Bitwala Card

Bitwala Card Review

A common argument for regular money (also known as fiat currency) as opposed to cryptocurrency is that you can’t use cryptocurrency to buy groceries and other everyday items. Well, through the use of a cryptocurrency debit card, you can. This is a review of Bitwala Card, one of the crypto debit cards out there.

General information

Bitwala is Germany’s cryptocurrency flagship with the mission of building the bank to bridge traditional and blockchain-based finance. Based in Berlin, Bitwala offers the world’s first all-in-one platform combining a regular bank account, Bitcoin and Etherem wallets, and seamless cryptocurrency trading. Their customers can easily buy and sell bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) with fast cash settlement directly from their bank account, hosted by a German partner bank. Bitwala’s investors include Earlybird, Sony Financial Ventures, coparion, Global Brain, High Tech Gründerfonds, ALSTIN Capital, and Digital Currency Group.

Bitwala currently supports BTC and ETH. Living off your cryptocurrencies and gains you've made with ETH and BTC is now easy. Easily trade your coins into Euro and have the funds ready on your own bank account. Use your card as usual and transactions will be converted into EUR on your account and bank statement.

Bitwala is a VISA-card, meaning that you can use the card at any point of payment that accepts VISA. This is of course a great advantage, seeing that VISA (and Mastercard) are the most accepted cards in the world.

US-investors may not use this card. So if you’re from the US and you’re looking for a crypto debit card, please refer to our Crypto Debit Card List to find one for you.

Support

Bitwala has support in two languages: German and English. But more languages will surely follow in the future.

Picture of Card

Bitwala Interest Account

Bitwala also has what they call the "Bitwala Interest Account". Through this, you can receive up to 5% interest on Bitcoin you deposit. The three main benefits with this solution are (in addition to receiving interest of course):

• No lockup, you can add & withdraw anytime, 
• Fast Liquidity: withdraw and convert to Euro within minutes, and 
• Minimum investment of only €10 in BTC.

The following infographic cleary shows the Bitwala Bitcoin Interest Account actually works in a comprehensible way:

Bitwala Bank Account

In addition to the interest account, Bitwala also offer bank accounts. This bank account is hosted by SolarisBank and comes with a German IBAN-number. The following three things are particularly noteworthy with this bank account:

• Euro deposits up to €100,000 are protected by the German Deposit Guarantee Scheme,  
• You can make standing orders and automatic payments for service subscriptions, and, finally, 
• You can send and receive SEPA transactions.

Bitwala Card Fees

Bitwala Card’s fees are low.

There are no monthly fees at all. There are no issuance fees (by the way, this is quite unusual).

There are no fees for ATM-withdrawals either, if we have understood the information about this card correctly.

The most important fee of them all, however, is the commission on spending. Bitwala Card has no such fees either!

In fact, the only fee Bitwala charges is the fee for every BTC and ETH trade (buy/sell) within the Bitwala account. This fee is 1.00% + the relevant network fee. The network fee, however, is fixed (and varies dependent upon the pressure on the BTC or ETH network from time to time) and is not a percentage of the trade amount.

To our knowledge, there is no maximum deposit limit.

Concluding remarks

If this is the crypto debit card for you, congrats! Sign up HERE.