Wirex Card

Wirex 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 Wirex Card, one of the crypto debit cards out there.

General information

Wirex Card supports 10 different cryptocurrencies: BTC, LTC, ETH, XRP, WAVES, WOLLO, DAI, NANO, XLM and Wirex Tokens. With respect to fiat currencies, Wirex Card supports 150+ different currencies. To our knowledge, this is more supported fiat currencies than any other crypto debit card out there.

In August 2019, the Wirex Card received Type II membership of the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA). They were the 8th financial services company to do so. Membership is a huge milestone on the road to becoming a legal Crypto Asset Exchange Service Provider in Japan.

The Wirex Card also managed to have 2,600,000 registered customers, in September 2019. 3,000 people are registering every day. Between them, Wirex customers apparently buy an average of 1,126 cups of coffee every day across 193 countries. In the UK, the most popular places to use a Wirex card are Amazon, Sainsburys and McDonalds.

Advantages

Out of all potential advantages with the card, Wirex themselves highlight five things: global reach, in-the-know, instant rewards, high limits and zero fees. Out of these advantages (more detailed in the picture below), we think that the global reach and instant rewards are most attractive. High limits, zero fees, are of course also good, although the "zero fees" statement is not 100% true, so it feels a bit misleading to us in that sense. The "in-the-know" advantage is also helpful but seems quite expected and most crypto debit cards do in fact have that as well, so the Wirex Card doesn't really distinguish itself from its competitors when it comes to that specific factor.

US-investors

US-investors may not use this card. If you’re from the US and you’re looking for a crypto debit card, we recommend you to check out our Crypto Debit Card List to find a card for you.

Mastercard

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

The card was previously a VISA-card, and was actually the second cryptocurrency firm ever to be the principal member of Visa. With that identity, Wirex could expand their business, including issuing Visa cards, providing related financial services and apply for other licences, as well as offering payment services for customers to pay at Visa merchants. We assume that Wirex Card has roughly the same capabilities from their affiliation with Mastercard instead.

Picture of Card

The following is the latest picture of the card that we have obtained:

Wirex Card Fees

Wirex Card’s fees are extremely low. 

There is no monthly fee. This is a bit unusual. There is no issuance fee. This is very unusual. 

ATM-usage results in a fixed fee of USD 2.50 per withdrawal. This might be disadvantageous in countries where the normal ATM-machines only allow smaller amounts of withdrawals (USD 20 for instance). In such scenarios, in order to withdraw a larger amount you need to withdraw several times, thus triggering the fixed fee each time. You can usually avoid this by just going to a local bank at the relevant place. Local banks normally permit higher withdrawals. In any event, the ATM-fee is not particularly high.

Furthermore, the most important fee of them all, the commission on spending. Wirex Card does not have a spending fee, but it has a loading fee when it comes to cryptocurrencies amounting to 1.00%. So in effect, when using the card to pay with crypto somewhere, you will indirectly have paid 1.00% in a spending fee. We have therefore included this 1.00% as the spending fee in our database (even though it is really a deposit fee).

There is no maximum balane for the Wirex Card, only a maximum spend per transaction and per day (USD 10,000 for both). This is also extremely competitive.

All in all, the fees and limits set by Wirex Card are incredibly competitive. For more details, please refer to the following subchapters of this review.

Account & Card Fees

On the date of last updating this review (19 January 2021), these were the account and card fees:

Deposit and Transfer Fees

On the date of last updating this review (19 January 2021), these were the deposit and transfer fees:

Card Transaction Fees

On the date of last updating this review (19 January 2021), the card transaction fees looked as follows:

Wirex Card Limits

On the date of last updating this review (19 January 2021), these were the different limits applicable to the card:

Wirex Card Cashback

The card from Wirex also offers something very interesting: a cashback feature. What is a cashback feature? Well, it's actually quite simple, every time you use the card, a percentage of what you pay with the card gets transferred back to you. For the Wirex Card, you get the cashback in the form of Bitcoin. How great is that?? The cash-back deal was raised from 0.50% to 1.50% on 12 September 2019, and then again to 2.00% on 9 March 2021.

On the date of last updating this review (19 January 2021), these were the reward levels (then not reflecting the subsequent increase of the cashback level to 2.00%):

Wirex Credit

As of 2022, customers can enjoy Wirex Credit! This excellent new feature allows customers to instantly borrow stablecoins against your crypto assets, offering total flexibility and zero set-up fees. What’s more, you can do all that with 0% interest.

The process is simplistic and customers can be signed up in a matter of minutes. As soon as the signup process is completed, customers have immediate access to their stablecoins, which can then be exchanged for crypto or fiat currency to spend using the Wirex card.

How To Sign Up For Wirex Credit?  

1. Go to Wirex Credit in-app and tap Get Started. 
2. Hit Borrow then select a cryptocurrency to use as collateral. 
3. Enter the amount you wish to use as collateral. 
4. Tap Continue, double-check the details, then select Confirm. 

There are no fixed monthly repayments, allowing you to borrow up to 80% of the value of the collateral (0% interest available on NXUSD only) - otherwise 60% for all other stablecoins. It’s worth noting that Wirex Credit is available in EEA and APAC regions (excluding Singapore).

Concluding remarks

Finally, if this is the cryptocurrency debit card for you, congratulations. Sign up here NOW.

But if not, check out one of the other epic cryptocurrency debit cards in our crypto debit card list. Good luck!