The everyday-spending card built for spending straight from a crypto balance

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

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18+ Only

The Trade Republic card lets you pay for things with the crypto you hold on a Trade Republic account, and in practice it works like an ordinary payment card at the till. My score for it is 7.2 out of 10. It is a good fit for EU residents who already keep money on Trade Republic and want to spend it in the real world; it is a poor fit if you are outside the EU, if you need a card that does not touch crypto at all, or if you want the issuer to publish every fee and limit in advance, because a fair amount of the fine print is not stated on the official pages.

Conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

The appeal of this card is simple. Trade Republic is best known as a broker where you buy and hold crypto cheaply, and the card extends that account into everyday life: instead of only trading, you can walk into a shop and spend the balance. That single idea is what earns it a high mark on everyday use and reliability in my scoring, and it is also where the real questions sit — the exchange rate you get, what it costs to top the balance, and what happens when something goes wrong. The rest of this review walks through those one at a time.

Verdict: 7.2 out of 10, and who it is really for

My overall mark is 7.2 out of 10. Here is how that breaks down, criterion by criterion, with the mark and the reason:

This is the profile of a card built for one specific reader: an EU resident who already holds crypto on Trade Republic and wants to spend it without moving it to an exchange first. If that is you, the everyday-use and reliability marks are high enough that the card earns its place. If it is not you — if you are outside the EU, or you simply want a conventional debit card — you are not getting the main benefit this card was built to deliver, and you should read the “who can get it” and “what to take instead” sections carefully.

The two mid-range marks are the honest weak points. “Who can get it” is 5 because the official site does not publish a readable country list, so I cannot tell you from the card’s own pages exactly where it is available. “Top-up options” is 5 because the official pages likewise do not spell out which coins you can spend or every top-up route. In both cases the useful detail comes from third-party sources, and I will label it clearly as unofficial throughout.

Who will they give you the card

The short answer: the official pages do not say, in a form I could read. Trade Republic is a Germany/EU-based operation — its site runs en-de and en-nl versions — but it does not open up a readable list of the countries it will issue the card in, so I cannot give you a definitive “yes” or “no” for where you live.

What I can tell you is who stands behind it. The card is issued by Trade Republic Bank, Berlin, and the company behind it is Trade Republic Bank GmbH, Brunnenstrasse 19-21, 10119 Berlin, which appears in the site footer. The licence details and the BIN sponsor are not stated in readable text, so I am not going to characterise the regulatory setup beyond what is plainly there.

There is a practical reason the country list matters more for a crypto card than for an ordinary bank card, and it is worth understanding before you apply. A payment card number starts with an issuer identification number of 6 or 8 digits that identifies the institution issuing it; a merchant can look that up and see which institution and country issued the card, and may apply extra scrutiny if the issuer country differs from your billing address. That is why a card issued in one country can sometimes look “foreign” to a shop in another, and why “can I use my card in my country” is a real question rather than a technicality. If you are in a country where the card is not officially supported, you should assume nothing works smoothly until you have confirmed it yourself.

The card itself is called “The Trade Republic Card”, issued by Trade Republic Bank, Berlin. Whether it is a Visa or Mastercard product, and the virtual-versus-physical setup, is not stated in the readable official text — though third-party sources point to a Visa debit. Identity verification requirements are not stated in readable pages either.

How to get it

Honestly, the official signup and verification steps are not spelled out in a readable form on the card’s public pages, so I will not walk you through a step-by-step apply flow I cannot verify. What is clear is the general shape: the card is tied to a Trade Republic account and issued by Trade Republic Bank in Berlin.

Two practical details come from unofficial sources and are worth knowing before you order. The virtual card is reportedly usable immediately after opening an account (per third-party sources). And a replacement costs the same as the original — 5 EUR for Classic, 50 EUR for Mirror — whether the card was lost, stolen, or expired (per the same sources). The delivery time is not stated. So if you lose the card, you should budget for paying for a second one at the original price rather than expecting a cheaper replacement.

There are three versions of the card, according to unofficial sources (per kreditkartenheld.com, July 2026): virtual, Classic, and Mirror. The Mirror version differs only by its metal casing, with the same fees and limits as the others. Because delivery times and eligibility are not officially stated, treat all of this as a guide to expect rather than a promise, and confirm the current terms on the official site before you commit.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is the honest headline on cost: the official pages do not publish the amounts. A third-party review is the source for the figures below, and I have marked them as unofficial. They are useful for planning, but check the official site for anything binding.

These figures come from third-party sources (20 July 2026). The “no monthly fee” point is sometimes repeated by third-party reviewers, but the official amounts are not stated, so I would not treat any of this as confirmed by Trade Republic.

Now let me make those numbers concrete with a few everyday payments, because that is where fees either matter or do not. The card advertises itself as being free at the ATM: the card page says ATM withdrawals worldwide are free. Unofficially, the detail is that withdrawals of 100 EUR or more are free at Visa ATMs worldwide, and below 100 EUR there is a 1 EUR fee; reisetopia.de says there is no cap on the amount or the number of withdrawals, though the ATM operator itself may still charge its own fee (per third-party sources). That operator fee is the one thing you cannot avoid, and it is worth remembering when you are abroad and queuing at a bank machine.

Three everyday examples, all unofficial figures:

• A grocery shop in the euro area: no card surcharge and no currency conversion cost, so it costs exactly the purchase price of your balance. This is the clean case.
• A purchase in a non-euro country: unofficially there is no foreign-currency surcharge and the official Visa rate is used, so you still pay the purchase price of your balance with no extra layer on top.
• An ATM withdrawal abroad: below the 100 EUR threshold, so unofficially a 1 EUR fee applies (on top of whatever the ATM operator charges).

Two more cost facts from the card itself. Card spending with crypto counts as a sale of that crypto, per a press release, so there are tax implications when you spend from crypto holdings — I will not get into tax specifics here, but it is a real cost consideration. And on crypto trading generally, the help centre says commissions are free with a 1 EUR third-party cost per trade. That 1 EUR is trading, not card spending, so do not add it to your card cost calculations.

Top up: how you get money onto the card

The core idea, and the official part: a press release says customers can use the crypto they hold with Trade Republic for card payments. That is the headline feature — the balance you spend comes from your crypto holdings. The list of coins is not stated, so I cannot tell you which specific assets are spendable.

The fuller set of top-up routes comes from unofficial sources (per kreditkartenheld.com, July 2026): a SEPA transfer is free, while topping up by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay costs 1% of the amount. Withdrawal details are not stated officially.

So your two clean ways in are a free SEPA bank transfer, or — if you would rather spend crypto directly — the card simply draws on what is already in your Trade Republic account. The 1% route by card is the one to avoid unless it is genuinely more convenient, because it is the only top-up method that carries a stated charge.

One background point that affects any crypto top-up, this card or another: a stablecoin aims to hold a stable value against something like a fiat currency, but it is not guaranteed to hold it. Transfers are also typically irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. And when you pay a stablecoin on Ethereum, the fee (“gas”) is paid only in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT but no ETH cannot send. This is why “which network” is not a detail when you are moving money onto a card.

Paying with it every day

This is where the card scores highest, and it is straightforward to see why. Unofficially, it works as a virtual card, a Classic card, or a metal Mirror card, and it supports both Apple Pay and Google Pay, with the card added in the app (per neuebanken.de, 2026). A metal card in Apple Pay, spending from a crypto balance, is the everyday-use picture this product is selling.

The rewards add a small incentive. The card page advertises 1% Saveback on card payments. A press release describes 2% Crypto Saveback on card spend, reinvested into a savings plan, up to 1,500 EUR monthly spend. Third-party German reviews (neuebanken.de and others, 2026) describe the unofficial picture in more detail: 1% Saveback into a savings plan of at least 50 EUR/month, capped at 15 EUR/month, and not paid on transfers, ATM withdrawals, investments, top-ups, PayPal, gambling, and quasi-cash. One review says crypto-funded payments earn 2% with a cap of 30 EUR since the end of 2025, which is partly consistent with the 2% in the press release. The cap on the 1% (reported as 15 EUR/month) is not verified officially, and there is at least one report (GIGA, unofficial, date not read) of the Saveback terms changing and a user losing the 1%. Treat the reward as a bonus, not a reason to choose the card.

What is not stated officially: the app details (store listings were not read), whether any merchant categories are blocked, and how disputes are handled. That last one matters more than it sounds — a chargeback is a refund ordered by the card issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received, and how well that works for you is something I cannot confirm from the card’s public pages.

What can go wrong

The card itself draws few complaints, but the company has some well-known ones, and they are worth weighing because they sit behind the card. Reported general Trade Republic complaints — not crypto-card-specific — include slow or hard-to-reach support, high crypto spreads, and hard-to-resolve account blocks. German press reports rising BaFin complaints, though the date was unclear. There is also a July 2026 complaint from a Portuguese user about a crypto deposit address given without a network warning. On Trustpilot (read 20 Oct 2026) Trade Republic sits at 4.6 out of 5 from 67,608 reviews, 11% one-star, with the most recent review on 20 Oct 2026; the visible reviews are mostly positive, one says “Card works worldwide”, and no card-specific complaint theme turned up there. On balance, the honest read is: the card is not where the complaints are, but the account around it is.

I want to add three background risks that apply to any card of this kind, because they are easy to overlook until they bite:

• A declined payment can leave a hold on your funds that stays for several days, typically up to 7. So a failed authorisation at a shop can quietly tie up money you meant to spend.
• Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards, because looking at the card type and issuer country reveals what it is. If a card looks unusual to a merchant, a decline is not necessarily your fault or the card’s.
• Buying with crypto means each payment may be treated as a separate disposal for tax, measured at the value on the date of the transaction, with short-term treatment if you held the asset a year or less. Spending is not spending from a bank balance here; it is a sale.

What to take instead

If the Trade Republic card does not fit — because you are outside its region, or you want crypto funding without the Germany/EU framing — these are the alternatives I compared it against, each with its own score:

A few honest notes on each, so you can weigh them against the card above.

RedotPay publishes far more detail — which is either reassuring or a warning, depending on how you read it. It is virtual and physical (Visa debit in its Singapore terms), with a USD card and an HKD card. It states application fees plainly: 10.00 USD for a virtual card, 100.00 USD for a physical one (not refundable once paid), with the fee taken from your balance and a welcome reward that cannot be used toward it. There is a transaction fee of 1.00% (the crypto conversion), 1.20% in a non-default currency, and a paid “Pro” tier at 12.90 USD monthly or 129.00 USD annually. On eligibility it is unusually explicit — a KYC list of countries whose citizens cannot verify or use the service, and a separate issuance list of 47 places whose residents cannot get either a virtual or a physical card.

Bitpanda is the more euro-centred option. It requires a verified account and residence in a euro-area country; users verified through “Bankident” cannot order. The card is a physical Visa debit (virtual not stated), EUR only, one active card at a time. Account opening and the first shipment are free; a reissue is EUR 5.90 (the FAQ says EUR 9.90 for lost or stolen) and each additional physical card is EUR 10. It spends from a chosen main asset — cryptocurrencies, precious metals or EUR — converted to EUR at payment, with Crypto Indices excluded. Its cashback is described inconsistently: the body says 1% on crypto spending while the page summary says “up to 2%”, which is worth knowing before you count on it.

Wirex is the most region-dependent of the three. Whether you get a physical or virtual card “depends on your region”, and its fees are published for the UK, EEA, APAC, SG, AU and “Other”. Card issuance is free in those areas; the metal Visa Signature debit card has an order fee of 45 GBP on the UK page with free DHL Express, or “only 45 EUR” elsewhere. It advertises no annual or foreign-exchange fees, and spending can draw on cash, stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. Its Cryptoback runs 0.5% Standard, 3% Premium, up to 8% Elite, with gambling, cash advances and crypto purchases excluded.

Against those, Trade Republic’s appeal is its combination of two high marks: it is the most polished for everyday use, and its issuer is a named German bank with a strong Trustpilot score. Its weakness, shared by all of them to some degree, is that some of the numbers you actually need are not on the official page.

Who I would recommend it to

I would point this card at you if all three of these are true: you live in the EU, you already hold crypto on a Trade Republic account, and you would rather spend that balance in a shop than keep shuttling it elsewhere. The card is built for exactly that, and it does it with the strongest everyday-use profile I found in this comparison.

I would point it away if any of these are true instead. If you are outside the EU, the country rules are not something I can confirm for you from the official pages, and you should verify them yourself before relying on the card. If you are put off by the fact that key figures — availability, coin list, some fees and limits — are not stated officially, that is a legitimate reason to prefer an issuer that publishes them (RedotPay is the extreme example of that). And if you would rather not have every purchase treated as a crypto sale, this card is the wrong shape of product, because the whole mechanism is spend-from-crypto by design.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Trade Republic card?

It is a payment card issued by Trade Republic Bank in Berlin that lets you pay for things with crypto held on your Trade Republic account. Rather than being a standalone crypto wallet card, it is tied to your broker account and draws on that balance. In practice it behaves like an ordinary card at the till, and unofficially it comes as a virtual, a Classic, or a metal Mirror version.

How does the Trade Republic card work?

You hold crypto with Trade Republic, and when you pay with the card the crypto is converted so the merchant receives ordinary money — a press release describes card spending as a sale of the crypto. Because each payment is a sale, spending from crypto can have tax implications, and the value is measured on the date of each transaction. The list of spendable coins is not officially stated.

Is Trade Republic a bank?

Yes, Trade Republic Bank GmbH is a German bank registered in Berlin at Brunnenstrasse 19-21, 10119 Berlin, and it is the issuer named for the card. However, it is best known as a crypto broker with a banking interface, not a general-purpose bank for direct debits and standing orders. That distinction matters: you are not getting a normal current account here.

Who owns Trade Republic?

The company behind the brand is Trade Republic Bank GmbH, the Berlin-based entity listed in the site footer and named as the card’s issuer. Specific ownership and the licence or BIN sponsor details are not stated in the readable official text. So the safest answer is that the operator is the Berlin bank, rather than naming individual investors.

Can I use the Trade Republic card in my country?

That depends on where you are, and the honest answer is that the official pages do not give a readable country list. Trade Republic is Germany/EU based (en-de and en-nl site versions), so the EU is the intended market. If you are elsewhere, do not assume — verify your own eligibility directly with Trade Republic before relying on the card, since the published pages are not specific enough for me to answer for you.

Does the Trade Republic card require KYC?

The card’s own pages do not state the verification steps in readable form. In practice, regulated businesses must verify customers under anti-money-laundering law, and in the EU that covers name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documents, a sanctions check, and politically exposed person screening. So yes, expect identity checks — I just cannot quote Trade Republic’s exact flow.

How do I top up the Trade Republic card?

The main route is crypto already held in your Trade Republic account, which the card can spend directly. For adding fiat, third-party sources say a SEPA bank transfer is free, while topping up by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay costs 1% of the amount. Official top-up details and any withdrawal terms are not stated in readable form, so confirm the current options with Trade Republic.

Is the Trade Republic card free?

Mostly, unofficially: the virtual card is 0 EUR, the Classic is 5 EUR one-time, and the metal Mirror is 50 EUR one-time, with no annual or monthly fee and no currency surcharge. But these amounts come from third-party reviews, not the official pages, which do not state them. The one clear cost to avoid is the 1% fee for topping up by card rather than SEPA.

Can I add the Trade Republic card to Apple Wallet?

Unofficially, yes — Apple Pay and Google Pay are both supported, and the card is added in the app (per neuebanken.de, 2026). The reason it works is that Apple Pay replaces your card number with a device-specific number stored on your device, never on Apple’s servers, and each payment uses a one-time security code. So adding it to a wallet is both convenient and no less secure than the physical card.

Is the Trade Republic card worth it?

For an EU resident already holding crypto on the platform, I think yes — it scored highest of the options I compared on both everyday use and reliability, with a named German bank issuer and a 4.6/5 Trustpilot score from 67,608 reviews. It is less clearly worth it if you are outside the EU, or if you want a provider that publishes its country list, coin list and fee table officially. Weigh the reward (unofficial 1% Saveback, some reports of 2% on crypto-funded spend) as a bonus, not the reason.

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