Zero fees, USDC-only funding, and one country list

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Fuse card is a virtual Visa debit card that spends USDC. There is no fee to issue it, no monthly fee, no inactivity fee, and no foreign-transaction fee on the USD amount. What you give up for that: the card is virtual only, it cannot be used at ATMs, it is issued in a fixed list of countries, and the only thing you can load it with is USDC moved between two accounts inside the same app. That is a narrower product than the crypto cards most people picture when they hear the phrase, and the score reflects it — 6.3 out of 10. It is a good fit for someone in the Americas who already holds USDC and wants a plain USD Visa to spend it from. It is a poor fit if you need a physical card, cash withdrawals, a bank account in your own name, or a way to load money from your local bank.

The conditions described on this page are current as of October 28, 2026.

The score, criterion by criterion

The pattern is easy to read. Cost and reliability — the two things that go wrong when a provider disappears or a fee turns up later — score well. Top-up options and everyday use — the two things that decide whether a card fits your day — score badly. That is why the total sits in the middle rather than higher: the card is cheap and orderly, and it is also narrow.

Will they give you the card

Yes, but only if you live in one of eighteen named places. The card’s own eligibility list is residence-based: the United States excluding New York and Alaska, then Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. If your address is not in that list, there is nothing to check next — the card is not offered there.

That list is worth reading twice, because it is unusual in shape. It is almost entirely the Americas plus Ghana and Nigeria, with no Europe, no United Kingdom, no Australia, and no most of Asia. If you are in Berlin, Toronto, London or Sydney, Fuse is not a candidate and no amount of documentation will change that.

On citizenship: the card’s public pages do not say whether nationality matters separately from residence. What is stated is that the list turns on where you live. In practice that is the filter that will decide your application, but the distinction is worth keeping in mind — rules in this sector often screen citizenship and country of birth as well as address, and you only find out at the point of checking.

There is a second, less visible filter to be aware of. Identity verification runs through Bridge, and it is mandatory for every applicant — no exceptions, no low-limit tier. More on exactly what that involves in the next section.

How to get it

The sequence the card describes is short. You verify inside the Fuse app, you create the virtual card, and you move USDC from the Main Account into the Card Account. The card itself is a virtual Visa debit card denominated in dollars; the card’s own disclaimer calls it a prepaid debit card, which is the more accurate description of what sits underneath. There is no physical card mentioned anywhere in the public material, so there is no delivery step, no waiting, and nothing in the post.

Verification is the part to plan for. You must be 18 or older. The card states four things it collects: your name, your address, your date of birth, and a government ID number. It also says that further documents may be requested at any time — a driver’s licence is the example given — which is a fairly open-ended commitment. The public pages do not say what proof of address looks like, how long the check takes, or why an application might be refused. If a document request lands on you days after you applied, the card’s terms anticipate it.

There is no tier structure to aim for — one tier only, and no upgrades described. That cuts both ways: nothing to unlock, and nothing to be moved up to. The one thing you control from the start is the spending limit in settings, which is where the daily and per-transaction caps live.

Fees: what it really costs

The card is unusually cheap on paper. Issuance is free, the monthly fee is $0.00, no annual fee is listed, and the inactivity fee is $0 — meaning an unused card does not quietly cost you anything. The foreign-transaction fee is 0% of the USD amount, and there is no per-purchase fee on top. The support page says there are no top-up fees and no card transaction fees, though the agreement itself keeps a “fees may apply” line alive.

Now the three everyday payments, because a fee table never tells you what a Tuesday costs.

A $30 lunch in Mexico City. You spend from your USD card balance, so the international-transaction fee is 0% of the USD amount. The card has no per-purchase fee, so nothing is added on top. What you are exposed to is not a card fee but the conversion: your USDC was turned into dollars when you moved it across, and the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed. That number is the one you cannot check from the outside, and it is the one that actually sets your cost here.

A $120 online subscription paid in a non-USD currency. The FX fee is 0%, so the currency conversion itself is charged at the network rate rather than marked up by the issuer. What can still bite is the decline itself. Address verification is mainly a US, Canadian and UK service and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, and some merchants refuse prepaid or foreign BINs because the card lookup reveals the type and country of issuer. If the payment fails, a declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for up to seven days. A refusal to reverse is also spelled out: stop payments are not allowed on card purchases.

A $900 flight paid online. The per-transaction limit is $2,000, so this clears that bar. The daily limit is $2,000 by default and adjustable only up to $2,000 in settings, which means a purchase above that needs the limit raised first. The FAQ says the daily limit may increase after you have used the card, so treat the $2,000 cap as the ceiling the card describes, not a starting point that drifts upward on its own.

Two things to hold onto across all of these. First, this is a single-tier card: one product, no cheaper and no premium version. Second, and most importantly for anyone budgeting in dollars, the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed. Everything else on this page is a number you can rely on; that one is not.

Top up: how money reaches the card

Top up means one thing and it is narrower than the word suggests: you transfer USDC from your Main Account to your Card Account inside Fuse. Funds are ready immediately. Only USDC sitting in the Card Account can be spent. There are no top-up fees, a cash reload is $0, and no minimum is listed. Fiat top-up options are not stated — the public pages do not describe a way to buy in from a local bank account.

The withdrawal side works the same way in reverse. You can move USDC from the Card Account back to the Main Account, with a five-minute security time lock on the way out. If the card is closed, the remaining balance goes back to the Platform Provider’s wallet as stablecoin at no fee, with one stated exception: the bank may refuse to return balances under $1.00. Closure can also be blocked by a pending transaction, an open dispute, an amount owed, or a hold.

Two gaps are worth naming. The card does not state which networks to use. The product is positioned around Solana, but that is not confirmed on these pages, and sending on the wrong network is the classic irreversible mistake — a deposit to an address belonging to another network can be lost or need manual support recovery, with no guarantee. The agreement also allows the Platform Provider or Program Manager to charge separate fees for stablecoin sales, which sit outside the “no top-up fees” line on the support page. If you buy USDC with fiat rather than moving USDC you already hold, you are in that second territory.

You also pay the network’s own fee for the on-chain leg — gas or bandwidth is charged by the blockchain, not by the card.

Paying with it every day

In person and online, this behaves like a prepaid Visa, because that is what it is. The card draws on a stored balance rather than on a linked bank account, so it cannot overdraw. Apple Pay is supported for in-store payments. Google Pay is not mentioned — worth knowing if your phone is Android, because the app itself is listed as iPhone only.

The app situation deserves a plain sentence. The App Store listing, “Fuse – Solana Smart Wallet”, shows no rating — “not enough ratings”. Third-party sites put the aggregate at around 4.5–4.6 from roughly 35 ratings, but that is unofficial and carries no date, so treat it as a rumour rather than a rating. For an app you would use to move money and freeze your card, “not enough ratings” is not a strong foundation.

There is no cashback stated anywhere. Merchant categories are not restricted by any listed MCC — the card names no blocked categories — though it cannot be used for illegal transactions or for cash back at point of sale. That middle path is real: online subscriptions, hotels, travel, and merchants who are comfortable with prepaid foreign BINs will work; a cashier in a shop that declines prepaid cards will not.

Disputes and reversals are where prepaid cards usually disappoint, and the terms are detailed. Report unauthorised use within two business days and your liability is limited to $50; report later and it can reach $500. Report errors within 60 days. The bank aims to decide in ten business days, extending to 45, with credit within ten business days if it takes longer, and up to 90 days for point-of-sale, foreign and new-card errors. You are told the outcome within three business days of the investigation ending. What you do not get is a provisional credit while a goods or services dispute runs, and stop payments are not allowed on card purchases. Merchant disputes go to the merchant first, and refunds come back to the wallet as stablecoin. Pending amounts “become available in 24 hours” after clearing.

What can go wrong

The honest risk here is not fraud; it is access to your own money.

A closed account with money in it. There is one reported case: a negative App Store review describing a closed account leaving roughly $600 inaccessible, and an X user reporting unanswered emails — both surfaced via a third-party aggregator, dates not shown, so unofficial. There is no Trustpilot page for Fuse and no Reddit threads found. No official incidents were found either. But the report matters because it describes the specific failure mode these cards have: the money is fine, the account around it is not, and getting it back depends on the provider answering.

Arbitration. The card agreement carries binding arbitration with a class-action waiver. You give up the right to join a group action and to argue in open court. For a card holding $2,000 at a time, that is a smaller thing than it sounds; it still belongs on the list of terms you read rather than skip.

No deposit insurance. Fiat in transit during conversion is not FDIC insured, and the funds are not FDIC insured in general. There is no overdraft.

Counterparty structure. Three companies stack up. Lead Bank, a Missouri state-chartered bank, issues the card under a Visa U.S.A. licence. Bridge Ventures LLC is the Program Manager. Squads Labs Inc. is the Platform Provider and is explicitly not a bank. A change at any layer can affect your card, which is exactly what happened with FTX in November 2022, when Visa said it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX” and the issuer wound down the US debit card programme — and with WaveCrest in Europe in 2018, when Visa’s suspension closed every WaveCrest-issued programme.

The app is a single point of failure. iPhone only, iOS 16.4 or later. There is no web fallback described and no 2FA mentioned in the security options.

What you can control is in the settings: freeze and unfreeze, set or reset a PIN, and a daily spending limit up to $2,000, described as “smart account enforced spending limits”. The bank may block or cancel a card it suspects of fraud. Support is email at [email protected] and phone on 833-237-8104, with hours not stated — the agreement refers only to business days, Monday to Friday excluding holidays.

What to take instead

Three alternatives, all of them wider in different ways. The comparison below is on published figures only; where a page does not publish something, that is the answer.

MetaMask is the one to look at if the Fuse funding constraint is what bothers you. It spends directly from a connected wallet across four networks and six named tokens, and it is available in far more countries. The catch is its per-transaction fee, described only as “minimal” with the amount not stated on the pages read, and its cashback footnote is tighter than the headline suggests: 3% applies to the first 10,000 USD spent, then 1%. It also says ineligible regions limit spending rather than sign-ups, which is a useful distinction, but US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per its FAQ.

KAST is the one to look at if you want a physical card and a rewards rate. Its fee structure is the most elaborate of the three, with membership tiers from 0 to 10,000 USD a year and a delivery fee of 40 USD on the Standard physical card. It also has the most careful country wording of any of these, and it is worth reading that wording before applying: living in a supported country is not enough if your ID is from a restricted region, and a VPN does not bypass this. Its fees are unusually transparent in the ways that matter — 0% for stablecoin top-up, card spend, transaction and mobile wallets — with non-USD FX at 0.5%–1.75% depending on where you live and where you spend.

Zeal is the one to look at if you want the widest reach and a multi-currency balance. It spends in 150+ countries, holds EUR, USD and GBP balances, and adds no FX fee of its own, converting at the Visa wholesale rate — though Gnosis Pay fees such as ATM charges may still apply. Its cost is not published at all, and its cashback depends on holding GNO in the card Safe, so the headline rate is conditional.

The choice comes down to which limitation is yours to live with: Fuse’s USDC-only funding and virtual-only card, or someone else’s country list, fee schedule, or rewards conditions.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Fuse to someone in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, or one of the other listed countries who already holds USDC and wants to spend it at shops and online sites without first converting to a local bank account. The price is genuinely good — no issuance, no monthly, no inactivity, no FX markup — and the card is issued by a real state-chartered bank under a Visa licence rather than by a name that appears nowhere in the payment chain. If your life runs through Apple Pay and USD pricing, and you never need cash, it does its job.

I would not recommend it to someone who needs a physical card in a wallet, who withdraws cash, who lives in Europe or the UK, or who plans to load the card from a local bank account. Four of those are deal-breakers rather than annoyances: no physical card is mentioned at all, ATMs are explicitly unavailable, the country list stops outside the Americas and two African countries, and there is no described fiat top-up path.

And I would hold this one lightly rather than lean on it. A single-tier virtual card with no 2FA mentioned, an iPhone-only app, undisclosed conversion fees, an arbitration clause, no FDIC insurance, and one report of an account closed with $600 unreachable is not a good place to keep money you cannot afford to lose. Use it for spending money you hold in stablecoin and expect to spend soon. Move it out, or close it, when the balance grows.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Fuse card?

It is a virtual Visa debit card issued by Lead Bank, a Missouri state-chartered bank, under a Visa U.S.A. licence, with Bridge Ventures LLC running the programme and Squads Labs Inc. as Platform Provider. It spends USDC held in a Card Account inside the Fuse app, denominated in dollars. The card’s own disclaimer calls it a prepaid debit card, which is the more accurate description of what sits underneath.

How does the Fuse card work?

You verify your identity in the app, create a virtual card, and move USDC from your Main Account to the Card Account. Only USDC in the Card Account can be spent, and funds are ready immediately. From then on it behaves like a prepaid Visa: each purchase deducts from the stored balance, and the card cannot overdraw. Money moves back the same way, with a five-minute security time lock.

Is Fuse a bank?

No. Fuse is a programme manager and front-end. The bank is Lead Bank, which holds the card programme and the deposit relationship; Bridge Ventures LLC manages it and Squads Labs Inc. provides the platform. This distinction matters because the card agreement, not the brand, is what governs your money — including its binding arbitration clause with a class-action waiver and the statement that funds are not FDIC insured.

Does the Fuse card require KYC?

Yes, for everyone. There is no low-limit tier or bypass: all applicants pass verification through Bridge, and it is mandatory. The card collects your name, address, date of birth and a government ID number, and states that further documents such as a driver’s licence may be requested at any time. Processing time and grounds for refusal are not stated on the public pages, which is worth assuming means they can take a while.

Is the Fuse card free?

Issuance is $0, the monthly fee is $0.00, no annual fee is listed, the inactivity fee is $0, and the foreign-transaction fee is 0% of the USD amount with no per-purchase charge. The honest answer to “free” has one asterisk: the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed, and the Platform Provider or Program Manager may charge separate fees for stablecoin sales.

Can I use the Fuse card in my country?

If you live in the United States outside New York and Alaska, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru or Uruguay, then yes. That is the complete published list, it is based on residence rather than citizenship, and it is why the card simply is not an option in Europe, the UK, Australia or most of Asia.

How do I top up the Fuse card?

You move USDC from the Main Account to the Card Account inside the app, and the balance is available immediately. There are no top-up fees, a cash reload is $0, and no minimum is listed. The card does not state which networks to use — Solana is its positioning, not a confirmed fact here — and fiat top-up options are not described at all.

Can I get cash out with the Fuse card?

No. The card’s own wording is that Fuse Cards cannot be used at ATMs currently, and the agreement lists ATM withdrawal and balance inquiry as not applicable. If cash is part of how you spend, this is a hard stop rather than a limitation to work around, and the alternatives that support physical cards are the ones to compare.

Is the Fuse card safe?

It has the usual safeguards in place — freeze and unfreeze, PIN set and reset, spending limits up to $2,000 per day — and it is issued by a licensed bank rather than an unknown name. Against that: 2FA is not mentioned, the app is iPhone only, funds are not FDIC insured, funds in transit during conversion are not insured, and there is one unofficial report of a closed account leaving about $600 inaccessible. Treat it as a spending tool, not a store of value.

Is Fuse card worth it?

For someone in a listed country who already holds USDC and pays mostly in USD prices, yes — the fee profile is hard to beat and the card is properly issued. For anyone who needs a physical card, ATM access, a European or UK address, or funding from a local bank account, no. The card scores 6.3 out of 10 precisely because the cost side is excellent and the flexibility side is not.

Content created by the «cryptocardbasics» team