The crypto card with an IBAN, and the fine print nobody puts on the front page

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Brighty is not a bank and it does not pretend to be one. Its own words on that are worth repeating early, because most of the confusion around this card comes from assuming that anything holding your money and handing you an IBAN is a bank. What Brighty offers is a financial technology service: a crypto wallet in an app, a euro IBAN, and a virtual card that spends from the balance. On that narrow promise it does a reasonable job — a virtual Mastercard for EUR 2.99, no monthly card fee, free incoming crypto, three plans with genuinely generous ceilings, and Google Pay support. The plan names are One, Plus and Pro, and the higher two cost EUR 9 and EUR 18 a month according to third-party reporting; Brighty’s own pricing page does not state the subscription prices, so treat those two numbers as unofficial and unconfirmed by the company.

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

Where it disappoints is everything around the edges. The issuing partners are not named on the pages I could read. Apple Pay does not work with the Mastercard, which removes the wallet most iPhone users actually reach for. Trustpilot sits at 3.2 out of 5 across 78 reviews, and the recurring theme is an account closed without a clear explanation. And several numbers that matter a lot — the ATM fee, the physical card price, the card currency, what happens to your balance if you close the account — are simply not stated anywhere on the public pages. My score is 5.6 out of 10.

Who it suits, who it does not

Brighty fits a fairly specific person: someone living in the EEA who wants a euro IBAN and a virtual card funded from crypto, and who is comfortable holding the balance inside someone else’s platform rather than in a wallet they control. If that is you, the product is usable and, on the numbers, fairly priced.

It does not fit several other people just as clearly:

• Anyone outside the EEA who assumed a crypto card is globally available. The card page is labelled “EEA only”.
• Anyone who needs a physical card in the post. The help centre reportedly says physical Mastercard orders will not be fulfilled.
• iPhone users who want to tap with Apple Pay, since that is unavailable for Mastercard cards.
• Anyone who wants to read a full fee schedule before opening an account, because significant parts of it are unstated.
• Anyone with a large balance whose main concern is custody. This is custodial by design.

One more framing helps: the card behaves more like a prepaid card than a debit card. Crypto is converted and loaded as a balance, and the card spends only that balance, so it cannot overdraw. It also cannot be overdrawn, which cuts both ways — it also cannot pay for something your balance does not cover.

Will they give you the card

Mostly yes, if you live in the right place, and with one nationality carve-out that is worth reading before you spend an hour on documents.

The card page is labelled “EEA only”. The app has since been extended to Montenegro and Andorra, with the company noting availability “may vary by jurisdiction”. A full country list is not published, so the practical test is: if you are in the EEA, you are inside the label; if you are in Montenegro or Andorra, you are inside the extension; if you are somewhere else, nobody has told you yes.

The nationality restriction is stated plainly on the site: “Due to regulatory restrictions, we are unable to onboard Russian nationals residing in Montenegro and Andorra.” Note the structure of that sentence. It is residence plus nationality, applied to two specific countries, not a general ban on Russian citizens in the EEA.

An unofficial count from a third-party comparison site, as of August 2026, lists 36 countries including the EU, the EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova. That is not something Brighty has confirmed, and where a third-party list and the official pages disagree, the official pages win.

Why this shape of rule is normal in this category: sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are 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 off on the transaction or relationship and, where necessary, end an existing one. That is the legal background to the account-closure complaints later in this review — not an excuse for them, but the reason they recur.

How to get it

You download the app, sign up, and verification runs inside the app at sign-up. Sumsub is named as the verification provider in a help article. Verification levels are not defined and processing time is not stated, so if you are in a hurry, plan for an unknown wait rather than a known one.

What you will be asked for is quite specific:

• Proof of identity: a clear photo, with full name, date of birth, place of birth and citizenship.
• Proof of address: a utility bill or bank statement PDF no older than three months — screenshots are rejected — or an official registration confirmation, or a second official ID that carries your address.

The listed rejection reasons are worth reading as a checklist rather than a warning: ambiguous, unclear, contradictory or incomplete documents; an address that does not match the address you signed up with; old or damaged documents; blank fields, including the signature.

On the card itself, the card page presents a virtual card usable wherever Visa is accepted, while the help articles reference a physical Visa, a virtual Visa with no PIN, and a virtual Mastercard. The fees article describes the card as a virtual Mastercard. Card currency is not stated. You can choose Virtual Card or Physical Card in the app, but the card issuance article gives no countries, no timeframe and no cost for physical delivery — so if a plastic card in your hand matters to you, treat this as unresolved. Unofficially, the help centre says physical Mastercard orders “will not be fulfilled”, with no published cost or timeframe; the replacement price is not published either. And unofficially, the Mastercard is issued by UAB Monavate, with balances in EUR, USD, GBP, AED and crypto including USDC, EURC, BTC, ETH, ADA, XTZ, TON and SOL.

One detail that matters more than it sounds: the help centre offers English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Spanish. There is no Russian in that selector. I am telling you what the language menu shows, not what the support staff speak, which is not stated.

Fees and what a payment actually costs you

This is the part to slow down on. The headline is friendly — EUR 2.99 to issue a virtual card, free monthly card service, free balance enquiry, up to 10 card issues a month — but several fees that would matter to you are simply not stated, including the price of a physical card and the fee for paying in a foreign currency.

Two or three of the numbers you will meet are third-party figures rather than Brighty’s own. Official and unofficial card limits even contradict each other, and the official figures are the ones in the table.

The three plans come from a help article dated 15/09/26. Cards included are 1, 2 and 3 respectively. The subscription prices and any metal card are not stated on that page, which is one of the more surprising gaps on a card whose whole pitch is a plan ladder.

Now three ordinary payments, and which fees touch them.

A EUR 40 coffee in the eurozone on One. No conversion, no FX, no fee at the till. Your limit is EUR 50,000 a day, so nothing binds. The only friction is that One has no free FX allowance, which does not matter if you never leave the eurozone.

A EUR 40 coffee bought with a non-euro card balance, on One. Here the exchange is where it bites: on One the free monthly FX allowance is EUR 0, so the 0.6% conversion rate applies. The fee for paying directly in a foreign currency is not stated, and I would not assume it is zero simply because nothing is written next to it. This is the single most important number to ask support about before you rely on the card abroad.

An online purchase in USD from a merchant that challenges the card. Beyond any fee, this is where card mechanics, not fees, decide whether you pay. Address Verification Service compares the numeric parts of the billing address you type with issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK, and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines. 3-D Secure may then step in with a one-time code or a biometric check. If the authorisation is declined, a hold on funds can remain for several days — typically up to 7.

A general note on why a card can behave oddly abroad: the first six or eight digits of a card number identify the issuing institution, and a merchant can look that up to see which institution and country issued the card. If the issuer country differs from your billing address, extra scrutiny is possible. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards for exactly that reason. That is category behaviour, not a Brighty defect.

Top up: crypto in, balance out

Top-ups are the strongest part of the offer. Incoming crypto is free on all plans with no monthly limit, which is unusually generous. The app holds crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC, and the NPC token is featured. Alongside it there is an IBAN fiat account.

The networks you can withdraw to are listed: Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, Cardano, Tezos, Islamic Coin, TON, Arbitrum, Solana, Polygon and BEP20. That list is broad, and breadth is exactly what makes the wrong-network problem real — blockchain transfers are irreversible, so 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 recovery with no guarantee. Copy the address from the app rather than from anything you saved earlier.

Incoming fiat is where charges reappear: SEPA 0.3% with a EUR 10 minimum, Faster Payments 0.3% with a EUR 10 minimum, SWIFT 0.7% with a EUR 50 minimum, and an incoming fiat limit of EUR 100,000 per month. The fee for topping the card up from a balance, and any minimum top-up, are not stated.

Outgoing crypto is charged per network and is the same on all plans with no monthly limit. Three at a time is already a lot to remember:

Two category details that decide whether a send succeeds at all. ERC-20 is the Ethereum token standard, and gas is paid only in ETH — a wallet holding USDT with no ETH cannot send. Tron prices fees through bandwidth and energy resources, often burning TRX. And Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option despite TRC20 appearing in Brighty’s withdrawal list; that is not a Brighty restriction, it is how the token itself works.

One thing to check before you rely on a transfer: what happens to your remaining balance when you close the account. On a user-initiated closure the account is “scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days”. What happens to money still in it is not stated. I would withdraw everything first and confirm the balance is zero, because the deletion schedule is explicit and the balance handling is silent.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, the card is competent with two real gaps.

The card is a virtual Mastercard, and Google Pay works with Mastercard. Apple Pay is unavailable for Mastercard cards as of a help article dated 26 May 2026, attributed to technical updates, and available for Visa. Apple Pay and Google Pay are both mentioned on the Montenegro and Andorra announcement. For iPhone users that is not a footnote: Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific Device Account Number stored in the Secure Element, and each payment uses a one-time dynamic security code, which is one of the better protections available. Without it you are typing a virtual card number into terminals and websites by hand, which is the opposite of good practice.

You can freeze the card in the app and terminate it in the app. Freeze is temporary; termination cannot be reversed. Merchant category blocking is not stated, so you cannot tell from the public pages whether gambling (MCC 7995), adult content or similar categories are restricted. Many issuers block these by policy rather than by law, and the list varies by issuer, so this is a question for support rather than something I can answer for you.

On rewards, the card page says only “Keep earning on your crypto while using it” — the rate and the payout are not stated, and cashback is not described. Unofficially, third-party reporting describes 0.5% base cashback in USDC on all tiers, 1.25% to 1.75% in selected categories, monthly caps of 20, 60 and 100 USDC on One, Plus and Pro, paid the following month to something called a Reward Box. Unofficially, that cashback can be reversed if a purchase is refunded or charged back.

The app itself: “Brighty: Crypto Card & IBAN” on the App Store, rated 4.9 — but that is from just 9 ratings in the Turkish storefront, which is not a meaningful sample. A Google Play rating was not found.

Finally, the thing I would most want a card page to describe: what to do when a payment goes wrong. There are help articles on a refund policy for unsupported crypto deposits and on wrong-network and unsupported-cryptocurrency cases, which is encouraging. I saw no card dispute or chargeback article. Unofficially, no dispute or chargeback process is described. A chargeback is a refund ordered by the issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received; in the US, debit reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, and prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. If a prepaid card is your only route to a purchase, check the dispute route before you buy, not after.

What can go wrong

Start with the one that keeps showing up in reviews. Trustpilot shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews. Recurring themes: accounts closed without explanation, with the company citing policy or regulation; referral bonuses not paid, with the company citing suspected referral abuse; and instant transfers taking hours. Some reviewers praise the cashback. I found no card-specific complaints and nothing on Reddit. Those review dates were not visible, so I cannot tell you how old the pattern is.

Next, the entity. Brighty states that it “is a financial technology company, not a bank”. Accounts, cards, custody and the on/off ramp are delivered through licensed partners — unnamed, on the pages I read, with no licence numbers shown. Unofficially, 2024 press coverage describes Brighty as based in Switzerland and holding crypto-exchange and digital-asset custodian licences; that is not confirmed on the official pages. Under EU law an electronic money institution can issue e-money, payment cards and wallets but cannot lend, and may serve the whole EU/EEA from a licence granted in one member state. A crypto card often depends on two licences at once, because the card is a payment service regulated separately from the crypto side. ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised crypto-asset service providers, white papers and non-compliant entities, and that register is the place to check a provider rather than a press release.

Then custody. Brighty holds the funds; this is not self-custody. The official FAQ says “Brighty keeps user funds in segregated accounts that are specially secured”, for fiat and crypto, and the company says it works with penetration testers. No insurance is mentioned, and 2FA is not mentioned on the page I read — and 2FA is one of the standard safeguards alongside instant freeze, spending limits and 3-D Secure. Segregated e-money funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme.

The reason segregation matters is that this category has a history. Mt. Gox reported about US$350 million stolen between 2011 and 2014; Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018; the Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022. Card programmes can also be shut down by a network: Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer; WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018. Closures typically follow a pattern — notice, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances.

Onboarding and offboarding both run through risk decisions. The officially listed offboarding reasons include suspected fraud, unclear source of funds, partner-provider concerns, and PEP or sanctions status. That last pair is exactly the category in which the Trustpilot complaint about unexplained closures sits, and it is why I would not treat a Brighty balance as the right place for the savings you would be most upset to lose.

Support is email at [email protected] with a help centre at help.brighty.app. No phone, live chat or published hours appeared in the FAQ I read.

Finally, two smaller items. The company raised USD 10M in December 2024, reported by Tech.eu — funding news, neither reassurance nor warning on its own. And tax. In the US the IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services, dollars or other digital assets generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local fiat currency at fair market value on the date of the transaction, which means each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. I am not giving you tax advice — I am telling you the mechanic exists so you do not discover it later. What applies where you live is for a local professional.

What to take instead

None of the three comparisons here is clearly better. They are different shapes of compromise, and picking between them is mostly about geography.

Stella scores highest of the four. It offers virtual and physical Visa cards working at what it calls “over 40 million VISA merchants globally”, and depositing crypto tops the custodial in-app wallet automatically. What I could not establish: which countries it serves, since the official site does not state them; and what it costs, since fees are only “described under this User Agreement and/or on the App”. Its terms bar users under economic sanctions programmes and route US and European users through affiliates, which tells you the onboarding is done through a partner rather than directly. No cashback is stated on the official card page — the Earn product is a separate yield feature.

Whop Cards is the most geographically awkward for most readers. Consumers are covered in 31 US states, businesses in 41, and unsupported consumer countries include Belarus, China (Mainland), Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam. Whether eligibility runs on citizenship or residence is not stated, which is a poor sign. It spends from a Whop balance, pending balance usable as soon as a payment arrives while standard withdrawals use settled funds, backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet — coins and networks not stated. The page says “No extra fees” without listing a single amount. The 5% cashback at select merchants, currently Uber, is the sharpest reward in this group.

UniFi Card is a prepaid debit Visa issued by Lead Bank, spending from a USD balance, with Apple Pay support in the app. You can receive funds via ACH, wire, SEPA or SPEI and get paid to a USDC wallet, with coins and networks beyond USDC not stated on the listing. Its app-store routes point at send-money corridors — the Philippines in PHP, Mexico in MXN, the eurozone in EUR, and recent release notes adding Colombia, Brazil via PIX and the UK — which tells you what it is actually for. It claims 3% rewards on balances, not on card spend. Fees are “may apply”.

The honest summary: if you are in the EEA, Brighty is at least a candidate, and its IBAN plus free incoming crypto is a real combination. If you are elsewhere, the geography of Stella or a corridor-focused card like UniFi may simply exclude you, and Whop is largely a US proposition.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Brighty to someone in the EEA who already holds crypto, wants to spend it through a normal-looking Mastercard without setting up a bank account for the purpose, and is content for the balance to sit with the provider. The numbers back that: EUR 2.99 for the card, no monthly card fee, free incoming crypto with no monthly cap, and card limits of EUR 50,000 a day on the free plan. Google Pay works, freeze and terminate are both in the app, and the IBAN is the kind of thing that makes this more useful than a plain prepaid card.

I would not recommend it, without hesitation, to an iPhone user who lives on Apple Pay; to anyone planning to keep a serious balance there for years; to anyone who needs a physical card; or to anyone outside the EEA and Montenegro and Andorra who has been reading marketing pages and assuming availability is universal.

Before you commit an hour of your time, ask support three questions in writing and keep the answers: what is the card currency, what is the fee for paying in a foreign currency, and what is the ATM fee and allowance. All three are currently not stated, and all three change what a payment costs. Then withdraw a small amount out to a crypto address before you fund it properly, so you have seen the network list work in both directions.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Brighty card?

Brighty is a financial technology service, not a bank, offering a crypto wallet in an app, a euro IBAN and a virtual Mastercard that spends from the balance you load. It behaves like a prepaid card rather than a debit card: crypto is converted into fiat balance and the card can only spend what is there. It cannot overdraw, which also means it cannot cover a purchase larger than your balance.

Is Brighty a bank?

No. Brighty states plainly that it “is a financial technology company, not a bank”, and delivers accounts, cards, custody and the crypto on/off ramp through licensed partners it does not name on the pages I read. Segregated e-money funds are not bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. Unofficially, 2024 press coverage describes a Swiss base with crypto-exchange and digital-asset custodian licences.

Who can get the Brighty card?

The card page is labelled “EEA only”, and the app has been extended to Montenegro and Andorra with availability that “may vary by jurisdiction”. There is a nationality carve-out: “Due to regulatory restrictions, we are unable to onboard Russian nationals residing in Montenegro and Andorra.” No full country list is published, so check your own residence before starting.

How do I get the Brighty card?

Download the app and sign up; verification runs in-app, with Sumsub named as the provider. You need a clear identity photo with your full name, date of birth, place of birth and citizenship, plus proof of address: a utility bill or bank statement PDF from the last three months, an official registration confirmation, or a second ID showing your address. Levels and processing time are not stated.

Does Brighty require KYC?

Yes. Identification and address documents are checked at sign-up, and rejections are listed for ambiguous, unclear, contradictory or incomplete documents, a mismatched address, old or damaged documents, and blank fields including the signature. Offboarding can follow later for suspected fraud, unclear source of funds, partner-provider concerns, or PEP or sanctions status.

What does the Brighty card cost?

A virtual card costs EUR 2.99 to issue on all plans, with up to 10 issues a month, free monthly card service and free balance enquiries. Beyond your free monthly FX allowance, in-app exchange is 0.6% on One, 0.5% on Plus and 0.4% on Pro. The physical card price, the foreign-currency payment fee and the ATM fee are not stated anywhere on the public pages.

How do I top up the Brighty card?

Incoming crypto is free on all plans with no monthly limit, and the app supports Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC alongside the IBAN fiat account. Incoming SEPA and Faster Payments cost 0.3% with a EUR 10 minimum, SWIFT 0.7% with a EUR 50 minimum, and incoming fiat is capped at EUR 100,000 a month. Always use an address copied fresh from the app.

Can I add Brighty to Apple Wallet?

Not with the Mastercard, as things stand. A help article dated 26 May 2026 says Apple Pay is unavailable for Mastercard cards because of technical updates, and available for Visa. Google Pay does work with Mastercard. If Apple Pay is your main way of paying, this is the single most important limitation to weigh.

Is the Brighty card safe?

Treat it as custodial, not self-custody: Brighty holds your funds, and its FAQ says they sit in “segregated accounts that are specially secured”. No insurance is mentioned and 2FA was not mentioned on the page I read. Trustpilot shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews, with recurring reports of accounts closed without explanation. Keep only what you can afford to lose tied up in it.

Is Brighty worth it?

For an EEA resident who already holds crypto and wants a euro IBAN plus a card funded from that balance, the price is reasonable: EUR 2.99 to issue, free card service, free incoming crypto. Against that sit an unstated foreign-currency fee, no Apple Pay, unnamed issuing partners, and a 3.2 Trustpilot score. I would fund it modestly first and test a withdrawal before scaling up.

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