LinkPay card review: four plans, crypto-only funding, and a service that splits its own numbers

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

LinkPay is one of those crypto payment cards that markets itself to people who can’t easily open a normal bank account: virtual Visa or Mastercard numbers, a crypto balance behind them, no physical card and no ATM access. It also markets itself to advertisers who want dozens of virtual cards at once, which is the angle that shows up most clearly in its pricing.

I’ve spent time going through LinkPay’s pricing pages, the figures buried in its Terms of Service, what users say in public reviews, and what comparison sites report separately. The picture that came out is a service that does several things at once and is honest about very little of it: the home page and the Terms disagree on what you actually pay, the issuer of the card is not named anywhere, and Trustpilot scores sit at about 2 out of 5. There are also real strengths, mainly that you can spin up virtual cards from a crypto balance quickly, in a large number of countries, and the higher plans become cheap per card if you really do need dozens of them.

This review is current as of October 28, 2026. The conditions, fees and country list below were checked on that date; if a figure later changes on LinkPay’s site, that version wins.

Verdict

LinkPay scores 5.0 out of 10. That number reflects a card that is technically usable in many countries and works for its main audience, namely advertisers and people who need a stack of virtual cards, but charges steep fees on the only realistic plan most people will pick and keeps quiet about who actually issues it.

For non-Russian advertisers who genuinely need lots of virtual cards, the higher plans can start to make sense: Pro at $179/month bundles 15 free cards with a 1% transaction fee and 1% cashback. For anyone who wants a single everyday card to spend crypto at a shop, the Lite plan’s 2% per-payment charge with a $2 minimum makes small purchases disproportionately expensive, and the unresolved complaints make the service hard to trust with a meaningful balance.

Will they give you the card

The headline figure from third-party reporting is that LinkPay works in 168 countries and is restricted in 28. That number is not on LinkPay’s own pages; it comes from a comparison site dated August 2026 and should be treated as unofficial and not confirmed by LinkPay.

What LinkPay’s own page does say is that service is not provided in 27 listed countries, and that list is explicitly not exhaustive. The named exclusions include the Russian Federation, Belarus, Hong Kong, the United States, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea, among others. The Terms go further: they bar residents and citizens of any of those countries, and they also bar US citizens, US permanent residents and US entities from opening accounts even if they live elsewhere. So if you hold a US passport, the answer is no, regardless of where you actually live.

The age question is the standard one for this category: prepaid and debit cards are typically for adults, and LinkPay’s own pages don’t restate that explicitly. If you are under 18, the answer in practice is no.

For everyone else, eligibility comes down to where you are a resident and what citizenship you hold, not where you happen to be travelling. The service also links out to an “Anti Money Laundering” page that explains the underlying KYC logic, but the page content itself isn’t shown in the public materials, so the exact thresholds and documents aren’t stated on a page you can read before signing up.

The simplest way to think about it: if you hold citizenship in a listed country, or you live in one, you’re out. The list is short but not a complete picture of who LinkPay will turn away, and the KYC process can refuse you for reasons that aren’t listed in advance.

How to get it

LinkPay sells itself as a virtual card product. The home page talks about “Virtual card for all purchases” and there is no physical card offered, so what you get is a 16-digit card number, an expiry and a CVV, the same way you would add any card to Apple Pay or Google Pay. The card network is reported by comparison sites as Visa or Mastercard; LinkPay’s own page does not state it.

Verification comes in three levels, and which one you’re at controls how much you can spend:

• No verification: $500 per month, advertising cards only. You don’t submit documents, but you also can’t use general-purpose cards.
• Basic verification: $2,000 per month, all card types except Apple Pay and Google Pay. You submit your full name, address and ID details.
• Unlimited verification: no spend caps and no card-type restrictions. You submit a valid ID photo and complete a live check.

In normal cases verification is finished within 24 hours, but rejected documents can be sent to manual review, and the company doesn’t list the specific rejection reasons beyond “valid documents with clear photos”. So there is some risk that a passport photo with glare or a slightly out-of-date utility bill gets bounced without a clear reason, and you wait longer.

There is no delivery step because there are no physical cards. Once verification clears, cards are issued from the dashboard, and the dashboard shows a card-activation minimum that is “usually around $15”. Send less than that and the card is never actually issued, which is a small but easy-to-miss gotcha.

What it really costs

The pricing on the home page is the cleanest part of the experience to read, but the Terms of Service quietly disagree with it on several lines, so the table below carries both where they differ.

Costs

The Lite plan is the only free plan, but it carries the 2% per-payment fee with a $2 floor, and it bundles zero free cards per month. That last point is easy to miss: on Lite, every card you create is paid for, and the per-card issue price isn’t stated anywhere I could find. So if you think of Lite as a free card with a small transaction fee, the picture is wrong. It is a paid-per-card service with a 2% per-payment charge on top.

If you step up to Pro, the per-transaction fee drops to 1% with no minimum, you get 15 free cards a month and 1% cashback. Pro is where the numbers start to make sense for a power user, especially if you’re running ads on Meta, TikTok or Google and need a fresh card number for each account or billing profile. The cashback cap on Pro is $179 per billing cycle, which is interesting because that’s the same as the monthly fee: at 1% cashback you would need to spend $17,900 in a month to max out the cap, and at that level the cap is not your binding constraint.

Ultra is where the home page and the Terms fall out of sync. The home page says $209 per month, 79 free cards, 2% cashback; the Terms say $299 per month, 100 free cards, 3% cashback with a $299 cap. Two of those three pairs cannot both be right. The Terms also say freeze and unfreeze of cards is available only on subscription or custom plans, so on Lite you cannot freeze a card yourself.

Three everyday payments, walked through

To make the fees less abstract, here is what three real-world payments would cost on each plan. The numbers are the fees only, not the cost of the goods.

Coffee at $4.50

• Lite: 2% with a $2 floor. You pay the $2 minimum, so $4.50 of coffee plus $2 of fee. The fee is significant relative to the price of the coffee.
• Plus: 1.5% with a $1 floor. The 1.5% of $4.50 is 7 cents, so the $1 floor applies. Fee is about 22% of the price.
• Pro: 1% with no floor. Fee is 4.5 cents. About 1% of the price.
• Ultra: 1% with no floor. Same as Pro.

A $200 grocery run

• Lite: 2%, no floor binding. Fee is $4.
• Plus: 1.5%, fee is $3.
• Pro: 1%, fee is $2.
• Ultra: 1%, fee is $2.

A $5,000 ad-spend top-up on a marketing platform

• Lite: 2%, fee is $100.
• Plus: 1.5%, fee is $75.
• Pro: 1%, fee is $50, plus 1% cashback on the $5,000 which is $50 (capped at $179 a cycle, so within the cap). Net fee: effectively zero if you max cashback.
• Ultra: 1% home page ($209 plan), fee is $50, plus 2% cashback which is $100, but the cap is $299 per cycle, so $100 lands inside the cap. Net credit: $50 back.

What jumps out is that the Lite plan is brutal for small everyday purchases, and the Pro plan is the first one where a $5,000 monthly marketing payment breaks roughly even with cashback. For ordinary spending rather than ad spend, almost everyone is better off on Pro or Ultra than on Lite, and Lite is barely a product for low-ticket payments.

FX fees are not stated on the public pages. USD cards are described as “planned to release soon” in the FAQ, so right now the assumption is that cards settle in a single currency and any cross-currency payment is governed by an FX rate that is not disclosed in advance. That is a real gap if you intend to spend in euros, pounds or yen.

How to top it up

LinkPay is crypto-only for funding. Fiat top-ups and on-ramp options are described as “planned” but not available, and the comparison site I checked confirms there is no bank transfer option today.

The official line is “7+ digital currencies”, without naming them on the public page. Unofficial reporting (CryptoCardHub, August 2026) names BTC and USDT specifically. Networks that are mentioned on LinkPay’s own dashboard copy are TRC20 (Tron) and BTC, with 20 confirmations required for TRC20 and from 4 confirmations for BTC. The Ethereum mainnet and other ERC-20 networks aren’t called out by name, which is itself a useful signal: if you only hold USDC on Ethereum, you may not be able to deposit it.

The deposit fee is part of the table above, and again the home page and Terms disagree: the home page says Pro and Ultra are free to fund, while the Terms say Pro charges 0.5%. The difference is small in dollar terms but worth knowing if you’re optimising a high-volume account.

Network fees are charged by the blockchain, not by LinkPay, but LinkPay does not say who pays them at the deposit step. In practice that means if you send USDT on Tron, you also need a small amount of TRX in the same wallet to pay the bandwidth or energy, and if you send BTC you pay the miner’s fee yourself. None of that is hidden, but the page doesn’t walk you through it.

A few practical points on deposits:

• If your top-up is below the card-activation minimum, usually around $15, the card is never issued. The minimum is shown in the dashboard before you confirm.
• Top-ups to verified cards are non-refundable, while unverified top-ups can be auto-cancelled and refunded within 2 to 14 business days.
• The page says confirmations are 20 for TRC20 and from 4 for BTC. If you send on a different network, or to an address belonging to a different network, the deposit can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee.
• There is no on-platform way to buy crypto with a card or bank transfer to fund the wallet, so you will need a separate exchange or on-ramp.

Withdrawals are technically possible: you can move funds back out from the Wallet, the Terms say they are processed during 10 working days, and the Terms also say withdrawal fees are free on all plans. That last point contradicts the home page, which lists 3% / 3% / 2% / 1% depending on plan. Internal P2P transfers by recipient email are supported, but you cannot withdraw from the platform directly to a LinkPay card. Cashback cannot be withdrawn to a bank account.

Paying with it every day

Day-to-day, what you have is a virtual card number, not a piece of plastic. There is no ATM access because there is no physical card, and the comparison site that reports on this confirms it. So the everyday experience is online checkout, in-app purchases, and subscription billing.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are the obvious next step, and LinkPay says both are “in final integration, will be available soon”. Comparison reporting is mixed: the eWallet section on the LinkPay site apparently says selected virtual cards can be added today, while the FAQ says “coming soon”. The Basic verification level is also explicitly excluded from Apple Pay and Google Pay when they do arrive, so full verification is a precondition for tap-to-pay.

Cashback is only on Pro and Ultra, and the headline on the marketing copy says “2% cashback for all payments”. On Pro, the rate is actually 1% per the costs table, and on Ultra it’s 2% per the home page or 3% per the Terms. The currency of the cashback payout is not stated, which is another gap to be aware of.

When something goes wrong with a payment, the published rules are:

• Failed transactions with pending authorisation: funds are released back in 5 to 10 minutes.
• Merchant refunds: usually within 4 weeks.
• Holds, for example by ad platforms: usually 10 to 14 days.
• Disputed transactions and chargebacks: the cardholder is responsible, and complaints are reviewed within 30 days.

A few things are worth pulling out. There is no formal chargeback process in the FAQ, even though the company says complaints are reviewed within 30 days. If a merchant refuses to refund you, you are largely on your own. Also, declined authorisations can leave a hold on your balance for several days, which is standard for cards in this category, not unique to LinkPay, but is worth knowing if you are budgeting tightly. And because cards are prepaid and there is no credit line, the card cannot overdraft: if the balance is short, the transaction is declined.

The app is available on the App Store and Google Play, and there is also a direct .APK download for Android. App store ratings are not shown on LinkPay’s own site, so you would have to check the stores directly to see what current users say.

What can go wrong

The most uncomfortable part of this product is what existing users say in public. The Trustpilot score is about 2 out of 5 from roughly 39 to 40 reviews.

The recurring complaints are:

• A card being frozen shortly before a transaction and reportedly only being unfrozen after upgrading to a paid plan.
• Withdrawals stuck “processing” for 4 weeks or more.
• Issuing a card taking several months in some cases.

LinkPay’s public replies tend to cite security protocols and insufficient verification, which is a fair answer in principle but doesn’t fully account for the wait times users describe.

A separate, second-hand report from a competitor site (Halocard) says LinkPay’s banking partner had issues that froze cards and withdrawals during a move to a new partner, with waits of around 3 months. This is a competitor telling you something bad about a rival, so it should be treated with caution, but the pattern matches the user reports on Trustpilot.

The company behind the card is LinkPay, with a registered address in Richmond, BC, Canada, and an MSB (Money Services Business) registration number M23039048. The card issuer, the BIN sponsor, the actual bank that puts the Visa or Mastercard on its licence, is not named anywhere on the public site. That is unusual, and it is the single biggest thing I would want answered before loading a meaningful balance.

Security on the platform itself looks standard: the wallet is custodial, which means LinkPay holds the credentials on your behalf. The Terms give the Administrator the right to suspend all wallets without notice if it suspects violations, and funds can be frozen during an investigation. There is a 3-attempt login lock, GDPR / ISO / PCI DSS badges, and freeze or unfreeze of a card is only available on a paid plan. There is no insurance, and no mention of segregated client funds or a deposit guarantee.

Support channels are a Telegram bot, an email address, and live chat on the website. All published support is in English. Reports of slow and repetitive support responses are common enough that it’s worth factoring in if you are considering the service for a use case where blocked payments will cost you money.

What to take instead

Three alternatives come up repeatedly when you look at LinkPay’s category, and the comparison is informative mainly because each one makes a different trade-off.

LinkPay vs Cardex

Cardex scores 5.6 out of 10 and positions itself as a “one crypto card, 200+ countries” product with no country list or exclusions published, which is itself a small risk: it’s harder to know in advance whether you will be turned away. The card runs on Verve, Visa, Mastercard or UnionPay networks and ships as a virtual and a physical card, with the App Store listing describing a Naira-denominated card. The interesting feature is “AI-Powered Conversion Rate”: at the moment of payment, the platform scans global exchange rates and tries to pick the best one, so the cost of converting crypto to fiat at the till is not a fixed percentage. No fee percentage is published. Funding is from USDT, USDC and BTC wallets, with networks not stated. Cashback is not mentioned. Cardex is for you if you want a card that may work in a country LinkPay excludes and you are willing to trust an opaque conversion engine instead of a published rate.

LinkPay vs TakeCard

TakeCard scores 5.5 out of 10 and is the regional alternative. The virtual card is available immediately at $5 issuance, while the physical card is Bolivia-only at the moment and costs $20 plus $20 shipping (one help article in the same help centre says $10 for the physical card, so the company itself is inconsistent on the price). There is no monthly fee. The card is prepaid, on the Visa network, issued in the United States, and settles in USD 1:1 with no currency adjustment for USD payments, with other currencies at the official Visa rate of the day. The published purchase commission is 1%. You fund the card from your Takenos balance, and starting data points to USDC and USDT on Polygon, BNB Chain, Tron or Ethereum, though I could not verify those networks on a public page. TakeCard is for you if you live in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia, Ecuador, the US, Spain or Italy, and you want a $5 virtual card with a flat 1% commission and a published USD peg.

LinkPay vs OkiCard

OkiCard scores 6.0 out of 10 and is the strongest of the three on transparency. It says “150+ countries” (some pages say “200+”) with “no geo-blocking based on your passport”, and it requires users to confirm they are not in a sanctioned jurisdiction. The card is virtual (a physical card is mentioned but not detailed), the network is “Visa/Mastercard” without a clear pick, and the card is USD/EUR-pegged. Pricing is a moving target: the pricing page says issuance is $0, monthly is $0, with a starting price of $15 for the virtual card, while the FAQ mentions a one-time issuance fee. There is an initial deposit of 100 USDT. Fees are 3% to load, 0% to spend in USD, “no hidden exchange spreads”, and FX fees are not stated. Funding is USDT on BSC, Ethereum, Tron and Solana, with USDC “soon” and BTC “coming soon”, and deposits go to a generated address then convert to fiat at the moment of spending. OkiCard is for you if you want a flat 0% transaction fee in USD, you hold USDT, and you want a service that publishes its load and conversion terms in plain language.

Across the three, the picture is that LinkPay is the only one with a structured subscription model and a built-in path to dozens of cards per month, and that is genuinely useful for advertisers. For single-card everyday use, OkiCard’s 0% in-USD transaction fee and 3% load fee can be cheaper than LinkPay’s Lite plan, especially on small payments where LinkPay’s $2 minimum hurts. Cardex sits in the middle, with an opaque but potentially competitive conversion engine. TakeCard is the regional specialist with the clearest flat-fee model.

Who I would recommend it to

LinkPay is the right card in a narrow set of situations, and the wrong card in a wider set. The good fit is a non-Russian advertiser or media buyer who needs many virtual cards, is comfortable with crypto-only funding, can absorb a $179 to $299 monthly subscription, and is happy to treat the per-card cost as a business expense. For that person, Pro at $179 with 15 free cards, a 1% transaction fee and 1% cashback can net out near zero cost on a meaningful monthly ad spend, and the convenience of having fresh card numbers on demand is real.

The bad fit is anyone who wants a single card to replace a normal bank card for everyday spending. Lite’s 2% fee with a $2 minimum is punishing on small purchases, the FX fee is not published, Apple Pay and Google Pay are not available, there is no physical card and no ATM, and the public complaint record is bad enough that loading a large balance is a real risk.

Before you commit, check five things in this order: first, whether your country of residence and your citizenship are both off the exclusion list, including the US passport rule; second, whether you actually need a virtual-only card, because if you want a piece of plastic or cash from an ATM, this is not the product; third, what you will really pay by adding up the per-payment fee, the per-card cost on Lite, and the deposit and withdrawal fees; fourth, whether you can live without Apple Pay and Google Pay for the next few months; and fifth, whether you are willing to keep your balance low given the frozen-card and stuck-withdrawal reports on Trustpilot. If any of those answers is uncomfortable, one of the three alternatives above is a better starting point.

Frequently asked questions

What is the LinkPay card?

The LinkPay card is a virtual payment card you fund from a crypto balance. You get a card number, expiry and CVV that you can use online or in apps, with the network reported as Visa or Mastercard, and no physical card is offered.

How does the LinkPay card work?

You deposit supported cryptocurrencies into your LinkPay wallet, the deposit confirms on the relevant network, your balance is available in the dashboard, and you can then issue virtual cards that draw on that balance when you spend.

Is LinkPay a bank?

No. LinkPay is registered as a Money Services Business in Canada, not as a bank. The actual card issuer and BIN sponsor are not named on the public site, which is unusual and worth knowing.

Who owns LinkPay?

The company is LinkPay, with a registered address in Richmond, BC, Canada and an MSB registration number M23039048. Ownership and the named issuer of the card are not stated on the public pages.

Is the LinkPay card available in my country?

According to unofficial reporting, LinkPay works in 168 countries and is restricted in 28. The official exclusion list names 27 countries and is explicitly not exhaustive, and US citizens, US permanent residents and US entities are barred from opening accounts regardless of where they live.

How do I get a LinkPay card?

You sign up on the website, complete one of three verification levels (none, Basic or Unlimited), and then issue virtual cards from the dashboard. Card issuance requires a top-up of around $15 to activate the card, and the process can take up to 24 hours or longer if documents are flagged for manual review.

Does the LinkPay card require KYC?

Yes. Even at the lowest level, the platform is built around KYC rules. No verification caps you at $500 a month and advertising cards only, Basic caps you at $2,000 a month, and full verification removes the cap and unlocks all card types.

How do I top up my LinkPay card?

You send one of the supported cryptocurrencies to the address shown in your dashboard, on the network shown there. TRC20 requires 20 confirmations, BTC from 4, and deposits below the card-activation minimum do not produce a card.

How do I add the LinkPay card to Apple Wallet?

You can’t yet, reliably. LinkPay says Apple Pay and Google Pay are in final integration and coming soon, and the Basic verification level is excluded from mobile wallets when they do launch, so full KYC is a precondition.

Is the LinkPay card safe?

It is a custodial product, which means the platform holds the credentials on your behalf and can suspend accounts. Trustpilot sits at about 2 out of 5 with recurring reports of frozen cards and stuck withdrawals, and there is no published deposit insurance, so the standard advice is to keep balances low.

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