Swissquote Card: a bank card for people who bank at Swissquote, not for people who just want crypto

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Swissquote Card is not a crypto card in the usual sense of the phrase — not a prepaid card you load with stablecoins from any wallet you like and spend anywhere. It is a Mastercard debit card issued by a regulated Swiss or Luxembourg bank, and the crypto part is one payment method layered on top of an ordinary multi-currency current account. That distinction explains almost everything about how it feels to use: the fees, the limits, the onboarding, the fact that your money sits in a bank account rather than in a blockchain wallet.

I scored it 7.1 out of 10. It is a good card inside its own world and a poor fit outside it. If you are already a Swissquote client, or you want a multi-currency European debit card and treat “pay some purchases in Bitcoin, Ethereum or XRP” as a bonus rather than the point, there is a lot here to like. If you are looking for a card that accepts a transfer from an external wallet, in a stablecoin, on a chain of your choosing, then this is the wrong product and the reason is structural, not a matter of tier choice.

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

Verdict: 7.1 out of 10, and the split is the story

That table is the honest shape of the card. Every strong mark is about the banking product; the weakest one is the crypto feature, which is the thing most people arrive searching for. And the audience it genuinely serves is narrow: Swiss-bank clients who want a debit card that can also pay in crypto.

That last point deserves unpacking, because “Swiss-bank clients” cuts two ways. There is a group of people for whom a regulated European bank with a genuine current account, a real IBAN, and Mastercard acceptance is exactly the goal — people who were priced out of ordinary cards, or who simply prefer the deposit-guarantee wrapper. For them, Swissquote is a real answer, and the fact that it can also sell crypto per purchase is a genuine convenience. There is another group who read “crypto card” and expect self-custody, any stablecoin, any chain, no bank in the middle. For them the product reads as a normal bank card with one extra button, and the extra button costs 1%.

The uncomfortable truth is that those two groups are being served by the same marketing language but not by the same product. Decide which one you are before you read the tiers.

Will they give you the card?

Short answer: yes, if your country and your residence match one of Swissquote’s regions and you are willing to open a real bank account first. No, if you were hoping a card in the post would arrive without that.

The mechanics are specific. You need a Swissquote account in your own name. Product and pricing depend on the region your residence falls into, and Swissquote’s site selector splits the world into Switzerland, Europe, the UK, the Middle East, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong and the rest of the world. Those are not cosmetic labels: which tier you are offered, at what price, with which limits, follows from that selection.

Physical Bright and Elite cards are listed for fifteen countries: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Austria, France, Germany, the UK, Cyprus, Spain, Malta, Monaco, the UAE, South Africa, Greece and Belgium. If you are not in that list, the realistic option is the virtual Light card, if your region offers it at all.

I should flag a boundary here. Third-party trackers put availability at 35 countries with 13 restricted, including the US, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela — but that is unofficial information from a comparison site dated 11 August 2026, not something Swissquote states. The fifteen-country list above is the official one.

In August 2026, news reported that Swissquote warned customers, mostly users of its Yuh app, that accounts could be closed. The CEO, Mark Burky, stated the reasons were exclusively economic in nature. At the time the accounts had not yet been closed.

Read that again and notice what it means for you, whatever your nationality: a European bank will profile the whole customer base, not just who is politically sanctioned. Residence, currency flows and the source of money all count. This is not a Swissquote quirk; it is what banking means. But it does mean that “I am legally allowed to have an account” is a different question from “this particular bank wants me as a customer”.

How to get it

The order is fixed and it starts before the card exists.

First, open a Swissquote account. The app offers a simplified opening route if you would rather not start from the desktop platform. Then make a first deposit — this is not optional, because the card spends from that balance. Then order the card, either in the app’s Bank tab or on the desktop platform. The Light virtual card is active immediately after ordering. Elite has one extra gate: at least CHF 100,000 in total assets at the time of subscription.

What the card pages do not tell you: which documents you will need, what proof of address is acceptable, what the minimum age is, how long processing takes, or on what grounds an application is refused. Full banking KYC and AML applies, and in the EU that means name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documentation, a sanctions check, establishing the purpose of the relationship and a politically-exposed-person determination. Where that due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to stand back from the transaction or, where necessary, end an existing relationship — which is why accounts close or freeze pending papers.

On delivery, the official position is that delivery time and cost are not stated. A virtual card you can use the same day solves most of that anxiety. For the physical card, third-party reviews report arrival by post within three to four working days, with one comparison site putting it at three to four days after approval — again, unofficial.

Replacement pricing is official and worth knowing before you lose something: CHF 5 for Bright, CHF 50 for Elite. For Light, not stated.

Fees: what it really costs

The headline is encouraging — Light has no monthly fee — but the number that decides whether this card is cheap for you is the 0.95% conversion fee, because anyone outside Switzerland or holding money in more than one currency will hit it.

Here is the full picture as published.

Three everyday payments, so you can see which lines actually fire.

Coffee in Zurich, paid in Swiss francs from a euro balance. The 0.95% conversion on the 13 main currencies applies — Light and Bright. On a CHF 5 coffee that amounts to 4.75 centimes. This is the case where the fee structure is kind to you.

A hotel in Tokyo, paid from your CHF balance. The Japanese yen is not among the 13 main currencies, so you are on Mastercard’s rate plus 1.5%. On a CHF 400 room that is CHF 6 in pure FX markup, before you count anything else. This is the number that decides the card for anyone who travels.

A laptop bought with Bitcoin as the payment method. Here the conversion fee is not stated on the pricing page, which is not the same as zero. Unofficial sources put the crypto exchange for card payments at 1%, with earlier tiered figures of 1% between EUR 25 and 10,000, 0.75% between 10,000 and 50,000 and 0.5% above 50,000. I would plan for roughly 1% and check the app’s own display before you commit, because the published pricing page does not settle it.

The 13 main currencies are CHF, USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD, CAD, SEK, HKD, NOK, DKK, AED and SGD.

What the tiers actually are

• Light — virtual card, free, the 13-currency conversion at 0.95%, lower limits, ATM at CHF 1.90 in Switzerland and CHF 4.90 abroad.
• Bright — physical plus virtual, CHF 6.90 a month for free for the first six months, five free Swiss ATM withdrawals a month, higher limits at 25,000 a month in payments and 2,000 a day at ATMs.
• Elite — metal card, CHF 39 a month, a CHF 100,000 total-asset requirement, conversion free up to CHF 5,000 a month, five free ATM withdrawals in Switzerland and abroad, and the highest limits in the range.

The Elite trade is worth naming plainly: you are paying CHF 39 a month and CHF 100,000 of assets to buy free currency conversion on the first CHF 5,000 you spend. If you spend less than that in a month, the tier is costing you money for nothing.

One attractive-sounding Elite perk is not something Swissquote publishes. Third-party reviews mention three free Priority Pass lounge accesses per year and insurance if at least half the trip is paid with the card. Treat that as unconfirmed.

And a number that looks generous until you know what it is: cashback is paid as Trading Credit. The official figures are 0.5% on Light and 1% on Bright and Elite for crypto payments, with regular purchase rates left to third-party sources — 0.25% on Light, 0.5% on Bright and Elite, and on Elite a further 0.5% in gold capped at CHF 25 a month, which needs roughly CHF 5,000 of spending. Trading Credit is not withdrawable cash; according to the same unofficial source it expires after three months. Read “cashback” as a discount on your trading fees, because that is what it is.

Top up: what actually funds the card

This is where the card stops being a “crypto card” in the sense most searchers mean, and it is the single most important thing to understand before you apply.

The card spends from your Swissquote account — the bank balance. To pay with crypto, you select crypto as the payment method in the app, and only the tokens needed for that particular purchase are sold. Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP are supported, with more “planned”. The card is funded from the Swissquote account, not from an external wallet.

Read that once more: external wallets and stablecoins are not named. No USDC from your own wallet, no USDT, no “send it on whichever chain is cheapest”. If that was your plan, this card does not do it, and no tier changes that. That is why top-up scored 4 out of 10 — not because crypto payment is broken, but because it is narrow.

There is also a line about limits: limits may apply when funding crypto exchanges. That is the reverse direction from paying, but it tells you the plumbing between the account and crypto venues is not unlimited.

Two related facts, since they come up in the same place. First deposit is required. And the deposit fee and minimum are not stated on the card pages — something to ask the bank rather than assume. If you close the account, the balance on it, and the withdrawal of crypto or bank balance, follow the account terms; the card pages do not set out the specifics.

The distinction matters if you have ever held crypto yourself. With Swissquote, control of the assets belongs to the custodian, not to you — the balance sits on a bank account, and the Luxembourg entity sits inside the FGDL deposit guarantee scheme. There is no seed phrase, which means there is no 12-to-24-word phrase that can leak. There is also no self-custody route and no blockchain address to send to. For many people that is a feature. If your reason for wanting a crypto card is self-custody, it is not available here.

Paying with it every day

Everyday use is this card’s strongest suit, and it earns its 9 out of 10 honestly.

The form factors are clear. Light is virtual only. Bright is physical plus virtual. Elite is metal physical plus virtual — the metal format itself comes from a third-party source rather than Swissquote’s pages. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported on the Luxembourg page, and a pricing comparison also lists Samsung Pay, while the Swiss page adds TWINT and eBill. There is a Swissquote mobile app for iOS and Android with a Bank tab, which is where the card is ordered and where crypto payment is selected.

Two figures about the app, unofficial and covering the whole Swissquote app rather than the card: App Store 4.3 out of 5 across 47,913 ratings, Google Play 4.3 out of 5 across 8,090 ratings. I did not read the stores directly; treat both as second-hand.

What is not stated anywhere on the pages: blocked merchant categories. That is worth asking about, because category blocking is common on cards of this kind and it is the sort of thing you only discover at a till. A merchant category code is a four-digit classification assigned when a business starts accepting cards, and MCC 7995 covers gambling. Issuers often block specific categories by policy rather than by law, and the list varies by issuer — so the only way to know is to ask.

Three smaller realities of card life to hold in mind. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven, which feels like your money being frozen when it is not. Some shops decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards because the issuer-identification lookup reveals the card type and country — which is why a Swiss-issued card can look “foreign” in another shop. And address verification, which compares the numeric parts of the billing address you type against issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines on otherwise fine transactions.

If your card is lost or stolen, you can block it through Client Services, and the Luxembourg page lists +352 2603 2003, Monday to Friday CET. Virtual cards carry built-in safeguards. Whether the app offers two-factor authentication or an instant in-app freeze is not stated on the pages I read, and for anyone who wants to freeze a card from a phone at 2am that is a fair question to put to support.

What can go wrong

There is no official incident on the card pages themselves. The risk here is not a documented outage; it is the ordinary fragility of money held by someone else, plus one live news story.

Start with the holdings. Assets on a Swissquote account are custodial by nature — it is a bank account, and in Luxembourg that sits inside the FGDL deposit guarantee scheme. Crypto payments are a convenience feature layered over that, not a self-custodied wallet. If the provider fails, there is no seed phrase you can use to recover funds, because there never was one. History in this category is not reassuring: Mt. Gox reported about US$350 million stolen over 2011 to 2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, and the Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022.

Then the August 2026 letters, covered above: roughly 600 accounts, mostly Yuh users, warned of closure over economic reasons.

Then the pattern of complaints, which is all unofficial and none of it from Swissquote. Trustpilot sits at 3.7 out of 5 from 3,371 ratings, covering all of Swissquote rather than the card. Themes across a WikiFX aggregator with roughly 49 complaints from 2026: slow withdrawals, slow customer service, difficult account activation, and closures stalled by source-of-funds questions. There is also a 2026 report of a failed flight booking on a Bright card. Slow withdrawals is the theme that appears most often, and it is the one that would hurt you most if you were relying on the card as your main way to move money.

Two structural risks that are not Swissquote’s fault. Card programmes do get wound down: Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer, and WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended in Europe in 2018, closing all its programmes. Closures typically follow a shape — notice, then spending stops, then you are asked to withdraw remaining balances. If that happens to a Swissquote card, your fallback is your Swissquote bank account, not a blockchain wallet.

And on disputes: Swissquote Bank Europe General Terms and Conditions for debit cards exist, but I could not read the PDF text, so dispute and chargeback time frames are not stated here. Do not assume your protection resembles the one you have with a domestic bank — prepaid-card coverage varies by jurisdiction and US debit-card rights under Regulation E and credit-card rights under Regulation Z are not a template that transfers.

What to take instead

If Swissquote is not the fit, the alternatives are not equivalent products, and comparing them honestly is more useful than ranking them. Two scored 6.7 and 6.1; one scored 7.5 — higher than Swissquote, and for a different reason.

Three things worth pulling out of that table.

Morse scores highest, at 7.5, and its appeal is structural rather than cosmetic. Its wallet is self-custodial, so control of the crypto stays with you, and it takes stablecoin transfers directly — USDC, USDG and EURC over Solana free of charge, with Bitcoin, USDT and Ethereum also accepted. It advertises zero foreign-exchange fees or markups at the real-time Visa rate, and paying online or contactless is free. Its caveats: the card is virtual only, its fee details are not published on the card page, and availability is by residence with a closed-beta list that includes Switzerland, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand — check the app, since the list is not published.

The International Visa Card is the most explicitly rule-bound. It is not available to residents or legal registrants of a sixteen-country list that includes Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Turkey and Venezuela; FATF grey-list countries are reviewed case by case with compliance approval; and purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Its cost profile is clean but expensive at the edges: $5 to issue, plans from free to $19 a month, and Visa’s rate plus a 2% FX fee.

UNi Card’s headline is “no annual fee or foreign transaction fee” with conversion at live OTC rates and “no hidden exchange fees”, plus spend-to-earn rewards up to 3%. But its eligibility is not stated and its funding route is not stated, which is exactly the pair of gaps that should stop you before you commit.

One background point that explains why a crypto card often rests on two licences rather than one: MiCA is the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, taking legal effect in June 2023, with its asset-referenced-token and e-money-token rules applying from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider rules, from 30 December 2024. But a card itself is a payment service, regulated separately under e-money and payments law. So MiCA covers the crypto side — custody, exchange, transfer — while the card side needs its own authorisation. Under MiCA, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. The transitional period for existing providers ran until 1 July 2026 or until they received or were refused authorisation, whichever came first, and ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised providers, white papers and non-compliant entities that you can check.

Who I would recommend it to

Three groups, in descending order of how well served I think they are.

You already bank with Swissquote, or you want a genuine European bank account with a Mastercard debit attached, and you want crypto payments as one option among several. This is the case the product was built for, and here the 0.95% conversion is genuinely competitive with most multi-currency debit cards, the Light tier is free, and Bright’s first six months are free too. If you hold more than one currency and travel, check whether your spending stays inside the 13 main currencies — if it does, this card is fine; if it does not, the Mastercard-plus-1.5% band will cost you real money.

You are in one of the fifteen countries listed for physical cards and want plastic plus virtual, with five free ATM withdrawals a month and Swiss ATM withdrawals priced at zero five times. Bright is the sensible pick at CHF 6.90, waived for six months.

You are willing to put CHF 100,000 in total assets with the bank. Then Elite’s free conversion up to CHF 5,000 a month and its five free ATM withdrawals in Switzerland and abroad can be worth CHF 39. Below that asset level, the tier is a cost rather than a benefit.

And three groups I would point elsewhere. If you want to fund a card from your own wallet with stablecoins on a chain you choose, Swissquote cannot do it — that is the 4-out-of-10 line, and no tier fixes it. If you travel in currencies outside the thirteen, you are paying a markup you would rather not pay, and Morse advertises none at all. And if you are the kind of customer a European bank might de-risk — the situation the August 2026 letters describe is exactly that — you should assume any bank can reach the same conclusion about your balance, and start with a smaller relationship rather than a large one.

Whatever you decide, read the current pricing in the app before you move money. Fees here are the thing most likely to change and the thing least likely to be buried by a third-party review.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Swissquote Card?

The Swissquote Card is a Mastercard debit card issued by Swissquote Bank Ltd in Switzerland or, for the European offering, Swissquote Bank Europe in Luxembourg. It draws on your Swissquote bank account balance rather than on a separate prepaid balance. You can nominate crypto as the payment method for a purchase, in which case the app sells only the tokens that purchase needs, drawing from Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP held in the account.

How does the Swissquote Card work day to day?

You open a Swissquote account, make a first deposit, then order the card from the app’s Bank tab or the desktop platform. Light is virtual and usable immediately after ordering; Bright and Elite add a physical card, with Elite in metal. Ordinary purchases are free and draw on the account balance in the card’s currency, converting from another currency if needed. Spending beyond your balance is not possible, because there is no credit.

Is Swissquote a bank, and who regulates it?

Yes. The Swiss side is Swissquote Bank Ltd, in Switzerland. For the European card, Mastercard is issued by Swissquote Bank Europe, supervised in Luxembourg by the CSSF and a member of the FGDL deposit guarantee scheme. That structure matters for you: your balance is a bank balance with deposit-guarantee features in Luxembourg, not crypto held in a self-custodied wallet.

Which countries can get the Swissquote Card?

Product and pricing depend on your region of residence, with the site separating Switzerland, Europe, the UK, the Middle East, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong and the rest of the world. Physical Bright and Elite cards are listed for fifteen countries: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Austria, France, Germany, the UK, Cyprus, Spain, Malta, Monaco, the UAE, South Africa, Greece and Belgium. Unofficial trackers give 35 countries available with 13 restricted, including the US, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Does the Swissquote Card require KYC?

Yes, full banking KYC and AML applies, including ongoing monitoring and suspicious-activity reporting, so you need a Swissquote account in your own name before the card. In the EU that covers identity documents, address, date of birth, nationality, a sanctions check and a politically-exposed-person check. Elite adds a separate requirement of at least CHF 100,000 in total assets at subscription.

What does the Swissquote Card cost to hold and to use?

Light has no monthly fee, Bright is CHF 6.90 and free for the first six months, and Elite is CHF 39. Card payments are free. Conversion on the 13 main currencies costs 0.95% on Light and Bright, while Elite is free up to CHF 5,000 a month then 0.25% per transaction. Other currencies are charged at the Mastercard rate plus 1.5%.

Can I fund the Swissquote Card from an external wallet?

No. The card is funded from your Swissquote account, and external wallets and stablecoins are not named as a funding route. Crypto payment works the other way round: you select crypto as the payment method and the app sells the tokens needed for that purchase, from Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP, with more “planned”. Limits may apply when funding crypto exchanges in the opposite direction.

Is the Swissquote Card safe, and what happened in August 2026?

No official incident appears on the card pages. In August 2026 Swissquote warned customers, mostly Yuh users, that accounts could be closed, with the CEO citing exclusively economic reasons. Unofficial user feedback is mixed: Trustpilot 3.7 out of 5 across 3,371 ratings covering all of Swissquote, with recurring reports of slow withdrawals and slow support.

What are the Swissquote Card’s limits?

Monthly payment limits are 10,000 in CHF, EUR or USD on Light, 25,000 on Bright and 50,000 on Elite. Monthly ATM limits are 5,000, 10,000 and 10,000 respectively, and daily ATM limits are 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000. Contactless without a PIN is capped at CHF 80. Elite additionally requires at least CHF 100,000 in total assets to subscribe.

Is a Swissquote Card worth it, and what are the alternatives?

For a multi-currency European bank customer who wants crypto payments as a bonus, yes — 7.1 out of 10. For funding from an external wallet with stablecoins, no, because it cannot do that. Alternatives differ sharply: an International Visa Card costs $5 to issue with a 2% FX fee and a long exclusion list, UNi Card claims no annual or FX fee with up to 3% rewards but states neither eligibility nor funding, and Morse advertises zero FX markup, a self-custodial wallet and free stablecoin deposits over Solana.

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