A Peru-only Mastercard that spends soles, dollars or crypto — within Peruvian borders
Available in US
If you live in Peru and want a payment card that can be loaded with crypto or with soles through Yape, Plin or a bank transfer, Tulkit is one of a short list of options you will come across. The card is a Mastercard, available as a virtual card the moment you sign up and as a physical card in one of twelve designs, with free delivery anywhere in Peru. There is no monthly or annual fee, and Tulkit advertises up to 2% back in Bitcoin on every purchase.
That is the shape of the product in a few sentences. The longer story is more uneven. Tulkit is the only country named in the card’s own pages is Peru, the plastic only ships within Peru, and the prepaid card itself settles only in soles. The exchange rate is described as “one of the best on the market” without a number, the crypto conversion fee is not published, ATM access is not described, and the licence number of the e-money institution behind the card is not given. So the headline is honest: the card is genuinely interesting for residents of Peru topping up with Yape, Plin or crypto, and outside that group the picture narrows quickly.
The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict
I would score the Tulkit card 5.5 out of 10. The card is free to open and to hold, the brand backing it is a Mastercard that works wherever Mastercard is taken, the rewards rate of up to 2% in Bitcoin is competitive, and the company running the conversion side, Tulkit Pay S.A.C., sits under an e-money institution regulated by Peru’s banking and insurance supervisor, the SBS. What pulls the score down is the geography. Tulkit names only Peru, ships the physical card only within Peru, and settles the card only in soles. The exchange rate has no published figure, the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed, and the company does not name the e-money licence under which it operates. If you are a Peruvian resident, the card is worth a serious look; if you are anywhere else, the card, as it stands today, is not an option.
Score breakdown
| Criterion | Mark | Why this mark |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 1 / 10 | Only Peru is named as a country; the physical card only ships within Peru |
| Cost | 8 / 10 | No monthly or annual fee, the account and both cards are free, but the exchange rate is described as “one of the best on the market” without a figure and the crypto conversion fee is not published |
| Top-up options | 5 / 10 | 24/7 top-ups via Yape, Plin, bank transfer or crypto, but the coins and networks accepted are not listed |
| Reliability and complaints | 7 / 10 | Tulkit Pay S.A.C. handles the conversion, electronic money is issued by GMoney S.A. under the SBS, no licence number is named and I could not find any complaints |
| Everyday use | 7 / 10 | Mastercard, virtual card instantly and a physical card in twelve designs with free delivery in Peru; Apple Pay, Google Pay and ATM use are not described |
| Total | 5.5 / 10 | A solid Peruvian product with a free structure and clear regulation at home, but narrow geography and several unstated fees keep it from the top of the category |
Who can get the Tulkit card
The short answer is: residents of Peru. Tulkit names only Peru as a country on its public pages, and the physical card is delivered only within Peru. Foreigners with a valid Peruvian immigration card are also covered, which means the rule for the physical card is residence, not citizenship. There is no broader list of supported countries on the card’s own materials.
The reason this matters is that the card is a prepaid Mastercard that, in practice, only operates inside one country. You cannot have a Tulkit card shipped to Argentina, Spain or the United States, and the card is described as settling only in soles. If you are a Peruvian resident travelling abroad, the card can still be used at any merchant that takes Mastercard, but the conversion path from soles to a foreign currency at the moment of payment is part of what is not described in the public fee schedule. The brand’s reach beyond Peru is, in other words, much smaller than the Mastercard logo might suggest.
For residents of Peru, the onboarding path itself is light. The Tulkit Pay app runs on iOS and Android, identity verification is described as taking a few photos, the registration is said to take minutes, and there is no paperwork, no credit check and a sign-up that the brand says takes under two minutes. The document list, the proof-of-address requirement, the minimum age and the KYC level (basic versus enhanced) are not stated. That is a small but real gap: an applicant does not know in advance which documents to have ready.
How to get it
The sign-up flow is built around the mobile app. You download Tulkit Pay, create an account, complete identity verification with a few photos, and the virtual Mastercard is issued instantly. The physical card, in one of twelve designs, is then shipped free of charge within Peru. The brand describes the registration as taking under two minutes, with no paperwork and no credit check. The exact delivery time and the cost of a replacement card, if you lose the plastic, are not stated.
What is not stated, and is worth noting before you start, is which documents the verification expects. The brand says it “takes a few photos”, which in practice usually means a government-issued ID and a selfie, sometimes a proof of address. If the app is stricter than the marketing copy suggests, the time from download to first payment may be longer than two minutes. A safe first step is to have your national ID or immigration card, a working camera and a stable internet connection ready before you open the app.
Once you are in, the virtual card can be used for online purchases immediately, and the physical card is added to your wallet or used at a point-of-sale terminal once it arrives. There is no public description of a separate activation step.
Fees and what it really costs
The headline is genuinely friendly: no monthly fee, no annual fee, no fee to open the account and no fee to request either card. Sending and receiving soles through Yape, Plin and standard bank transfers is also free. The full schedule is published in the “Tarifario Tulkit Card” PDF on the brand’s pages, which is where the smaller fees and limits live.
What is missing from the public materials is the part that actually decides what a payment costs. The exchange rate is described as “one of the best on the market”, with no number behind it. The crypto conversion fee is not stated. The fee for spending in a currency other than soles is not stated. ATM fees are not stated. The deposit fee for crypto, the minimum top-up, and the network fees you pay on a blockchain transfer are not stated either. QR payments are capped at S/5,150 per day, and card limits can be set inside the app, but other limits (monthly spend, ATM withdrawal) are not published.
A short table lays out what is and is not disclosed.
| Fee or limit | What Tulkit says |
|---|---|
| Account opening | Free |
| Card issuance (virtual) | Free, issued instantly |
| Card issuance (physical) | Free, one of 12 designs, free delivery in Peru |
| Monthly fee | None |
| Annual fee | None |
| Exchange rate | “One of the best on the market” — no figure given |
| Crypto conversion fee | Not stated |
| Foreign currency (FX) fee | Not stated |
| ATM fee | Not stated |
| Top-up via Yape, Plin, bank transfer | Free for soles |
| Top-up via crypto | Coin, network, fee and minimum not stated |
| Daily QR payment limit | S/5,150 |
| Other limits (monthly, ATM) | Not stated |
To give a sense of what this means in everyday use, three common scenarios are worth walking through.
A coffee paid for with a soles balance in a Lima café: you tap or insert the physical card at a Mastercard terminal, the soles balance is debited directly, and there is no fee to the merchant or to you beyond the price of the coffee. This is the cleanest case, and it is the one the fee structure supports.
A coffee paid for with a USDC balance on a trip outside Peru: the card would convert USDC to soles to load the balance, and then convert soles to the local currency at the point of sale. The first conversion has no published fee, the second is whatever the Mastercard network and the issuer apply, and the brand does not publish that figure either. The total cost of this payment is therefore genuinely unknown until you try it.
A cash withdrawal from an ATM in Lima: the card’s ATM behaviour is not described. Whether you can withdraw at all, what the per-transaction fee is, and what daily or monthly limit applies are all unstated. A simple “is this card usable at an ATM” question does not have a public answer.
Top up: funding the card
The card is designed to be topped up around the clock. Tulkit’s own pages describe four channels: Yape, Plin, bank transfer and crypto. The first three are local Peruvian rails and are free for soles. The fourth is a crypto transfer; the supported coins, the supported networks, the minimum top-up and the network fees are not listed on the public pages, although the brand’s starting data covers major coins such as BTC, ETH and USDT.
For a Peruvian reader, the Yape and Plin rails are the most relevant. Both are mobile-payment apps tied to Peruvian bank accounts, and both work instantly for soles. A bank transfer from a Peruvian bank account is the third fiat option. All three are free at the card level, though your own bank may charge for an outgoing transfer.
For a crypto-funded top-up, the missing detail is meaningful. If the card accepts USDT on Tron, the on-chain fee is paid in TRX, and a wallet that holds USDT but no TRX cannot send. If the card accepts USDC on Ethereum, the on-chain fee (gas) is paid in ETH. The card provider’s own page does not tell you which coin, on which network, with what minimum, so the practical advice is to test with a small amount first and to make sure your sending wallet has the native token of the network you choose. Crypto top-ups that arrive on an unsupported network, or to an address of the wrong network, are typically not recoverable.
There is also a withdrawal direction. Tulkit’s pages say that crypto stays available for withdrawal at any time and describe transfers as instant, with no fees stated. The closure balance — what happens to any soles or crypto left on the card if you close the account — is not stated. As with the top-up side, the safer pattern is to withdraw to your own wallet well before you intend to close the account.
Paying with it every day
In Peru, the card behaves like a normal Mastercard prepaid card. The virtual card is for online shopping and can be added to most wallets and subscription services. The physical card is for in-person payments at any merchant that takes Mastercard, and the twelve design options let you pick a look you do not mind carrying.
The rewards structure is simple: up to 2% back in Bitcoin on each purchase. The full terms — the minimum spend, the maximum cap, the rate at which the cashback is calculated, and the schedule on which the Bitcoin is paid out — are not stated. A 2% headline is competitive in the category, but the practical yield depends on the conditions behind the headline.
What is not described, and which affects the everyday picture, is the card’s behaviour outside the Mastercard logo. Apple Pay and Google Pay support are not stated, so it is not clear whether the card can be tokenised for phone payments; the most cautious reading is that it cannot, until the brand confirms otherwise. ATM access is not described. Wallet-to-wallet features inside the app (peer transfers, bill payment, savings) are not described. Customer support is reachable by email at [email protected], the e-money institution’s support is [email protected], a complaints book is available under “Consultas y Reclamos”, and there is no public phone number; a WhatsApp link on the page is a placeholder and hours of operation are not stated.
A point that often surprises first-time users of any prepaid card, not just this one, is the hold behaviour: a declined authorisation can leave a temporary hold on the balance for several days. The standard timeframe is up to about a week. That is a property of card networks, not a Tulkit-specific policy, and it is worth knowing if you ever see a “missing” amount after a failed tap or online checkout.
What can go wrong
The honest list starts with the things the brand does not say, because the gaps are where most of the practical risk lives.
First, the country. The card is for residents of Peru, the plastic ships only within Peru, and the prepaid card settles only in soles. Anyone outside that frame is not the target user, and the card will not reach them. The score on “who can get it” reflects this directly: 1 out of 10.
Second, the unstated fees. The exchange rate is described with a marketing phrase rather than a figure, the crypto conversion fee is not disclosed, the foreign-currency fee is not disclosed, and the ATM behaviour is not described. Until those numbers are published, the real cost of any given transaction is uncertain, and the only way to find out is to make the transaction and look at the app.
Third, the company and licence structure. The conversion side is handled by Tulkit Pay S.A.C., and the electronic money that sits behind the card is issued by GMoney S.A., which the brand describes as authorised and regulated by the SBS, Peru’s banking and insurance supervisor. The licence number is not given, the safeguarding arrangements for customer funds are not described, and there is no mention of how customer balances are held if the issuer or the conversion company gets into trouble. The general rule in this category is that e-money balances are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme; that is a category-level point, not a Tulkit-specific statement, but it is worth keeping in mind.
Fourth, the operational details that affect daily use. The replacement cost of a lost physical card is not stated, the delivery time after sign-up is not stated, the dispute and chargeback process is not described, and the security safeguards the brand claims (“bank-level security”, encryption, 90% of assets held offline) are marketing phrases rather than a published security policy. The card can be locked and unlocked in the app, and spending limits can be set in the app; those are positive controls, and they are the part of the security story that the user can actually see and use.
Fifth, the wider category risks that apply to any crypto-funded card. Crypto transfers are irreversible, and a deposit sent on the wrong network, or to an address of another network, can be lost. Stablecoins can lose their peg, and the funds you think are dollar-denominated may not be when you go to spend them. Card programmes can be wound down by their network or their issuer with limited notice, in which case new loads stop, spending stops, and any remaining balance has to be withdrawn within a defined window. Tulkit is not singled out here: these are the structural risks of crypto cards as a category, and a careful user plans for them.
On the positive side, I could not find any official incident or any third-party complaint against Tulkit or its e-money partner, and there is no dated news event on the brand’s public record that would change that picture.
What to take instead
If Tulkit’s geography does not fit you, or if you want a card that is open to a wider set of countries, the category has a few alternatives worth comparing. None of them is a like-for-like replacement, because the question each one answers is slightly different. Three examples give a sense of the trade-offs.
| Alternative | Score | Where it works | What it costs | What it earns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| International Visa Card | 6.7 / 10 | Excludes residents of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam; FATF grey-list countries reviewed case by case; purchases blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela. The rule is by residence or registration, not citizenship. | Virtual card $5 one-time, no maintenance fee; plans from free to $19/month; 2% FX fee on non-USD spending | No cashback stated |
| UNi Card | 6.1 / 10 | Availability is not stated | No annual fee, no foreign transaction fee; assets converted at live OTC rates; no hidden exchange fees | Up to 3% Spend-to-Earn rewards |
| Morse | 7.5 / 10 | App in over 140 countries, local add/withdraw in over 70; closed-beta countries that need an invite code include Australia, Hong Kong SAR China, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and others; the card is “available only in certain countries” and the list is in the app | Issuance and monthly fee not stated on the card page; zero FX markup, real-time Visa rate, paying with the card is free | Rewards not stated on the card pages |
The International Visa Card is closer to a USD payment card for non-US residents, with a published FX fee and a clear plan structure. UNi Card is a multicurrency Mastercard on the UNi.Global account with a 3% rewards headline. Morse is fully virtual, uses the real-time Visa rate, and is self-custody on the funding side, which suits readers who want their crypto to stay in their own wallet until the moment of payment. None of these alternatives is a Peruvian soles card with Yape, Plin and bank-transfer top-ups; that combination is what Tulkit offers, and the reason to consider it is the local fit, not the international reach.
Who I would recommend it to
The short version: if you are a resident of Peru, Tulkit is worth trying. If you are anywhere else, it is not an option in its current form, and you should look at the alternatives above.
The longer version is a profile rather than a checklist. The card suits a Peruvian resident who already uses Yape or Plin for daily payments and wants a Mastercard that can also be topped up with crypto for a small part of their spending. It suits a freelancer or small business owner in Peru who wants a separate card to set aside for business expenses and to earn up to 2% back in Bitcoin on those expenses. It suits someone who has tried to open a bank account in Peru and run into the usual friction, and who wants a regulated e-money product with a clear Peruvian supervisor behind it. The free structure of the card is genuinely rare, the rewards rate is competitive, and the regulation is concrete even if the licence number is not published.
It does not suit a non-resident looking for a multicurrency card to use across borders, because the plastic is a soles card and the geography is Peru. It does not suit a heavy ATM user, because the ATM behaviour is not described. It does not suit someone who needs to know the exact cost of every transaction in advance, because the exchange rate, the crypto conversion fee and the foreign-currency fee are not published. And it does not suit someone who wants their crypto to stay in their own wallet until the moment of payment, because Tulkit’s model is custodial on the conversion side: the brand says 90% of assets are held offline, which is a positive control, but it still means the user is trusting the issuer with the funds between the top-up and the spend.
If your situation matches the first group, sign up with a small top-up, test a low-value payment in soles, then test a small crypto top-up, and only scale up once you have seen the actual cost in the app. If your situation matches the second group, the alternatives above are a more honest starting point.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Tulkit card?
The Tulkit card is a prepaid Mastercard issued in Peru, available as a virtual card for online use and as a physical card in twelve designs with free delivery within Peru. It is operated by Tulkit Pay S.A.C. and runs on electronic money issued by GMoney S.A. under the supervision of the SBS, Peru’s banking and insurance supervisor.
Is Tulkit a bank?
Tulkit itself is not a bank. Tulkit Pay S.A.C. is a Peruvian company that handles the fiat and crypto conversion for the card, and the electronic money on which the card sits is issued by GMoney S.A., a separate e-money institution regulated by the SBS.
Who owns Tulkit?
The brand behind the card is Tulkit Pay S.A.C., a Peruvian company. The electronic money that funds the card is issued by GMoney S.A., which the brand describes as authorised and regulated by the SBS. The ownership structure and the e-money licence number are not given in the public materials.
Is the Tulkit card available outside Peru?
The public materials name only Peru as a country for the card, and the physical card ships only within Peru. The prepaid card itself settles only in soles. Travellers may be able to use the card at Mastercard merchants abroad, but the local-currency conversion path is not described.
How do I get the Tulkit card?
You download the Tulkit Pay app on iOS or Android, create an account, complete identity verification with a few photos, and the virtual Mastercard is issued instantly. The physical card, in one of twelve designs, is then shipped free of charge within Peru.
Does the Tulkit card require identity verification?
Yes. The brand says identity verification “takes a few photos” and that the whole sign-up takes minutes, with no paperwork and no credit check. The specific document list, the minimum age, and the level of KYC applied are not stated in the public materials.
How do I top up the Tulkit card?
You can top up the card around the clock through Yape, Plin, a bank transfer or a crypto transfer. The three fiat options are free for soles, and the crypto coins and networks supported, the minimum top-up, and the network fees are not listed in the public materials.
How do I add the Tulkit card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay?
The public materials do not describe Apple Pay or Google Pay support for the card. Until the brand confirms tokenisation is available, the safest assumption is that the card cannot be added to a mobile wallet, and the only way to pay in person is with the physical card at a Mastercard terminal.
How much does the Tulkit card cost to use?
There is no monthly fee, no annual fee, and no fee to open the account or to request either card. Sending and receiving soles through Yape, Plin and bank transfers is free. The exchange rate, the crypto conversion fee, the foreign-currency fee and the ATM fee are not published, so the actual cost of a given transaction is only visible after the fact, in the app.
Is the Tulkit card safe?
The brand describes its security as “bank-level”, says it uses encryption, and says 90% of customer assets are held offline, with a custodial model. The card can be locked and unlocked and its spending limits can be set inside the app. The e-money institution that issues the underlying funds is regulated by Peru’s SBS, although the licence number is not given, and the customer-fund safeguarding arrangements are not described in the public materials.
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