A French-only crypto debit card for bitcoin savers, judged against what it actually does
Available in US
Bitstack is a French crypto platform that has built a Visa debit card on top of its cash account. You sell bitcoin in the app, the euro balance is what the card spends, and you earn a small amount of bitcoin back on every payment. The pitch is simple and, in places, quite well executed. The catch is geography: at the time of this review the card is available exclusively to residents of France, and the rollout is gradual, with other EU countries sitting on a waitlist.
I went through Bitstack’s official pages, the relevant help articles and the public reviews on Trustpilot to put together this review. The conditions are current as of October 28, 2026. Where the official pages do not say something, I say so plainly rather than guess.
Verdict
The Bitstack card scores 5.5 out of 10. The split looks like this:
| Criterion | Score | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 2 / 10 | France only, gradual rollout, other EU countries on a waitlist |
| Cost | 8 / 10 | One-off card fee of EUR 9.99 plus delivery, no monthly subscription, free FX up to EUR 1,000/month, free ATM withdrawals up to EUR 200 or 5 per month, 0.70% on Apple Pay and Google Pay deposits |
| Top-up options | 3 / 10 | The card spends euros from the Bitstack cash account; bitcoin is sold in the app to fund it, and other coins or networks are not named |
| Reliability and complaints | 9 / 10 | Bitstack Digital Assets SAS, registered with the AMF (A2025-003) and acting as agent of Xpollens, an electronic money institution supervised by the ACPR; the card is issued by BPCE; Trustpilot score 4.3 out of 5 from 1,417 reviews, with the usual complaints about timing |
| Everyday use | 5 / 10 | Physical Visa Classic, Apple Pay from 30 June 2026, ATM access; Google Pay is still in development and the virtual card is planned but not yet available |
| Total | 5.5 / 10 | A well-priced card for a very narrow audience |
The card suits French residents who already save in bitcoin through Bitstack and want a way to spend those savings in euros without going through a separate exchange every time. It does not suit anyone outside France, anyone who wants a multicurrency card, or anyone who expects to top up with stablecoins or a choice of networks.
Who they will give the card to
Bitstack is clear about this: the card is available exclusively to residents of France, including the overseas territories. The rollout is gradual, so even some French residents may not see the order option right away. It appears in the Cash tab once the account qualifies. Other EU countries are on a waitlist per Bitstack’s starting data, but there is no published timeline for when, or whether, they will be added.
The eligibility rule is residence-based, not citizenship-based. The official pages do not say so explicitly, but the same pattern is common across French-issued cards. If you are a French resident with a non-French passport, the relevant fact is where you live; if you are a French citizen living abroad, the relevant fact is that you are not a French resident.
The official pages do not list the documents you need to provide. The user-facing order flow is what tells you what is asked, and that flow is not visible until you have an account. I have not seen the company publish a standard checklist, and other KYC details, such as proof of address or age requirements, are not stated on the official pages. Trustpilot has at least one user report from July 2026 describing a slow identity-verification process that ended in rejection, with Bitstack replying that decisions follow regulatory requirements and that specifics are not shared publicly. That is the kind of situation you can run into, and the kind of explanation you should expect if you do.
How to get it
The order is placed inside the app. You open the Cash tab, choose the card order, pick a PIN, enter the delivery address, see the total (EUR 9.99 plus a delivery fee that varies by address; the precise amount is not stated), and pay from one of four sources: the Bitstack cash account, a bank card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. There is no separate web form to fill in.
The card itself is a physical Visa Classic debit card. It spends the euro balance sitting in your Bitstack cash account. A virtual card is planned but not yet available, and a metal tier is not stated. The card’s currency is the euro: fees are listed in euros, and the card draws on a euro cash account.
Delivery is to France, including the overseas territories. Production usually starts the day after confirmation, with up to 10 business days for metropolitan France once production starts, and up to three weeks for the overseas territories. The delivery fee varies by address and the amount is not stated. The cost of a replacement card is also not stated.
The official pages do not state what KYC level is needed to reach the card order, and the KYC documents are not listed. In practice, the same identity checks that let you use Bitstack’s crypto services are what sit behind the card, since the card is issued by a regulated partner and Bitstack acts as an agent of an electronic money institution. If you are already verified on Bitstack for euro deposits, the card order is the last step, not the first one.
What it really costs
The fee page and the help article are not perfectly consistent with each other. The help article says EUR 9.99 for the card plus a variable delivery fee and no monthly subscription. The pricing page lists a Standard card at EUR 14.97 or EUR 14.98 with delivery included, a Plus monthly plan at EUR 9.99 with free shipping, and a Plus annual plan that includes the card and delivery at no extra cost. Treat the table below as the practical range, not as a single price.
| Fee or limit | Amount |
|---|---|
| Card issuance (help article) | EUR 9.99 |
| Card issuance with delivery (pricing page, Standard) | EUR 14.97 or 14.98 |
| Plus monthly plan | EUR 9.99 per month, shipping free |
| Plus annual plan | Card and delivery included |
| Monthly subscription | None |
| FX fee on first EUR 1,000 of foreign-currency spending per month | None |
| FX fee above EUR 1,000/month | About 1% on the excess, at the Visa rate at the time of the transaction |
| Apple Pay / Google Pay deposit fee | 0.70% on all plans |
| Bitcoin purchase fee (Standard) | 1.5% under EUR 250, 1.25% from EUR 250 to 1,000, 1% over EUR 1,000 |
| Bitcoin purchase fee (Plus) | 0.75% flat |
| Extra fee if purchase not funded from the cash account | 0.70% (Plus treatment is inconsistent on the page) |
| ATM withdrawal | Free up to EUR 200 per month or 5 withdrawals, whichever first; beyond that the higher of EUR 1 or 1% per withdrawal, in France and abroad |
| Third-party ATM operator fee | Possible, shown before confirming |
| Card payment cap | EUR 5,000 per month |
| ATM cap | EUR 200 per week, EUR 1,000 per month total |
| International payments cap (Standard) | EUR 1,000 per month |
| International payments cap (Plus) | EUR 3,000 per month |
Limits cannot be changed from inside the account.
To make that concrete, here is what three everyday payments look like.
A EUR 40 lunch in Paris, paid in euros, falls inside the EUR 5,000 monthly cap, with no extra fee. The foreign-currency FX waiver does not apply because you are paying in euros. The card debit is the only cost. If you had to top up the cash account first from your bank card via Apple Pay, that deposit would cost 0.70%.
A EUR 120 hotel in Tokyo is a foreign-currency payment. It counts towards the EUR 1,000 monthly free-FX allowance, and Bitstack does not add an FX fee on top. The amount is converted at the Visa rate at the time of the transaction. If your Tokyo trip pushes the foreign-currency total above EUR 1,000 for the month, the rest of the spend is hit with about 1% on the excess.
A EUR 80 ATM withdrawal in Berlin is inside the EUR 200-per-month free allowance, so Bitstack does not charge its own fee. The ATM operator, though, may charge its own, and Bitstack says it is shown before you confirm. Above EUR 200 in a month, or after five withdrawals, whichever comes first, you pay the higher of EUR 1 or 1% per withdrawal.
The card is sold in two plans. Standard gives a lower Stackback cap (1%) and a lower international payment cap (EUR 1,000/month); Plus costs EUR 9.99 per month, gives up to 1.5% Stackback, raises the international cap to EUR 3,000/month, and charges a flatter 0.75% on bitcoin purchases. There is also a Plus annual plan that bundles the card and delivery. Which one is worth it depends on how much you save and how much you spend abroad; for most casual users Standard is the right starting point, and the only reason to upgrade is if you want the higher Stackback and the higher international cap and you actually use them.
Top up
The card does not have a separate “top up” button. The cash account is the source of funds, and the way you feed it is by selling bitcoin in the app. Buy bitcoin when the price is right, hold it, and sell a slice into euros whenever you want to spend. That is the design, and the pricing tiers I described above are what the conversion costs.
Two other ways to add euros are listed: a bank card via Apple Pay or Google Pay, which carries a 0.70% fee on all plans, or a direct bank-card top-up to the cash account. The pricing page is internally inconsistent on whether the 0.70% extra applies to bitcoin purchases not funded by the cash account on the Plus plan, and I have flagged that as something to read carefully on the actual page before you commit to a plan.
What is not stated is just as important as what is. The official pages do not say which coins you can deposit, which networks are supported, what the minimum top-up is, or who pays the network fee on a crypto transfer. The card pages do not describe a stablecoin deposit path or a direct network transfer at all. If you are used to cards where you can choose between USDC on Ethereum, USDC on Solana or USDT on Tron, the Bitstack card does not offer that choice, at least not on the public card pages. In practice the published flow is “sell bitcoin in the app, get euros, spend euros”, and anything else is a question for support.
Withdrawing money from Bitstack to a bank account is not described on the card pages either. Trustpilot users mention bank-transfer withdrawals via support, but no fee or minimum balance is published.
Paying with it every day
The card is a physical Visa Classic debit card. Apple Pay is available from 30 June 2026 with the app version 3.10.0, and you can add the card to Apple Wallet from then on. Google Pay is in development and not yet available. The virtual card, planned from the start, is still not available. So for now, the everyday experience is “swipe or insert the physical card, or tap with iPhone”.
A small reward called Stackback is paid in bitcoin once the purchase is fully settled. The base rate, with no activation, is 0.1% on Standard and 0.15% on Plus, with a minimum payout of one satoshi. You can boost it by using Bitstack’s automatic savings features, such as recurring buys or round-ups. The boosted rate is up to 1% on Standard and up to 1.5% on Plus, capped by your previous month’s savings; once you stop saving, the rate falls back to the base. Stackback is excluded on peer-to-peer and top-up transactions, ATM withdrawals, gambling and cash equivalents, loan repayments, government payments and some securities purchases. The official pages do not state whether any other merchant categories are blocked for spending, only which categories are excluded from the reward.
The iOS app in the France App Store scores 4.79 out of 5 from 11,152 ratings (read 2026-10-21). I did not read the Google Play rating.
If something goes wrong with a payment, you can freeze the card in the app, then call +33 9 69 32 00 61 to register an opposition (the menu asks you to state that the card was issued by BPCE), then call +33 9 69 39 03 49 to open a contestation case that is handled by BPCE. The window for raising a dispute is 13 months from the payment settlement date.
What can go wrong
The good news first. Bitstack is Bitstack Digital Assets SAS, registered in Aix-en-Provence under company number 899 125 090 with offices in Meyreuil, France. It is licensed as an agent of Xpollens, an electronic money institution authorised by the ACPR, and it is registered with the AMF as a crypto-asset service provider under number A2025-003. The card itself is issued by BPCE (Banque Populaire Caisse d’Épargne), a major French retail-banking group. That is a clean chain of regulated entities. I did not find any official incident report.
The Trustpilot score is 4.3 out of 5 from 1,417 reviews (read 2026-10-21), which is a healthy score. The themes in the negative reviews are the kind you see on most regulated crypto products: withdrawal-to-bank and support delays in July 2026, an unexplained KYC rejection in July 2026, card delivery delays in June 2026, and complaints about low limits and Apple Pay not being accepted at some merchants in June 2026. None of these are unusual, but the KYC one is worth dwelling on. If you read Bitstack’s reply, it says the decision follows regulatory requirements and that specifics are not shared publicly, which is what you would expect but does mean you have very little room to argue the case once the decision is made.
In terms of news: Apple Pay was added on 30 June 2026 (app v3.10.0), the AMF registration is A2025-003 with a date not stated, and from 10 August 2026 round-ups started counting towards the Stackback tier.
The card is custodial: your funds sit in the Bitstack account, and Bitstack sits on top of Xpollens’ regulated payment infrastructure. The usual safeguards are there: every payment needs strong authentication, you can freeze the card instantly in the app, and the limits are fixed. There is no built-in insurance, which is normal for this kind of card but worth saying out loud.
Two related risks worth flagging. First, the limits cannot be changed from inside the account, so if EUR 5,000 per month on card payments or EUR 1,000 per month on international payments does not match your spending, you have to top up via Plus to raise the international cap to EUR 3,000, and that is as high as it goes. Second, the card does not appear to offer a multicurrency balance, so every non-euro payment is a conversion at the Visa rate with the FX fee above EUR 1,000/month, and there is no way to park funds in dollars or pounds to soften the rate.
What to take instead
The Bitstack card is unusual in that its headline constraint is geography. If you are not in France, the card is not for you today, and the right next step is to look at the cards that do serve your country. The list below is not exhaustive; it is a starting point drawn from the alternatives I looked at.
| Card | Score | What it does, and where it wins or loses against Bitstack |
|---|---|---|
| International Visa Card | 6.7 / 10 | A U.S.-issued Platinum Visa, currently virtual only, with a $5 one-time issuance fee and no maintenance fee. Free in USD on all plans, foreign currency at the Visa rate plus 2%. Free deposits of any kind, including USDC and USDT into a USD account, plus USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow rails. Not available to residents or registered entities of a long sanctions-style list (Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam), and purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela. FATF grey-list countries are reviewed case by case. Rule is by residence or registration, citizenship not mentioned. |
| UNi Card | 6.1 / 10 | A multicurrency Mastercard that spends from the UNi.Global account, with no annual fee and no foreign transaction fee, and conversions at live OTC rates. Spend-to-Earn rewards up to 3%. Eligibility, funding path and the existence of a physical card are not stated. |
| Morse | 7.5 / 10 | A fully virtual Visa prepaid debit that spends from a Morse Balance in any currency, with zero FX markups and free online and contactless payments. Self-custodial wallet, free USDC, USDG and EURC deposits on Solana, support for Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum and other tokens, plus debit-card, stablecoin and Account Details (USD, EUR, MXN, COP, BRL with CPF) deposits. Available in over 140 countries for P2P, local add and withdraw in over 70, and the card is available in “certain countries” with a closed beta in 16 named ones. Issuance and monthly fees are not stated on the card page. |
If the thing you want from Bitstack is “spend my bitcoin in euros”, and you are in France, Bitstack is a credible answer. If you are outside France, or you want a multicurrency balance, or you want to deposit stablecoins on the chain of your choice, the alternatives above are the ones to look at first.
Who I would recommend it to
I would recommend the Bitstack card to French residents who already use Bitstack to save in bitcoin and want a clean way to convert and spend small amounts in euros without going through a separate exchange. The pricing is honest, the FX waiver is generous for casual use, the ATM allowance is fine for a normal month, and the Stackback reward, even at the base rate, is a small bonus that you actually receive in bitcoin.
I would not recommend it to people outside France, who should look at the alternatives above instead. I would also be cautious about recommending it to anyone who needs to spend more than EUR 5,000 a month on the card, EUR 1,000 a month abroad without paying the Plus fee, or anyone whose spending pattern hits the excluded Stackback categories often, because the reward is what makes the everyday use case interesting and that reward drops to nothing on those transactions. And I would not recommend it to anyone who needs a multicurrency balance: the card spends euros only, and every non-euro payment is a conversion.
If you are inside the target audience, the practical checklist is short: confirm your residency qualifies you, accept that the card fee and delivery fee are what they are, decide between Standard and Plus on the international cap and the Stackback cap rather than on the price alone, and do not plan on a virtual card or Google Pay in the near term, because neither is available.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Bitstack card?
The Bitstack card is a physical Visa Classic debit card that spends the euro balance of your Bitstack cash account. You fund the cash account by selling bitcoin in the app, and the card is issued by BPCE in partnership with Bitstack and Xpollens. A virtual card is planned but not yet available, and a metal tier is not stated on the official pages.
How does the Bitstack card work?
The card is linked to the euro balance of your Bitstack cash account. You buy bitcoin on Bitstack, hold it, and sell a slice into euros whenever you want to spend. The card itself only spends euros, and every payment is authenticated with 3-D Secure. A small amount of bitcoin is paid back as Stackback once the purchase is fully settled.
Is Bitstack a bank?
No. Bitstack is Bitstack Digital Assets SAS, a crypto-asset service provider registered with the AMF under number A2025-003, acting as agent of Xpollens, an electronic money institution supervised by the ACPR. The card is issued by BPCE. Bitstack does not take deposits in the banking sense and customer funds are not bank deposits.
Is the Bitstack card available in my country?
The card is available exclusively to residents of France, including the overseas territories, and the rollout is gradual, so not every French resident will see the order option right away. Other EU countries are on a waitlist per Bitstack’s starting data, with no published timeline. If you are outside France, the card is not available to you today, and the alternatives section above is a better place to start.
Does the Bitstack card require KYC?
The official pages do not list the documents required, the KYC level needed for the card, or the age threshold, and these details are not stated on the public card pages. In practice, the same identity checks that let you use Bitstack’s crypto services sit behind the card, and the order flow is what shows you what is asked. A Trustpilot report from July 2026 describes a slow identity-verification process that ended in rejection, with Bitstack explaining that decisions follow regulatory requirements and that specifics are not shared publicly.
How do I top up the Bitstack card?
The card draws on the euro balance of the Bitstack cash account. The published way to feed it is to sell bitcoin in the app, and the published way to add euros from outside is a bank-card deposit via Apple Pay or Google Pay at 0.70%. The official card pages do not list which coins you can deposit, which networks are supported, what the minimum top-up is, or who pays the network fee on a crypto transfer.
Is the Bitstack card free?
There is no monthly subscription on the Standard plan, the FX fee is waived up to EUR 1,000 per month of foreign-currency spending, and ATM withdrawals are free up to EUR 200 per month or five withdrawals, whichever first. The card itself is EUR 9.99 plus a variable delivery fee per the help article, although the pricing page lists the Standard card at EUR 14.97 or 14.98 with delivery included and a Plus plan at EUR 9.99 per month with free shipping. The pages are not perfectly consistent, so read the actual order screen before paying.
How do I add the Bitstack card to Apple Wallet?
Apple Pay has been available since 30 June 2026 with app version 3.10.0. Open the app, go to the card section and follow the prompt to add the card to Apple Wallet. Google Pay is in development and not yet available, so the equivalent flow on Android is not open at the time of this review.
Is the Bitstack card safe?
The card is issued by BPCE, a major French retail-banking group, and Bitstack is registered as a crypto-asset service provider with the AMF and acts as an agent of Xpollens, an electronic money institution supervised by the ACPR. The usual safeguards are there: every payment needs strong authentication, the card can be frozen in the app, and the limits are fixed. There is no built-in insurance, the funds are custodial, and customer funds held by an electronic money institution are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by deposit guarantee schemes.
Is the Bitstack card worth it?
For French residents who already save in bitcoin on Bitstack and want a clean way to convert and spend in euros, yes: the pricing is honest and the FX waiver is generous. For anyone outside France, anyone who needs a multicurrency balance, or anyone who needs to spend more than EUR 5,000 a month on the card, no: the geography and the limits get in the way before the fee structure does, and the alternatives in the comparison section above are worth a look.
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