LinkPay Card Review: What This Card Is Actually For

LinkPay is a virtual crypto card aimed less at people who want to buy groceries and more at people who need a large number of separate virtual cards to pay for advertising and similar online services. That single fact explains most of what you will find here — the tiered card limits per month, the tiered verification limits, the absence of a physical card, the cashback that only appears on the two most expensive plans, and the wallet apps you add card details to rather than tap. It also explains why the price table looks the way it does, and why several of the fees are stated differently in two places on the company’s own site.

I scored the card 5.0 out of 10. That is not a rounding of a better number; it is the sum of six criteria that pull in opposite directions. Access is unusually broad, top-up options are decent, and the card is genuinely cheap to hold on the higher tiers. Everything about actually spending money day to day, and everything about what happens when something goes wrong, pulls the score back down.

Conditions described below are current as of 21 October 2026.

Verdict: 5.0 out of 10, and the score breaks down honestly

The score table below is the whole review in miniature. I have not smoothed it. Where a mark is low, the reason is a fact I could point at on the company’s pages or in user reports, not a general impression.

So who does this suit? Someone running ad accounts, needing several virtual cards at once, already holding crypto they do not mind leaving on the platform, and willing to accept that the support answers in English and that a freeze may mean waiting. The card is built for that person.

Who does it not suit? Almost everyone else. If you want a card in your pocket, if you want to pay a subscription from your phone, if you want to be able to draw cash, or if the idea of leaving your balance with a provider whose issuing bank is not even named on its site makes you uncomfortable, this is not the card. An alternative further down fits most of those cases better.

Will They Give You the Card?

Officially, no in a specific list of 27 countries, and that list includes the Russian Federation and Belarus along with Hong Kong, the United States, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. The company’s own page says the list is not exhaustive, and the terms bar both residents and citizens of the listed countries. The terms go further on the US: US citizens, permanent residents and US entities cannot open accounts.

That is the single most important thing to understand about this card, so let me be direct about who it is closed to. If you live in Russia, you are not eligible. If you live in Belarus, you are not eligible. Opening an account while resident there would mean giving false information to a regulated provider, and the terms bar it. I cannot help with that, and you should not spend time looking for a workaround.

If you are a Russian-speaking reader in another CIS country — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia, Uzbekistan and the rest — the official list does not name your country, but the list says it is not exhaustive, and the terms bar citizens of listed countries as well as residents. So Russian citizenship is itself the problem, not just where you live. That is a legal and compliance situation where the honest move is to ask a qualified adviser in your own jurisdiction what applies to you, and not to guess on the strength of a card review. Practically, expect the identity check to be the point of failure: the card asks for a valid ID photo and a live check at full verification, and the provider is entitled to refuse.

If you are a Russian citizen living outside Russia and outside the listed countries, residence is not automatically disqualifying, but citizenship still matters to the provider’s screening. Do not assume eligibility from the map; ask the provider directly before you move any money.

Unofficial sources — a third-party card comparison site, not LinkPay — put the picture at 168 countries available and 28 restricted, with Russia marked as restricted. Take those numbers as indicative, since the company has not confirmed them. The home page links to a “Certain Countries” page for the authoritative list, and I have relied on the company’s own statement and terms rather than the third-party count.

One more thing worth knowing before you start: what verification level you reach determines what you can actually do, and that is covered in the next section. There is also a less obvious trap here. Because the terms bar citizens of listed countries rather than only residents, a Russian citizen with a clean foreign address is in a materially different position from an American citizen with a Russian address. Citizenship and residence are screened separately, and both are asked about.

How to Get It

The signup starts in the app and runs through verification. There is no physical card to wait for — the site offers virtual cards only, described as a “virtual card for all purchases” — and the FAQ says cards run on the Visa or Mastercard networks. Nothing on the pages I read names a single currency for the card; the FAQ says USD cards were “planned to release soon”, so check what currency your card comes in before you commit funds to it.

Verification comes in three levels, and this is the part that most affects whether the card is usable:

Verification is generally completed within 24 hours, but it can take longer. Rejected documents can go to manual review, and the only rejection reason the site gives is that documents must be valid with clear photos. That is worth pausing on: the published reasons for refusing you are thinner than the published reasons for accepting you.

If you need to move more than $2,000 a month, or you need Apple Pay or Google Pay, the Unlimited level is where you have to go, and that means handing over a live video check. If you are someone for whom a live check of that kind is difficult, complicated or inadvisable — because of where you are, who you are, or what you can safely be seen doing — then this card is not going to work for you, whatever the country list says. That is not a LinkPay problem specifically; it is what a $2,000-monthly ceiling buys.

Note the shape of the tiers: the free level is limited to advertising cards only. The free tier is not a general-purpose card, it is a single-purpose one. That is a deliberate design, and it tells you the product’s centre of gravity.

What It Really Costs: Fees and Limits

Here is the honest position: the card’s own pricing page and its Terms of Service disagree on several numbers, and in some cases they disagree about whether a fee exists at all. I have laid out both where they conflict rather than picking the friendlier one.

Plans, as listed on the home page:

Now the Terms of Service version of the same table, which is the document that would actually bind you:

The transaction fees agree between the two documents. The decline, deposit and withdrawal fees do not. Ultra is $209 on the pricing page and $299 in the terms, with 79 free cards versus 100. The cashback is another point of contradiction: the pricing page shows 2% on Ultra, the headline says 2% cashback for all payments, and the terms give Pro 1% and Ultra 3% with a per-billing-cycle cap of $179 and $299 respectively. Cashback can be accumulated but not withdrawn to a bank.

What this means for you in practice is that a price quoted from a screenshot can be wrong, and that the terms document is the safer thing to read. If you are spending real money on Pro or Ultra, download the terms before you pay.

Other costs and limits, taken as stated:

• The per-card issue price on Lite is not stated, so the true cost of issuing cards on the free plan cannot be calculated from public pages.
• No FX fee is stated anywhere, and the card currency itself is not confirmed. For a card that converts crypto to a fiat balance, an unstated conversion cost is a real gap.
• No ATM is offered, and virtual cards cannot be used at one. An unofficial third-party source confirms no ATM access and no physical cards.
• No explicit daily or monthly spend limits are published; the monthly ceilings come from the verification levels instead — $500, $2,000, unlimited.
• Team member counts by plan are 3, 5, 20 and 50, and merchant accounts 1, 1, 2 and 3. Users with more than 100 cards can request custom limits through support.
• Freeze and unfreeze are available only on subscription or custom plans, not on Lite.

Three everyday payments, to make the percentages real. I am using the pricing page figures, which are the higher ones for decline and withdrawal fees.

• A supermarket shop on Lite: the 2% fee is subject to the $2 minimum, making it flat for small purchases. You pay more than the purchase price.
• A streaming subscription on Lite: again below the $2 minimum, so the fee is $2. That is a significant percentage surcharge on the purchase, every month.
• A card activation top-up on Lite: the dashboard asks for this before issuance, and the minimum is around $15. The deposit fee is 1%.

The minimum fee is what makes Lite punishing for small purchases. On Pro or Ultra the 1% with no minimum is much cheaper than the fee you pay on Lite for a small purchase, and Lite charges nothing at all unless you also want card issuance or higher limits. If your spending is small and irregular, Lite is fine. If you spend money every week, the $59 Plus plan is already cheaper than a year of Lite’s $2 minimums.

How to Top It Up

Top-up is crypto only. The site says deposit options for 7+ digital currencies but does not name the coins or the networks on the pricing page; unofficial third-party sources name BTC and USDT and mention the TRC20 and BTC networks. Fiat deposits and on-ramp are described as “planned”, which is not the same as available today. One unofficial source adds that there is no bank transfer.

The mechanics have a trap worth knowing before you send anything. The dashboard shows an activation minimum before the card is issued, usually around $15, and if your deposit is below that minimum the issuance simply fails. The card is not issued and the money is sitting in the wallet. Confirmation times are stated as 20 confirmations for TRC20 and from 4 for BTC — so on the slower network, budget for the wait before assuming something has gone wrong.

The deposit fee is 1% on Lite, 0.75% on Plus, and free on Pro and Ultra per the pricing page. The terms say 0.5% on Pro. Who pays the blockchain’s own network fee for your deposit is not stated anywhere I read, and on some networks that is a real sum. Add it to the mental total.

Getting money back out is where the two documents part company most sharply. The terms say you request withdrawals from the Wallet, that they are processed “during 10 working days”, and that the withdrawal fee is free on all plans. The pricing page says 3%, 3%, 2% and 1% depending on plan. On a Pro plan withdrawing funds, the fee is either $0 or a percentage depending on which page you read. Assume the fee exists until told otherwise.

Three further withdrawal facts. You cannot withdraw from the platform directly to a LinkPay card. There is an internal peer-to-peer transfer by recipient email. And if you close the account, remaining funds are sent to specified payment details minus fees.

The chain of custody here is the thing to sit with. This is a custodial setup: your balance sits in the provider’s Wallet, and the Terms say the Administrator may suspend all wallets without notice where it suspects something, and that funds may be frozen during an investigation. Blockchain transfers are also one-way in the sense that mattering: a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. Copy the deposit address character by character, confirm the network matches the coin, and do not treat a support agent’s promise to recover a mis-sent transfer as a plan.

Paying With It Every Day

Thin. That is the section, honestly. There is no physical card, so there is nothing to hand over at a counter. Apple Pay and Google Pay are described as being in “final integration” and “will be available soon”, and they are not available at Basic verification even once that has happened. An unofficial source flags a contradiction of its own: an eWallet page suggests selected virtual cards can be added, while the FAQ says “coming soon”. When two pages of the same site disagree on whether the most-used feature exists yet, plan for it not existing.

There is no ATM. There is no named card currency; the FAQ says USD cards were planned to release soon. Add to that the unstated FX fee, and the arithmetic of spending abroad with this card is genuinely unclear from public information.

What you do get is cashback, and it is plan-gated: Lite 0%, Plus 0%, Pro 1%, Ultra 2% on the pricing page. The headline promises “2% cashback for all payments”, which contradicts both tables, and the payout currency is not stated. The cashback also cannot be withdrawn to a bank.

On the apps: there is an iOS app, a Google Play app, and a direct APK download. No ratings are shown on the site’s own download page. Support is a Telegram bot, an email address and live chat on the website, in English. Working hours are not stated.

There is one practical silver lining for online spending, and it is worth taking seriously: because a virtual card number is bound to your account rather than printed, you can create and discard cards. If you pay one subscription with a card number and then cancel it, you have reduced the blast radius if that merchant is compromised or if the number leaks. That is a genuine everyday advantage over a single long-lived card, and it is one of the reasons this kind of product exists at all.

Blocked merchant categories are not mentioned anywhere on the pages I read. That cuts both ways: you do not know what is blocked, and the usual suspects in this category — gambling, which carries merchant category code 7995, and adult content — are exactly what people most often want blocked. Ask before you rely on it.

What Can Go Wrong

This is where the score collapses, so let me give you the failures in order of how likely they are to affect you.

The issuer is not named. The company is LinkPay, registered in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, with an MSB registration number M23039048 — money services business registration, not a banking licence. The bank or institution that actually stands behind your card is not stated. That matters for two separate reasons: you cannot verify its reputation, and you cannot tell whose regulator to complain to if something goes wrong.

The balance is custodial, and the terms say so bluntly. The Administrator may suspend all wallets without notice on suspicion or violation, and funds may be frozen during an investigation. The account locks after three failed login attempts. The site displays GDPR, ISO and PCI DSS badges; whether insurance is offered is not stated. I take no view on whether those badges were earned, but I would note that a badge on a homepage is not a depositor protection scheme.

Then the user reports, which are the reason for the 3 out of 10. On Trustpilot the card sits at 2 out of 5 from roughly 39 to 40 reviews. One third-party summary puts Trustpilot at about 2.3 from 44 reviews and another review platform at about 4.7 from ten, noting that some of those reviews came via vendor invitation and describing support as slow and repetitive. The specific complaints: a card frozen shortly before a transaction and reportedly unfrozen only after buying a paid plan; withdrawals stuck at “processing” for four weeks or more; waits of months for a card to be issued. The company’s replies cite security protocols and insufficient verification.

I want to be fair about the small samples here. Forty reviews is not a statistically meaningful picture of a large user base, and a low rating on a review site can be dominated by a specific incident or a specific period. But the pattern matters more than the number: frozen cards, slow withdrawals and slow support are three different complaints that all point at the same underlying thing, which is that when something goes wrong at this provider, resolution is slow. That matches the two official timelines already quoted — withdrawals “during 10 working days” and complaints reviewed within 30 days — which are long by the standards of a payment service.

A competitor’s site, and treat this with caution because it is a competitor: it reports that LinkPay’s banking partner issued frozen cards and withdrawals during a move to a new banking partner, with waits of months. A partner migration is exactly the scenario where a card programme’s back end changes underneath you while your money is in it. If that happened, it is the most plausible explanation for a cluster of freeze complaints, and it is also the least likely to be resolved quickly.

The money side of a failure is worse than the card side. If a card is frozen you lose spending ability. If a wallet is suspended you lose the balance, and a crypto transfer out is irreversible in the other direction too: there is no built-in recovery, and the network cannot freeze or return funds once they have moved. Custodial platforms have a documented history of this — Mt. Gox at roughly $350 million reported stolen between 2011 and 2014, Coincheck at about $400 million in 2018, Ronin Network at $625 million in 2022 — and holding funds with any custodian carries counterparty and hack risk. That is not an accusation about LinkPay specifically. It is the shape of the risk you accept by leaving crypto on a platform’s balance.

Then the smaller operational irritations. Failed transactions with a pending authorisation return in 5 to 10 minutes, but merchant refunds usually take up to 4 weeks, holds by ad platforms 10 to 14 days, and unverified card top-ups are auto-cancelled with refunds in 2 to 14 business days — while top-ups on a verified card are non-refundable. You are responsible for chargebacks and disputed transactions, and there is no chargeback process described in the FAQ at all. A declined authorisation can also leave a hold on your funds for days.

That last group of numbers is the one to weigh against your own situation. Ad platforms holding funds for 10 to 14 days means your balance is tied up. Refunds taking four weeks means a disputed $30 is a month of your money. And top-ups being non-refundable once you are verified means a mis-sent transfer is gone — remember the activation minimum of around $15 and the confirmation requirements of 20 on TRC20.

One more risk that is not the provider’s fault but lands on you: address verification. AVS compares the numeric parts of the billing address you type with issuer records, and it is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines. On a card issued from a Canadian-registered provider with no named issuer, some merchants will look at the BIN, see a foreign prepaid-style card, and either decline it or apply extra scrutiny. This is a structural feature of prepaid and foreign BINs, not a bug you can complain about.

What to Take Instead

I looked at three alternatives with published pricing of their own. Here is how they compare on what I could actually verify, followed by where the comparison breaks down.

The comparison you most want is probably with Bitrefill, because it is the only alternative here with both a virtual and a physical card and a clearly stated cashback. Its 2% total cashback with no cap — 1% on each crypto deposit, 1% on each purchase — beats LinkPay’s plan-gated, contradictory cashback on every tier. It lists fiat and card funding alongside a wide crypto list, which answers LinkPay’s crypto-only limitation. Its costs are less transparent in one respect: the deposit spread on crypto-to-euro conversion is not quantified, an inactivity fee applies after 12 months without spending or cash-out, and the card currency appears to be euros by implication rather than by statement. Country eligibility is subject to criteria “established and verified by our partners”, and citizenship versus residence, and Russia and Belarus specifically, are not stated.

UPay offers virtual and physical cards for both personal and business use, claims support in 180+ countries, and its KYC partner accepts only ID documents issued by the same country as the user — which is a sharp constraint for a lot of readers, and a feature rather than a bug if your documents are in order. Card payments convert to USD, EUR, AED and others. Costs are not stated at all, which is why it cannot outrank Bitrefill on my list.

Kemy has the most interesting pricing of the three and the highest headline cost: $15 to issue a virtual card valid three years plus $2 a month, or $250 for a physical Mastercard with DHL Express included, valid three years, one per user, at $10 a month. On the physical card its transaction fee is not listed separately and its FX fee is not listed; the main-account deposit fee appears as 8% in one place and 5% in another. It claims 190+ countries with “a few restrictions apply” and no published list.

Now, the honest caveat that applies to this whole table. On LinkPay, Russia and Belarus are closed to both residents and citizens. On all three alternatives, citizenship versus residence and Russia and Belarus are simply not stated. That is not a recommendation — an unstated rule is not an open door, and you should ask. It does mean the same conversation with a different provider, and for someone whose situation makes that conversation delicate, an alternative that will at least tell you its answer is worth the ask.

Who I Would Recommend It To

I would recommend this card to someone running paid advertising who needs many virtual cards, holds crypto they are comfortable leaving on a platform, works in or reads English without difficulty, and has a plan for what to do when a card is declined. The free cards per month, the tiered verification limits, and the fact that card numbers can be created and discarded are all real, and they fit that job well.

I would not recommend it to someone whose spending is a weekly shop, a phone bill and a subscription. The $2 minimum fee on Lite makes small payments expensive, there is no cash, no phone wallet, and no confirmed card currency. If you want a card you can actually live with, look at the alternatives.

And I would be cautious with anyone planning to keep meaningful balances on it. The balance is custodial, the issuer is not named, the terms allow wallets to be suspended without notice, and the complaints describe slow releases rather than fast ones. If you use this card, use it as a payment instrument rather than as a place to store money — keep what you need to spend and no more.

Two things to check before you send anything anywhere: read the Terms of Service version of the fee table rather than the pricing page, and confirm with support in writing which currency your card will be issued in and what the FX charge is. Both are currently unstated or contradictory, and both are the kind of detail that turns a 5 into a 3 on a bad day.

Frequently asked questions

What is LinkPay?

LinkPay is a service that issues virtual payment cards on the Visa or Mastercard networks and lets you pay online from a crypto balance converted into a fiat balance. It is registered in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, with MSB registration M23039048. It is not a bank, and the bank or issuer behind the cards is not named on its public pages.

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

No, it is not a bank. It holds an MSB registration in Canada, which is a money-services registration rather than a banking licence. The issuing institution is not stated, which means you cannot check its reputation or work out which regulator to approach if a card fails. Treat the card as a payment instrument from an unlicensed-as-a-bank front end.

How does LinkPay card work?

You send crypto to the platform’s Wallet, the balance is credited, and cards you issue draw on that balance like a prepaid card. The dashboard shows an activation minimum, usually around $15, before a card is issued. Verification level decides how much you may spend: $500 a month unverified, $2,000 at Basic, unlimited at full verification.

Can I use LinkPay if I live in Russia or Belarus?

Not on the official terms, no. The company’s list of 27 closed countries includes both, and the terms bar residents and citizens of listed countries, so Russian citizenship alone is disqualifying. Opening an account by declaring false residency would be fraud against a regulated provider. If you are a Russian citizen living in a country not on the list, citizenship is still likely to be screened, so ask the provider directly rather than assuming.

Does LinkPay require KYC, and how long does it take?

Yes, at two of the three levels. Basic needs your full name, address and ID details; full verification needs a photo of a valid ID and a live check. The site says verification usually completes within 24 hours but can take longer, and rejected documents may go to manual review with only “valid documents with clear photos” given as the reason for refusal.

Is LinkPay card free?

The Lite plan is free, but it gives you zero free cards per month, a $500 monthly ceiling, advertising cards only, and no Apple Pay or Google Pay. Paid plans start at $59 a month for Plus with five free cards. On Lite the transaction fee is 2% with a $2 minimum, so small purchases are expensive.

How do I top up the card, and how long does it take?

Crypto only, 7+ currencies, with fiat and on-ramp described as planned. Third-party sources name BTC and USDT and the TRC20 and BTC networks. Confirmation is stated as 20 blocks on TRC20 and from 4 on BTC, so plan for the wait. If you send less than the activation minimum shown in your dashboard, usually around $15, the card simply is not issued.

How do I withdraw money, and what does it cost?

Withdrawals are requested from the Wallet and the terms say they are processed during 10 working days. The terms say the fee is free on all plans while the pricing page lists 3%, 3%, 2% and 1% by plan, so assume a fee until told otherwise. You cannot withdraw straight to a LinkPay card, and cashback cannot be withdrawn to a bank.

Is LinkPay safe, and what about the negative reviews?

The balance is custodial: the company holds it and its terms allow wallets to be suspended without notice on suspicion, with funds frozen during an investigation. Trustpilot shows about 2 out of 5 from roughly 40 reviews, with reports of frozen cards and withdrawals stuck for four weeks or more. The issuer is not named and the support is English-only, with working hours unstated.

Is LinkPay worth it?

It is worth it if you need many virtual cards for advertising and can leave crypto on the platform; the free-cards-per-month structure and disposable card numbers are genuinely useful there. It is not worth it for ordinary daily spending: no physical card, no ATM, no phone wallet yet, an unstated FX fee and no confirmed card currency. For the second use case, an alternative with a physical card and a clearer cashback is the better buy.

Created by the ”Crypto Card Rating” editorial team.