A cheap stablecoin card with an unnamed issuer behind it

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you hold stablecoins and you want to spend them like ordinary dollars without opening a bank account, KAST is one of the more interesting options on the market today. The fees are genuinely low — no annual charge on the Standard tier, no fee to load a stablecoin, no fee to spend in dollars — and it pays cashback. On the raw numbers it scores well. But the same review that hands it 9 out of 10 for top-up options hands it 3 out of 10 for reliability, and that gap is the whole story. What you are really deciding is whether saving a fraction of a percent per transaction is worth holding your balance with a company that does not name the bank issuing its card.

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

My score for the KAST card is 6.1 out of 10. That is not a dismissal; it is the sum of a card that is unusually good at the mechanical parts of being a card and unusually quiet about the parts that decide whether your money is still there next month.

Who this suits. Someone who already holds USDT or USDC across several chains, spends mostly in dollars, and has a genuine reason not to use a mainstream bank’s card — no fixed address, no local bank willing to open an account, a country the person cannot easily open a current account in, or simply a preference for paying directly from a stablecoin balance without converting through an exchange. If your money already sits on-chain, KAST removes the awkward middle step.

Who it does not suit. Anyone whose income arrives through a bank account, anyone who needs a card that a shop will never question, anyone holding a large balance they cannot afford to have frozen for weeks, and anyone who needs a named issuer and a licence number on the page. If you are choosing a card for your salary, KAST is the wrong shape of product. If you are choosing a card to spend crypto you already hold, the shape is right — the open questions are about the counterparty, not the use case.

One clarification before I go further: I am not telling you whether KAST is safe, and I cannot. Nobody who is not KAST can. What I can do is tell you exactly what is disclosed, what is not, and where the gaps sit.

Who will they give you the card

The short answer: if your country of residence is on KAST’s internal list and your identity document is not from a restricted region, you can probably get it — but you cannot find out in advance, because KAST does not publish that list.

KAST shows the list of supported countries during KYC, at the point where you are already applying. If your country is not on it, the screen simply tells you KAST is not available there. That is a sensible design for a company that has to change its footprint as partners and regulators move, and it is also genuinely inconvenient for you: you cannot read a page and find out whether you qualify before spending twenty minutes on an application that may end in a refusal.

There is a second list — restricted locations — which the terms reference without naming a single country on the pages I read. So one of the two lists that decide your eligibility is public in name only.

The part that surprises people most is that residence is not the whole test. Citizenship and identity document nationality matter independently:

• If you live in a supported country but hold an ID from a restricted region, you may still be ineligible to pass KYC, even though your address is fine.
• Dual citizens holding an ID from a supported country may pass.
• Only the account holder’s own ID is accepted. You cannot open it for someone else.
• A VPN does not help. KAST’s own wording is that it does not bypass this.
• You can create an account from a country that is not supported, but the account stays locked: it opens, it just never becomes usable.

That last point is worth sitting with. It means the failure mode is not “you get nothing,” it is “you get an account that looks real and does nothing.” If you are somewhere KAST does not operate, your realistic options are other services, not cleverer timing.

For context on why nationality is treated separately at all: KYC rules exist because regulated businesses must verify customers and assess risk under anti-money-laundering law, and in the EU customer due diligence specifically covers name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documentation, a sanctions check, and a politically-exposed-person check. Nationality is screened separately from residence because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are commonly applied to citizenship and country of birth, not just to your address. If you have ever wondered why a card that works in your country can still refuse your passport, that is the mechanism.

How to get it

You apply in the app, and the KYC process comes in three levels. Understanding which level you need saves a lot of confusion, because the first level alone will not get you a card.

Level 1 — account creation. Phone number and an OTP, a PIN, email, country of residence. This gives you app access and nothing else. No cards, no sending, no receiving. Plenty of people install the app, complete this step, and assume they are finished; they are not.

Level 2 — identity document. A valid government ID — passport, national ID card or driver’s licence — plus a selfie with liveness check. This unlocks sending and receiving funds and getting cards.

Level 3 — proof of address and enhanced checks. Citizenship is requested at this stage. This unlocks USD and EUR accounts and global payouts. KAST may also ask for source-of-funds documents at any point. US residents are asked for an SSN. The minimum age is the legal age in your country, 18 in most.

The order of operations is: create the account, pass KYC, then order a virtual or physical card.

What KAST does not publish: how long verification takes, and the official list of reasons for rejection. The two exceptions I can see are that expired documents are rejected, and an unsupported or restricted country is rejected. Everything else is a closed list.

Once you are through, you have a choice of cards:

• Virtual and physical, with up to 10 cards per user.
• Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium), Visa Infinite gold plated (Private).
• Other designs in the same range: Pengu, Solana, Bitcoin.
• Balances are held in USD. Stablecoin deposits are converted 1:1 with a 0% spread.

Physical card delivery is stated as 7–10 business days. The Standard tier pays 40 USD delivery on the physical card. The countries shipped to, and the cost of a replacement card, are not stated on the pages I read — worth asking support before you need a second one.

If you have been burned by a provider before, the level system is the thing to interrogate. Level 2 is where your money becomes movable. If a provider asks you to fund before the checks are done, that is a warning sign; KAST’s structure does not force you to, and you should not let anyone talk you into it.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is the honest version: on the everyday path — load stablecoins, spend in dollars — KAST costs essentially nothing, which is why the cost score is a 6 rather than a 2. The money is in the physical card, the non-dollar side of things, and the ATM.

Renewal and reactivation fees exist but the amounts are not stated.

Three everyday payments, with the fees that actually bite:

Coffee in your own country, in dollars. 0%. You loaded the balance at 0%, the merchant charged in dollars, and nothing is taken. This is the case KAST is built for and it is hard to argue with.

A subscription or shop that bills in euros. The FX fee applies, somewhere between 0.5% and 1.75% depending on where you live, where the transaction happens and which card programme you are on. Small purchases are also under a threshold charge: 0.10 USD on non-USD transactions under 25 USD. On a 20 USD subscription that is the 0.10 USD plus the percentage, which is noticeably worse than the headline suggests. The exact rate depends on your country, so treat the range as the range and not as a number to plan around.

Taking cash out. 3 USD plus 2% of the amount, plus the FX fee if you are not in dollars. This is the expensive one, and it is where people get surprised. A 100 USD withdrawal costs you 5 USD before any conversion. The stated limits also disagree with each other: the concierge page says up to 500 USD per withdrawal and either 3 withdrawals or 1,500 USD per 24 hours; the card marketing page says 250 USD per withdrawal including fees and 3 withdrawals per rolling 24 hours, which is 750 USD a day. The two official pages contradict each other, so assume the lower figure until you have checked in the app.

Two things about limits deserve a plain sentence. “Unlimited” is not the same as unflagged — large transactions may be pulled for compliance review. And the terms, read strictly, give the company the right to set limits and show them to you later, without publishing what they are. You can always set your own lower limits in the app, which is a sensible default.

One more charge to know about: a declined transaction caused by insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD. Under normal use that is nothing. Under a frozen or restricted account, where declined payments repeat, it becomes a mechanism that can push a balance negative — which is precisely what the complaints in the risks section describe.

Top up: how to get money onto it

You fund KAST with stablecoins, and the options are the strongest part of the whole offer. USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD are named, with USDT and USDC supported on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and TRON, and the app lists the current networks. Deposits are 0% with no stated upper limit, excluding the blockchain’s own network fee. No bank account is needed.

One discrepancy to be aware of: the stablecoins page names four tokens while the Terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”. The app is the more practical answer, but if you are holding PYUSD or RLUSD and planning a large deposit, confirm in the app first.

Bank deposits are also possible, at these stated rates: USD ACH 2 USD, FedWire 15 USD, SWIFT 30 USD, EUR SEPA 0.5%. The minimum top-up is not stated.

Getting money back off is where the free-loading story changes character:

The balance left on closure is not stated, which matters if you ever close the account.

Two things about moving value in and out that are worth more than any fee line. First, spending comes straight out of your own balance at each purchase — it is not credit, so the card cannot go into debt on a purchase, though the declined-transaction fee can still take you below zero. Second, blockchain transfers are irreversible: a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. So the free top-up is only free if you pick the right chain. Solana and Arbitrum are the cheap exits; Ethereum is the expensive one at 6 USD plus 0.1%, and there is no way to know from the pricing table alone that you picked wrong until the money has gone.

Paying with it every day

This is where KAST scores highest, and the reason is simple: it behaves like an ordinary card in almost every respect that matters at the till.

Apple Pay and Google Pay both work with the virtual and physical cards at 0% fee. Samsung Pay is not stated. The card works wherever Visa is accepted — the service claims 150M+ merchants across 170+ countries, which is a claim from KAST rather than something I could independently verify, but it follows from the network rather than from the brand. Cash is available at Visa ATMs, at the price discussed above.

Two useful everyday mechanics. You can freeze the card from the app, and you can set your own spending limits lower than the platform default. Neither two-factor authentication nor insurance is stated on the pages I read, which is a real gap given the section on risks below.

The rewards are worth understanding because they are tiered and capped:

• Standard pays 1.5% cashback in USD on the first 2,000 USD of monthly spend.
• Premium pays 2% on the first 10,000 USD a month.
• Private pays 3% on the first 40,000 USD a month.
• KAST Points are separate: none on Standard, +1% on Premium, +2% on Private of eligible spend.
• Cashback is paid in USD once the transaction is authorised.
• SOL staking rewards in Points run at 0.25 per 1 SOL roughly every two days on Standard, 0.5 on Premium and Private.
• The Reserve rate on balances is 8% on Standard, 10% on Premium, 12% on Private — and this offer is stated as ending 1 July 2027.
• Visa Infinite benefits on Premium and Private — travel, purchase protection, lounge, eSIM — require separate registration on the Visa Benefits portal.

If you spend under 2,000 USD a month, the Standard tier’s cashback is the number that matters: 1.5% back in dollars, paid after authorisation. That is genuinely competitive with ordinary bank cards and is the strongest argument for the free tier.

Two things that bite in practice. Merchants can place pre-authorisation holds that sit on your balance. And a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another: the merchant can look up the issuer’s identification number at the front of your card number and see which institution and country issued it, and apply extra scrutiny when that country differs from your billing address. This is structural, not a KAST quirk — it is why some prepaid and foreign-issued cards get declined at the counter. KAST’s Terms prohibit spending on weapons, controlled substances, Ponzi, pyramid and MLM schemes, counterfeit goods, Darknet and Tor purchases, adult content, and pseudo-pharmaceuticals. Gambling is not mentioned in those terms, but many issuers block it by policy rather than by law, and the blocked list varies by issuer, so do not assume a category is open because KAST is silent.

If something goes wrong with a transaction, the Terms say to contact the company within 90 days. The company’s liability is capped at 500 USD. The chargeback process itself is not stated — and that is a meaningful absence, because a chargeback is the mechanism that normally settles a disputed payment, and prepaid-card coverage varies by product and should not be assumed.

What can go wrong

This is the section that takes the score from comfortable to uncomfortable, so let me be blunt about what is disclosed and what is not.

The issuer is not named. KAST says it is “a financial technology company, not a bank”, and that cards, custody and the on/off-ramp are “provided by licensed partners”. Which partner issues the card is not stated — the terms say only “one of our Partner”. For comparison, when you use a card you can usually name the bank that owes you the money and complain to it. Here, that name is the missing piece.

No licence numbers appear anywhere on the pages I read. No regulator is named either, and availability is described as “subject to regulatory approval”. I found no regulatory action against KAST in what I searched — that is worth saying, because silence cuts both ways: it is not the same as a licence.

The entity is offshore in the way that tends to matter. The Terms entity is KAST Tech, registration number 16223, incorporated in Anjouan, Comoros, with governing law in Seychelles and SIAC arbitration in Singapore. The App Store developer is Troia Limited. Partners named in the Terms include Tazapay and BitGo; the homepage logos include Stripe, Privy, Fireblocks, Visa, Sardine and Elliptic. Logos are not licences. No licence numbers.

Why this matters more than it might look: an electronic money institution must safeguard customer funds by segregating them or insuring them, and those funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not sit under a deposit guarantee scheme. Whether KAST’s arrangement gives you that protection depends entirely on which licensed partner holds your balance — and that is the partner they do not name.

The complaints are real and specific. On Trustpilot, KAST sits around 2.5 on regional pages and 2.7 on the main page, across roughly 170 reviews. I am giving you a third-party score that the card itself does not publish or confirm. The recurring themes in 2026 are:

• Accounts frozen or restricted shortly after a deposit, with the funds held.
• Repeated 0.50 USD declined-transaction fees in April 2026, pushing a balance negative.
• ATM withdrawals that dispensed no cash while still debiting the account.
• Repeated document requests on self-transfers.
• Slow support.

KAST replies to most negative reviews saying accounts can be restricted by security and compliance systems — which is a normal thing for a regulated-adjacent business to say, and also exactly what you would expect to read if frozen withdrawals were routine. The positive reviews praise low fees and stablecoin spending, which is consistent with the rest of this review. Official incidents: not stated.

Here is the honest shape of the trade. This is not a rare disaster pattern. It is the ordinary consequence of account controls meeting a company that will not tell you who holds your money: when a compliance system decides something is wrong, the mechanism that resolves it is a document request, and the mechanism that protects you while it is unresolved is the issuer’s reputation and the chargeback process. You know how the first works. You have to take the second on trust.

The category history is worth weighing here, and not as fear-mongering. Custodial platforms have failed before: Mt. Gox with about 350 million US dollars reported stolen between 2011 and 2014, Coincheck at about 400 million in 2018, and the Ronin Network at 625 million in 2022. On the card side, Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer; Visa also suspended WaveCrest in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Programme closures typically follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source — new loads ending 8 July 2026, spending stopping 8 August 2026 — came from a single unconfirmed source, so I would not lean on the dates, but not the shape.

None of that makes KAST the same as any of those. It makes the question of the issuer’s name a question you should ask out loud, because the card’s own answers do not settle it.

A final point on what KAST does state about safety: it positions itself as a stablecoin money app with custody by licensed partners, and it lets you set lower spend limits in the app. That is the whole list. Two-factor authentication, card freeze and insurance are not stated on the pages I read — except that Visa Infinite benefits exist for Premium and Private. If you enable two-factor authentication somewhere in the flow, that is your doing, not a published feature.

Support is the one soft spot that is not a complaint. There is a KAST Concierge help centre, 24/7 on all tiers, a VIP Concierge for Private, and [email protected] appears in the company’s replies. The membership page offers English only in its language selector.

What to take instead

The alternatives here are not all the same shape, and the honest comparison depends on which constraint is binding for you: fees, custody, or disclosure. Three others, with their published numbers.

MetaMask Card — 7.1 out of 10. The strongest of the three, and structurally different from KAST. It is a Mastercard, issued by Monovate with Crypto Life as card provider, virtual card first and instant with a metal version you can pre-order at 199 USD a year (the virtual card is free, with no annual or maintenance fee). Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Canada; elsewhere it is a waitlist, and US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed. Proof of residency is required. Spending draws directly on your connected wallet across Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT named. Fees are described as minimal per transaction with no additional MetaMask fees, no foreign transaction fee and the Mastercard rate, though the amount is not stated on the pages I read. Cashback is 1% on Virtual and a headline 3% on Metal, with a footnote limiting 3% to the first 10,000 USD spent and 1% after, paid in mUSD into the Money Account. It also carries a $FLY bonus of 5X (Virtual) and 7X (Metal) through the Blackbird dining app.

Zeal — 6.1 out of 10. Same score as KAST, different risk profile. Spend is stated across 150+ countries, though issuance “depends on eligibility and regional availability” and the card programme is live in the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. It is a Visa card with a virtual card for online use, addable to Apple Pay, and accounts in EUR, USD and GBP under Gnosis Pay. No fee schedule is published on zeal.app or the App Store, so costs are genuinely not stated. Zeal charges no additional FX fee and converts at the Visa wholesale rate, though Gnosis Pay fees such as ATM may still apply. Cashback is up to 4% paid in GNO, which you must hold in the card Safe to qualify and which can change — and the App Store separately advertises up to 5% variable APY on EUR and USD balances, which is a yield claim, not a card benefit, and deserves its own scepticism.

TokenPocket — 5.8 out of 10. The weakest of the four on these numbers, largely because of what is unsaid. A Visa debit for a list of European countries and territories (Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland among them) and a Mastercard debit for Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK, with the Americas “planned for Q2 2025”. It runs on Arbitrum, with balances in EUR24 and USD24 and Fiat24 cards that are virtual. The 1% deposit fee is described as later refunded “through rewards, reduced transaction fees, etc.” — which is not the same as not charging it — and beyond the NFT creation fee, partly covered by TokenPocket, TP Card states no additional fees. No cashback is stated and no specific coins or networks are listed in the FAQ.

The pattern is worth naming: every one of these cards is a front end, not the bank. A card number starts with a 6- or 8-digit issuer identification number that names the institution behind it, and in KAST’s case that institution is deliberately unnamed. MetaMask, which scores highest, publishes its issuer and provider. That single difference is most of what separates 6.1 from 7.1.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend KAST to someone in this specific position: you already hold stablecoins, you spend in dollars, your bank either cannot or will not give you a card, and the amount you would leave on the balance is small enough that a freeze would hurt rather than ruin you. For that person the deal is genuinely good — 0% to load, 0% to spend, 1.5% back on the first 2,000 USD a month, Apple Pay, and a virtual card you can have in minutes. Few products do that for free.

I would not recommend it as your primary card, for two reasons that have nothing to do with fees. The first is disclosure: an unnamed issuer and no licence number on the page means that in the exact scenario where you need someone to be accountable — funds held, card declined, support slow — there is no named party you can point at. The second is that the freeze complaints are concentrated where you would be most exposed, which is immediately after a deposit, the moment you have the most reason to want the money back.

Before you apply, here is the short list I would work through. Confirm your country is eligible by starting the process, since the list is not published. Ask support, in writing, which partner issues the card and under whose licence your balance is held — a company unwilling to answer that question in writing has told you something. Keep your balance small relative to what you could lose. Prefer Solana or Arbitrum over Ethereum for both loading and withdrawing. Set your own spending limits in the app rather than relying on the platform default. Enable two-factor authentication yourself, since it is not a stated feature. Pull the money out regularly rather than treating this as a savings account, because an inactivity fee of 1 USD a month starts after twelve months and the balance on closure is not stated. And if your income comes through a bank, keep your ordinary bank card for ordinary life and treat KAST as the spending card for the money you would not mind being asked about.

Frequently asked questions

What is the KAST card?

KAST is a stablecoin payment card: you load USDT, USDC, PYUSD or RLUSD, it converts them to a dollar balance at a 0% spread, and you spend that balance through a Visa card, virtual or physical, with Apple Pay and Google Pay. It is positioned as a financial technology company rather than a bank, with cards, custody and on/off-ramp handled by licensed partners. The Standard tier costs 0 USD a year. No bank account is needed to fund it.

Is KAST a bank, and who owns it?

No — KAST describes itself as a financial technology company, not a bank. The Terms entity is KAST Tech, registration number 16223, incorporated in Anjouan, Comoros, with governing law in Seychelles and SIAC arbitration in Singapore; the App Store developer is Troia Limited. Named partners include Tazapay and BitGo. The company that issues the card is not named on the pages I read, and no licence numbers appear on them either.

Who can get a KAST card?

Anyone whose country of residence appears on the list shown during KYC — a list KAST does not publish. Residence alone is not sufficient: if you hold an ID from a restricted region you may still fail, even living in a supported country. Dual citizens with an ID from a supported country may pass. You must be of legal age in your country, typically 18, and only your own ID is accepted. A VPN does not bypass this.

How do I apply, and how long does it take?

You create an account in the app with phone, OTP, PIN, email and country of residence, then complete KYC in levels: Level 1 is the account itself, Level 2 adds a valid passport, national ID or driver’s licence plus a selfie and unlocks cards, Level 3 adds proof of address and unlocks USD and EUR accounts. KAST does not publish processing times, so I cannot give you a realistic figure — budget for an unknown, and do not assume it is quick.

What does KAST cost?

The Standard tier is 0 USD a year, top-ups are 0%, spending in USD is 0%, Apple and Google Pay are 0%, and Apple and Google Pay carry no fee. The costs sit elsewhere: 40 USD delivery on a Standard physical card, 2 USD for an extra virtual card, 0.5%–1.75% FX on non-USD transactions, 0.10 USD on non-USD transactions under 25 USD, 0.50 USD for a declined transaction, and 3 USD plus 2% at an ATM. Premium is 1,000 USD a year and Private 10,000 USD.

How do I top up, and which network should I use?

You send stablecoins — USDT or USDC on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum or TRON, with PYUSD and RLUSD also named — at a 0% fee, no bank account needed. Network fees are paid to the blockchain, not to KAST. For withdrawals the cheapest routes are Solana at 1 USD plus 0.1% and Arbitrum USDC at 0.20 USD plus 0.1%; Ethereum costs 6 USD plus 0.1% and Tron USDT 5 USD plus 0.1%, with a 5 USD minimum.

Is the KAST card safe to use, and are the reviews real?

There are no published safeguards beyond app-based spending limits and the option to freeze the card; two-factor authentication and insurance are not stated. Trustpilot, a third-party rating the card does not confirm, sits around 2.5–2.7 across roughly 170 reviews, with 2026 reports of frozen accounts, repeated 0.50 USD decline fees, ATM debits with no cash, and repeated document requests. KAST replies saying accounts can be restricted by compliance systems. I am not telling you it is safe or unsafe — I am telling you it is undisclosed.

Is the KAST card free, and is it worth it?

Free is the standard case: 0 USD a year, 0% to load, 0% to spend, 1.5% cashback on the first 2,000 USD of monthly spend, two cards included. For a stablecoin holder spending dollars, that is a strong package. It stops being worth it if you need a named issuer, a deposit guarantee, or confidence that a frozen balance will be released quickly.

Can I add KAST to Apple Wallet, and where does it work?

Yes — Apple Pay works with both the virtual and the physical card at 0% fee, as does Google Pay. Samsung Pay is not stated. Anywhere Visa is accepted, which KAST claims is 150M+ merchants in 170+ countries, though that figure is the service’s own claim. Cash is available at Visa ATMs at 3 USD plus 2%, with stated per-withdrawal limits that differ between two official KAST pages, so assume the lower one.

How do I close a KAST account, and what happens to my balance?

The Terms set a 90-day window to report a transaction dispute, and cap the company’s liability at 500 USD, but the public pages do not describe account closure or say what happens to a remaining balance. The Terms also note that limits are set by the company and shown on the platform, without publishing figures. Before funding, ask support in writing what closure looks like and where your money goes — and withdraw early rather than leaving a balance parked.

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