A Brazilian crypto card that pays Bitcoin back, with the fee details left unsaid

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Bipa scores 5.9 out of 10. That is a middling grade for a card whose strongest idea — getting a share of what you spend back in Bitcoin — is genuinely attractive, and whose weakest point is that it never tells you what a payment abroad or a cash withdrawal costs. The card is built for one country and one audience: Brazilian residents who want to be paid in Bitcoin while spending reais. If that is you, there is real substance here: a free tier, a Mastercard in both prepaid and credit form, native Pix, and Bitcoin cashback that rises with the plan you pay for. If you are anywhere else, or you are the kind of person who wants the exchange rate and the ATM charge printed on the page before you commit, this is the wrong card and I would not try to bend it into shape.

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

Who the card suits, and the score behind that view

Bipa is a Brazilian company, the plans are priced in reais, and the credit side runs on Brazilian risk criteria. Brazilian residents who want to earn Satsback — cashback paid in Bitcoin — on card purchases are the audience the product is built around. That is a real, specific fit, and it is why this card scores what it does.

The score table below breaks the 5.9 down. Read the low row first: it is the reason this is not an 8.

Two things about that score deserve a note. First, “who can get it” at 2 out of 10 is not a claim that Brazilians are refused. It is a claim that the public pages do not say who qualifies, which is a practical problem if you are reading this from outside Brazil and wondering whether to bother. Second, the reliability row is high partly because of an absence: no Reclame Aqui or Trustpilot page about Bipa turned up in the dedicated search. An absence of complaints is not the same as a record of good service, though for a young card it is not an unwelcome sign.

Will they give you the card?

Nobody publishes the eligibility rule. The card’s own public pages do not state who can be approved. What they do make clear is the shape of the business: Bipa Intermediação de Ativos Digitais LTDA is a Brazilian company, CNPJ 37.008.710/0001-78, founded in 2020 in Brazil, and it describes itself as both a payment institution and a virtual asset service provider regulated by the Central Bank of Brazil — that description is the company’s own claim. Plans are priced in reais, and the credit card is based on Brazilian risk criteria.

The card is issued by Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento, named by Bipa as responsible for issuing the Bipa cards. Plans are offered with BIPA Instituicao de Pagamento Ltda, CNPJ 40.910.463/0001-05. Bipa has reported R$17 million in funding from Ego Death Capital on its own company page — that figure is undated and comes from the company.

So the honest answer to “will they give me the card?” is: if you are a Brazilian resident, the product is aimed squarely at you; if you are not, the pages do not tell you enough to find out, and the answer will only come from the app itself. The issuer and BIN sponsor are not named beyond Stark Bank.

How to get it

The route is the app: sign up, send a selfie and a document, and let Bipa verify. That is the whole published process, and the parts most applicants care about are the parts not written down.

• Identity check at sign-up. A selfie and a document are sent when you register.
• Ongoing checks. Stark Bank and Bipa may verify your data at any time. Bipa may also request updated registration data periodically.
• Consequences of wrong information. False information can lead to suspension and card cancellation.
• Age. Adult individuals only.
• Credit limit. Approval of a credit limit depends on a prior analysis.

Not stated on the pages: the verification levels, which documents are accepted, or how long processing takes. And the bigger gap — card issuance, use, guarantee and disputes are governed “exclusivamente pelos Termos do Cartão”, the Card Terms, which I did not read. If the exact question you have is “what happens if my card is used by someone else after I report it”, the answer lives in that document, not on the marketing pages.

What you do get to choose is the tier and the form. The card is Mastercard, in prepaid and credit versions (the credit one is called Bipa Crédito), virtual and physical. The tiers are arranged in bands: Gold covers Free and Plus, Platinum is Pro, Black is Max. The physical card is free on Pro and Max and carries a fee on Free and Plus — the amount is not stated. Delivery time is “per the periods informed by support channels”, with no figure given, and a Brazilian delivery address is implied. There is also a virtual card, and the prepaid limit can be “enabled in crypto”.

Fees: what it really costs

Here is where I have to be blunt. Bipa publishes its plan fees and its crypto trading fees, and it does not publish the numbers you would use to work out what a purchase actually cost you. The card’s FX rate and conversion fee are not stated, and neither are ATM fees. There is a “Tabela de Tarifas” — a fee table — and your plan governs the amounts, but the amounts are not listed on the page.

The costs table below reproduces what is published. Where a value is missing, that is the finding, not an oversight on my part.

The tiers, since the fee is only half the story:

Now, three everyday payments, and which fees apply. These are worked through from the published terms — I am not filling the gaps with guesses.

A R$40 lunch in a São Paulo café. Nothing bites here. You pay in BRL, so no FX rate and no IOF apply. If you were on Free or Plus, the physical card fee was already counted. And you earn the plan’s Satsback — 0% on Free, 0.5% on Plus, 1% on Pro, 1.5% on Max — with crypto bought with the card excluded from the reward. Credit-card rewards post after the invoice is paid; prepaid rewards post after settlement.

A R$120 dinner in Lisbon on the Plus plan. This is the case the pages do not price. Foreign use is limited to travel and personal expenses, and only in credit mode. The FX rate “may be higher or lower than the BCB average rate”, so you do not even know the direction of the difference. IOF on remittance abroad is your responsibility and the rate is not named. Plan your budget with a margin, because the number that decides it is not published.

R$500 from an ATM in Buenos Aires. The credit card is usable abroad; the prepaid side is not for this. The ATM fee follows the fee table and your plan, and a daily, weekly or monthly ATM limit may be imposed on you — none of the figures are listed. Expect this to be the least predictable line on any statement you keep.

One more thing about limits, because it catches people out. A credit limit increase requires an extra deposit and the enabling of a guarantee. Bipa may set a maximum per active plan and review limits periodically. Merchants can set their own minimum and maximum amounts, which is normal and is not the card blocking you.

Top up: how money gets in

The funding side is the best part of Bipa, and it earns its 8 out of 10 comfortably. Pix is native, which for a Brazilian user means the transfer is instant and free of the correspondent-bank dance that usually eats a crypto deposit. Bitcoin arrives on-chain or over Lightning. USDT arrives via Ethereum (ERC-20) or Polygon only — and this is the detail to burn into your memory: Solana is not accepted for USDT. USDC, SOL, XRP and ETH networks are also listed.

The mistake people make here is not the network but the irreversibility. Blockchain transfers do not reverse. If you send a deposit on a network Bipa does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, it can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee attached. Check the network twice. If you hold USDT on Tron, note that Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, and Tron fees are paid by burning TRX rather than by an ETH-style gas — a wallet with a token but no native coin cannot send. And a stablecoin is not a guarantee: stablecoins aim to hold a stable value but, as the BIS reported in July 2025, about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation sits in USDT and USDC, and USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis.

Two smaller mechanics. The prepaid card limit may be enabled in crypto, with settlement per clause 5.9 of the Card Terms. The credit card is backed by reais held as collateral or guarantee. Plan fees are debited from the prepaid limit or from your reais balance. The Cofrinho minimum is R$50.

Withdrawal and closing are worth knowing before you need them. There is a guide called “Como sacar ou transferir Dolar (USDT)” and a US$100,000 limit on international crypto transfers — I read the titles only, so treat those as existence rather than detail. There is no plan or card cancellation fee. On cancellation Bipa may deduct amounts owed from the available balance, and cancelling the card does not cancel the plan — a small trap for anyone winding down.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, Bipa behaves like a normal Brazilian card with a crypto kicker. It is a Mastercard, prepaid or credit, physical or virtual, in reais. The virtual card is handy for online subscriptions and can be enabled with the prepaid limit in crypto. The physical card is free on Pro and Max, which is where the value calculation starts to make sense against a paid monthly fee.

Two things you will look for and not find named: Apple Pay and Google Pay. The card “may be enabled in digital wallets according to eligibility”, which is a real sentence that carries no brand name with it. If adding it to your phone’s wallet is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have, ask support before you pay for a plan.

There are two named restrictions on ordinary use. Some transactions classified as MoneySend by the processor are blocked, and no blocked merchant category code list is published. Merchants apply their own minimum and maximum amounts. For context on why a card sometimes fails at a till anywhere: a card number starts with a 6- or 8-digit issuer identification number that any shop can look up, so a card issued in one country can read as “foreign” to a merchant in another — which is where prepaid and foreign BIN declines come from, and why some sellers treat a crypto card differently from a local one.

The rewards are the reason to stay. Satsback is paid in Bitcoin on card purchases, excluding crypto bought with the card, and it credits after invoice payment on credit and after settlement on prepaid. There is a second, separate reward for the reais you leave as guarantee, requiring an active card: Free earns 75% of CDI, Plus 100% of CDI up to R$3,000 and 90% above that, Pro 110% up to R$5,000 and 100% above, Max 115% up to R$5,000 and 100% above. Read those two reward streams carefully, because they reward different behaviours: one rewards spending, the other rewards leaving money parked as collateral.

The app itself rates well on the stores — App Store 4.8 and Google Play 4.7 across more than 20,000 ratings, with 300,000+ downloads. That is the company’s own claim, read on 2026-10-20.

What can go wrong

Most of the risk in this card is not dramatic. It is procedural, and it is the sort of thing that only matters on the day it goes wrong.

The dispute window is short. Unrecognised transactions must be reported within 5 days of the transaction. Stark Bank does a preliminary analysis, then a final one “within the period defined by Stark Bank” — no number of days given. There is a 7-day right of withdrawal for online purchases. Bipa does not assume responsibility for the outcome of a dispute, and a chargeback reverses the Satsback you earned on that purchase. So a contested R$200 dinner costs you the cash and the reward.

Theft and fraud. Three wrong PIN attempts block the card; you unlock it in the app. Report loss or theft to support to have it blocked. Bipa and Stark Bank never ask for passwords. Note the important asymmetry: Bipa answers for third-party misuse only after the block has been requested — before you report, you are carrying the loss. Custody and insurance are not stated.

The out-of-app risk is the crypto risk. Transfers are irreversible and a stolen private key has no recovery path. Custodial platforms have a real history of failure: Mt. Gox (about US$350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (about US$400 million, 2018), Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022). Bipa describes itself as a payment institution and a virtual asset service provider under Central Bank of Brazil supervision — its own claim — and stablecoins are not censorship-proof: Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity.

Programmes get closed. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers and can suspend a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes. A closure typically means a notice period, then loading and spending stop, then you are asked to withdraw. If you are weighing Bipa, keep your crypto balance somewhere you control and do not treat the card balance as a savings account.

Declines and holds. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds for several days, typically up to seven. Address Verification Service is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines. 3-D Secure (Visa Secure, Mastercard’s Identity Check) adds a step to online payments; under it, liability for fraudulent online payments can shift from the merchant to your bank — or, per its critics, to you.

Support is Portuguese only, which is worth weighing if you are not comfortable there. There is in-app chat under profile > “Ajuda e suporte”, a Help Center chat and form with a reply promised within 24 business hours, social media, and [email protected]. Hours are Monday to Friday 09h–21h and Saturday to Sunday 09h–15h, with the time zone not stated.

On complaints: a dedicated search for Bipa complaints on Reclame Aqui and Trustpilot found no pages about Bipa. The company claims a 4.8 rating from 26,000+ reviews — marketing, unverified, and a different number from the store ratings above, so treat both as separate claims rather than one fact.

Alternatives to compare

If Bipa’s geography does not work for you, the comparison is not close — the other cards publish far more of their costs. Here is what each one actually says.

Nexo scores 6.3 out of 10. It is open to residents and citizens of “selected European countries, including the EEA and the United Kingdom” — note the wording covers both, and there is no country list on the page. It issues a virtual card (activated in the app) and a physical one, through DiPocket UAB. There is no monthly, annual or inactivity fee, but the virtual card needs at least $50 in the account to activate, and the physical card is free to ship only with a balance above $5,000 in digital assets and at least Gold tier. The FX fee is 0.2% on weekdays in the EEA, UK and Switzerland and 2% elsewhere, rising to 0.7% and 2.5% at weekends — published figures, which is the point. Cashback applies only in Credit Mode with more than $5,000 held, by tier: Platinum 2% NEXO / 0.5% BTC, Gold 1% / 0.3%, Silver 0.7% / 0.2%, Base 0.5% / 0.1%. News, unofficial: Cointelegraph reported a 2025-era Bulgarian police raid on Nexo’s Sofia office over alleged Russia-sanctions and AML violations, with no official Nexo statement on Russians found.

Xplace scores 7.7 out of 10. Visa, with a virtual card available instantly and a physical card live on Silver, Gold and Platinum coming soon, delivery 7–14 business days. The annual fee is the headline cost: Basic free, Silver $99/year, Gold $249/year, Platinum $999/year, with no origination fee on borrowing. Platinum advertises “0% FX”; FX for other tiers and the conversion fee are not stated. Deposits are BTC, ETH, SOL, JitoSOL, USDC, USDT and xStocks on the Solana network. Credit-mode cashback is 0.5% on Basic up to 2% on Platinum, paid in USDC to your wallet at settlement; Cash-mode cashback is not stated. Visa acceptance is said to cover 160+ countries.

ether.fi scores 6.7 out of 10. It issues only in listed jurisdictions — Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, plus 31 US states, with Belgium and Ireland eligible without physical delivery. If your jurisdiction is not listed, you cannot apply. Brazil is on that list, which makes ether.fi the most direct comparison for a Brazilian reader. The FX fee sits on top of the base rate by tier: Core 0.5%, Luxe 0.25%, Pinnacle and VIP none, and EUR purchases carry a 0% FX article. Members normally get one free virtual card, or $10 in regional-pricing countries. Cashback is paid in ETHFI, locked seven days then claimable, at 3% up to a monthly cap that varies by tier from $2,000 upward, and ATM, cash advances, P2P and gambling merchant categories are excluded.

Where the category as a whole is regulated is worth a paragraph. A crypto card usually rests on two licences: the card is a payment service under e-money and payments law, while the crypto side falls under markets-in-crypto regulation — in the EU, MiCA (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114), which ESMA says took legal effect in June 2023, with its stablecoin rules applying from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provider rules from 30 December 2024. Electronic money institutions must safeguard customer funds in segregated accounts or by insurance, and those funds are not the same as bank deposits. Visa and Mastercard license issuers rather than issuing to consumers directly. In the US, FinCEN guidance FIN-2013-G001 treats administrators and exchangers of convertible virtual currency as money transmitters, while people simply buying goods with their own money are not.

If Bipa does not fit because of Brazil or because of the fee silence, and none of the three above fits either, the honest comparison is against a plain prepaid card or a debit card from a bank that publishes its exchange rate. A card that hides its FX cost can be more expensive than one that charges openly.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Bipa to a Brazilian resident who already holds some Bitcoin, wants to spend reais day to day, and wants a slice of that spending back in BTC without thinking about it — and who pays the Pro or Max fee rather than the Free fee, since the physical card is free only on those tiers and 1% or 1.5% Satsback is the actual product.

I would not recommend it to someone who needs a card issued outside Brazil, or to anyone who plans to lean on it abroad. The foreign-use restrictions, credit-mode-only rule, unnamed IOF rate, undirected FX and possible ATM limits make it a poor travel card on the published information. Nor to a non-Portuguese speaker, who will find support is in one language only.

And I would suggest that before you pick a plan, you do what I could not do from public pages: open the fee table and the Card Terms, and check the FX rate, the ATM charge and the withdrawal conditions in the currency you actually spend in. That information exists — it just is not on the page the marketing is written on.

Frequently asked questions

What is Bipa?

Bipa is a Brazilian company founded in 2020 that offers a Mastercard in prepaid and credit form, virtual and physical. It describes itself as both a payment institution and a virtual asset service provider regulated by the Central Bank of Brazil, which is the company’s own claim. The card is issued by Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento.

Is Bipa a bank?

No — Bipa describes itself as a payment institution and a virtual asset service provider, not a bank, and the card programme is issued by Stark Bank S.A. Instituicao de Pagamento. That distinction matters for what happens to your balance if the company fails, because payment-institution safeguarding is not the same protection a bank deposit carries.

Do I need to be in Brazil to get a Bipa card?

Eligibility is not stated on the card’s public pages, which is why “who can get it” scores only 2 out of 10. The product is clearly aimed at Brazil — a Brazilian company, plans in reais, Brazilian risk criteria on the credit side — but the actual rule is not published.

Does Bipa require KYC?

Yes, in the ordinary way: a selfie and a document are sent at sign-up, and Stark Bank and Bipa may verify your data at any time. The specific verification levels, accepted documents and processing time are not stated on the pages reviewed, and false information can lead to suspension and card cancellation.

How much does Bipa cost per month?

Free is R$0, Plus R$14.90, Pro R$49.90 and Max R$99.90, with some discounts for usage. The physical card is free on Pro and Max and costs something on Free and Plus — the amount is not stated. There is no plan or card cancellation fee.

What are Bipa’s fees for converting or spending abroad?

That is the gap. Only plan fees and crypto trading fees are listed; the card’s FX and conversion fee is not stated, the FX rate may be higher or lower than the BCB average, the IOF rate is not named, and ATM fees follow a fee table whose amounts are not published. Foreign use is limited to travel and personal expenses in credit mode.

What does it cost to withdraw cash from an ATM?

Not stated. ATM fees follow the fee table and your plan, and daily, weekly or monthly ATM limits may be imposed without the figures being listed. For a Brazilian card used at a foreign ATM, this is the least predictable line on any statement.

Can I add Bipa to Apple Pay or Google Pay?

The card “may be enabled in digital wallets according to eligibility”, and neither Apple Pay nor Google Pay is named. If wallet support decides whether you use this card, ask support first — the published pages will not settle it.

Which networks can I send USDT on?

Ethereum (ERC-20) or Polygon only. Solana is not accepted for USDT. USDC, SOL, XRP and ETH networks are also listed, and Bitcoin arrives on-chain or via Lightning. Sending on the wrong network is usually unrecoverable.

Is Bipa safe, and what should I watch out for?

The issuer is named, and the dedicated complaint search found no Reclame Aqui or Trustpilot page about Bipa — an absence of complaints rather than a record of them. Report loss or theft to support promptly, because Bipa only answers for third-party misuse after the block is requested, and report unrecognised transactions within 5 days.

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