia Pacific. Costs: virtual issuance free in all regions until further notice; physical issuance or replacement 29.99 USD in Australia, 5 USD or USDT in Argentina, 29.99 USDT in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Asia Pacific, none in Brazil and Mexico, and waived for VIPs holding certain physical cards; auto interest, no annual fees. Fees: 0.9% crypto conversion over the One-Click Sell rate in most regions, 0.5% in Argentina; FX fees of 2% in the Australia/Asia Pacific/Georgia/Mexico group, 2% international fee in Kazakhstan outside the country, 7% in Argentina, 1.5% in Brazil, 1% in Peru. The card has no balance of its own — it draws on the Funding Account, fiat first, selling crypto only if fiat is short. Rewards from October 2026 apply only to crypto-funded spending: tiers from Base at 2.00% with a 5 USD monthly cap up to Infinite at 10% with 600 USD, with cashback in USDT, plus a 10% welcome cashback up to 110 USDT in the first 30 days.

MetaMask — 7.1 out of 10, the highest of the group. A Mastercard, virtual first and instant, with a Metal version you can pre-order after approval; one card per user; issuer Monovate, card provider Crypto Life. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories with proof of residency, and other regions join a waitlist; the citizenship rule is not stated, and US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ. Virtual is free with no annual or maintenance fee; Metal is $199/year. Fees are described as minimal per transaction with no additional MetaMask fees, the amount is not stated on the pages, and there is no foreign transaction fee — the Mastercard rate is used. It spends directly from the connected wallet across Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with tokens including mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual, and 3% on Metal limited to the first $10,000 spent and 1% after that.

How do you choose between these? Three questions, in order. First, does your country and citizenship appear anywhere on that provider’s lists — read both lists where they exist, because RedotPay’s two lists differ. Second, do you want a stored balance you control the exit from, or do you want your card to draw on an exchange account you already hold; Bybit is the second shape, MetaMask the third, RedotPay and Fiat24 the first. Third, what does leaving look like — and this is the question Fiat24 failed and the reason it is on this page at all: check for a documented payout route, a minimum, a closure procedure, and what happens to the key or asset that holds your balance before you commit funds.

Who I would recommend it to, and who I would not

I would recommend Fiat24 to exactly one person: a holder with a balance to extract, who has read the payout and closure steps above, who will link their own bank account by IBAN, who will pull 100 EUR or 100 CHF at a time if that is all the balance allows, and who will not send a message into a Telegram group asking for help because the reviews say that is how people get scammed. For that person the advice is unglamorous: get to zero, close the account, and do it while the payout rails still work, because the docs already promise forced exits and a maintenance-mode site is not a promise of anything.

I would not recommend it as a card to anyone. Not because crypto cards are a bad idea, but because this one has told you, in writing, that it is not functioning, and it has not told you when it will function again. There is no waiting list with a date, no reopening promise, no new applications. A card you cannot get today, with no stated future date, is not a card you can plan a trip on.

I would also gently push back on the framing I have seen around this product. The idea that a crypto card is outside national banking systems — unblocked, unrestricted, yours — is the sales pitch, and the documented reality is the opposite: nationals of Iran, North Korea and Russia are excluded, US Persons are excluded, residence must be in an eligible country, and an EU e-money token can only be issued by a credit institution or an EMI. What you are buying is a licensed issuer’s card with a crypto front end. The licence is real; the marketing around it often outruns the terms. Read the terms.

For readers in Russia and elsewhere in the CIS: the citizenship exclusion for Russian nationals was documented, and it did not depend on where you lived. Living in another CIS country, or in the EU, the UAE, or anywhere else, does not convert a Russian passport into an eligible one under that wording. For Russian citizens who hold another citizenship or permanent residence elsewhere, the honest position is that this card’s pages do not explain how nationality-based screening interacts with residence, and the programme is closed, so there is nothing to test it against. Anyone currently shopping for a crypto card in that position should treat an explicit citizenship list as a screening criterion — providers publish them, they differ from residence rules, and the ones on RedotPay’s lists include Russia on both the KYC and card-issuance lists. Rules here are set by the issuer’s licences and by sanctions screening, and those apply wherever you live; I am not in a position to advise how to work around any of them, and you should be sceptical of anyone who offers to.

Frequently asked questions

What was Fiat24 and what happened to it?

Fiat24 was a Swiss-based crypto card service: your account was an NFT in your own wallet, you loaded EUR, USD, CHF or RMB balances, and a virtual Mastercard with no PIN spent them. The card was announced as “Coming soon in December 2024”, later worked for some users, and now the site is in “maintenance mode” and accepts no new applications. Docs add forced-exit rules and a refund fee from 15 May 2026. Existing holders should bring balances to zero and close the account.

Is Fiat24 a bank, and who actually issues the card?

Neither exactly. The operator site says SR Saphirstein operates under a Swiss fintech licence under Art. 1b of the Banking Act and is supervised by FINMA, while the card issuer is named as SR Saphirstein AG in Switzerland with BIN 5481 0849. Deposit insurance is not stated on the pages. An electronic money institution is not a bank: it can safeguard customer funds in segregated accounts or by insurance, but those funds are not bank deposits and may not be covered by a guarantee scheme.

Who can get a Fiat24 card now?

Nobody new. The site is in maintenance mode and no new applications are being accepted, with no date given. The one documented eligibility statement is a restriction: residence in an eligible country from a list at info.fiat24.com/overview, with nationals of Iran, North Korea and Russia excluded, and US Persons excluded. The card documentation page itself names no countries and no citizenship rule at all.

Does the Fiat24 card require KYC, and how long does it take?

The documented process is a single KYC with a biometric ID or passport, age over 18, a GPS location capture, a TIN collected, one account per person, and screening against US Person status, PEP status and OFAC/EU sanctions. An account could open in under one business day during CET hours. Some emerging countries were limited to CHF 1,000 per 30 days. For new applications this is now academic, since none are being taken.

How do I withdraw my remaining money from Fiat24?

Link your own bank account by making a small IBAN deposit from it first — up to 10 accounts per currency — then request a payout to your bank in EUR or CHF. The minimum is 100 EUR or 100 CHF; a successful payout is free, a returned one costs 10 EUR or 10 CHF; payouts are booked the same business day, or the next after 15:00 CET and at weekends. Activation needs a minimum balance of 10 EUR, 10 CHF or 10 USD depending on your region.

Can I use a Fiat24 virtual card in Apple Pay?

Unofficially, no — cryptocards.so says Apple Pay and Google Pay are not supported, which contradicts the official documentation. The official user docs list Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay among the supported digital wallets. If you hold a card, test it yourself in your own wallet rather than trusting either description, and remember that locking and unlocking the card in the dApp each locks changes for 24 hours.

Are Fiat24’s fees really low?

Nobody can tell you from the official pages, which carry no fee schedule at all — not the monthly fee, not the FX fee, not the top-up fee. Unofficially, issuance, the month, ATMs, FX, top-up and declines are listed as free, while crypto deposits cost 1–1.75% plus network gas. The fees that are officially documented are on the way out: a refund processing fee of 1 USD, 1 EUR or 1 CHF (7 CNH) per refund from 15 May 2026, and 10 EUR or 10 CHF for a returned payout.

Is it safe to leave money on a crypto card in maintenance mode?

The structural risk is that the network relationship can lapse, not just the website. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022 and the US card was wound down by its issuer, and a suspended issuer closes programmes. Since Fiat24 names no reopening date, the practical answer is to withdraw what you need rather than treat the balance as parked funds. Keep in mind the 3-D Secure setup is by email one-time password, so a compromised email is a compromised card.

How do I delete or close my Fiat24 account?

Bring all balances to zero, then go to id.fiat24.com, sign in, open Profile and choose Close Account. Closure is final and no second account is permitted afterwards. Your KYC data is retained as required by Swiss anti-money-laundering law, so closing the account is not the same as asking for your data to be deleted.

Which card should I use instead of Fiat24?

Within the same evaluation, MetaMask scores 7.1 out of 10, RedotPay 6.9 and Bybit Card 6.0 — all functioning, all with published country lists you must check against your own citizenship and residence before anything else. RedotPay charges 10.00 USD for a virtual card and 1.00% per transaction; Bybit’s virtual card is currently free with a 0.9% conversion fee; MetaMask’s virtual card is free with minimal per-transaction fees and no FX fee. Each of them, like Fiat24, will eventually need withdrawing from, so check the exit terms first.

Written by the editors at Crypto Card Rating.