A crypto card that has already switched off: reading the 1inch wind-down notice and picking what comes next

Updated October 2026

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Available in US

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If you landed here searching for the 1inch card, the most important thing is not a fee table or a rewards rate. It is that the 1inch Card programme is being discontinued. New sign-ups are closed, and anyone still holding a balance is advised to move it out as soon as reasonably possible, with 18 December 2026 named as the furthest foreseeable date. That single fact reorders everything else you might be looking for. The question is no longer “is this card good value?” but “what do I do with the money sitting in it, and what do I use instead?”

I want to be straight with you about what this page can and cannot tell you. The 1inch public notice is short, and it is written for people who already have an account rather than people shopping for a card. It states almost nothing about fees, limits, eligibility or rewards — most of those details are simply not stated on the pages I could read. Where that is the case I say so once and then stop guessing, because a made-up number is worse than an honest gap. A handful of figures in circulation come from third-party sites rather than from 1inch or its issuers; I mark those as unofficial every time, and they are not confirmed by the card.

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

What is 1inch Card, and what happened to it

The 1inch Card launched on 8 April 2024 as a physical and virtual card issued through Crypto Life and running “powered exclusively by the Mastercard network” — that wording is from the launch blog post, which was last updated 8 May 2026. The card was designed to spend straight from a 1inch Wallet, converting crypto to fiat at the moment of payment. That is the short version of what it was. Now comes the short version of what happened to it: a discontinuation notice, new sign-ups closed, and a recommendation to move balances out, with the stated furthest foreseeable date of 18 December 2026. The notice carries no date of its own on the page.

If you are imagining applying for the first time, stop here. There is no application to make. The programme is closed to new customers, and the notice does not carry a country list for eligibility — that detail is not stated, so I cannot tell you which markets were served. Unofficially, third-party listings put the card in the EEA and the UK, and not in the US (per spendnode.io, August 2026). Treat that as a description of what existed rather than a rule you could rely on today.

The corporate chain is worth understanding, because it decides who you talk to when money is stuck. The balance sits in an e-wallet issued by Monavate — Monavate Ltd in the UK, UAB Monavate in the EU — which is described as an authorised e-money institution. The card provider is Crypto Life: Frozen Time UNIPESSOAL LDA in the EU, or Baanx Group Ltd in the UK. Identity checks were handled by Crypto Life, with the requirements themselves not stated.

KYC itself, unofficially, was required, with a basic tier carrying lower limits (per spendnode.io, August 2026). The tier structure, the currencies the card dealt in, the delivery terms and the app store ratings are all not stated — and for currencies there is a structural reason, not just an omission: the programme is closed, so there is no current list to publish.

What was the product like? Cards that people liked: a physical and a virtual card, plus unofficial reports of Apple Pay and Google Pay support (per spendnode.io, August 2026). A 500 USD daily ATM limit is also unofficial and unconfirmed. That is the appeal. What people disliked, and what the score below weighs hardest: it is over.

The score, in the open

My overall mark for 1inch Card is 4.4 out of 10. That is not a verdict on a bad product — the day-to-day design scored very well. It is a verdict on a product you can no longer sign up for, and on how much trust a holder has to place in a wind-down.

Two things I would not want a reader to miss. First, the 0 for eligibility is not a criticism of how 1inch screened anyone — it is an arithmetic consequence of the closure. Second, the 9 for everyday use is real, and it is the reason this card generates search traffic years after it closed: people are still finding the wallet, still holding the balance, and still trying to spend it. Both groups are served by this page, in that order.

If you already have the card

This is the section that matters most if you are reading while holding money in the account, so I will not bury it in caveats.

The notice advises users to withdraw or spend the balance as soon as reasonably possible, by signing in to the card account. The stated furthest foreseeable date is 18 December 2026. That date is set by the issuer and provider, not guaranteed — treat it as a deadline to work back from, not a promise that funds will be reachable until that evening. In practice: do not plan to need this balance in January.

Three structural facts shape what you can do:

• Your balance is not held by 1inch. It sits in an e-wallet issued by Monavate. That matters for two reasons: Monavate is the authorised e-money institution, so the money sits with a licensed entity rather than with a crypto brand; and the issuer’s own card terms, section 16, allow remaining e-wallet funds to be redeemed up to six years after account closure.
• Withdrawal fees are not stated. Anyone budgeting the exit should assume they will find out at the point of withdrawal rather than assume a figure.
• Your practical limits, top-up methods and ATM terms are not stated. Unofficially, spendable assets were 1INCH, ETH, USDT, USDC, BTC, LTC, XRP and BXX (per spendnode.io, August 2026); a daily spending limit of 8,000 USD is also unofficial, with one directory listing giving EUR 8K daily and EUR 5K monthly. The networks those tokens were sent on were never named in any source I could read, and that gap is exactly where mistakes happen.

If support is needed, the routing is clear enough. Card balance, status, KYC, closure and personal-data requests go to Crypto Life support, by email or by the chat inside the card account. If Crypto Life does not respond, you contact 1inch support with the request, the date and the channel you used: 1inch logs the case and escalates it, but cannot action account-level requests itself. Languages and opening hours are not stated. Read that routing carefully — the entity that holds the e-wallet is not the brand you signed up under, and treating them as the same office is how wind-downs turn into weeks of waiting.

What is *not* on the notice matters as much: there is no refund or dispute process described, no refund timetable, no stated route for a failed deposit. If you have a transaction in dispute, the notice gives you nothing to lean on. The card account, web and in-account chat were where the card was managed.

What can go wrong

The obvious risk is the closure itself, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than softened: this programme is ending, and the timeline is not guaranteed. Beyond that, the complaints picture is worth reading carefully, because it separates the platform from the card.

On Trustpilot, 1inch overall showed 3.6 out of 5 from 547 reviews when I read it on 2026-10-20, with only 6 reviews in the last 12 months, 79% five-star and 5% one-star; the company replies to 16% of negative reviews. (An earlier aggregator figure of 4.2/5 from 543 reviews appears in circulation — Trustpilot itself shows 3.6, so use the lower, direct figure.) Those are 1inch-wide numbers, not card-specific.

Card-specific user reports cluster in a narrower and more worrying place: money arriving on-chain and not landing in the account. One report describes a USDC deposit to the “1inch crypto card” confirmed on-chain but not credited on 1 October 2026; another a card transfer that never arrived on 30 September 2026; another USDC uncredited for more than 20 hours with the answer “under review” on 1 September 2026; a withdrawal pending 30+ days in February 2026; and slow, generic support responses in June 2025, October 2025 and June 2026. No card-specific official complaint record was found. I read this cluster as the core practical hazard of the wind-down: your money sits in a system with a support queue that is about to lose a counterparty’s staff, and the failure mode is the deposit that vanishes.

Two of those deserve a word of context. On custody: the launch blog says users “keep control … while still retaining custody”, which is ambiguous phrasing that cuts both ways, and the balance genuinely lives at Monavate. On screening: Tether’s own policy is that it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and freezes funds tied to illicit activity, so stablecoins are not censorship-proof. That is a property of the asset, not of this card.

The six-year redemption window under the issuer’s terms section 16 is the reassurance, and it is also the caution: a redemption right measured in years is a fallback, not a plan.

Crypto cards in general: how this works

Because the card is gone, the more useful thing I can do is explain the machinery, so you can read the alternatives below with your eyes open.

How a crypto card actually operates. A card number begins with an issuer identification number — a BIN or IIN of 6 or 8 digits — that says which institution issued it; the rest is an account identifier plus a check digit. Merchants can look that prefix up and see the issuer and issuing country, and may apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. This is the single most underrated reason a card gets declined abroad. In the pre-loaded balance model common to crypto cards, you first convert or top up a balance and the card spends only that, so it cannot overdraw — unlike a debit card, which asks a bank to withdraw from a linked account at the moment of purchase. Behind every one of these cards sit at least three parties: the network (Visa or Mastercard) routes messages and sets the rules, the issuer is a bank or licensed e-money institution holding the programme, and the crypto brand is often just a programme manager or front end that markets it. Neither Visa nor Mastercard issues crypto cards to consumers; they license issuers and can suspend a programme — Visa said in November 2022 that it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX” as the FTX US debit card was wound down.

Custody. Control of crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key or seed phrase. With a custodial wallet the provider holds the credentials and you must trust them completely; a seed phrase — typically 12 to 24 words in an unencrypted form of the key — lets anyone who obtains it restore the wallet and spend the funds, and blockchain transfers are typically irreversible with no built-in recovery. Custodial platforms have a real record: Mt. Gox (about US$350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (about US$400 million, 2018) and Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022). A self-custody-linked card keeps funds in your own wallet until the moment of payment, but leaves you carrying the full weight of key loss, phishing, and clipboard-hijacking malware that swaps copied addresses.

Identity checks. KYC is required by anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism-financing law, and it is not a form you fill once: it includes ongoing transaction monitoring and suspicious-activity reporting. In the EU, due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documents, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether you are a politically exposed person. If due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to refrain from the transaction and, where necessary, end the relationship — which is why accounts close or freeze pending documents. In the US the customer identification programme requires name, date of birth, address and an identification number. Nationality is screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening is often applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as country of address. Prepaid and debit cards are generally for adults 18+, some issuers with higher limits.

Regulation. MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, took legal effect in June 2023; its asset-referenced token and e-money token (stablecoin) rules applied from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider rules, from 30 December 2024. Under Article 48, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. The transitional period lets providers already operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first — a date worth holding in mind when you read any crypto card’s licensing. ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised providers, white papers and non-compliant entities. A CASP authorised in one member state can serve the EU. Note the two-licence structure: a card is a payment service regulated under e-money and payment-services law, while MiCA covers the crypto side, so a crypto card commonly rests on two separate licences. EMIs must safeguard customer funds in dedicated accounts or by insurance — such funds are not bank deposits and may not sit under a deposit guarantee scheme.

Stablecoins and networks. A stablecoin aims to hold a stable value against a fiat currency, but “despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable”. Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC are dollar-pegged, and the BIS put about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation in these two as of July 2025. Circle says USDC is redeemable 1:1 for USD and 100% backed by cash and cash equivalents, mostly in an SEC-registered government money market fund, with monthly reserve attestations by a Big Four firm, and lists USDC as natively supported on 38 networks as of 16 September 2026, including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon PoS, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Stellar. Tether’s USDT is built on multiple blockchains with reserves intended to back it 1:1, and has been issued on networks including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon and Avalanche. Depegs are not hypothetical: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023. Two network mechanics catch people out constantly. ERC-20 is the Ethereum token standard (proposed November 2015) and gas is paid only in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT with no ETH cannot send. Tron’s pricing uses bandwidth and energy, often burning TRX. And Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. Transfers are irreversible: a deposit sent on an unsupported network, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. Finally, the network fee for your deposit is charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider — a distinction that decides nothing about the card’s pricing and everything about your cost on a given chain.

Payments, and why cards get declined. A merchant category code is a four-digit number classifying a business, specified in ISO 18245 and assigned when a merchant starts accepting cards; MCC 7995 covers gambling, and many issuers block it on specific cards by policy rather than by law, with the blocked list varying by issuer. 3-D Secure adds an identity check to online payments — Visa’s brand is Visa Secure, Mastercard’s is Identity Check, and EMV 3-D Secure 2 (published 2016) supports one-time passcodes and app-based authentication aligned with EU strong customer authentication. Address Verification Service compares the numeric parts of the typed billing address with issuer records; it is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs precisely because the lookup reveals the card type and issuer country. In mobile wallets, Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific Device Account Number stored in the Secure Element, never on Apple’s servers, and each payment uses a one-time dynamic security code — while the issuer can restrict a tokenised number, for example blocking it on magnetic-stripe, phone or website use. Finally, a declined authorisation may leave a hold on funds for several days, typically up to 7.

Safety and closures. Typical safeguards are app-based 2FA, instant card freeze, spending limits, 3-D Secure confirmation and tokenised mobile wallets. Closures follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. A chargeback is a refund ordered by the issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received; US debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. And under 3-D Secure, liability for fraudulent online payments can shift from merchant to the cardholder’s bank — or, per critics, to the cardholder.

Tax. 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 or investment holdings this is a capital gain or loss, short-term if held one year or less, measured in local fiat currency at fair market value on the transaction date — which means each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. I am not offering tax advice; I am flagging that a card’s convenience does not soften this.

What to take instead

These are the live programmes I would look at, from the angle of someone who held a 1inch card and now has to place money somewhere else. Scores here are from the same scale as the card above.

MetaMask — 7.1 / 10. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories, with examples including Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay; other regions join a waitlist, and the pages say ineligible regions limit sign-ups rather than spending. Proof of residency is required, and a citizenship rule is not stated. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ — a reminder that eligibility moves. The card is Mastercard; a virtual card is issued instantly and a Metal card can be pre-ordered in the app after Virtual approval, one card per user, with issuer Monavate and card provider Crypto Life — the same names that appear in the 1inch chain above. Virtual is free with no annual or maintenance fee; Metal is $199/year. Fees are described as a “minimal fee for each transaction” with the amount not stated on the pages read, a linked fee table, “no additional MetaMask fees”, and no foreign transaction fee since the Mastercard rate is used. It spends directly from the connected wallet over Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT named (the page says nine tokens), and Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual, and on Metal a 3% headline limited by a footnote to the first $10,000 spent and 1% after that; there is also a $FLY bonus at 5X for Virtual and 7X for Metal via the Blackbird dining app.

KAST — 6.1 / 10. Eligibility is residence-based and shown at KYC: if your country is not listed, KAST is not available there. The country list itself is not published, a Restricted Locations list is referenced with no countries named, and citizenship or ID matter independently — living in a supported country while holding an ID from a restricted region may still make you ineligible, dual citizens with an ID from a supported country may pass, only the account holder’s own ID is accepted, and a VPN does not bypass it. An account can be created in an unsupported country with KYC still locked. Cards run to ten per user: Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium) and Visa Infinite gold plated (Private), plus Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin designs, with the balance in USD and stablecoin deposits converted 1:1 at 0% spread. Membership is 0 USD for Standard, 1,000 USD/year for Premium and 10,000 USD/year for Private, billed annually upfront with no monthly option; an extra virtual card is 2 USD (“in some regions” also 2 USD on included Standard virtual cards), a Standard physical card carries 0 USD card fee plus 40 USD delivery while Premium and Private physical cards are included, and there is a 1 USD/month inactivity fee after 12 months with renewal and reactivation fees whose amounts are not stated. On fees: stablecoin top-up 0%, card spend in USD 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple and Google Pay 0%, non-USD FX 0.5%–1.75% depending on your residence country, transaction country and card programme, non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD, and a declined transaction for insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD. Funding is USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD, with USDT/USDC on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and Tron as listed in the app; no bank account is needed, and the terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”, which conflicts with the PYUSD and RLUSD listing — check the app, not the marketing. Spending comes from your own balance and each purchase is deducted straight away; this is not credit. Cashback is in USD: 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD/month at Standard, 2% on the first 10,000 USD/month at Premium, 3% on the first 40,000 USD/month at Private, with KAST Points adding none, +1% or +2% of eligible spend, paid in USD when a transaction is authorised.

Zeal — 6.1 / 10. Spending is said to work in 150+ countries, though issuance “depends on eligibility and regional availability”, and the Gnosis Pay documentation has the card programme live in the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, with Zeal update notes also mentioning Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia. It is a Visa card with a virtual card for online use that can be added to Apple Pay, and accounts in EUR, USD and GBP via Gnosis Pay; a physical card is not stated. Costs are not stated — there is no fee schedule published on zeal.app or the App Store. Zeal charges no additional FX fee and converts at the Visa wholesale rate, though Gnosis Pay fees such as ATM may still apply. It spends from balances in the card Safe (EUR/USD/GBP stablecoin accounts, chains Gnosis Chain and Celo per the docs), with the exact coins not stated for Zeal. Cashback is up to 4% paid in GNO on Gnosis Chain, with GNO required to be held in the card Safe to qualify and rates subject to change; the App Store also advertises up to 5% variable APY on EUR/USD balances.

Two patterns jump out of that table, and they are the practical conclusions of this review. First, the two highest-rated alternatives are not new institutions — MetaMask runs through the same issuer and card provider pair as 1inch did, which tells you the closure was a programme decision, not a competence verdict on the plumbing. Second, every live option has at least one number the issuer has not published, whether that is a transaction fee amount or an FX spread. The category’s structural secret is that the fee you care about is usually the one described in a table linked from a page rather than on the page itself. Go and read that table before you fund anything.

Who I would recommend it to

To nobody, for a new sign-up — that is the plain answer, and it is not a close call. The programme is closed. Any comparison that treats the 1inch card as a live option is comparing against a closed door.

To existing holders, my advice is narrower and more urgent. Read the notice’s instruction as a deadline rather than a suggestion: move the balance out, or spend it, as soon as reasonably possible, and work back from 18 December 2026 rather than forward from whenever you get around to it. Route your request to Crypto Life first, by email or the chat in the card account, because they hold the account and the e-wallet relationship; escalate to 1inch only if that goes nowhere, and expect them to log rather than fix. If you have a deposit you sent but cannot see, raise it now rather than in November, and include the transaction hash and date. And read section 16 of the issuer’s card terms, since the six-year redemption window after account closure is the floor under your money, not the plan for it.

What I would *not* tell you: that the e-wallet at an authorised e-money institution is a bank deposit (it is not, and deposit guarantee schemes do not cover it), that official-looking fee figures floating around online are confirmed (they are not), or that any crypto card payment is outside the tax system because it feels like spending (in the US it is a disposal of property). And I would not pretend the deposits-not-credited complaints are settled — they are the reason I would want a holder’s money out early.

If you are starting fresh and your problem is that an ordinary bank card is hard to get, read this page as a map of the machinery rather than a recommendation: understand custody, understand which licence covers which part, and understand that a pre-loaded balance cannot overdraw. Then pick a programme that is open to you, from the list above, and check the fee table they link rather than the headline.

Frequently asked questions

What was the 1inch card?

It was a Mastercard payment card, physical and virtual, issued through Crypto Life and launched on 8 April 2024, designed to spend from a 1inch Wallet with crypto converted to fiat at the moment of payment. The launch blog says the card runs “powered exclusively by the Mastercard network”; that post was updated on 8 May 2026. The programme is now being discontinued, so the card exists only for existing holders.

Can I still apply for the 1inch card?

No. New sign-ups are closed — the notice states the 1inch Card programme is being discontinued. There is no application to make, and no waiting list to join. The notice also carries no country list, so which markets the card had served is not stated on the pages I could read; third-party listings put it in the EEA and UK, not the US.

Is the 1inch card safe, and who holds my money?

Your balance is not held by 1inch. It sits in an e-wallet issued by Monavate — Monavate Ltd in the UK, UAB Monavate in the EU — described as an authorised e-money institution. Card provider and account handling sit with Crypto Life. E-money institution funds must be safeguarded in dedicated accounts or insured, but they are not bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme.

What should I do if I still have a balance?

Withdraw or spend it as soon as reasonably possible by signing in to the card account, and work back from the stated furthest foreseeable date of 18 December 2026. Send balance, status, KYC and closure requests to Crypto Life support by email or the in-account chat. If they do not respond, contact 1inch support with the request, date and channel — they log and escalate but cannot action account-level requests.

Is the 1inch card free, and what were its fees?

Unofficially, per spendnode.io in August 2026: annual fee 0 USD, FX 0%, a 1.75% crypto conversion fee on every transaction, and a 2% ATM fee with a 500 USD daily ATM limit. Another aggregator reports a 2% card spend fee alongside the 1.75% conversion fee. None of this is confirmed by the card’s own pages — the fee information is not stated there.

Does the 1inch card need KYC, and can I use it in my country?

KYC was handled by Crypto Life and the requirements are not stated. Unofficially, KYC was required with a basic tier carrying lower limits, and the card was reported as available in the EEA and UK but not the US. Since the programme is closed, country availability now matters only for existing holders; anyone reading third-party lists should treat them as description, not entitlement.

Can I use a crypto card without KYC?

No, and you should be wary of anyone offering otherwise. KYC rules require regulated businesses to verify customers and assess risk under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism-financing law, including ongoing monitoring. In the EU that means name, address, date of birth, nationality, ID documents, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship and PEP screening. If due diligence cannot be completed, the institution must refrain from the transaction and may end the relationship.

Why is a crypto card sometimes declined at a store?

A merchant can look up the first six or eight digits of your card number and see the issuer and the issuing country, and may apply extra scrutiny when that country differs from your billing address. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards on that basis. A declined authorisation can also leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven, so check your balance before assuming the money left.

What can I use instead of the 1inch card?

The live programmes worth reading are MetaMask (7.1/10; Mastercard, virtual free and Metal $199/year, spending from the connected wallet, sign-up open in 45 listed countries and territories), KAST (6.1/10; Visa, up to ten cards, membership from 0 USD to 10,000 USD/year, USD cashback from 1.5% to 3%) and Zeal (6.1/10; Visa virtual card, up to 4% cashback in GNO, no additional FX fee). All three leave at least one fee unstated publicly.

Is 1inch a bank, and does closing the card affect my 1inch account?

No, 1inch is not a bank; the card balance sat with an e-money institution, Monavate. The closure is a card programme event, so your wider 1inch wallet and its trading features are a separate question from your card balance. If you want to close an account, the card notice gives no deletion process and no support hours or languages — those details are not stated, so expect to go through the account provider.

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