A self-custody payment card that spends straight from your wallet

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

MetaMask has long been the wallet most crypto users already have open in a tab. The MetaMask Card takes that self-custody model and extends it to everyday payments: a Mastercard that draws directly on tokens sitting in your own wallet, converts them at the point of sale, and leaves you without a pre-loaded fiat balance to top up or forget about. That single design choice is what makes the card interesting and what creates most of the friction that users report.

I have spent time with the card’s published documentation and the support pages behind it, and I will walk you through what I found: who can actually get one, what it costs in the situations you will use it, how the funding model works in practice, and where the experience breaks down. The MetaMask card is live, and so are the complaints I will get to later in the review.

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

Verdict

The MetaMask card earns 7.1 out of 10 in my assessment. That score reflects a card that does something genuinely different from most crypto cards on the market, does it cheaply, but ships with rough edges around the card programme itself rather than the wallet behind it.

The audience this card was built for is the self-custody wallet user in Europe or Latin America who already keeps assets in MetaMask and wants to spend them without first selling into a bank account. If that is you, the design is elegant. If you live in the United States or the United Kingdom, you cannot currently sign up at all. If you are outside the 45 listed countries, you are on a waitlist with no published timeline.

Who will they give you the card

The card’s terms of service talk about a list of eligible countries, and that list is the first filter you run into. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories, drawn mostly from Europe, Latin America and a handful of additional jurisdictions. Other regions can join a waitlist rather than being rejected outright. The full official list, as published, is: Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guatemala, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Uruguay. Russia, Belarus and Turkey are not on the list.

A few finer points matter. The card programme uses the country where you live, not where you hold citizenship, and the card provider states this explicitly: ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending. The citizenship rule itself is not stated on the public pages, which is the kind of gap you should expect when a programme spans that many jurisdictions.

The United States and the United Kingdom are a special case. Their sign-ups are temporarily closed, even though the United States shows up in connection with Metal availability on other parts of the site. The FAQ confirms the temporary closure; the card page does not reconcile the two. If you are in either country, the practical answer today is that you cannot open an account, and the page does not say when that will change.

Proof of residency is required. Citizenship is screened separately from residence because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are often applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as the address you currently live at. The exact documents, the KYC levels and the reasons for rejection are not stated. The age requirement is also not stated on the public pages, which is unusual for a regulated card product. For prepaid and debit cards in general, availability is typically restricted to adults aged 18 and over, and some issuers set higher limits, but I would not assume that until MetaMask publishes the figure.

What this means for you in practice: if your country is on the list, expect to provide proof of address, an ID and probably a selfie, and expect the process to be handled by Crypto Life, the card provider. If your country is not on the list, signing up puts you on a waitlist rather than rejecting you outright. If you are in the US or UK, the door is shut for now and the public materials give no reopening date.

How to get it

The application runs inside the MetaMask app, and the flow is built around the fact that you already have a wallet.

Identity checks are handled by Crypto Life, the card provider named on the FAQ, and the issuer is Monavate. The two names matter later when something goes wrong, because the support contact, the chargeback process and the licence that ultimately backs the card all run through those two companies rather than MetaMask itself. There is no credit check.

The official documentation only confirms that proof of residency is required, that no credit check runs, and that a verified address is needed if you want a Metal card shipped. The KYC document list, the processing time and the reasons a verification can be rejected are not stated in the public material I read. Unofficial reporting, which I will flag as such throughout, suggests that email, phone and ID are required, that address proof and a selfie are not required, and that KYC approval can be near-instant. Treat that as community-reported rather than confirmed.

What the card flow looks like in practice is: you connect a wallet, you complete KYC, and you receive a virtual Mastercard that activates instantly, with no physical card mailed at sign-up. One card per user. If you want the Metal tier, you can pre-order it inside the app after the virtual card is approved; it ships securely to a verified address. The delivery time, the shipping cost and the replacement cost are not stated. MetaMask Card Support is described as available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for assisted replacement in your region.

Two things to keep in mind before you start. First, the virtual card is the product that gets you spending the same day; the Metal is a premium upgrade, not a prerequisite. Second, if your wallet is on Solana only, you cannot use the card to withdraw credit. The card needs a wallet that can interact with at least one of the supported networks to work as a payment source.

What it really costs

The headline numbers are friendly. The virtual card is free, with no annual fee and no maintenance fee. The Metal card costs $199 a year. There is no foreign transaction fee on top of the Mastercard rate. So far, so simple.

The part that is less simple is the per-transaction fee. The card page describes a “minimal fee for each transaction” and points to a fee table on the support site; the table I read returned no figures. The FAQ adds that the fee is “small” and refers to a “Using” page for details. There is no specific amount published, and unofficial third-party reporting lists monthly, issuance, ATM, FX, top-up and decline fees as free, which contradicts the official “minimal fee” wording. The two cannot both be right, and the official wording is the one that matters.

The cost picture also depends on which tier you pick and what you do with the card. Two products exist:

• Virtual: free, $15,000 a day on the card, $1,000 a day at the ATM, 1% cashback on the first $10,000 of spend, $FLY bonus 5X through Blackbird.
• Metal: $199 a year, $30,000 a day on the card, $5,000 a day at the ATM, 3% cashback on the first $10,000 of spend then 1%, $FLY bonus 7X, plus the option to start a 90-day Club Regular trial.

The ATM section is where the documentation starts to contradict itself. The card page lists ATM limits for both Virtual and Metal tiers. An older FAQ version says ATM withdrawals are available only to US card users and Metal holders. Those two statements cannot both be true at once, and the public pages do not resolve it. The same problem appears in the daily limits: the card page gives $15,000 and $30,000, an older FAQ version cites €8,750 or $10,000 per day, and the two figures do not match.

You can also set your own daily, weekly and monthly limits inside the app, which is the practical way to avoid the contradiction biting you: pick a cap that you are comfortable with and let the published maximums stay theoretical.

The way fees actually show up in everyday use looks like this.

• Coffee in your home country: the merchant charges in the local currency, MetaMask’s “minimal fee” applies, and your cashback lands as mUSD. The exact fee number is not published, so I cannot tell you what percentage of a €4 coffee is fee.
• Dinner abroad in a currency you do not hold: no foreign transaction fee is added on top of the Mastercard rate, and the “minimal fee” still applies. Whether the Mastercard rate is the best available rate is what the card’s own description claims; you have to take that on faith because no benchmark is published.
• ATM withdrawal abroad: free up to $1,200 a month, then unclear. If you cross that line, the published material does not say what you pay next, which is itself a cost you should price in by staying under it.

What this means for you: the published fee schedule is thin and self-contradicting, and the per-transaction number you actually care about is the one that is not published. The most you can do is keep your spend under the free ATM cap, avoid foreign transaction fees by relying on the Mastercard rate, and budget for the “minimal fee” as a small, opaque drag on every purchase.

How to top up the card

The MetaMask card does not work like a prepaid card you top up in advance. It draws directly on the tokens sitting in your connected wallet at the moment you pay. That is the single biggest design decision behind the product, and it is worth understanding before you try to use the card.

Networks supported are Linea, Base, Monad and Solana. Tokens named on the card page are mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT; the page references a set of nine in total. You can manage which token sits at the top of the priority list under Manage in the app, and the card balance display reflects that order.

There is no preloading. You do not “deposit” USDC into the card and then spend it; the wallet delegates spending authority to the card, and each purchase pulls from the wallet on demand. That means there is no minimum top-up, no fiat top-up, and no separate card balance to keep an eye on. The downside is that you need to keep gas in the right network to keep the flow working, and a Solana-only wallet cannot withdraw credit at all.

The funding model is the part that lets MetaMask claim the card is non-custodial: your tokens stay in your own wallet until the moment of payment, and freezing or deactivating the card leaves the funds exactly where they were. The card provider does not hold your crypto, and that is a meaningful difference from a card that asks you to deposit into a programme balance.

In practice, funding looks like this.

• Make sure your wallet has the token you want to spend, on one of the supported networks.
• Make sure the wallet has enough of the network’s native token to pay gas if a transaction has to settle on-chain.
• Connect the wallet to the card inside the MetaMask app, pick a priority token, and start paying.
• If you need to cash out, withdrawals go out as mUSD: Money Account holders receive it in their Monad mUSD vault, others receive it at a priority EVM address on Linea as mUSD. Monad withdrawals have sponsored gas.

A few edge cases are worth flagging. The card page references nine tokens but lists six by name, so the long tail is undocumented. The fee table that should cover network fees, deposit fees and minimum top-ups returned no figures when I checked, so the cost of moving a token into the card’s spending path is not stated. The withdrawal fee is also not stated. And if you send a deposit on a network the card does not support, the transfer can be lost or stuck in support with no recovery guarantee, because blockchain transfers are irreversible.

What this means for you: the card is essentially a spend-permission on your existing wallet rather than a destination you transfer funds into. That is a clean model, but it puts the responsibility for keeping the right token on the right network with enough gas on you. If that sounds like work, it is, and it is the price of staying non-custodial.

Paying with it every day

Once the card is in your wallet and your tokens are in priority order, the everyday experience is the strongest part of the product.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported. The virtual card is available immediately after approval, so you can add it to a mobile wallet and start paying before any plastic arrives. The Metal card is the physical counterpart, with higher limits and a higher cashback rate for the first $10,000 of spend, then a base 1% thereafter. ATM withdrawals work on both tiers, with the limits and the free monthly cap I described earlier.

The rewards structure runs through two tracks. The cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on the Virtual tier, 3% on Metal for the first $10,000 of spend and 1% after that. The $FLY bonus is a separate multiplier (5X on Virtual, 7X on Metal) that runs through the Blackbird dining app, so it kicks in only when you spend at participating restaurants.

A few things the documentation does not cover. The blocked merchant categories are not stated, so I cannot tell you whether the card declines gambling, adult content, or other MCC-coded categories. The app store ratings for the MetaMask app are not stated on the card page or the FAQ. Refunds go through a familiar path: ask the merchant first, escalate to a chargeback through Crypto Life support if that fails, and the money lands in your “Credits” balance. The time frames for any of those steps are not stated.

What this means for you: the everyday mechanics are straightforward if your wallet is set up. Apple Pay and Google Pay work, the limits are generous on Metal, and the cashback is paid in a dollar-denominated token so the value is not exposed to crypto volatility at the point it lands. The downside is that anything unusual, a refund that does not arrive, a blocked merchant, a card frozen for a reason you do not understand, runs into support that is the weakest part of the product, which is where I am going next.

What can go wrong

The most honest section of any card review is the one that talks about what goes wrong, and the MetaMask card has a real story here that I do not want to soften.

The first thing to understand is the company structure. The card provider is Crypto Life. The issuer is Monavate, although the FAQ at one point spells it “Monovate,” which is itself a small warning sign about the documentation. The site footer says “Copyright 2026 Consensys, Inc.” but the FAQ does not say Consensys provides the card, so the relationship between the wallet company and the card programme is a marketing one rather than a direct service one. The issuer’s country of registration and the licences it holds are not stated. An unofficial community source names Monavate Limited as the FCA-regulated entity handling UK complaints, but I would treat that as a useful pointer rather than a confirmed fact.

The second thing is the documentation itself. The FAQ and the card page contradict each other on ATM availability, on daily limits, and on whether US Metal cardholders exist while US sign-ups are closed. When a card product ships with that kind of internal contradiction, the burden of figuring out the truth shifts to you, and the support team that is supposed to absorb that burden is the part users complain about the most.

The recurring complaints I found, drawn from community sources and the card’s own materials, fall into a few clusters.

• Refunds that land in a “Credits” balance inside the app rather than back in your wallet, and that are difficult or slow to move out. The dispute path is the standard one (merchant first, then chargeback through Crypto Life), but the destination balance is one you may not have planned for.
• Support tickets that loop through automated replies, take a long time to resolve, and have no live chat. The card provider’s contact is an email address on the FAQ, and unofficial reporting describes slow, copy-paste responses. MetaMask Card Support is described as 24/7 for assisted replacement in your region, but the rest of the support experience does not match that standard.
• Cards frozen at lifetime-transaction limits until a manual upgrade, accounts closed for inactivity, and a physical card that one App Store reviewer reports arrived more than a month after the promised two-week window. Treat those as user reports rather than confirmed patterns, but they are not isolated.

The security model is the part that does work. The card is non-custodial, so your wallet’s private keys stay with you and the funds stay in your wallet until the moment of payment. You can freeze or replace the card instantly in the MetaMask app, the funds stay in your wallet when the card is frozen or deactivated, and you can set your own daily, weekly and monthly limits. Transaction alerts and activity monitoring are described. Insurance is not stated, which is the usual gap for a product that is not a credit card or a bank account.

What this means for you: the technical design of the card is sound, but the operational layer behind it is the part that gets tested when something unusual happens, and that is the part users describe as the weak link. If you are the kind of person who can resolve a support ticket by email over several days, the card is usable. If a frozen card or a refund stuck in Credits would be a real problem for you, the published materials do not give you much reassurance.

What to take instead

The MetaMask card is not the only self-custody-flavoured option on the market, and a few alternatives are worth weighing if the eligibility map or the support reputation rules this one out.

KAST is a stablecoin card with a residence-based country check that surfaces at KYC, not at sign-up. If your country is not listed, you can still create an account but the card stays locked, which is a different model from MetaMask’s waitlist. KAST issues up to ten cards per user, in three tiers (Standard free, Premium $1,000 a year, Private $10,000 a year) and several designs, including a Pengu and a Bitcoin edition. Cashback runs 1.5% to 3% in USD depending on tier, with extra KAST Points on the paid tiers. The fee structure is fully published, which is a contrast: stablecoin top-up is 0%, card spend in USD is 0%, non-USD FX is 0.5% to 1.75% depending on residence and programme, and there is a $0.50 fee for declined transactions. KAST scores 6.1 out of 10 in my assessment. The headline weakness is the annual fee on the tiers where the rewards are interesting, and the residency check that turns into a hard wall rather than a queue.

Zeal is a Visa card that runs on the Gnosis Pay rails and is live in a smaller set of countries (the EU, the UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand per the Gnosis Pay documentation, with Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia highlighted in Zeal’s own update notes). It supports EUR, USD and GBP accounts and spends from balances in a card Safe. Cashback is paid in GNO on Gnosis Chain and can reach 4%, with an additional variable APY advertised on EUR and USD balances. Zeal charges no additional FX fee and converts at the Visa wholesale rate, with Gnosis Pay’s own fees (such as ATM) potentially still applying. Zeal scores 6.1 out of 10. The published fee schedule is thin, the rewards depend on holding GNO in the card Safe, and the country list is narrower than MetaMask’s.

Rizon is a Visa Platinum card aimed at US and LATAM residents, with a published claim of 122+ supported countries that is harder to verify. The pricing model is “check the app for the price” on issuance, replacement and additional cards, which is not a fee schedule I would sign up to without seeing first. The headline rewards are 2.5% back on eligible purchases plus a points programme, and the deposit and USD card spend are free. Rizon scores 6.7 out of 10, dragged down by the lack of a published fee schedule and a country story that does not quite add up.

The honest comparison is that the MetaMask card’s design is closer in spirit to Zeal’s than to KAST’s or Rizon’s, because both MetaMask and Zeal try to keep the user close to a self-custody wallet, while KAST and Rizon push the user towards a programme balance that the card spends from. The trade-off is that MetaMask’s self-custody model also inherits the operational support burden, which is the part users complain about.

Who I would recommend it to

If you already keep assets in a self-custody wallet, you live in one of the 45 listed countries, and you want a card that spends those assets without first converting them into a bank balance, the MetaMask card is a reasonable fit. The virtual card is free, the per-transaction fee is described as “minimal” without being quantified, and the everyday mechanics through Apple Pay and Google Pay work. You will have to live with the documentation gaps, the contradiction between the FAQ and the card page, and the support experience that the community describes as slow.

If you live in the United States or the United Kingdom, the card is not an option today. The temporary closure has no published reopening date, and an unofficial third-party report names a UK regulated entity (Monavate Limited) that has not been confirmed by the card’s own pages. If you are outside the 45 listed countries, the waitlist has no timeline, and a residency-based card like KAST or a Visa card that publishes its country list more openly might be a faster route to a working product.

If you are uncomfortable with the idea of a per-transaction fee whose amount is not published, or with refunds landing in a “Credits” balance that you have to chase back to your wallet, the published materials do not give you enough to budget around. KAST publishes its fees more clearly, which is a real advantage if you care about a known cost per transaction.

If you are weighing the Metal tier at $199 a year, the maths is straightforward: 3% cashback on the first $10,000 of spend is $300 in the first year, less the $199 fee, and the higher daily limits and the larger ATM ceiling matter only if you actually use them. For everyone else, the free virtual card is the right starting point.

In the end, the MetaMask card is a card for the user who values the design over the documentation. The design is genuinely good. The documentation is genuinely thin. You can be the kind of user that can carry that gap, and if you are, the card will do what it says on the tin. If you cannot, the alternatives are not perfect, but at least a few of them publish their fees.

Frequently asked questions

What is the MetaMask card?

The MetaMask card is a Mastercard that spends tokens directly from a self-custody wallet, converting them at the point of sale rather than from a pre-loaded fiat balance. It is issued by Monavate, with Crypto Life as the card provider, and managed inside the MetaMask app.

How does the MetaMask card work?

You connect a wallet to the card inside the MetaMask app, choose which token sits at the top of the priority list, and pay at any merchant that takes Mastercard. The card pulls the tokens from your wallet at the moment of purchase, applies a “minimal fee” per transaction, and credits any cashback in mUSD into your Money Account.

Is MetaMask a bank?

No. MetaMask is a self-custody wallet, and the MetaMask card is a card programme issued by Monavate and operated by Crypto Life. The wallet holds your private keys, but the card itself is a payment product run by licensed payment companies, not by MetaMask.

Who owns MetaMask?

The site footer credits Consensys, Inc. with the 2026 copyright, but the card’s own pages do not state that Consensys provides the card. The card is run by Crypto Life and Monavate, and the relationship between the wallet and the card programme is described in the FAQ rather than in a service contract.

Is the MetaMask card available in my country?

Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries, mostly across Europe, Latin America and Canada. The United States and the United Kingdom are temporarily closed. Every other country is on a waitlist with no published timeline.

How do I get the MetaMask card?

You apply inside the MetaMask app, complete KYC with Crypto Life (proof of residency is required, no credit check), and receive a virtual Mastercard instantly. The Metal card can be pre-ordered in the app after the virtual card is approved and ships to a verified address.

Does the MetaMask card require KYC?

Yes. Proof of residency is required, and KYC is handled by Crypto Life. The full list of KYC documents, the processing time and the reasons for rejection are not published, and unofficial reporting suggests that email, phone and ID are typically required.

How do I top up the MetaMask card?

You do not top it up in the traditional sense. The card spends directly from tokens in your connected wallet on Linea, Base, Monad or Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT among the supported tokens. You manage the priority token under Manage in the app.

Is the MetaMask card safe?

The card is non-custodial, so your wallet’s private keys stay with you and your funds stay in your wallet until the moment of payment. You can freeze or replace the card in the app, set your own limits, and rely on transaction alerts. Insurance is not stated, and the dispute path runs through Crypto Life support.

Is the MetaMask card worth it?

If you live in one of the 45 listed countries, already use a self-custody wallet, and can absorb the documentation gaps and the support experience the community describes, the virtual card at no cost and no foreign transaction fee is a useful way to spend tokens directly. If you are in the US or UK, the card is not currently available, and the alternatives should be on your shortlist.

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