Good
- 0.5% back in XTP on the free Essential plan, with no monthly fee
- 1.5% cashback for a €300 XTP lock on the Plus plan
- Platinum and Prestige plans pay no FX or ATM fees
- Free virtual card, and free bank loads by SEPA or Faster Payments
Watch out
- 8% cashback needs €25,000 of XTP locked for 12 months
- Cashback is paid in XTP, Tap's own token
- 1.99% crypto trading fee on the free plan when you sell crypto
- Physical card costs £12.99 on every plan
Tap Card is a prepaid Mastercard from the crypto app Tap that pays cashback in Tap's XTP token. The free Essential plan pays 0.5% with no monthly fee, the virtual card is free and the physical card costs £12.99. Rates rise to 8%, but every plan above Essential needs XTP locked for 12 months.
Tap is a Gibraltar-based app for buying, holding and spending crypto alongside euro and pound accounts. You load the card from a fiat balance or by selling crypto in the app, and the cashback lands in your account as XTP. Pick your country at the top of the page to see the terms in euros or in pounds.
Tap Card cashback
Tap Card pays 0.5% back in XTP on the free Essential plan, and up to 8% on plans that need you to lock XTP for 12 months.
On Essential, spending €1,000 a month earns €5 in XTP. The Plus plan is the step most people should look at, because locking €300 of XTP (or £250 in the UK) triples the rate to 1.5%, which is €15 a month on the same spending. Over a year that is €180, well over half the value of the lock.
The higher plans need much larger locks: Prime pays 3% for a €2,500 lock, Premier 4% for €5,000, Platinum 6% for €15,000 and Prestige 8% for €25,000. At €1,000 a month, Prestige earns €960 a year, about 3.8% of the XTP you've locked. Locked XTP can't be traded for the 12 months, so you carry its price risk the whole time.
Cashback is paid in XTP, Tap's own token, and payments at merchants in categories such as utilities, insurance, financial services, gift cards and government services earn nothing.
Tap Card fees
Tap Card has no monthly fee, and the costs that matter are the FX fee and the crypto trading fee, both of which fall as you move up the plans.
Payments in another currency cost 1.5% on Essential, Plus and Prime, 1% on Premier and nothing on Platinum or Prestige. If you load the card by selling crypto, Tap charges a trading fee of 1.99% on Essential, falling to 1.49% on Plus, 0.99% on Prime and as low as 0.25% on Prestige.
Loading euros by SEPA or pounds by Faster Payments is free, so the cheapest way to use the Tap Card is from a fiat balance. Topping up with a debit card costs 2.49% on Essential, and cards issued outside the UK and EEA cost 4.49%. The physical card is £12.99 on every plan, and an inactivity fee of £3 a month starts after 12 months without a load or payment.
Tap Card ATM withdrawal fees
Tap Card lets you withdraw €500 a month free on the Essential, Plus and Prime plans, then charges 2% with a €2 minimum.
Premier doubles the free allowance to €1,000, and Platinum and Prestige have no ATM fee at all. Each withdrawal is capped at €300, with €4,000 a month in total. On Essential, a €200 withdrawal abroad within the free allowance still costs €3 in FX fees if the cash is in another currency, plus any fee the ATM owner adds.
Is Tap Card safe?
Tap Card is custodial: Tap Global holds your crypto, and your fiat balance sits with Tap's e-money partners in segregated accounts.
Tap Global Limited is registered in Gibraltar and licensed by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission as a distributed ledger technology provider. The cards are issued by Transact Payments Limited, and euro and pound accounts are provided by e-money institutions including Moorwand, which is authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority.
The bigger risk is XTP itself. Every plan above Essential depends on holding Tap's own token for a year, and cashback is paid in it, so a fall in the XTP price cuts both your locked balance and the value of your rewards. Tap also runs a separate Earn programme through a Panama company that treats depositors as unsecured creditors, and it has nothing to do with the card.
Who should get Tap Card
Tap Card suits UK and EEA residents who already use Tap and are happy to lock €300 of XTP for the 1.5% Plus plan. For a moderate spender, the extra cashback repays the lock within the first year.
The Essential plan alone is weak, with 0.5% back, a 1.5% FX fee and a 1.99% fee to sell crypto. The 6% and 8% plans make sense only for people who want a large XTP position anyway, since €15,000 to €25,000 locked in one small token is a big bet. The comparison below shows the alternatives in your country.
Where Tap Card is available
Tap Card is available to adults living in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, with euro and pound versions of the card.
The card isn't offered in the United States. Once issued, it works online and in shops worldwide wherever Mastercard is accepted.