Nº 10 Fiat card, crypto on-ramp

ZEN.COM Card review

A well-run, fully regulated euro account with a Mastercard and a crypto on-ramp bolted on. Good bank-alternative, but not a crypto card: it never holds crypto and pays no cashback on everyday spending.

Licensing: UAB ZEN.COM is an electronic money institution licensed by the Bank of Lithuania (licence LB000457) and passported across the EEA; UK customers are served by ZEN-UK Limited under an FCA e-money licence. Your balance is safeguarded fiat e-money, which is a stronger consumer position than any card on this list. ZEN states it does not provide crypto services itself: crypto transfers are executed by external partner exchanges, and ZEN only moves the euros.

ZEN.COM is a Polish-founded, Lithuanian-licensed account with a 35-currency wallet, local transfers in EUR, PLN, GBP and RON, and a physical or virtual Mastercard. The Free plan costs nothing but charges 0.5% over the Mastercard rate on purchases outside your account currency, €10 for a physical card and 1.5% at ATMs. Gold (€0.90 a month) cuts FX to 0.2% and adds €200 of free ATM withdrawals; Platinum and Pro (€6.90 a month) take FX to 0% and free ATMs to €800 a month. Because you can hold lei, forint or pounds in the account, paying from a local-currency balance avoids the markup altogether.

The crypto part is an on-ramp, not a card feature. From the app you can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC with euros and send it to an external wallet, or send crypto in as a top-up, which is exchanged into euros on arrival. Funding the account that way costs 0.5%, sending crypto out costs 2% on Free and Gold or 0.5% on Platinum and Pro, and the account itself never holds a crypto balance. You cannot spend crypto at the till; you spend euros that used to be crypto. The service is only available to EEA customers of the Lithuanian entity, not in the UK.

Cashback is real but narrow. ZEN’s Instant Cashback pays partner-specific rates (single digits at retailers such as AliExpress, far more on software subscriptions) when you click through from the app and pay with the card, settled in the purchase currency and capped at €250 per partner per day. There is no rate on ordinary spending, and Free-plan users see offers at half value: full rates need Gold, Platinum or Pro. Purchases routed through PayPal or Curve earn nothing.

Who it’s for: people who want a regulated euro account with a cheap card and an occasional, simple way to buy or cash out crypto. Anyone chasing cashback on crypto spending should look at Bleap, Krak or ether.fi instead.