"Crypto card" means at least three different things. First, Visa and Mastercard debit or prepaid cards that let you spend a crypto balance in shops. Second, voucher cards sold at kiosks or Coop, which you use to buy bitcoin – not to pay with it. Third, your ordinary bank or credit card used to buy crypto online; that route is covered in buying crypto with a credit card.
This page deals with the first two. It shows which cards you can actually get with a Swiss address, what a payment in francs really costs, and where providers’ information for Switzerland is patchy. That last point matters for expats: a card that worked in Berlin or Dublin may not be open to you once your residence moves to Switzerland.
How a crypto card works
Technically, a crypto card is an ordinary Visa or Mastercard issued by an electronic money institution. For the SwissBorg Card that is UAB Monavate, supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. When you pay, the provider sells the necessary slice of your coins in real time, and the merchant receives francs or euros as usual. Nobody at the Coop checkout is taking bitcoin: you are selling a little of it with every coffee.
That creates three cost layers: the fee or The difference between the buy and sell price. Often built into the rate rather than shown separately. on conversion, any FX charges when the card currency differs from the shop’s, and subscription or token-lock costs for better tiers. The bait is almost always A refund of part of the purchase amount or fee – with crypto cards usually paid in the issuer’s own token. in the house token: BORG at SwissBorg, CRO at Crypto.com, NEXO at Nexo.
Some cards add a credit function. Nexo lets you pay in credit mode, borrowing against your coins as collateral instead of selling them. As with any A loan secured by pledged securities or coins. If their value falls sharply, you must top up the collateral or it is sold., a sharp price fall can trigger a forced sale.
Cards available to Swiss residents
| SwissBorg Card | Crypto.com Prepaid | Nexo Card | Cryptonow voucher | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Virtual Mastercard | Prepaid Visa | Debit and credit mode | Voucher, not a payment card |
| Swiss residents | unclear | |||
| Currency | CHF | EUR account | not confirmed | CHF amount turned into BTC |
| Costs | 0.99% per payment | Subscription or CRO lock (EEA tariff) | Card free, FX 0.2–0.7% | CHF 1 + 6.9% (2021 test) |
| ATM cash | not confirmed for CH | up to EUR 2,000 a month free | ||
| Rewards | up to 99% of the fee in BORG | up to 4.5% in CRO (EEA) | 0.5–2% in NEXO | none |
SwissBorg Card
The SwissBorg Card is the only crypto card we know of that explicitly runs in francs for Swiss customers. Its rulebook says residents of Switzerland receive CHF as the base currency, which cannot be changed later. You need level-2 identity verification with ID and proof of address. Swiss customers contract with BlockNodes SAS in France, which holds a MiCA authorisation from the French regulator AMF; the card itself is issued by Monavate.
For now the card is virtual only – for Apple Pay, Google Pay and online shopping. A physical card may follow "depending on demand", for a fee. ATM withdrawals are not available. Each payment is a conversion at 0.99% under the current pricing policy; depending on your rank, 5% to 99% of that fee comes back as BORG that stays locked for a period. Foreign-currency payments use the Mastercard rate, and SwissBorg says it adds no FX mark-up of its own.
Watch how money gets into the app: SwissBorg accepts francs only by SWIFT, not SIC, and topping up by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay costs Swiss residents 4.5% at the standard rank. More in our SwissBorg review.
Crypto.com Prepaid Visa
A Crypto.com help article lists Switzerland among the countries to which its Prepaid Visa ships. The catch: Swiss customers get a euro account, as Crypto.com does not offer francs. Paying in Switzerland with a euro card means converting back to francs on every purchase – at a cost we could not confirm for Switzerland.
Under the EEA tariff, card tiers depend on a subscription or locked CRO: the entry tier is free with no CRO rewards, the next costs EUR 3.99 a month or EUR 450 of CRO locked for twelve months and pays 1.5%, and the top tier needs EUR 450,000 locked for 4.5%. The website does not say whether that table applies unchanged to Swiss customers. Crypto Earn is explicitly closed to Swiss residents. More in our Crypto.com review.
Nexo Card
Nexo is the grey area. Its official FAQ refers to "selected European countries", including the EEA and the UK, and "another eligible country in Europe". Its fee table, though, names Switzerland directly: foreign-currency payments cost 0.2% on weekdays and 0.7% at weekends for the EEA, the UK and CH. Media reported a Swiss launch in February 2025. Check availability in the app before you transfer any money.
The virtual card is free, provided you hold at least USD 50; the physical card requires Gold tier and a USD 5,000 portfolio. Cashback ranges from 0.5% in NEXO (or 0.1% in bitcoin) to 2% in NEXO (or 0.5% in bitcoin) at the top tier. Cash withdrawals are free up to EUR 2,000 a month, then 2%.
Not available or unclear
- Bitpanda Card: Bitpanda requires residence in the euro area, so Swiss residents are excluded, whatever some comparison sites say. If you moved here from the eurozone, check whether your card is still covered. Platform details: Bitpanda review.
- Coinbase Card: the card terms apply to EEA residents; we found no Swiss version (Coinbase review).
- Binance Card: the European programme ended on 20 December 2023, and Binance has no FINMA authorisation (Binance review).
- Wirex, Plutus, Tangem Pay: Swiss availability not confirmed.
- Gnosis Pay, Fiat24: listed as available in Switzerland in a CoinGecko comparison; Gnosis Pay works without francs. Not checked directly by us.
- AMINA Bank: offers credit cards, but only to professional clients with at least CHF 500,000.
Swissquote and Yuh issue ordinary debit cards: to spend crypto, you sell it in the app first. Whether Revolut lets Swiss customers spend crypto directly with its card, we could not confirm (Revolut review).
What a payment really costs
Take a CHF 100 dinner in Zurich. With the SwissBorg Card you sell CHF 100 of crypto and pay CHF 0.99 in conversion fees. At the standard rank, 5% of that fee – around 5 centimes – comes back as locked BORG. There is no currency exchange, because card and bill are both in francs.
With a euro-denominated card the maths changes: your crypto is converted into euros, and the euro amount is then converted again to settle the franc bill. Add the cost of getting money onto the platform in the first place – 4.5% for a card top-up at SwissBorg, or your bank’s SWIFT charge. If you only pay occasionally, it is often cheaper to sell coins deliberately and move the proceeds to your Swiss account (cashing out crypto in Switzerland).
The kiosk "bitcoin card" is a voucher
Search for "bitcoin gift card Switzerland" and you will mostly find Cryptonow cards. They are distributed by Värdex Suisse AG, which says it also runs more than 80 crypto ATMs. Since December 2023 Coop has sold bitcoin and ether cards worth CHF 50 to 500 in 160 branches; earlier they were also sold at Valora kiosks and petrol-station shops. Secondary sources report that some online resellers sell the vouchers for TWINT.
Here is how it works: you pay the amount at the till, activate the voucher online with your wallet ID, the scratch-off PIN and an SMS code, and receive bitcoin. A 2021 test by the Swiss portal finanzdepot.ch reported CHF 1 activation plus a 6.9% commission. You cannot sell back through Cryptonow, and resellers contradict each other on validity (12 months or 10 years). Värdex itself says it is not supervised by FINMA and that the voucher amount is not covered by deposit insurance. We could not check current prices. Other cash routes are in buying bitcoin with cash.
You need coins first – the simplest route is an online purchase by transfer from your Swiss account.
Operating since 2013Group registered with FinCEN (US) and the FCA (UK)
Tax: every card payment is a sale
Because the card sells crypto every time you pay, each purchase creates a gain or a loss. For private investors in Switzerland that is usually harmless: capital gains on private assets are tax-free, though losses are not deductible either. What remains taxable is the holding itself, through cantonal An annual cantonal tax on your net assets as at 31 December – cryptocurrencies are included.: you declare the balance at 31 December in the securities list, using the federal tax administration’s year-end rate.
Keep the card statements anyway. SwissBorg books each payment as a trade, and with very many transactions the tax office may look at whether you count as a professional trader. We found no official guidance on whether cashback in BORG or CRO is taxable income; if in doubt, declare it and ask your cantonal tax office. The basics are in our Swiss crypto tax guide.
Checklist before you apply
- Is Switzerland named in the card’s own terms, not just on a comparison site?
- Does the card run in CHF or EUR?
- What is the fee per conversion, and is it hidden in the rate?
- How does money reach the platform – SIC, SWIFT or card – and at what cost?
- Does the better tier require a subscription or locked tokens?
- Who issues the card and who supervises it? E-money is not covered by Swiss deposit insurance.
A crypto card is a tool for spending crypto, not a savings product. If you plan to hold bitcoin long term, a wallet you control is the better home (crypto wallets in Switzerland).
