Good
- No fee to open an account, and cards are issued in minutes
- Choice of Visa, Mastercard and Discover cards
- BINs from the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore
- Funds arrive in about a minute when you deposit USDT on TRON
Watch out
- 1.5% fee on every USDT deposit, plus 1 USDT under 100 USDT
- Only USDT on the TRON network is accepted as crypto
- No cashback or rewards on any card
- Virtual cards only, with no physical card
Foton Card is a platform for virtual prepaid dollar cards that you fund with USDT on the TRON network or by bank transfer. Opening an account is free, but every USDT deposit carries a 1.5% fee, each card has its own issuance and top-up charges, and none of the cards pay cashback.
Foton Card started in 2020 and sells to both businesses and individuals, from agencies paying for Google and Facebook ads to shoppers buying from foreign websites. You can create several cards in one account, each on a different Visa, Mastercard or Discover range from the US, the UK, Hong Kong or Singapore.
Foton Card cashback
Foton Card pays no cashback, points or token rewards, and there are no tiers or subscriptions that add them.
The platform sells flexibility instead: many cards, many card ranges, and a choice of issuing country for merchants that are picky about where a card comes from. That's the reason to use it, not rewards.
The cost of missing cashback is easy to work out. A card paying 1% returns $10 on $1,000 of spending, or $120 a year at that rate, while Foton Card returns nothing and takes 1.5% on the way in.
Foton Card fees
Foton Card's one published fee is the 1.5% processing fee on USDT deposits, plus an extra 1 USDT on any deposit under 100 USDT, according to Foton's user guide.
In practice a 100 USDT deposit credits $98.50 to your account, and a 50 USDT deposit credits $48.25 after both charges. Sending at least 100 USDT at a time avoids the flat fee, and deposits under 2 USDT aren't credited at all.
Each card then has its own fees: an issuance fee when you create it, a top-up fee when you load it, a transaction fee on payments and a fee for declined payments. Foton sets these per card range and shows them in the dashboard before you create a card, but doesn't publish a public price list, so compare a few ranges before you pick one.
Moving money back is simple but has a floor. You can refund part of a card's balance to your account as long as at least $10 stays on the card, and to empty it you cancel the card, which deletes it for good and returns the balance.
Foton Card ATM withdrawal fees
Foton Card doesn't publish any ATM fees, and its cards are virtual only, so there is no physical card to use at a cash machine.
Foton's guides describe deposits, card top-ups, refunds and online payments, with nothing on cash withdrawals. If you need cash from your crypto, pair Foton Card with a card that comes in physical form.
Is Foton Card safe?
Foton Card is custodial: once your USDT deposit lands, it becomes a US dollar balance held by Foton and the banks that issue its cards.
Foton says it works with banks in several countries and protects accounts with encryption, fraud monitoring and two-factor login, which switches on by default and asks for a code when you sign in from a new device. USDT deposits are checked on the TRON blockchain and credited in about a minute.
What Foton's website doesn't say is who runs the service, where the company is registered, which licence it holds or which banks issue each card range. That makes it hard to know who to turn to if a bank freezes a card. Keep the account as a float for upcoming payments rather than a place to hold savings.
Who should get Foton Card
Foton Card suits media buyers, e-commerce sellers and IT teams who pay for ads, cloud hosting and software with USDT and need cards from a particular country or card brand.
Separate cards for each ad account or subscription make spending easy to track, and the choice of US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore ranges helps when a platform rejects cards from other regions.
For personal spending the case is weaker. A $500 monthly budget loses $7.50 to the deposit fee before any card fees, with nothing back in cashback. If you mainly want to spend crypto in everyday life, the comparison below shows cards with lower costs in your country.
Where Foton Card is available
Foton Card says it serves customers in more than 200 countries and regions, but it doesn't publish a list of supported or excluded countries.
Sign-up is online through the Foton dashboard, and the cards work with merchants worldwide that accept the card brand you choose. Starting the registration is the quickest way to check whether your country is covered.