A free Mastercard that spends your crypto balance, available only in Europe

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you live in the UK or the EU and you want a plain payment card that spends a crypto balance without a monthly fee, the Krak card does exactly that and little more. It is a Mastercard debit card issued by Monavate, the crypto side comes from Kraken, and there is no card to pay for. That is the good news, and it is genuinely good news. The catch is that the card only exists for UK and EU residents, the cost of spending an asset rather than a fiat balance is a spread whose size the card does not publish, and the account is closed more often than an ordinary bank’s. My score for the whole package is 7.1 out of 10, and almost all of the shortfall sits in two places: who can actually get one, and whether it works reliably after your money is on the account.

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

The verdict: 7.1 out of 10

Here is the card broken into the six things that actually decide whether a card is any good, with my mark out of ten for each.

Two things drive that number. The costs side is close to as good as this category gets — there is genuinely nothing to pay monthly and nothing to pay per transaction, which is unusual and worth saying plainly. The everyday-use side is also excellent, because a virtual card in minutes plus Apple Pay and Google Pay plus fee-free ATM withdrawals is a real, usable wallet of money. What drags the total down is geography and reliability: if you are outside Europe this card is not for you at all, and if you are inside Europe you should read the complaints section before you move money.

Who it suits: UK and EU residents who already hold assets on Krak, Kraken or Kraken Pro and want to spend them at ordinary shops without setting up a separate exchange account per currency. The cashback up to 2% is a genuine add-on rather than the reason to sign up. Who it does not suit: anyone outside the UK and EU; anyone who wants their crypto held in their own wallet rather than with a provider; anyone who cannot tolerate an account freeze after a bank transfer; and anyone whose main need is a wide choice of spendable coins and networks, because the card’s own pages do not say which those are.

Will they give you the card?

Yes, if you are a resident of the UK or the EU — and that is the whole gate. The card page says it is “currently available to residents of the UK and the EU, with more countries coming soon”, and the same page carries a footnote saying geographic restrictions apply. There is a wrinkle worth knowing about before you plan around it: the help article describes personal accounts for UK, EEA and US residents, which is wider than the card page’s own wording. The card page is the one that governs the card, so the honest reading is that US residents can hold an account while the card itself may still be restricted. If you are in the US and reading this hoping for a workaround, there isn’t one described, and this review is not going to invent one.

Beyond residence, the requirements are these: a verified Krak account with completed KYC, an age of at least 18, and identity verification by Monavate, the issuer, before a card is issued. The card’s public pages do not say which documents are accepted, what proof of address looks like, or what the exact age threshold is beyond 18 — the verification levels and their processing times are not stated there. That matters if you are somewhere with a patchy paper trail: you will not find a checklist on the card page, so treat the identity requirements as “ask support”, not “read and prepare”.

One thing that is stated clearly, and which is worth internalising: because Monavate is a regulated institution doing anti-money-laundering checks, it screens customers rather than merely opening an account. In the EU that means name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documentation, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether you are a politically exposed person. Nationality is recorded and screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening is applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as to your address. If due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to hold back or end the relationship — which is the ordinary legal reason accounts close, not a sign that you did something wrong.

How to get it

The path is short and linear: create a Krak account, complete KYC, then order a virtual card, which arrives in minutes, or a physical card. The physical card comes in orange or black and ships free; delivery is to the UK and EEA, and the delivery time is not stated on the pages. Replacement of a physical card costs $4.99 or the equivalent in the card currency, charged by Monavate. Virtual and physical cards are cancelled separately, so ending one does not end the other — worth remembering if you are tidying up.

There is also a metal card: stainless steel, 16 g. It is not a purchase. You qualify for it by holding an average of GBP/EUR 50,000 in combined assets across Krak, Kraken and Kraken Pro. That is a holdings test, not a fee, and it is the same threshold structure that drives the cashback rate. If you are nowhere near that level, the metal card is not something you are choosing between — it is simply not available to you.

What to check before you order: whether the card currency matches where you live (GBP for UK cards, EUR for EEA cards), and whether the metal threshold is even on your horizon. One unofficial note, from a third-party site and not confirmed by the card: plastic cards are “normally within 14 business days”, and a metal card replacement is quoted at GBP/EUR 60 — the $4.99 figure is what the card’s own page states, so if you lose a metal card the two numbers do not agree and it is worth asking support which applies to you.

Fees: what it really costs

The headline is genuinely good. The card is free to order, there is no monthly fee and no annual fee, and Krak states zero transaction fees, zero FX fees, zero ATM withdrawal fees and zero monthly fees on your spend. The only Krak-side charges I can find named are the $4.99 replacement fee and, potentially, a fee if you end the agreement within six months.

So what does a day of spending actually look like? Three examples, and in each the Krak fee is zero while the cost sits somewhere else.

A coffee in a eurozone café on an EEA card. You pay in euros, the card is EUR, the Mastercard rate is passed through with no markup, and Krak takes nothing. This is the cleanest case and it is genuinely free.

A coffee in a non-euro country on an EEA card. Again the Mastercard rate, no Krak markup, no Krak fee. What you have not avoided is the network’s own rate, which is the thing “no FX fee” means here — Krak is not adding to it, but you are not getting the interbank rate either. And if that coffee was paid for out of a crypto balance rather than euros, the sell-side spread is on top, and its size is the number the card does not publish.

Paying for something from a crypto balance itself — say you hold the asset and nothing else. This is the case with a real, unquantified cost: “a variable spread applies when spending across assets”, and no figure is given for it. Anyone telling you this card is free to use has skipped this. If you spend mostly from a fiat balance the spread is not in your way. If you spend mostly from crypto, the spread is the price of the convenience and you should work out what it means against the assets you actually hold.

Two more everyday details. Hotels and car rentals can pre-authorise 10-20% above the amount and hold it for up to seven days, which is a normal card-network behaviour, not a Krak fee, but it will show up in your app as money you do not have. And a declined payment can leave a hold that sits for days — typically up to seven. Neither is Krak’s doing; both can be mistaken for a Krak bug the first time they happen.

Top up: how money gets onto the card

The card has no balance of its own. It spends the Krak Everyday account balance, and multi-currency spending draws on your currencies in the order you set in the app. That order is the single most useful setting on the card: if you hold two assets and a euro balance, you decide which gets sold first, and you decide it per payment rather than at signup.

The limitation to understand is that 600+ assets are offered across Krak, but not all of them are available for card use. The ones that are not show as “Unavailable” when you build your Spend Order. Which ones are supported, and on which networks, is not stated on the pages I read. That is a real gap and it is the kind of gap that only shows up after you have deposited. Fiat balances can be spent too, which is the cheapest way to use the card if you want to avoid the spread entirely.

Deposits can be made “at any time in the app”, and some deposit methods carry three-day withdrawal holds. Separate articles describe fiat funding via Plaid in EUR and GBP, and via PayPal. The deposit fee and the minimum are not stated on the pages I read, so I cannot tell you what it costs to put money in — you would be relying on the app’s own screen for that. One unofficial figure exists on a third-party site, for near-instant card deposits of GBP/EUR 0.25 plus 3.75%, but the card does not confirm it, and I would not build a plan around a number that appears in one place.

The withdraw side is thinner still, and this is where I would want an answer from support before committing money. Withdrawal of a card balance to a bank account or to crypto is not described in the card’s own FAQ. Cancelling is done by contacting Krak Support, a fee may apply if the agreement ends within six months, closing the Kraken E-Wallet terminates the Monavate agreement, and redemption is governed by Kraken’s terms rather than the card terms. In plain terms: the way money leaves is documented under Kraken, not under Krak, and if you need to be able to move out quickly, that is a question to ask before you load, not after.

Paying with it every day

This is where the card is strongest, and 10 out of 10 is not flattery. A virtual card is available in minutes, which means you can be spending before a plastic card arrives in the post. The physical card is Mastercard debit, the metal one is also Mastercard, Apple Pay is supported, and both Apple Pay and Google Pay can be used. ATM withdrawals carry no Krak fee in over 190 countries. That is a genuinely complete everyday setup for someone in Europe.

Then the cashback. “Up to 2% cashback in cash or crypto”, depending on average assets held with Krak, Kraken or Kraken Pro — the same holdings measure that gates the metal card. Up to 4% on travel booked via Krak Concierge. Up to 2% is the ceiling, not the rate; the rate you get depends on your average assets, and the card does not publish the tier table, so work out which bracket you fall into before you value the card on cashback alone. This is the audience in a sentence: UK and EU residents who want crypto cashback.

The apps are on iOS through the App Store and on Android through Google Play; the official pages do not state ratings. If a merchant category blocking question is in your head, the card pages do not say which categories are blocked — but you can block currencies from being spent through the Spend Order, which is a related and more useful lever for people holding several assets.

Money back works like this. A refund returns to the Everyday account in the card’s primary currency, and crypto is not converted back automatically. That last clause catches people out: if you paid in crypto and are refunded, the refund arrives as the card’s currency, not as the asset, and the conversion is yours to arrange. Disputes start by opening the transaction in the app and tapping “Get help with this transaction”. Complaints are acknowledged within 24 hours in the UK with a final response within 15 business days, extendable by 20, and within 15 business days in the EEA, or 35 if delayed; there is a 14-day cooling-off refund of fees. Kraken’s own help article warns that disputes may take 45-60 days. Set your expectation at the slow end.

What can go wrong

Two things, and neither is about a lost PIN.

The first is the spread. It is described only as variable and is not quantified anywhere on the card’s pages. If most of your spending draws on crypto balances, this is your main ongoing cost and you are being asked to accept it without a figure. That is the single biggest information gap I found in this review.

The second is account restriction. Third-party user reports describe accounts being restricted after a bank transfer or a deposit, with funds inaccessible. That is the theme that recurs, alongside generic escalation replies with no timeline. A Reddit report from July 2026 describes an 11-day security review that suspended deposits, withdrawals and card use, with Kraken support later saying it “dropped the ball”. I found no Trustpilot or Reddit results other than these, and the aggregate Trustpilot score is inconsistent between sources — 3.8 from 34 reviews or 1.9 from 126 — so treat any single number you read as unreliable in either direction.

One aggregator, penchan.co, undated and unverified, reports card payments failing in the UK and EEA, automatic freezes after small transfers from sanctioned addresses, an undisclosed spread, and a Bank of Lithuania fine or warning for Monavate UAB relating to AML and safeguarding. I am passing those on as claims, not findings: the page is undated and unverified, and I could not corroborate them from the card’s own pages, which report no official incidents.

One more report worth knowing, from a UK cardholder: terminals asking for a signature instead of a PIN, and a delayed refund. Signature prompts on a card that should be PIN-capable usually mean the terminal cannot read the chip — which links back to the BIN. A card’s first six or eight digits identify the issuing institution and country, and some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs because that lookup reveals the card type and issuer country. That is also why a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another. Address verification, which compares the numeric parts of the billing address the buyer typed against issuer records, is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards and can cause declines on their own.

On security itself: you can freeze, unfreeze or replace a physical card instantly in the app, and the card states real-time transaction monitoring and data encryption. Two-factor authentication is not stated on the card pages. Understand the structure rather than the feature list — the network (Mastercard here) routes the messages and sets the rules, the issuer (Monavate) holds the card programme under its licence, and the crypto brand is largely the front end. The E-Wallet is an e-money account issued by Kraken, not Monavate, and safeguarding is not covered in the card terms.

That last point deserves one more sentence, because it is where a lot of trust is quietly resting. Funds sit with a provider, so you are trusting a provider: custody means the private key is held by them, a seed phrase of 12 to 24 words in unencrypted form is something that can restore and drain a wallet if it leaks, and crypto transfers are typically irreversible with no built-in recovery. Custodial platforms have a real record — Mt. Gox at about US$350 million reported stolen between 2011 and 2014, Coincheck at about US$400 million in 2018, Ronin Network at US$625 million in 2022. Third-party commentary, not confirmed by the card, says fiat is held in segregated accounts at regulated institutions, that UK e-money is not covered by FSCS, and that the EEA wallet has no deposit-guarantee coverage. Under EU rules e-money institutions must safeguard customer funds by segregating them or insuring them, but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not sit under a deposit guarantee scheme. Please check that yourself for your own jurisdiction rather than taking my word for it.

And a structural reminder about how this category fails: card programmes close. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, taking all its programmes with it. The usual sequence is a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers and can suspend a programme — in November 2022 Visa said it had terminated its global agreements with FTX, and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer.

What to take instead

If you are outside the UK and EU, the honest answer is that Krak is not a candidate and you should look at a card built for your region. Here is how the alternatives in this comparison actually stack up, including where the public pages are silent — which is itself a useful signal.

Reading that table honestly, the striking thing is how much of it is “not stated”. Two of the three alternatives publish no eligibility, no card terms and no fees on pages I could read. That is worth weighing on its own: a card whose public pages are thin leaves you relying on support answers, and support answer quality is exactly what the Krak complaints section is about.

Bybit is the most documented of the three and the most complex. Its card draws on a Funding Account rather than holding its own balance, spends fiat first, and sells crypto if fiat runs out at its own exchange rate plus a conversion fee — which is structurally the same model as Krak’s spread, but at least quantified. Its FX fees are real and vary widely by region. Its rewards scheme is unusually generous but has a rule that catches people out: from 2026-10-05 only crypto-funded transactions earn points or cashback, and fiat-funded spending earns nothing. It also states plainly that the product is not meant for EEA customers and that all EEA participation is strictly prohibited, which tells you exactly who it is for and, by implication, who it is not for.

The comparison for most readers comes down to this. If you are in the UK or EU and already hold assets on Kraken, Krak’s cost profile — nothing monthly, nothing per transaction, no FX markup, no ATM fee — is the best of the three and is hard to argue with. If you are elsewhere, Bybit may serve your region and Krak will not. And if what you want is to know what you are paying, only Bybit publishes the numbers.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend the Krak card to a UK or EU resident who already keeps money on Kraken, spends most of it in the currency of their own country, treats the card as a convenient front end for an existing balance rather than as a place to hold savings, and is comfortable being KYC’d by two regulated entities and accepting that an account can be frozen for compliance reasons.

I would not recommend it as a first crypto product, because the withdrawal side is the weakest documented part and you should know how money leaves before you put money in. I would not recommend it outside the UK and EU, because the card does not exist for you. I would not recommend it if you hold coins outside the supported set — the pages do not tell you which are supported, and “Unavailable” in your Spend Order is how you find out after the fact. And I would not recommend it to anyone who needs their funds to be their own, because this is a custodial arrangement and the risk sits with the provider.

The cost side deserves one last word, because it is genuinely exceptional and I do not want the reliability concerns to bury it: a card with no issuance fee, no monthly fee, no annual fee, no transaction fee, no FX markup and no ATM fee, with Apple Pay and Google Pay and fee-free cash withdrawals in 190+ countries, is hard to beat. If your spending is in your card’s own currency and mostly from a fiat balance, this card is close to free in the way that matters. If you spend crypto every day, buy the convenience knowingly — the spread is unquantified on the card’s own pages, and I would rather you hear that from me than discover it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Krak card?

Krak is Kraken’s consumer app, and it issues a Mastercard debit card that spends the balance of your Krak Everyday account. The card itself is issued by Monavate — Monavate in the UK under FCA FRN 901097, and Monavate UAB in Lithuania under licence no. 92 — while the crypto side and the wallet come from Kraken. It works as a card spent from a crypto balance, converting what you hold into the currency of purchase.

Is Krak a bank?

No. Krak is an app from Kraken, and the card is issued by Monavate, a licensed banking and payments institution; the balance you spend from is an e-money account issued by Kraken, not by Monavate. Under EU rules e-money institutions must safeguard customer funds, but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme, so do not treat this balance as a bank deposit.

Who owns Krak?

Krak belongs to Kraken, the crypto exchange. The card programme is not run by Kraken directly — it sits with Monavate in the UK and Monavate UAB in the EEA, licensed in Lithuania. That two-company structure is normal for this category: the crypto brand markets the card and the licensed institution holds the programme and does the identity checks.

Do I need KYC to get a Krak card?

Yes. You must have a verified Krak account with completed identity verification, be at least 18, and pass Monavate’s own identity check before a card is issued. The card’s public pages do not list which documents are accepted or how long verification takes, so ask support what to prepare rather than assuming.

Is the Krak card free?

The card is free to order and there is no monthly or annual fee, and Krak charges zero transaction, FX and ATM withdrawal fees. What is not free is everything else: a variable spread applies when you spend across assets and its size is not published, replacing a card costs $4.99, third-party ATM operators may charge their own fee, and blockchain network fees apply to on-chain deposits.

Which countries can use the Krak card?

The card is available to residents of the UK and the EU, with more countries said to be coming soon, and geographic restrictions apply. The help article mentions personal accounts for UK, EEA and US residents, which is wider than the card page’s wording — but that is about holding an account, not necessarily about getting the card, so US residents should ask before assuming.

Can I use the Krak card in my country?

You can use it wherever Mastercard is accepted, and withdrawals are said to carry no Krak fee in over 190 countries. Two practical catches: the card is denominated in GBP for UK cards and EUR for EEA cards, so purchases elsewhere go through the Mastercard rate, and some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards when they check the card’s first digits.

How do I top up the Krak card?

You deposit into your Krak Everyday account at any time in the app, and the card spends that balance in the order you set in the Spend Order — 600+ assets are offered but not all are available for card use, and unsupported ones show as “Unavailable”. Some deposit methods carry three-day withdrawal holds, and the deposit fee and minimum are not stated on the public pages I read.

How do I withdraw money from Krak?

Honestly, the card’s own FAQ does not describe it, which is the answer you deserve. Cancelling is done by contacting Krak Support, a fee may apply if the agreement ends within six months, and closing the Kraken E-Wallet ends the Monavate agreement — redemption is governed by Kraken’s terms rather than the card’s. Ask support directly before you load money you expect to move out.

Is the Krak card safe, and is it worth it?

The card states real-time transaction monitoring, data encryption, and instant freeze, unfreeze or replacement of a physical card in the app; two-factor authentication is not stated on the card pages. It is worth it if you spend mainly in your card’s own currency from a fiat balance, and less obviously worth it if you spend crypto daily and the unquantified spread is doing real work — and you should know that accounts restricted after a transfer are the most common complaint theme.

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