What the Brighty card really does, and where it falls short

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Brighty promises something ordinary bank cards rarely offer: a European IBAN that lives in the same app as your crypto, and a card that spends from that balance without a trip to a bank branch. If you are an EEA resident who has struggled to open a regular account, that combination is genuinely useful. If you are looking for a mainstream banking relationship, it is not that — and the complaints suggest the gap between the two can be painful.

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

The verdict: a 5.6 out of 10, with the score broken down

Brighty scores 5.6 out of 10. That is not a failing grade; it is a card that does some things well and leaves other things unsaid. The audience it genuinely serves is EEA residents who want a crypto IBAN and a virtual card and who can live with a provider that will not always explain itself. The audience it does not serve is anyone who needs a named issuing bank, a physical card in the post, or a support line that picks up.

The number that should give you pause is the fourth one. Reliability is not a feature you can shop around at the end; it is the thing you discover on the day your payment fails. Brighty’s Trustpilot score of 3.2 out of 5 across 78 reviews is not catastrophic, but the recurring theme — accounts closed without a clear explanation — is exactly the failure mode that makes a card useless to someone who depends on it.

Who gets the card

Brighty’s own card page is labelled “EEA only”. The app has since expanded to Montenegro and Andorra, though the page adds that availability “may vary by jurisdiction”. So the short answer is: eligibility is decided by where you live, not by where you happen to be standing when you open the app.

There is also a nationality rule layered on top of the residence rule, and it is worth reading closely. The page states: “Due to regulatory restrictions, we are unable to onboard Russian nationals residing in Montenegro and Andorra.” That is a specific carve-out for a specific nationality in a specific pair of countries — not a blanket exclusion of Russian citizens across the EEA.

A full country list is not stated on the public pages. Third-party card comparison sites describe 36 listed countries including the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova, but this is unofficial and not confirmed by Brighty. Treat it as a rough map, not as an answer. If your country is not obviously inside the EEA, write to [email protected] before you upload anything.

The reason country rules matter so much here is structural, not bureaucratic fussiness. A card number begins with an identification prefix of six or eight digits that tells the merchant which institution and which country issued it. Merchants look that up, and when the issuer country does not match the billing address they may apply extra scrutiny or decline the payment outright. A card issued in one country looks “foreign” in another. If you are a resident of a place where your address will look foreign to the shop, that friction is part of what you are buying.

How to get it

Verification runs inside the app at sign-up; a help article names Sumsub as the identity provider. The verification levels themselves are not defined, and the processing time is not stated. If in-app verification stalls, the fallback is email to [email protected].

What you will need to hand over is more concrete:

• Proof of identity: a clear photo, your 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 showing your address.

The stated reasons for rejection are worth reading before you submit, because most of them are avoidable in one pass. Documents may be ambiguous, unclear, contradictory or incomplete. Your address may not match the address you signed up with. Documents may be too old or damaged. Blank fields count as a problem, including the signature line.

On the card itself: the card page shows a virtual card, payable wherever Visa is accepted. A help article references three things — a physical Visa, a virtual Visa without a PIN, and a virtual Mastercard. The fees article describes the card as a virtual Mastercard. The card currency is not stated. Delivery is not stated either: the issuance article says you can choose Virtual Card or Physical Card in the app, but publishes no countries, timing or cost, and no replacement price. Third-party sources report that physical Mastercard orders are currently unavailable and that the help centre says they “will not be fulfilled” — unofficial, not confirmed by the card, and it comes with no published timeframe for when that might change.

One more unofficial detail, useful only as background: reports list the Mastercard as issued by UAB Monavate, with balances in EUR, USD, GBP, AED and crypto in USDC, EURC, BTC, ETH, ADA, XTZ, TON and SOL. Brighty’s own pages do not name the issuing partner, which is the point I return to in the risks section.

Fees and what a payment actually costs

Virtual card issue costs EUR 2.99 on all plans, and the monthly card service fee is free, as is a balance inquiry. You can issue up to 10 cards per month. Three plans exist — One, Plus and Pro — and they differ in limits and in how much free currency exchange you get, more than in headline price.

Subscription prices for the plans and any metal card are not stated on the tier page. Third-party sites put One at no cost, Plus at EUR 9 per month and Pro at EUR 18 per month — unofficial, and those same sites quote card limits of EUR 15,000 / 25,000 / 50,000, which contradicts the EUR 50,000 / 75,000 / 100,000 in Brighty’s own table. Where a number disagrees, believe Brighty’s table and check with support, because the third-party figures appear stale.

Now three everyday payments, with the fees that actually attach.

Buying something in euros, in a euro shop. This is the quiet case and it is the cheapest one. If your balance is already in euros, there is no conversion and no FX allowance consumed. You are paying from a stored balance.

Buying something in dollars while your balance is in euros. Here the free monthly allowance comes into play: One has none at all, so you pay 0.6% straight away; Plus gives you EUR 2,000 a month before the 0.5% rate starts; Pro gives EUR 5,000 before 0.4%. Separately, the fee for paying in a foreign currency — the scheme’s own conversion markup — is not stated. That is a real gap. You know the in-app exchange rate; you do not know what the card network adds on top.

Withdrawing cash at an ATM. The card page claims acceptance at ATMs worldwide. The fee and the allowance are not stated. If a physical Visa does arrive, it must be used at an ATM with a new PIN after a PIN change in order to activate. Unofficial legacy Visa rates, offered here as an illustration rather than a promise: Plus at EUR 3.50 in the EEA and EUR 3.50 plus 3.5% outside; Pro at EUR 3 in the EEA and EUR 3 plus 3% outside. There is no dependable current ATM feature listed for the Mastercard at all, so if cash is part of your plan, ask before you rely on it.

Two things that can cost you money without any fee being charged are worth naming. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven. And on-chain network fees — the gas or bandwidth a blockchain charges — are set by the network, not by Brighty, so they are outside anything the card controls.

How to Top up Brighty

Top-up happens in two currencies, and the two halves have very different pricing. Incoming crypto is free on all plans with no monthly limit. Incoming fiat is not free: SEPA costs 0.3% with a minimum of EUR 10, Faster Payments 0.3% with a minimum of EUR 10, and SWIFT 0.7% with a minimum of EUR 50. Incoming fiat is capped at EUR 100,000 per month.

The card side mentions Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC held in the app, with an IBAN fiat account alongside. Networks are not stated on that page. The withdrawal side does list outgoing crypto networks: Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, Cardano, Tezos, Islamic Coin, TON, Arbitrum, Solana, Polygon and BEP20.

So a typical top-up starts as a transfer to the right network. Getting the network wrong is the expensive mistake available to you here. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee of recovery. Note also that stablecoins are not censorship-proof — Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity — and that not every coin travels on every network. Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option despite Tron appearing in the outgoing list.

Outgoing crypto fees are the same on all plans with no monthly limit: EUR 3 for ERC20, EUR 3 for TRC20, EUR 20 for BTC, EUR 1 for ADA, EUR 1 for XTZ, EUR 1 for HAQQ, EUR 3 for TON, EUR 3 for ARB, EUR 3 for Solana, EUR 3 for Polygon and EUR 3 for BEP20. If you mostly move stablecoins on cheap networks and rarely touch Bitcoin, those numbers are reasonable. If you withdraw BTC often, EUR 20 per withdrawal will shape your habits.

The card top-up fee and minimum top-up are not stated.

Then there is the account-closure question, which nobody likes to think about but everybody should locate early. On a closure you initiate yourself, the account is “scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days”. What happens to the balance in those 30 days is not stated. Plan an exit route before you need one.

Paying with it day to day

Apple Pay and Google Pay are both mentioned for the Montenegro and Andorra expansion. The practical position, as of a help article dated 26 May 2026, is that Apple Pay is currently unavailable for Mastercard cards because of technical updates and is available for Visa, while Google Pay works for Mastercard. So the wallet you probably want most depends on which network your card runs on — and blocked categories are not stated anywhere I could read.

The app itself sits at 4.9 from 9 ratings on the App Store under a Turkish storefront, a very small sample. The Google Play rating was not found. A 4.9 from nine people is not evidence of anything.

On rewards, the card page says only “Keep earning on your crypto while using it” — no rate, no payout mechanism, and cashback is not described. Unofficial sources describe 0.5% base cashback in USDC on all tiers, 1.25% to 1.75% in selected categories, monthly caps of 20 / 60 / 100 USDC on One / Plus / Pro, paid the following month to a Reward Box. None of that is confirmed by Brighty’s pages, and the reward currency is a USDC balance rather than money in your pocket, so it moves with the coin.

If you pay with crypto, you should know when the tax point falls. Digital assets are generally treated as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local fiat currency at the fair market value on the transaction date. Every card payment funded from crypto can therefore be a separate disposal. That is a general principle of how these assets are taxed in many places, not a statement about your circumstances — check your own position with a professional.

Disputes are the other gap. The help centre has articles on refunds for unsupported crypto deposits and on wrong-network deposits. No card dispute or chargeback article was found. That matters because a chargeback — a refund ordered by the issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes for fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received — is the normal route to recovering money when a purchase goes wrong. Without a described process, you are relying on goodwill. And note that US debit card reversal rights and prepaid-card coverage differ, and prepaid coverage should not be assumed.

What can go wrong

Start with the complaints, because they are the most concrete thing here. Trustpilot shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews on the Belgian-Dutch page, read on 20 October 2026; review dates were not visible. The recurring themes are accounts closed without explanation — the company cites policy and regulation — a referral bonus not paid, where the company cites suspected referral abuse, and instant transfers taking hours. Some reviewers praise the cashback. No card-specific complaints and nothing on Reddit was found.

Read those themes next to the official position on offboarding. Stated reasons for ending a relationship officially include suspected fraud, an unclear source of funds, partner-provider concerns, and PEP or sanctions status. Those are legitimate grounds. What the reviews describe is the experience of not knowing which one applied to you. Both things can be true: the policy is sound and the communication is poor. For a person whose entire financial life runs through one app, poor communication is an expensive flaw.

Then the structural risk, which is not a complaint at all. Brighty states plainly: “Brighty is a financial technology company, not a bank.” Accounts, cards, custody and the on- and off-ramp are delivered through unnamed licensed partners, and no licence numbers appear on the pages I read. A fintech sitting on top of licensed partners is a normal structure — a crypto card often depends on two licences, since a card is regulated as a payment service under e-money and payment-services law while the crypto side falls under markets-in-crypto-assets rules. But unnamed partners make a real difference when something goes wrong. You cannot escalate to a body when you do not know who holds your funds. Unofficial 2024 press coverage puts Brighty in Switzerland with crypto-exchange and digital-asset custodian licences; that is not confirmed on official pages.

On custody, this is not a self-custody card. Brighty holds the funds. The FAQ says user funds are kept “in segregated accounts that are specially secured”, for both fiat and crypto, and the company says it works with penetration testers. No insurance is mentioned and two-factor authentication was not mentioned on the page I read. Segregated accounts are a real safeguard — e-money institutions are required to safeguard customer funds this way — but they are not the same as bank deposits and may not sit under a deposit guarantee scheme. Custody carries counterparty and hack risk with a documented history: Mt. Gox, Coincheck and the Ronin Network all represent losses in the hundreds of millions. If you would rather the funds stayed in your own wallet until the moment of payment, this is the wrong card.

On Apple Pay, note the direction of travel. In November 2022 Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX and the FTX US debit card was wound down; WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes. Programme closures follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. So keep enough liquidity to leave.

A smaller set of things that can simply fail:

• A declined authorisation can hold your funds for several days, typically up to seven.
• Merchants may decline prepaid or foreign BINs because the lookup reveals card type and issuer country.
• Address Verification Service is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines.
• 3-D Secure shifts liability for fraudulent online payments in ways that critics say can land on the cardholder.
• Google Play users have no visible rating to check.

Support is thinner than the app. Email at [email protected] and a help centre at help.brighty.app; no phone, no live chat and no hours are listed in the FAQ. The help-centre language selector offers English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Spanish — no Russian. Staff languages are not stated.

Finally, in December 2024 Brighty raised USD 10M, per Tech.eu. Money raised is not the same as money earned, and it tells you about runway rather than about service quality.

What to take instead

Four alternatives came up in the comparison, and none of them is a clean substitute — they fail in different directions. Scores are on the same ten-point scale.

RedotPay, at 6.9, is the strongest of the four on paper. It publishes a KYC list and a separate card-issuance list, and the two disagree in ways that will cost you time if you read only one: the KYC list names 41 places including Croatia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Ukraine, while the card list dated 28 August 2026 adds India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Singapore and Turkey with “Residents of these areas are ineligible for both virtual and physical cards”, and cannot be used as billing addresses. Its costs are heavier: 10.00 USD for a virtual card application, 100.00 USD for a physical one, non-refundable once paid. In exchange you get both card types, a 1.00% transaction fee with a 1.20% non-default-currency fee, and a 12.90 USD monthly Pro tier.

Wirex, at 6.7, is the most flexible in shape: a virtual card for online use and a physical card for terminals and ATMs, one of each at a time, with spending able to draw on cash, stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. It publishes fees for the UK, EEA, APAC, Singapore, Australia and “Other”, and card issuance is free in those regions. Rewards are the strongest in the group — Cryptoback in WXT from 0.5% at Standard to up to 8% at Elite — though ATM withdrawals, crypto purchases, gambling and refunds are excluded.

Bitpanda, at 6.5, is the most conventional and the most constrained. It requires a verified account and residence in a euro-area country, offers a physical Visa debit card in EUR only with one active card at a time, and charges EUR 5.90 to reissue. It spends from a chosen main asset — crypto, precious metals or EUR — converted at the moment of payment, with a minimum payment of EUR 1. It is the least adventurous of the four and, for someone who simply wants a regulated exchange with a card attached, possibly the least frustrating.

None of these is a recommendation to switch. The right comparison for you is which failure you can live with: an unnamed issuer, a region-gated fee table, an eligibility list that contradicts itself, or a residency lock to the euro area.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Brighty to someone in the EEA who already holds crypto, wants an IBAN in the same app as the coins, and is comfortable treating the account as a stored balance rather than a bank. The free incoming crypto transfers, the free monthly card servicing, and a EUR 2.99 virtual card are a fair combination for that person.

I would not recommend it to someone who needs the card to work everywhere without friction, who relies on cash, or who plans to lean on Apple Pay with a Mastercard — that combination is currently unavailable. I would be especially cautious if your plan is to hold a meaningful balance there for a long time, because the issuer is not named on the official pages and the closure terms do not say what happens to the money. The Trustpilot pattern of unexplained closures is the single strongest argument against depending on this as your only card.

If you are in a hurry: get the virtual card, keep it as a second or occasional card, put in only what you can afford to have tied up, download what you need for an exit while you still have access, and keep a real bank card as your first line.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Brighty card?

Brighty is a financial technology company — not a bank, as its own materials state — that offers a euro IBAN and a virtual payment card inside one app alongside crypto holdings. You convert or top up a balance, and the card spends from it like a stored-balance card rather than a normal bank debit card. Accounts, cards and custody are delivered through licensed partners whose names do not appear on the public pages.

Is Brighty a bank?

No, and Brighty does not pretend otherwise: “Brighty is a financial technology company, not a bank”. It holds funds in segregated accounts it says are specially secured, and it uses unnamed licensed partners for issuing and on/off-ramp. Unlicensed-by-us press coverage from 2024 describes Swiss crypto-exchange and custody licences. Segregated e-money accounts are protected but are not bank deposits and may not fall under a deposit guarantee scheme.

Which countries can get a Brighty card?

The card page is labelled “EEA only”, with the app expanded to Montenegro and Andorra, though availability “may vary by jurisdiction”. The rule runs on residence, with one nationality carve-out: Russian nationals residing in Montenegro and Andorra cannot be onboarded. A full country list is not stated officially. Third-party sites list 36 countries including Switzerland, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova, which is unofficial and unconfirmed.

Does the Brighty card require KYC?

Yes, verification runs inside the app at sign-up, with Sumsub named as the identity provider. You supply 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 under three months old (screenshots are refused), an official registration confirmation, or a second ID. Rejections usually trace to unclear or incomplete documents, a mismatched address, or blank fields.

How much does the Brighty card cost?

A virtual card costs EUR 2.99 to issue on every plan and the monthly card service is free, as are balance inquiries. Above each plan’s free exchange allowance, in-app currency exchange costs 0.6% on One, 0.5% on Plus and 0.4% on Pro. Outgoing SEPA costs EUR 3 plus 0.3% on One and EUR 0.5 plus 0.3% on Plus and Pro; SWIFT costs 0.9%. ATM fees and limits are not stated.

Can I add the Brighty card to Apple Wallet?

Only if it runs on Visa. A help article dated 26 May 2026 says Apple Pay is currently unavailable for Mastercard cards because of technical updates, and available for Visa; Google Pay works with Mastercard. Since the fees material describes a virtual Mastercard, the wallet most people want is the one that may not work for them. Check which network your card runs on before you plan around tap-to-pay.

How do I top up the Brighty card?

Two ways, priced very differently. Incoming crypto is free on all plans with no monthly limit — Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC among them — while incoming fiat costs 0.3% for SEPA and Faster Payments with a EUR 10 minimum, and 0.7% for SWIFT with a EUR 50 minimum, capped at EUR 100,000 per month. Check the network before sending: transfers are irreversible, and a wrong-network deposit may be unrecoverable.

Is Brighty safe to use?

It depends on what you need. Funds are held by Brighty in custody, not by you in a self-custody wallet, and no insurance or two-factor detail is stated on the page I read. The issuer behind the card is not named officially. Trustpilot shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews, with accounts closed without explanation a recurring theme. Use it as one card among several rather than your only one.

Why was my Brighty account closed, and can I appeal?

The most common complaint theme is closure without explanation. Officially, stated offboarding reasons include suspected fraud, an unclear source of funds, partner-provider concerns, and PEP or sanctions status — legitimate grounds, but not the ones users say they were told. There is no published appeal procedure, no phone line and no live chat, so [email protected] and the help centre at help.brighty.app are the routes available.

Is the Brighty card worth it?

For someone in the EEA who wants a crypto IBAN and a virtual card in one app, the EUR 2.99 issue fee, free monthly servicing and free incoming crypto transfers are a fair deal. You give up a named issuer, a working physical card, reliable Apple Pay on Mastercard, and any published ATM pricing. Treat it as a second card, fund it lightly, and keep a conventional bank card as your primary.

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