The dollar card that keeps its fee list short

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The VIIO card is a Visa card that spends a balance you hold in dollars, topped up from Colombian pesos or from stablecoins. On paper that is an unusually tidy proposition: no monthly fee, a free virtual card, a physical card that is currently exempt from its own issuance charge, and a claim that the card “currently does not charge any fee” at all. What it is not is a fully disclosed product. The contract is Colombian law, the issuing bank is not named on the pages I could read, the percentage charged on currency conversion is nowhere listed, and the help centre quietly points at a Colombian bank and at a passport-without-Colombian-ID question, which tells you more about who this is really built for than the marketing copy does.

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

My score for VIIO is 6.6 out of 10. That is not a bad score. It is the score of a product with a very good cost sheet and an unusually thin disclosure sheet, aimed squarely at one country and one currency need, and quiet about almost everything a careful reader would ask.

Who it suits: Colombian residents who want a dollar-denominated card, hold or can get USDC, and mostly buy things online or in shops that accept Visa. Who it does not: anyone who needs a published FX percentage before they commit, anyone who lives outside Colombia and needs certainty about whether they can be issued the card, and anyone whose main worry is where their money actually sits — the card’s terms say VIIO “does not receive or manage user money” and “does not collect public funds”, but they do not say who custodies the balance.

Two of the three strongest marks are about the things this card does well. Cost and everyday use both score 8, and for once that is not flattery: there is a real, tangible reason to like a card that costs nothing to hold and works at a Visa ATM in another country. The weak marks are about trust and reach. Eligibility gets 5 because the country list is not published, and reliability gets 6 because I could not name the bank that stands behind the Visa programme.

Will they give you the card?

Short answer: probably yes if you are in Colombia and can prove it; I cannot tell you for any other country, because the card does not say.

The card’s terms govern the agreement by Colombian law, and the product is aimed at Colombia. The card page says merchants are in “200+ countries” — read that carefully, because it is a statement about where the card *spends*, not about who can *hold* it. That distinction trips up a lot of people reading crypto card pages for the first time, and it is worth sitting with before you apply anywhere: a card that works in 200 countries and can be issued in one is a very different product from a global card.

The eligibility country list is not stated in the card terms. So the honest answer to “is VIIO card available in my country” is: the card does not publish the answer. What you can watch instead is the help centre, which signposts a Colombian bank and PSE top-up as the funding route, and hosts a question about a passport held without a Colombian ID. I did not read the answer to that one, so I will not guess at it — but the fact that it exists in the help centre tells you the case of a foreign passport is something the company is actively handling, not something it ignores.

So the practical test is this: if you are a Colombian resident with a Colombian document and a Colombian bank account or PSE access, this card is built for you and you will probably get it. If you are elsewhere, you are applying into an unpublished list, and I would not build a plan around a card that will not tell me whether I qualify.

How to get it

The path is short, and the interesting number on it is not the form — it is the balance you need before the card exists.

• The age and identity part. The card terms have you confirm you are of legal age, supply the information requested, update it at least yearly, and consent to credit bureau checks. The document list is not stated, so I cannot tell you whether a national ID, a passport, a proof of address or all three.
• The virtual card. Free, once your account is topped up with at least 3 USD.
• The physical card. Needs at least 50 USD in the balance.
• Activation. The card arrives deactivated and you activate it in the app.

Notice the shape of those thresholds. They are not credit checks — they are balance gates. You do not need an approval decision to get spending power here; you need money in the account first. That is what a prepaid card is, and it has a real upside for anyone who has been turned away by a bank: there is no credit file standing in the way of the card itself, only the identification the law requires. There is also a real limit, and it is the same one every prepaid card has: the card spends only what you have put in, so it cannot help you bridge a gap.

The KYC levels themselves are not stated — there is no published tier table telling you what balance or documents unlock what limit. On top of that the delivery question is open: the physical card’s delivery countries, delivery time and delivery cost are not stated either. If you are outside Colombia and your plan depends on a physical card arriving in the post, that is a question to ask in the help centre before you fund anything, not after.

Two more card-level facts worth knowing now. The virtual card carries a dynamic CVV, which means its security code changes — good for the card, awkward if you are the sort of person who writes security codes on a note. And the replacement schedule is asymmetric in a way that tells you what the company thinks of each product: a replacement physical card is $5 USD, reissuing a virtual card is $0, and either is free if the card is defective or a disputed charge is resolved in your favour. The physical card is treated as the fragile one.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is where this card looks its best, and where it hides the most.

Every monthly and issuance figure I can quote is zero or currently exempt. What is missing is the conversion rate, and that is the number a dollar card lives or dies on.

Run three everyday payments through that table and you will see the shape of the problem.

A coffee in pesos, Bogotá. You hold a dollar balance and the shop charges in pesos. “Pay in any currency, VIIO handles the conversion” is a promise of convenience, not a promise of rate. The card terms say “The Card currently does not charge any fee.” Taken literally that is excellent news. Taken alongside the page that says purchases “Depend on the VISA type and exchange rate”, it is not a number. What I would do: make one small test purchase, see what the app shows as the rate and the fee line, and only then decide whether the cost of the conversion is one you accept on every future purchase. The disclosure you are missing is exactly the disclosure that matters most here.

A subscription in euros, paid from dollars. Same arithmetic, larger number. The card converts, the rate is not published, and the amount is one you agreed to months ago. For a recurring charge this is where an unstated percentage quietly becomes a standing cost — not a one-off. If a euro subscription is a meaningful part of your spending, this is the case to test before you rely on it.

A withdrawal at a Visa ATM abroad. “Withdraw local cash at any VISA ATM worldwide” is a genuinely good line. The fee “Depend on the ATM operator”; VIIO’s own fee is not listed and there is no stated free allowance. So the honest version is: the ATM owner may charge you, and I cannot tell you what, if anything, VIIO adds on top, or how much you can take out before a fee applies. Withdrawal is possible in COP, USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP and MXN. The limit on your balance is the limit on the cash.

One more thing that is easy to misread: your credit is capped at the value of the digital assets in your account. That is not a lending product, and there is no plan where a good month on the crypto market means a bigger credit line. It also means that if you hold nothing, the card spends nothing — which is the whole design, and for most people the right design.

How to Top up

Three routes, one of them genuinely open to you if you are outside Colombia.

• PSE, in Colombian pesos. No cost, currently exempt. This is the local rail and it is the cheapest-looking way in.
• Bank transfer, in Colombian pesos. No VIIO cost, but the bank may charge you.
• Crypto. USDC and USDT balances, received by wallet address or QR code.

The crypto route is the one that gets headlines, and it is the one with the most silence in it. The networks are not read out in the card’s public pages — that is, I could not confirm which chains to send on — and the crypto top-up fee is not stated. Those two gaps are the same gap twice, and it is a gap with teeth.

Blockchain transfers are irreversible. If you send on a network the card provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, the funds can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. So the single most useful thing you can do before topping up with crypto is to copy the address or scan the QR *from inside the app*, not from an email, not from a search result, not from a message. Then send a small test amount before sending the rest. This is not a trick to get around anything — it is just how irreversible transfers work, and every wallet provider in the world says the same.

A small piece of stablecoin background, because “send USDC” hides a choice. USDC is a dollar-pegged token and USDT is another; between them they account for about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation as of the BIS’s July 2025 read. Circle says USDC is redeemable 1:1 for USD and fully backed by cash and cash equivalents, mostly in an SEC-registered government money market fund, with monthly reserve attestations. Circle listed USDC as natively supported on 38 networks as of 16 September 2026, including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon PoS, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Stellar. USDT has been issued on networks including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon and Avalanche. Two things follow. First, if your USDC sits on Tron, note that Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. Second, and more important for this page: stablecoins can depeg. TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022; USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. The name is a promise about value, not a guarantee of it.

Also worth knowing before you convert, because it applies to every crypto card and not just this one: on-chain network fees for your deposit are charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider. And a token held on one chain cannot necessarily pay fees on that chain — ERC-20 gas is paid only in ETH, so a wallet with USDT and no ETH cannot send. That is a real and common way for a first transfer to fail.

The withdrawal side is the mirror image, and here the numbers are good: withdrawal is “No cost (currently exempt)” for COP, USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP and MXN, and a transfer to a crypto wallet costs only the network fee, with VIIO charging none. What is not addressed is your balance if you close the account. If closing is ever on your horizon, ask what happens to the money first — that page is blank.

Paying with it every day

A virtual card for the wallet and the internet, a physical contactless card for the real world, Visa at both.

That is the whole everyday-use story, and it is a good one. The virtual card has a dynamic CVV, so it is the card you put into a phone or a laptop and the one that is cheapest to replace. The physical card is contactless. The balance is a “Digital USD balance” — a dollar balance, not a crypto balance, once the money is in. And the virtual card links to Apple Pay, so the number you would otherwise type into a checkout lives in your phone instead.

What is not stated is worth listing, because each missing item is a small thing you will find out at the wrong moment. Google Pay is not disclosed. Blocked merchant categories are not stated — and merchant category codes are how issuers block things: MCC 7995 covers gambling, casinos, betting and lotteries, and many issuers block it by policy rather than by law, with the blocked list varying by issuer. So I cannot tell you whether this card will let you pay at a betting site, and you should not assume either way. Rewards are not stated. The KYC level that would raise your limits is not stated.

Two of those are not small. Blocked categories is the one that decides whether the card is a spending tool or a spending tool with a hole in it, and the honest answer is that I do not know. Apple Pay is a genuine plus in a market where phone payments are normal; the mechanism is sound, with the card number replaced by a device-specific account number stored in the Secure Element rather than on Apple’s servers, and a one-time dynamic code per payment.

App quality is where the mark of 8 turns into a caveat. The iOS app — Colombian App Store — is rated 4.0 out of 5 from 12 ratings, read on 21 October 2026. Twelve ratings is a very small number, which means the score can change quickly with just a few new reviews. The Google Play rating was not readable because the page truncated. Where you have a choice, judge this card partly on whether you can install and fund the app without friction, because with a prepaid card the app is not a convenience — it is the only place the balance, the freeze button and the disputes live.

That last one matters more than it sounds. Disputes. A reversal request — fraud, an unauthorised purchase, non-delivery, defective goods — must be filed within five business days of you becoming aware of the problem, and it is handled under Article 51 of the Colombian Consumer Protection Statute. Five business days is short. If you see something wrong on a statement and mean to deal with it next week, you have already used two days. Note the jurisdiction in that sentence too: your consumer protection is Colombian, so if you are elsewhere, you are relying on a Colombian framework, not your home country’s.

What can go wrong

Let me separate the things that are ordinary risks of this category from the things that are specifically VIIO.

Nobody is named as the issuer. The company behind the card is Persimon S.A.S., trading as VIIO Colombia, and the footer says it “does not provide or offer regulated financial services”; the terms say VIIO “does not collect public funds”. The issuing bank is not named on the pages I read. Press coverage in La Republica in January 2025 reported a launch of a USDC dollar card in Colombia with Visa and Dock. When you cannot name the bank that stands behind the Visa programme, you cannot fully answer a question like “who has my money and what happens if they fail”, and for a prepaid balance that is the central question. Ask it in writing and see what you get back.

There is no track record to look at, in either direction. I found no official incidents and no reviews — no Trustpilot page, nothing on Reddit in the complaints search. That is not a clean bill of health; it is an absence of evidence, and for a young Colombian product it mostly means the card is too new to have a public reputation. What I can tell you is that the disclosure detail you would want from a review site does not exist here, so your own test transactions matter more than usual.

The crypto top-up is the sharpest edge. Networks not disclosed, crypto top-up fee not named, and irreversible transfers underneath both. I covered the mechanics above and I will not repeat them, but the summary is: copy the address from inside the app, test with a small amount, and assume a wrong-network send is gone.

The card can be frozen, and that cuts both ways. Dynamic CVV on the virtual card, freeze or cancel instantly in the app, instant alerts, and the PIN blocks after three wrong entries. Those are the right controls. They also mean a card that is genuinely yours can be genuinely unusable at a moment when you need it — locked out three PIN entries deep on a card you can only replace for $5 USD if it is the physical one.

Prepaid cards are not bank deposits. This is the general point that applies to nearly every card in this category, so I will state it once and plainly. Electronic money institutions must safeguard customer funds by segregating them in dedicated accounts or insuring them, but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by deposit guarantee schemes. Balance your confidence accordingly.

Programmes do close. Visa does not issue crypto cards to consumers; it licenses issuers and can suspend a programme. 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 crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. How a closure usually runs: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. With this card, your balance is dollar-denominated rather than token-denominated, which makes a withdrawal request easier to honour than a request to unwind a crypto position — but it does not make the closure any less real.

Your money is where the keys are. Control of crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key. With a custodial wallet the provider holds it and you must trust them completely; a seed phrase is typically 12 to 24 words in plain text, and anyone who has it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Transfers are typically irreversible and a stolen key has no recovery path. Custodial platforms have a real history here — Mt. Gox, about $350 million reported stolen in 2011–2014; Coincheck, about $400 million in 2018; Ronin Network, $625 million in 2022. I could not determine from the pages I read whether the VIIO balance is custodial. The terms say VIIO “does not receive or manage user money,” which suggests the balance is not held as customer crypto, but the card does not spell out the arrangement, and that is a fair question to put to support.

Some merchants will not want it. A card number starts with an issuer identification number of 6 or 8 digits that identifies the issuing institution, and merchants can look it up — including the issuing country. A Colombian-issued prepaid Visa may look “foreign” to a shop in another country, and some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs for that reason. Address Verification Service, 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 at checkout for no obvious reason. A declined authorisation can also leave a hold on your money for several days, typically up to 7.

Support is thin and in two time zones at most. Email at [email protected] and a help centre at intercom.help/viio_help/en. The help centre says Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, with the time zone not stated. Pages exist in Spanish and English. If you are outside Colombian hours, an email written at midday for you is an email waiting until the next business day — which, combined with the five-business-day dispute window, is a real constraint on a card I would otherwise call straightforward.

Taxes are yours to work out. 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. For personal holdings that result is a capital gain or loss, short-term if held a year or less, measured in local fiat currency at the fair market value on the date of the transaction. Each card payment funded from crypto can therefore be a separate disposal. This is not advice — it is a flag that the tax treatment of your own situation is something to check with a professional in your own country, not something a card review can settle.

What to take instead

Three cards, scored the same way, so the comparison is honest rather than flattering to the one I am reviewing.

International Visa Card is the closest comparison and it beats VIIO by a hair on my scale. Its big advantage is exactly VIIO’s weak point: the foreign currency fee is written down — “Visa exchange rate + 2% FX fee”. You can price a purchase before you make it. Its trade-off is geography and, mostly, plastic: it is a U.S.-issued Platinum Visa, virtual, with the physical card marked “Coming soon”, and the account is not available to residents or legal registrants of a long list including Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, with FATF grey-list countries reviewed case by case. Purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Note the rule is by residence or registration, not citizenship. You deposit USDC or USDT into the USD account free at 1:1, and there are also USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow deposits. No cashback is stated.

UNi Card is a multicurrency Mastercard spending from the UNi.Global account balance. Its pitch is the absence of surprises: “No annual fee or foreign transaction fee”, conversion at “live OTC (Over-the-Counter) rates”, “No hidden exchange fees”, and spend-to-earn rewards up to 3%. The gaps are on the other side of the sheet — who can get it is not stated, the top-up routes are not stated, and whether it is physical or virtual is not stated. In a straight comparison, UNi says less about its access than VIIO does, and says more about its fees.

Morse scores highest at 7.5. It is a Visa prepaid debit that is fully virtual for now and spends from the Morse balance in any currency. Its fee claim is the strongest in the group — “Zero foreign exchange fees or markups” at the real-time Visa rate, with conversions at the real exchange rate “with no markup”, and paying online or contactless free. The Morse Wallet is self-custodial, which answers the custody question VIIO leaves open. Funding is broad: debit card, stablecoin transfer, and account details in USD, EUR, MXN and COP (BRL needs a Brazilian CPF); USDC, USDG and EURC via Solana are free, other tokens and blockchains carry a fee; Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum and others can be deposited. Rewards are not stated on the card pages.

What holds Morse back is reach. Eligibility is by residence, not citizenship — at least 18 and resident in a supported country, with the app in “over 140 countries” and local add/withdraw in over 70. It cannot serve customers subject to US sanctions (also UK, EU, UN). And a set of countries are closed-beta behind an invite code: American Samoa, Australia, Cape Verde, Guernsey, Hong Kong SAR China, Isle of Man, Japan, Jersey, New Zealand, Serbia, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Türkiye, United Kingdom and Western Sahara. The card is available only in certain countries, the app is the check, and the list is not published on the card page.

So the choice is roughly this. You want the FX percentage printed before you commit: International Visa Card. You want fees described in plain language and are comfortable with a longer list of unknowns: UNi Card. You want the strongest combination of fees and self-custody and can live with virtual-only: Morse. You want a dollar card, Colombian rails, and a physical contactless card today: VIIO — with the disclosure gaps priced in.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend VIIO to a Colombian resident who wants to hold and spend dollars, who can reach USDC or USDT, and who buys things online or pays contactless in shops. For that person it is a good card at an unusually low price: free virtual card, free monthly, physical currently exempt, free withdrawals in seven currencies, Visa ATMs worldwide, Apple Pay on the virtual card, and a freeze button that works instantly. The five marks out of ten that this card does not get are not about the product being bad; they are about the product telling you so little.

I would not recommend it, without a conversation with support first, to anyone who needs the conversion percentage before they spend, to anyone who cannot answer “will I be issued this card where I live” from the card’s own pages, or to anyone whose priority is knowing exactly who holds their balance and what happens if that company has a bad year. Those are not disqualifications — they are questions the public pages leave open, and the answers may well be fine. But you should not fund a card on the assumption that a blank field means a good answer.

Two practical pieces of advice, in order. Before you top up with crypto, find out which networks are supported — copy the address from the app, send a small test, then send the rest. Before your first meaningful purchase, make one small payment in a currency other than dollars and read the rate and fee the app shows you. Between those two tests you will learn more about VIIO’s real cost than any review, including this one.

Frequently asked questions

What is the VIIO card?

VIIO is a Visa card that spends a balance you hold in dollars. You top the balance with Colombian pesos through PSE or a bank transfer, or with USDC or USDT, and the card draws down that stored balance. It is closer to a prepaid card than to a bank account: a Visa credit card number, a digital dollar balance, and no credit line. The company behind it is Persimon S.A.S., trading as VIIO Colombia, and the contract is governed by Colombian law.

How does the VIIO card work?

It works like a prepaid Visa. You load dollars, and each payment takes money out of that balance, so the card cannot overdraw. You can hold a virtual card with a dynamic CVV for online payments and a physical contactless card, and the virtual one links to Apple Pay. Withdrawals are possible in COP, USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP and MXN at Visa ATMs worldwide. Your credit is capped at the value of the digital assets in your account.

Is VIIO a bank?

No, and its own materials say so plainly. The footer states that it “does not provide or offer regulated financial services” and the terms say VIIO “does not collect public funds”. The issuing bank is not named on the pages I was able to read, which is why I would ask support directly who stands behind the Visa programme before you hold a large balance. A USD balance here is not a bank deposit.

Who owns VIIO?

The card is operated by Persimon S.A.S., branded as Persimon (VIIO), in Colombia. La Republica reported a launch in January 2025 of a USDC dollar card in Colombia with Visa and Dock. Reports of Venezuela and Portugal additions were not confirmed on the pages I read. Because the issuer is unnamed, the safest way to think about ownership is: you know who runs the app, but not yet who underwrites the card.

Is the VIIO card available in my country?

That is the question the card does not answer. The eligibility country list is not stated in the terms; the contract is Colombian law, the product is aimed at Colombia, and the help centre points at a Colombian bank, PSE top-ups and a passport-without-Colombian-ID question. The “200+ countries” line refers to where merchants are, not who can be issued the card. If you are not a Colombian resident, treat your eligibility as unknown rather than likely.

How much does the VIIO card cost?

Less than almost anything comparable: virtual issuance free, reissue $0, monthly $0. The physical card is “No cost (currently exempt)” though the page also lists $5 USD if your balance is under $50, and a replacement physical card is $5, free if defective or a disputed charge is resolved in your favour. The catch is the conversion fee, which is not itemised — purchases “Depend on the VISA type and exchange rate”.

How do I top up the VIIO card?

Three ways. PSE in Colombian pesos, currently exempt of cost; bank transfer in pesos, with no VIIO cost but your bank may charge; or crypto, with USDC and USDT balances received by wallet address or QR. The crypto top-up fee is not stated and the supported networks are not disclosed, so copy the address from inside the app and test with a small amount first — blockchain transfers are irreversible.

Is the VIIO card safe to use?

The security controls are real: dynamic CVV on the virtual card, instant freeze and cancel in the app, instant alerts, and the PIN blocking after three wrong entries. What I could not establish is the custodial arrangement — the terms say VIIO “does not receive or manage user money” without spelling out how the balance is held. I also found no independent reviews, so your own small test payments are worth more here than they would be for a card with a public track record.

Is the VIIO card free?

Almost. There is no monthly fee and the virtual card costs nothing, and the card terms say “The Card currently does not charge any fee”. Two caveats to carry: ATM withdrawals depend on the ATM operator’s fee with no free allowance stated, and physical issuance is currently exempt but the card’s own pages warn that fees may be reinstated. “Currently” is doing real work in both sentences.

How do I delete my VIIO account or get my money out?

Withdrawals are “No cost (currently exempt)” in COP, USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP and MXN, and a transfer to a crypto wallet costs only the network fee with none charged by VIIO. On closing the account, though, the card’s public pages are silent about what happens to a remaining balance — that is one of the questions I would put to [email protected] before closing anything, alongside which networks are supported and who the issuing bank is.

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