A cheap Mastercard that only really works for people living in Peru

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

There is a pattern with crypto cards: the headline says “spend your crypto anywhere”, and the small print quietly names one country where the plastic actually arrives. Tulkit is a clean example of that pattern. The card carries no monthly fee, no annual fee, and no account-opening charge, and the company says its exchange rate is “one of the best on the market”. But Peru is the only country named anywhere in the public material, the physical card ships within Peru only, and the crypto conversion fee — the number that decides whether spending crypto through a card is cheap or expensive — is not disclosed at all.

I went through the card’s own pages and supporting material line by line to work out what is actually promised, what is merely claimed, and what is missing. My score is 5.5 out of 10, and the shape of that number matters more than the number itself: the card is unusually good on the things it does not charge you for, and unusually silent on the things that would make it easy to trust with money you cannot afford to lose track of.

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

Who it is for, and who it is not

Tulkit suits residents of Peru who already move money through Yape or Plin and want a Mastercard that costs nothing to keep. It does not suit anyone who is not in Peru, and it is a poor fit for anyone who plans to live mainly on crypto rather than mainly on soles.

That is the short version, and it is worth being blunt about it before anything else. If you are reading this outside Peru, the practical answer is that there is no Tulkit card for you as things stand. That is not a technicality I have inferred from a footnote; Peru is simply the only country named, and the physical card is described as shipping anywhere in Peru.

Inside Peru the picture is different. The card is free to open, free to keep, and there is no monthly or annual charge. The account can be funded through the payment rails Peruvian people already use. That is a real, coherent product for a real local need: a card that behaves like an ordinary Mastercard without a monthly fee attached, funded from everyday local transfers.

The catch is that “swipe it like an ordinary card” and “spend from crypto” are two different claims, and Tulkit is much more convincing on the first than the second. The crypto conversion fee is not stated. The coins and networks supported are not listed. You can add your own list of things to check before you rely on it, but I want to be clear that some of them are not checkable from public information at all — they are simply gaps, and gaps are what the score is penalising.

The three 7s and the 8 are there because the fundamentals are real: a regulated e-money issuer in Peru, a major card network, free cards, and no complaint history I could find. The 1 on eligibility is brutal and deserved. Average that together and you get a card that is excellent for a narrow group and irrelevant to almost everyone else.

Will they give you the card?

If you are in Peru with valid Peruvian immigration documentation, the card appears to be available to you. If you are anywhere else, the public pages do not say that you can have one.

Peru is the only country named. The physical card ships anywhere in Peru. The wording around who can register mentions foreigners holding a valid Peruvian immigration card — that is a real door, but it is a door into Peru, not a door into other countries. If you are a non-Peruvian citizen living in Peru with the right immigration card, this is the situation the card describes. If you are a Peruvian abroad, or a resident of a country that is simply not Peru, nothing in the public material suggests you are in scope.

For anyone who is in scope, the answer is pleasantly undemanding. Registration is described as taking minutes, with no paperwork and no credit check, and the process takes under two minutes. Identity verification is described as taking a few photos. A credit check being absent is worth noting on its own terms: the card does not appear to be lending you anything, so there is no borrowing decision to be refused.

What the card does not tell you is just as relevant to your application. The document list is not stated. Proof of address is not stated. The minimum age is not stated. Verification levels are not stated — so if you have been burned by a platform that quietly asked for far more than expected, you cannot pre-check that here. That is not proof that a demanding document list exists; it is proof that you would be finding out during onboarding rather than before.

My advice, if you fall inside the eligible group: have your identity document and your Peruvian immigration card to hand, and expect a short process rather than a long one. My advice if you fall outside it: do not spend an evening filling in an application that the public pages give you no reason to expect to succeed.

How to get it

Getting the card is straightforward — a virtual Mastercard appears immediately, and the physical one is ordered in-app and delivered free inside Peru.

The card is a Mastercard, and it comes in two forms. The virtual version is issued instantly, which means you can put it to use or add it to a wallet before any plastic arrives. The physical version comes in 12 designs. Both are described as free to request.

That pairing — instant virtual, physical on request — is the standard shape for this category, and Tulkit executes it without adding a charge. What is missing is timing and the bad-luck case. How long delivery takes within Peru is not stated. What a replacement card costs if you lose it, or whether a replacement is even offered, is not stated. Those are the two questions I would ask in the app before I relied on the physical card for anything time-sensitive.

One further constraint shapes everything you do with the card afterwards: the prepaid cards settle only in soles. You can pay in soles, dollars or crypto according to the page, but the settlement currency is the sol. That is a normal design for a locally issued prepaid card, and it is also the single most important structural fact for a non-Peruvian reader, because it means the card is tied into the local currency in a way that no amount of crypto flexibility changes.

Fees: what it really costs

There is no monthly fee, no annual fee and no charge for opening the account or requesting either card. What Tulkit does not publish is the crypto conversion fee — the number that would tell you what a crypto-funded purchase actually costs.

The cost picture is genuinely good where it is published. The card’s own wording is blunt: “Sin costo mensual, ni anualidad” — no monthly cost, no annual fee. Opening an account and requesting the physical and virtual card are both free. Sending and receiving soles via Yape, Plin and banks is free. That is a lot of “free” for a financial product, and it is the reason the cost score is an 8 rather than something lower.

The exchange rate is claimed to be “one of the best on the market”. I have no figure to test that against, so I can neither confirm nor contradict it. What is genuinely missing is the fee charged when crypto is converted, and the fee charged on foreign-currency use. Both are not stated. In a product whose whole pitch is spending crypto, an undisclosed conversion fee is not a minor omission — it is the number that decides whether the card is a tool or an expensive way to spend money.

A detailed fee schedule does exist: it is in the “Tarifario Tulkit Card” PDF. That is where you should look before you commit, and it is a fair thing to point out that a published tariff sheet exists at all. The gap is that the marketing-facing pages do not surface those numbers where a prospective user would meet them.

Now let me walk through three ordinary payments, because that is where the fee structure either works for you or does not.

Paying for a taxi with a QR code. This is the case the card is clearly built around, and it is the case where the published numbers help you most. QR payments are capped at S/5,150 per day, which is a real number you can plan around. Transfers in soles via Yape, Plin and banks are free. If you set a card limit in the app you can hold the daily exposure to whatever you are comfortable with. This is the smooth path.

Paying for goods online from abroad on a card funded with crypto. Here the picture changes. The crypto conversion fee is not disclosed, the foreign-exchange fee is not disclosed, and the exchange rate is a boast without a number. The card settles in soles, so a dollar-denominated purchase goes through a conversion somewhere in the chain, and you cannot tell from public information who takes a spread or how much. I am not saying this payment is expensive. I am saying you cannot find out before you make it, which is a different problem and, in my view, the more serious one.

Withdrawing cash at a machine. This is not stated at all. No fee, no daily limit, no indication of whether the card works at Peruvian cash machines in the first place. Cash machines are also the place where foreign-issued and prepaid cards most often run into friction, and where a declined authorisation can leave a hold on the balance for several days. Treat this as unknown rather than as free.

How to Top up the card

Topping up is 24/7 through Yape, Plin, a bank transfer or crypto — but the coins and networks are not published, and that matters more than it sounds.

Four routes, all of them either Peruvian or crypto. Yape and Plin are the two mobile payment systems that dominate daily life in Peru, so for a local user this is not a limitation but a feature: the money arrives the same way the rest of your money arrives. Bank transfer is there for larger sums. Crypto is there for people who hold it.

Soles deposits through Yape, Plin and bank transfer are free of charge. What is not stated: any deposit fee, any minimum, and any network fees. Network fees matter more in this product than in most, and the reason is structural. On-chain network costs are charged by the blockchain, not by the card company — so when you send USDT over a network, the network takes its cut and the card provider takes whatever it takes. Neither number is published here.

That leads to the sharpest practical warning in this review. Blockchain transfers are irreversible. If you send on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, the funds can be lost, or need manual support recovery with no guarantee of success. And you cannot check the supported list, because it is not published. So the honest position is this: the crypto top-up route is offered, but choosing it safely requires information the public pages do not give you. Ask support for the supported coins and networks in writing before your first transfer, and treat any answer you get as a snapshot rather than a guarantee.

One detail does work in your favour. Crypto on the account stays available for withdrawal at any time, and transfers are described as instant, with no fees stated. So the flow is not one-way: you can load crypto, spend some of it, and pull the rest back out. What happens to a remaining balance if you close the account is not stated, and that is the question I would put at the top of the list.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, this is a Mastercard that behaves normally — spend in soles, dollars or crypto — with up to 2% back in Bitcoin on each purchase.

The everyday mechanics are simple. The card is a Mastercard, virtual and physical, prepaid, spending from the balance you have loaded. Because it is prepaid, it works like a stored-value card rather than a debit card linked to a bank account: you fill it, and when the balance is gone the card stops. It cannot overdraw, which is a genuine comfort if your income is irregular — you can never be into the balance, because there is no balance beyond what you put there.

The reward is the interesting hook. Up to 2% back in Bitcoin on each purchase. Read the “up to”: the further conditions are not stated, so I would treat the maximum as an advertising ceiling rather than an expected return, and I would not build any plan around it.

The app is Tulkit Pay, on iOS and Android. I did not check store ratings, so I am not going to pretend to know whether people like it. What the app is stated to do is more useful than its rating anyway: set card limits, lock and unlock the card, freeze it, and report account theft through a form. Limits you control in-app are the feature I would use most, because they turn an open-ended balance into a bounded one.

Two things you will look for immediately and that the public pages do not answer: whether you can add the card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and where it works in practice. Neither is stated. On the second point, the general rule is worth knowing even where the card’s own answers are silent. Merchants can look up the issuing country from the card number, and some apply extra scrutiny when it differs from the billing address — which is why a card issued in one country can look foreign in another. And a merchant category code, the four-digit code that classifies a business, exists to let issuers block whole categories by policy: gambling, for example, is commonly blocked on specific cards, and the list varies by issuer. So “where can I use it” has a longer answer than the map of Peru.

What can go wrong

The realistic risks here are not dramatic fraud headlines — they are missing information, a company structure with a name you should be able to look up, and the standard ways prepaid cards fail anywhere.

Let me start with the good news, because it is genuinely good and I found nothing to contradict it. I found no official incident involving the card, and no third-party complaints either. Absence of complaints is not proof of quality — a young product generates fewer complaints than an old one, and a product few people have used generates few of anything — but nothing here is actively alarming.

The company structure is where you should look closely, and it is more reassuring than it might sound. Tulkit Pay S.A.C. handles the fiat and crypto conversion. The e-money itself is issued by GMoney S.A., which the material describes as authorised and regulated by the SBS, the Peruvian supervisor. No licence number is given. That last detail is the one to chase: an e-money issuer naming its regulator is good, and an e-money issuer naming its licence number is better, because a number is something you can verify independently rather than take on trust. I would ask for it.

On security, the claims are these: “bank-level security”, encryption, and 90% of assets held offline. The card is custodial, which means the provider holds the credentials — so this is a trust position, not a self-custody one. That has a known shape of risk. Crypto platforms holding customer assets have failed before at scale: 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. The point is not that Tulkit is any of those. It is that holding funds with a custodian carries counterparty and hack risk, and the mitigations named here are mostly about cards rather than about the crypto side.

Within the app you can lock and unlock the card, freeze it, set limits, and report theft. Whether customer funds are safeguarded — segregated in dedicated accounts or insured, which is what e-money institutions are generally required to do — is not stated, and that is a question worth asking, because safeguarded funds are not the same as bank deposits.

Support is email: [email protected] for Tulkit Pay, [email protected] for GMoney. There is a complaints book, “Consultas y Reclamos”. There is no phone line, the WhatsApp link is a placeholder, and hours are not stated. A complaints book is a formal, regulated mechanism and it counts in your favour; the placeholder is a small blemish.

Finally, a risk that belongs to this whole category rather than to Tulkit. Card programmes close. When they do, the sequence is usually a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw what is left. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022 and the US debit card was wound down by its issuer; WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended in Europe in 2018, closing every programme it had issued. In both cases the network had the power to end the arrangement. A network does not run your money; the issuer does — but the network holds the licence, and that is a structural fact about every card in this article.

What to take instead

If Tulkit’s geography rules you out, the realistic alternatives are a virtual Visa card with published fees, a multicurrency Mastercard account with no FX fee, or a self-custody-linked virtual card — each with a different trade-off.

I looked at three, and I want to be honest about what I could and could not compare, because the comparison is uneven. Tulkit’s strengths are its zero fees and its Peruvian fit; the alternatives are stronger on disclosure and geography, which is exactly the trade you are making. Their scores on the same scale: Morse 7.5, the international Visa card 6.7, UNi Card 6.1.

The international Visa card is the most transparent of the three, and transparency is worth a lot. Its exclusions are published — residents and legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam are excluded, FATF grey-list countries are reviewed case by case, and purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Note that the rule is by residence or registration, not citizenship. It pays in USD, costs $5 for the virtual card with no maintenance fee, and is explicit about the foreign-exchange cost: Visa’s exchange rate plus a 2% FX fee. It is also, for now, a card that does not exist in plastic — the physical version is listed as “coming soon”.

UNi Card is the one whose fee claims are cleanest: no annual fee, no foreign transaction fee, conversion at live OTC rates, and “no hidden exchange fees”. It sits on the Mastercard network and spends from a multicurrency account. Up to 3% with Spend-to-Earn. But two of the things I would check before choosing it are not stated at all: who is eligible, and how you fund the account.

Morse has the strongest privacy posture of the three. It is by residence rather than citizenship, requires you to be at least 18 and a resident in a supported country, and the wallet is self-custodial — your funds are in your own wallet, not on someone’s balance sheet. Card payments online and contactless are free, and FX fees are zero. Two catches: the card is fully virtual, and its fees are genuinely not published — the card page points you to a Cardholder Agreement. It also runs an invite-only closed beta in a long list of countries including Australia, Hong Kong SAR China, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and others.

My honest read: if you are in Peru, Tulkit’s zero-cost local card is hard to beat on its own terms, and none of these three replicates Yape and Plin funding. If you are not in Peru, Tulkit is not an option and you are choosing between these on other grounds — disclosure, custody, and geography.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Tulkit to someone living in Peru who pays for most things by QR, has no use for a credit check, and wants a Mastercard with no monthly fee attached to it.

That reader gets a lot for nothing. No monthly fee, no annual fee, free virtual and physical cards in 12 designs, free soles transfers through the two payment apps they already use, free card issuance, a virtual card in hand immediately, and up to 2% back in Bitcoin on purchases. If your money moves through Yape, this card fits into your life without asking it to be a crypto product at all.

I would not recommend it to three groups. If you are outside Peru, it simply is not addressed to you. If you are holding most of your wealth in crypto and want the card to be the main interface to it, the undisclosed conversion fee makes that a decision you cannot make responsibly from public information. And if you are the kind of user who needs a published fee schedule, a support phone line, or a licence number, this card will frustrate you — not because anything is wrong, but because those things are not published.

One last point, because it applies to everyone reading this in the general run of crypto cards. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves. They license issuers, and they can suspend a programme — as Visa did with FTX in November 2022. So the name on the card is not the institution standing behind it. Here that means Tulkit Pay S.A.C. and GMoney S.A., with the SBS named as regulator and no licence number given. Check that number before you put meaningful money in. And a final word on the tax side, offered as a pointer rather than as advice: in the US the IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local currency at the value on the transaction date. If a card payment is funded from crypto, each payment can be its own disposal. Your own jurisdiction may treat it differently; I am not in a position to tell you how yours does.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tulkit card?

Tulkit is a prepaid Mastercard that lives inside the Tulkit Pay app, issued in Peru. The account and both the virtual and physical cards are free, with no monthly or annual charge, and Tulkit Pay S.A.C. handles the fiat and crypto conversion while GMoney S.A. issues the e-money under SBS supervision. It is built for Peruvian use: the physical card ships within Peru and prepaid cards settle only in soles.

Is Tulkit a bank?

Not as far as the public pages describe. It is a card programme from a payment and crypto company, Tulkit Pay S.A.C., with the e-money issued by a separate licensed institution, GMoney S.A., described as authorised and regulated by the SBS in Peru. No licence number is published, which is the detail I would ask for. The card is a payment product, not a deposit account, and nothing suggests deposit-guarantee protection.

Who can get the Tulkit card?

Peru is the only country named, and the physical card is delivered anywhere within Peru. The wording on registration mentions foreigners who hold a valid Peruvian immigration card, so the door is open to non-Peruvian citizens living in Peru with the right documentation — not to people in other countries. A credit check is not required, registration is described as taking under two minutes, and no paperwork.

Does the Tulkit card require KYC?

Yes, in a light form. Identity verification is described as taking a few photos, with no paperwork and no credit check. What the public pages do not publish is the document list, whether proof of address is required, the minimum age, or what verification levels exist. So you would learn the exact requirements during onboarding rather than before, which is worth knowing if you have been caught out by that before.

How do I top up the Tulkit card?

Four ways, available 24/7: Yape, Plin, a bank transfer, or crypto. Soles deposits through Yape, Plin and bank transfer are free of charge. The catch is that the coins and networks are not listed, and network fees are charged by the blockchain rather than the card provider. Transfers are irreversible, so get the supported networks in writing before your first crypto deposit.

How much does the Tulkit card cost?

The card itself costs nothing: no monthly fee, no annual fee, and the account, virtual card and physical card are all free to open and request. Soles transfers via Yape, Plin and banks are free too. What is not published is the fee charged to convert crypto and any foreign-exchange fee, which is the number that would actually tell you what spending crypto through the card costs.

Can I use the Tulkit card in Apple Pay or Google Pay?

The public pages do not say, and I would not assume either way. What is stated is that a virtual Mastercard is issued instantly, that the app works on iOS and Android, and that you can lock, unlock and freeze the card and set limits inside it. Apple Pay and Google Pay support are not disclosed, and cash machine withdrawals are not addressed either, so treat those as unknown until you see them in the app.

Is the Tulkit card safe to use?

Reasonable, with caveats. It uses Mastercard and 3-D Secure-style online protection, the app lets you freeze the card and set spending limits, and the material claims bank-level security, encryption, and 90% of assets held offline. I found no official incident and no third-party complaints. The caveats: the e-money issuer names no licence number, safeguarding of customer funds is not stated, and 90% held offline means a custodian risk on the remainder.

What happens to my crypto if I withdraw it?

Crypto stays available for withdrawal at any time, and the transfers are described as instant, with no fees stated. That means the flow works in both directions — load, spend, pull the rest out. What the pages do not say is what happens to a leftover balance if you close the account, which is the question I would put to support before closing anything.

How do I delete my Tulkit account?

The public pages as reviewed do not set out a deletion process, so I am not going to invent steps. What is documented is the email route — [email protected] for Tulkit Pay and [email protected] for GMoney — plus GMoney’s formal complaints book, “Consultas y Reclamos”. There is no phone line, the WhatsApp link is a placeholder, and support hours are not stated.

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