Tuyo Card Review: Fees, Cashback and Buy Now, Pay Maybe

Tuyo Card is a free virtual Visa card that spends USDC on the Base network from a self-custodial Tuyo wallet. It has no issuance or monthly fee, charges 0% on US dollar purchases in the US and up to 2% elsewhere, and pays rewards in TUYOs points plus random free purchases instead of fixed cashback.

Tuyo is a wallet app first, with Earn strategies, token trading and fiat account numbers alongside the card. The card draws on your USDC even while it sits in an Earn strategy, so your balance keeps earning until the moment you pay.

Tuyo Card cashback

Tuyo Card has no fixed cashback rate: card spending earns TUYOs reward points, and some purchases are randomly made free under a feature Tuyo calls Buy Now, Pay Maybe.

TUYOs are points, not a token, and they can't be traded or transferred. Tuyo shows the earning rates only inside the app, and the program runs in seasons with multipliers that step down over time. The current season runs until Tuyo launches its own token, which it expects in 2026, and it has said at least 20% of that token's supply will go to users and the community.

Buy Now, Pay Maybe is the headline feature. When you pay, Tuyo can decide not to debit some or all of the purchase, so a coffee or a dinner can cost you nothing. Tuyo publishes no odds, there's nothing to opt into, and its terms allow it to exclude merchants or change the feature at any time, so a free purchase is a pleasant surprise that you can't plan a budget around.

Tuyo Card fees

Tuyo Card has no issuance, monthly or yearly fee, and US dollar purchases made in the US cost nothing extra on top of the price.

Two fees apply elsewhere, according to Tuyo's help centre. A 1% abroad fee, charged by the card provider, applies to any purchase made outside the US, and a 1% FX fee applies to any purchase in a currency other than the dollar. A euro payment in Paris pays both, so €100 costs about €2 in fees, and a dollar payment at a shop outside the US pays just the 1% abroad fee.

Funding the card is cheap if you already hold USDC on Base, because there's no conversion step. Other tokens or networks have to be converted to Base USDC inside the app first, and Tuyo's trading fee is 0.25% except on swaps between stablecoins and on bridging, where only network fees are charged.

New cards can spend up to $50,000 a day, rising to $100,000 and then $200,000 as your total card spending grows.

Tuyo Card ATM withdrawal fees

Tuyo Card can withdraw cash at any Visa ATM once you set a PIN in the app and choose "Credit" at the machine.

Tuyo doesn't list an ATM fee of its own, but it says the ATM operator sets its own charges and exchange rate, and those count toward a limit of $250 per withdrawal. You also get three attempts in any rolling 24 hours, and declined attempts count, so a fourth try the same day is refused automatically.

That makes the card fine for the odd taxi fare or market stall, but $750 a day at most is too little for anyone who relies on cash.

Is Tuyo Card safe?

Tuyo Card is built on a self-custodial wallet, so Tuyo Inc. never holds your USDC and you can withdraw it to any other wallet, even if your identity check fails or your account is restricted.

The card works as a collateralised Visa credit card at 0% interest. Your USDC stays in your own smart contract wallet as collateral, and each purchase is paid by the issuer and settled from that balance. Because the collateral is a dollar stablecoin, the risk of it losing value against your purchases is small.

Tuyo runs the card through Rain (Signify Holdings, Inc.), and cards are issued by licensed partner institutions, with Third National as the issuer in the US. Bank transfers and account numbers go through Bridge, a licensed US money transmitter. The Earn strategies are a separate risk: they run on third-party DeFi protocols, and Tuyo says their returns can be lower or even negative.

Who should get Tuyo Card

Tuyo Card suits people who already hold USDC, want to keep control of their keys, and spend mostly in US dollars.

For someone in the US paying in dollars, the card costs nothing per purchase, and the chance of a free purchase is a bonus no ordinary debit card has. The option to keep your balance in an Earn strategy until you spend it also helps if you keep a larger float on the card.

For someone in Europe or Latin America paying in local currency, every purchase costs 2%, which is more than many crypto cards that charge nothing on currency conversion and also pay a fixed cashback rate. The comparison below shows the cheaper options in your country.

Where Tuyo Card is available

Tuyo Card is available in 213 countries and territories, including most of Europe, Latin America and Asia, but not in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Ukraine, India, China, Vietnam, Nigeria or Israel.

In the US the card can't be issued to residents of 19 states, including Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Oregon and Washington, or to residents of the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the other US territories.