- One tap, two conversions — in two different contracts. The crypto-to-fiat sale sits in your programme's platform terms; the fiat-to-fiat conversion sits in the card agreement, the document carrying the fee schedule. Only the second is usually published with a number.
- “0% foreign transaction fee” covers one cost on one leg. Crypto.com's US agreement says it outright: the fee is “in addition to the currency conversion rate”, and the issuer “will not reimburse you for any exchange rate loss”.
- Same brand, same tier, two very different FX bills. A Midnight Blue card pays 3% under the US agreement and 0.2% inside the UK and EU under the UK schedule. Jurisdiction beats tier.
- EU law makes the markup publishable; UK law only makes it nameable. Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 wants a percentage mark-up over the ECB reference rate, published. The UK's Schedule 4 asks only for the “index or base” in your contract.
- It can be done properly. Revolut's crypto fee document names the mid-market reference, splits market spread from its own added spread, works a €100 example and puts a range on it: 0–3%. No crypto-native card we read publishes any figure.
On this page
- One tap, two conversions, two contracts
- What the card agreement promises about the rate
- The crypto leg is in a different document
- When your coins are actually sold
- One brand, two countries, two FX bills
- The FX allowance nobody describes
- What a real spread disclosure looks like
- EU law says publish it; UK law says name it
- Which programmes publish a conversion clause
- Measure your own crypto card exchange rate
- Final take
- Sources
- FAQ
You spend €50 abroad on a card that advertises no foreign transaction fee, and €51.40 leaves your balance. Nothing was charged twice. You have just paid a crypto card exchange rate rather than a fee, and the difference matters because a fee has to be published and a rate does not. On a €2,000 month that gap is the price of a decent dinner, invisibly billed. So we read six documents on 9 October 2026 — two card agreements, two sets of platform terms, one EU regulation and one UK statutory schedule — and found the reason nobody can quote you a single number: one tap triggers two separate conversions, written into two separate contracts, and only one of them comes with a fee table.
One tap, two conversions, two contracts
Pay for a coffee in Lisbon with a crypto card issued in the United States and two exchanges happen. First your tokens become fiat. Then, because the merchant bills in euro and your card settles in dollars, that fiat becomes other fiat. Every guide to “0% FX” cards is about the second one. The first is where the larger and less visible cost usually sits.
The split is contractual, not merely accounting, and Crypto.com's US Prepaid Visa Cardholder Agreement — effective 1 September 2026 — draws the line in its opening section: “No cryptocurrency debits, credits or balances will take place on the CRYPTO.COM Prepaid Visa Card or be held on the Card. Only US Dollars (USD) are held.” It then points elsewhere for the other half: “See the Crypto.com App Terms and Conditions for additional information about any fees, benefits, and your obligations regarding transactions involving cryptocurrency.”
Read that twice. The card agreement — the one with the issuing bank, the regulator and the Schedule of All Fees and Charges — governs dollars only. The sale of your crypto is elsewhere, in a document with no fee schedule attached.
| The two legs | Leg 1: crypto → fiat | Leg 2: fiat → fiat |
|---|---|---|
| Governed by | Platform / app terms | Card agreement |
| Who sets the rate | The programme or its partner | The card network (Visa, Mastercard) |
| Published as a percentage? | Rarely or never | Usually yes, as a fee |
| Reference index named? | “Market rate”, unspecified | Wholesale or government rate |
| Covered by EU Art. 4 markup duty | No | Yes |
| What “0% FX” refers to | Not this leg | The fee on this leg only |
The two conversions inside one card payment. Kardd, 9 October 2026, from the programme documents cited throughout.
What the card agreement promises about the rate
Section 19 of the same US agreement is the clearest statement any crypto card publishes about the fiat leg, and it contains three sentences worth knowing by heart. The first separates fee from rate: “This Foreign Transaction Fee is in addition to the currency conversion rate.” A card charging nothing can still earn on the rate.
The second describes the rate itself: “The Visa currency conversion procedure includes use of either a government mandated exchange rate, or a wholesale exchange rate selected by Visa.” Note selected by. This is a rate chosen from a range, not a published benchmark you can look up and check a receipt against.
The third is the timing, and it is the one that catches travellers: “The exchange rate Visa uses will be a rate in effect on the day the transaction is processed. This rate may differ from the rate in effect on the date of purchase or the date the transaction was posted to your account.” You are not billed at the rate on the day you tapped. You are billed at the rate on the day the transaction cleared, which may be several days later, and the agreement closes the door on complaint: the issuer “will not reimburse you for any exchange rate loss or fee”.
The crypto leg is in a different document
So what does the other contract say? KAST's Terms and Conditions of Service carry the clearest conversion clause we found on a crypto-native programme, under the heading Conversion: “Upon executing a Card Transaction, you grant our Partners permission to convert and deduct the necessary amount of Acceptable Tokens from the Custodian Wallet.” The amount “may be converted into stablecoins or fiat currencies at the Partner's discretion”, and — the rate sentence — “The conversion rate is based on the current market rate between the settlement assets and converted assets.”
That is the whole of it. No index, no venue, no percentage, no tolerance. “Current market rate” is a reasonable thing to write and an unauditable thing to receive, because every token trades at slightly different prices on every venue at every instant, and the clause does not say which one. The same terms also list, among the charges that may be deducted, “foreign exchange variances” — a cost named but never quantified.
None of this makes KAST an outlier — it makes it the most forthcoming crypto-native programme we could read, which is the actual problem. Our KAST card review covers the rest of its fee stack.
When your coins are actually sold
The two contracts also answer a question most cardholders have never thought to ask: at what moment do you stop owning the token? There are two architectures in this market and they put the sale in completely different places.
| Model | Your crypto is sold | Price risk between tap and settlement | What the card holds | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-converted prepaid | At top-up, in the app | None — you already hold fiat | Fiat only (“Only US Dollars”) | Crypto.com Prepaid Visa |
| Convert at transaction | On executing the card transaction | Yours, at that moment's market rate | Tokens, until you spend | KAST |
Where the disposal happens. Kardd, 9 October 2026, from the Crypto.com US Prepaid Visa Cardholder Agreement (1 September 2026) and KAST's Terms and Conditions of Service.
The practical consequences diverge sharply. On the prepaid model you take your crypto price risk once, deliberately, when you top up — and then you are simply holding dollars, with an FX fee ahead of you. On the convert-at-transaction model every purchase is a sale at that day's price, which is why the tax position is different too, as our guide to crypto card taxes sets out. Neither model is wrong. But only one of them is described on the product pages, and it is usually not the one you have.
One brand, two countries, two FX bills
Here is the finding that should end the habit of quoting one number for a card. Crypto.com publishes a foreign transaction fee in the US agreement's Schedule A and a different one in its UK fees article, last updated 31 July 2026. Same brand, same tier names, different bills.
| Tier | US card: foreign transactions | UK card: non-GBP within UK & EU | UK card: outside UK & EU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midnight Blue (entry) | 3% | 0.2% | 2.0% |
| Ruby Steel | 3% | 0.2% | Free to £400/mo, then 2.0% |
| Jade Green / Royal Indigo | 3% | 0.2% | Free to £800/mo, then 2.0% |
| Icy White / Obsidian / Frosted Rose Gold | No charge | No fee | No fee |
Crypto.com foreign transaction fees by tier and jurisdiction. US figures from Schedule A of the Prepaid Visa Cardholder Agreement effective 1 September 2026; UK figures from the UK fees and limits help article, updated 31 July 2026. All sit on top of the network conversion rate.
Two things fall out of that table. The first is that the entry tier carries the heaviest FX cost in both countries, which inverts the usual intuition: the cardholders least able to lock up a large stake pay 3% in the US where the top three tiers pay nothing. FX cost here is a loyalty gate, not a cost of service.
The second is that the two documents are not measuring the same thing. The UK schedule charges 0.2% on a non-GBP purchase inside the UK and EU — a charge with no analogue in the US document, which treats country and currency as one category. A reader who learned “Crypto.com charges 3%” from an American guide and then held the UK card would be wrong twice over. Our Crypto.com card review tracks both schedules.
The FX allowance nobody describes
One structure in that table deserves its own name, because no comparison page we read describes it. On the UK Plus and Pro tiers, spending outside the UK and EU is not charged at a rate at all. It is charged at zero up to a monthly cash allowance — £400 or £800 — and 2.0% after that.
That is a different product from a percentage. A fortnight's £1,200 of holiday spending on the Pro tier is free on the first £800 and costs 2.0% on the remaining £400 — an all-in rate of about 0.67% for the month. Split across two calendar months, the same £1,200 is free entirely. An allowance rewards planning in a way a rate never does, and it punishes the single large purchase, which is exactly the pattern a traveller has.
What a real spread disclosure looks like
It would be easy to conclude that this cost is simply unpublishable — that a market rate moves too fast to describe. One regulated issuer disproves that, in a document anyone can download. Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd's retail crypto fee schedule devotes a section to Spread, and it does four things no crypto card document we read does.
| What a disclosure needs | Revolut's crypto fee document | Typical crypto card terms |
|---|---|---|
| Names the reference price | “based on the mid-market price”, defined as the average of the best available buy and sell prices on the broader market | “current market rate”, undefined |
| Separates market cost from its own margin | Yes — “Market Spread” vs “Product Added Spread” | Not separated |
| States which side it is applied to | “one-sided”: buy or sell, not both | Not stated |
| Quantifies it | 0–3% of the trade amount | No figure |
| Works an example | €100 mid-market, 1% one-sided: pay €101 or receive €99 | None |
Comparison of spread disclosure practice. Revolut column quoted from the RDAEL Retail Crypto Fees document; right-hand column from the card programme terms read for this article, 9 October 2026.
Note that Revolut's top of range, 3%, is not flattering to Revolut. That is the point: a published range invites you to check it, while “current market rate” cannot be checked at all. A disclosure this specific is a choice, not a regulatory impossibility.
EU law says publish it; UK law says name it
Which raises the obvious question: what is anyone actually required to tell you? The answer differs by jurisdiction, and the gap is wider than the marketing suggests.
In the EU, Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 on cross-border payments in the Union — the codification of 14 July 2021 — deals specifically with “currency conversion charges related to card-based transactions”. It requires providers to “express the total currency conversion charges as a percentage mark-up” “over the latest available euro foreign exchange reference rates issued by the European Central Bank”, to disclose that markup before the payment is initiated, and under Article 4(2) to publish it in an understandable and easily accessible way on a widely available electronic platform.
Two notes of precision there, because both are got wrong constantly. First, the instrument people cite for this — Regulation (EU) 2019/518 — was repealed; 2021/1230 codified it, so a guide citing the 2019 number is quoting a text no longer in force. Second, Article 4 reaches the currency conversion. It says nothing about selling your token, which is why the ECB-benchmark duty lands on leg 2 and never touches leg 1.
The UK asks for something weaker. Schedule 4 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 requires a framework contract to set out, at paragraph 3(b), “details of the interest and exchange rates to be applied” and, where reference rates are used, “the relevant date and index or base” for determining them. That is a duty to name your index inside a contract, not to express a markup against a common benchmark on a public page — so two UK-issued cards can both comply fully and remain impossible to compare. For how the rest of the EU regime lands on cards, see our guide to crypto cards and MiCA in Europe.
| Duty | EU — Reg. 2021/1230 Art. 4 | UK — PSRs 2017 Sch. 4 para 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Benchmark | ECB euro reference rates | Whatever index the contract names |
| Expressed as | A percentage mark-up | “Details of” the rates |
| Where | Public, easily accessible platform | The framework contract |
| Timing | Before the payment is initiated | Pre-contract and on change |
| Comparable between cards? | Yes, by design | Not necessarily |
| Covers the crypto sale? | No | No |
Currency conversion disclosure duties compared. Kardd, 9 October 2026, from Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 Article 4 and the Payment Services Regulations 2017, Schedule 4.
Which programmes publish a conversion clause
We then ran the only test that settles an argument like this: try to retrieve each programme's own words. The result is the disclosure spread we keep finding here — a few documents you can hold a firm to, and a long tail of pages saying nothing retrievable.
| Programme | Fiat-leg FX fee published? | Crypto-leg conversion clause? | A rate or index named? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto.com (US) | Yes — 3% / no charge by tier | Deferred to App Terms | Visa wholesale or government rate |
| Crypto.com (UK) | Yes — 0.2% / 2.0% and allowances | Deferred to App Terms | Not in the fees article |
| KAST | Not in the terms read | Yes, with a buffer clause | “Current market rate”, undefined |
| XKard | No — deferred to “the website” | No clause | None |
| RedotPay | Help centre resolves but renders client-side — no clause retrievable by plain fetch | ||
| Gnosis Pay | Help centre no longer resolves, consistent with its December 2026 wind-down | ||
Conversion-rate disclosure by programme, as retrievable on 9 October 2026. “No clause” means none was retrievable from the published terms, not that none exists.
XKard is worth naming precisely because we earn a commission on it. Its terms, last updated 4 June 2025, run to seven short sections with no currency conversion clause at all; section 4 says only that “Users are responsible for understanding the applicable fees, limits, and usage policies”, with the detail deferred to the website. Our XKard review covers the published fee picture; on conversion, there is nothing in the terms to hold it to.
Measure your own crypto card exchange rate
Since the number is usually unpublished, measure it. One small purchase and three figures give you a defensible all-in cost for your own card — more than any comparison table can honestly offer.
| Step | What to record | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mid-market token price at the moment you tap, with the timestamp | Your reference price — the thing the terms decline to name |
| 2 | The merchant's billed amount in the merchant's own currency | The only figure in the chain nobody can adjust |
| 3 | The amount finally deducted from your balance, after it settles | Your true cost, both legs and all fees included |
| 4 | Convert step 2 at the mid-market rate yourself; compare with step 3 | Total spread plus fees, as a percentage |
| 5 | Subtract any disclosed percentage fee | The undisclosed part |
| 6 | Repeat once in your card's own currency | Separates the crypto leg from the fiat leg |
A six-step method for measuring a card's all-in conversion cost. Kardd, 9 October 2026.
Two cautions. Use the settled amount, not the pending one — a pending figure can include a hold that has nothing to do with the rate, as our guide to pre-authorisation holds explains. And run step 6 the same day: a convert-at-transaction card re-prices your token every time.
Know which document governs your money
Kardd tracks the issuing entity, the licence, the custody model and the published fee schedule for every card we cover — because the contract your card sits under decides what you can hold anyone to.
Kardd may earn a commission on sign-ups, including XKard. Affiliate disclosure.
Final take
This market competes on the one FX number that is easy to publish and easy to zero out, and says almost nothing about the one that is neither. “0% foreign transaction fee” is true on a great many cards and describes a single fee on a single leg — while the issuer's own agreement says the fee is “in addition to the currency conversion rate”, and that nobody will reimburse you for the rate.
None of which requires suspicion of any particular card. It requires knowing which of the two contracts you are reading. So before your next trip, find three things: whether your card holds fiat or tokens, which document names your conversion rate, and whether your FX cost is a percentage or a monthly allowance. If your programme is EU-regulated, ask where its Article 4 markup is published. And if the only answer is “the current market rate”, you have learned the most useful thing available: the number is yours to measure, because nobody has undertaken to tell you.
Sources
- CRYPTO.COM Prepaid Visa Cardholder Agreement (US), effective 1 September 2026 — sections 1, 19 and Schedule A.
- Crypto.com Prepaid Visa Card fees and limits, United Kingdom — updated 31 July 2026.
- KAST Terms and Conditions of Service — the Conversion clause.
- Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd, Retail Crypto Fees — section 7, Spread.
- Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 on cross-border payments in the Union — Article 4.
- Payment Services Regulations 2017, Schedule 4 — paragraph 3.
- XKard Terms and Conditions — last updated 4 June 2025.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What exchange rate does a crypto card use?
Two rates, from two documents. The crypto-to-fiat rate comes from your programme's platform terms — KAST's say only “based on the current market rate”, naming no index. The fiat-to-fiat rate comes from the network: Crypto.com's US agreement describes “a wholesale exchange rate selected by Visa”, applied on the day the transaction is processed. Your fee table usually covers only that second leg.
Is a 0% foreign transaction fee card actually free to use abroad?
No. Crypto.com's US agreement states that the Foreign Transaction Fee is “in addition to the currency conversion rate”, and that the issuer “will not reimburse you for any exchange rate loss”. A card can charge no fee and still earn on the rate it converts at: 0% removes one of two costs on one of two legs.
When is my crypto actually sold?
It depends on the architecture. A prepaid card sells it at top-up: Crypto.com's agreement says “Only US Dollars (USD) are held” on the card, so the sale happens in the app before you tap. A convert-at-transaction card sells it when you spend — KAST converts and deducts tokens “upon executing a Card Transaction”, making every purchase a disposal at that moment's rate.
Does EU law require crypto cards to publish their exchange rate markup?
For the fiat leg, yes. Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 requires the total currency conversion charges to be expressed as a percentage mark-up over the latest available ECB euro reference rates, disclosed before the payment starts and published on an easily accessible platform. It codified and replaced Regulation (EU) 2019/518, so guides citing the 2019 number quote a repealed text. Nothing in Article 4 reaches the sale of your token.
What does the UK require instead?
Less, and at contract level. Schedule 4 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 requires a framework contract to give “details of the interest and exchange rates to be applied” and, where reference rates are used, “the relevant date and index or base”. That is a duty to name your index, not to publish a markup against a shared benchmark — so two UK cards can both comply and still be impossible to compare.
How can I measure my own card's spread?
Make one small purchase and record three figures: the mid-market token price when you tap, the merchant's billed amount in its own currency, and the amount deducted once it settles. Convert the billed amount at mid-market yourself and compare — the gap is your all-in cost, and subtracting any disclosed fee leaves the undisclosed part. Repeat in your card's own currency to separate the legs.
Which crypto card programmes publish a conversion rate clause?
Fewer than you would expect. Of those we read on 9 October 2026, Crypto.com publishes a foreign transaction clause and a tiered percentage schedule for the fiat leg in both its US and UK documents; KAST publishes a crypto-leg conversion clause with no rate, index or figure. XKard's terms carry no conversion clause at all, RedotPay's help centre renders client-side, and Gnosis Pay's no longer resolves.