Brighty reviewed: an EEA crypto IBAN and virtual card that keeps its costs and limits in the app

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Brighty is not a bank. It says so itself in plain words on its own pages: it is a financial technology company that holds accounts, issues cards, takes custody and moves money on and off the crypto rails through licensed partners whose names it does not print. What you get, if the eligibility lines up with where you live, is an IBAN, a virtual card and an app that converts Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC into something a shop will accept. On paper that is exactly the answer for anyone who has tried and failed to open an ordinary bank card. In practice the same pages are noticeably vague where it matters most — no named issuer, no stated KYC levels, no conversion rates, no card currency, and a review record that includes accounts closed without explanation. I scored it 5.6 out of 10. That is not a dismissal. It is a genuinely useful product with a real gap between what it advertises and what it publishes.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 5.6 out of 10, and the split is uneven

The score is an average, and an average hides more than it explains here. Brighty scores its best marks on the things it does concretely — topping up and the shape of the plans — and its worst on the things it leaves unsaid. Reliability and complaints is the weakest line at 4 out of 10, and that is the one I would not average away.

Who this suits: residents of the EEA who want a euro IBAN in the same app as their crypto, who can live with paying a percentage on every conversion, and who treat a virtual card as a normal thing rather than a disappointment. Who it does not suit: anyone who needs a physical card today, anyone who pays in Apple Pay and only has a Mastercard, anyone who wants to know exactly which institution is holding their money, and anyone who has a history of having an account frozen and would find that intolerable.

One thing worth saying at the top because it colours everything below: the customer-facing pages describe a partnership model with unnamed licensed partners, and a third-party compilation lists 36 eligible countries including the EU, the EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova. Neither list is the same as an official one. If your country is not in the EEA, treat the app download as the only signal you will get.

Will they give you the card?

The card page carries one label that does most of the work: “EEA only”. The app has since been extended to Montenegro and Andorra, and the company qualifies even that with availability that “may vary by jurisdiction”. There is one eligibility sentence that is stated outright, and it is a nationality restriction rather than a residence one: “Due to regulatory restrictions, we are unable to onboard Russian nationals residing in Montenegro and Andorra.” So the rule works by residence plus a nationality carve-out for that pair of countries.

Beyond that, the card’s public pages do not give a full country list — I looked and did not find one. A third-party site compiled 36 listed countries in August 2026, including the EU, the EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova, but that is unofficial and not something the card itself confirms. If you are reading this outside the EEA, your realistic test is whether the app will let you complete verification, not what any page promises.

The wider category context matters here, and it is the same for every card I look at. KYC rules exist because regulated businesses must verify customers and assess risk under anti-money-laundering law, including ongoing monitoring and suspicious-activity reporting. In the EU, customer due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documentation, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether you are a politically exposed person. Nationality is screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy apply to citizenship and country of birth as well as to your address. Cards generally go to adults aged 18 and over, and some issuers set higher limits. None of that is Brighty-specific, but it is why the “EEA only” line exists at all.

How to get it

Verification runs in the app, at sign-up. A help article names Sumsub as the verification provider. The card does not define what levels exist or how long processing takes — that is not stated. If in-app verification stalls, the fallback the card publishes is email to [email protected].

What you are asked for is specific, and this is one of the better-documented parts of the product:

• Proof of identity: a clear photo, plus full name, date of birth, place of birth and citizenship.
• Proof of address: a utility bill or bank statement as PDF, no older than three months — screenshots are rejected — or an official registration confirmation, or a second official ID that shows your address.
• Common rejection reasons: documents that are ambiguous, unclear, contradictory or incomplete; an address that does not match what you entered at sign-up; documents that are old or damaged; blank fields, including the signature line.

That last list is worth reading before you photograph anything. Most of those rejections are avoidable and cost you a second round trip.

The card itself is a virtual card, usable wherever Visa is accepted, according to the card page. A help article goes further and refers to a physical Visa, a virtual Visa without a PIN, and a virtual Mastercard. The card currency is not stated. An issuance article says you can choose a Virtual Card or a Physical Card in the app, but gives no countries, no time and no cost, and no replacement cost. Then the catch: a third-party site reported in August 2026 that physical Mastercard orders are currently unavailable and that the help centre says they “will not be fulfilled”, with no published price or timeframe and no published replacement price. That is unofficial and not confirmed by the card — but it lines up with what the fees article calls the card, which is a virtual Mastercard, so the practical picture is that you are signing up for a virtual card.

That same third-party compilation adds two details the card does not publish: that the Mastercard is issued by UAB Monavate, and that the balances run in EUR, USD, GBP, AED and crypto including USDC, EURC, BTC, ETH, ADA, XTZ, TON and SOL. Treat the issuer name as unofficial until the card prints it.

What it really costs

Here is the honest state of the pricing. Some of it is published to the euro; a lot of it is simply absent from the public pages, and the card’s own summary line — that crypto converts instantly — comes with no rates attached.

Three everyday payments, to make the shape of it concrete:

A EUR 40 lunch paid from USDC. You have loaded crypto free of charge, so the inbound side costs nothing. The conversion in the app then applies: on One, 0.6% above whatever monthly free allowance is left; on Pro, 0.4%. The card does not publish the exchange rate it gives you, only the percentage it takes, so the number you actually receive is the one thing you cannot check in advance.

A EUR 25 subscription billed in USD. Here the fee for paying in a foreign currency is not stated at all. Some issuers charge a percentage on top of the network’s own conversion; Brighty publishes nothing on this page, which means you find out from your statement rather than from a fee table.

Taking cash out. The card page claims worldwide ATM acceptance but gives no fee and no allowance. The unofficial picture is worse than silence: a third-party site reports there is no dependable current ATM feature on the Mastercard at all, and lists legacy Visa rates of EUR 3.50 in the EEA and EUR 3.50 plus 3.5% outside it on Plus, and EUR 3 in the EEA and EUR 3 plus 3% outside on Pro. Unofficial, dated August 2026, and it concerns a Visa line rather than the Mastercard you would actually hold. If cash is part of your plan, treat this as unverified.

There is a third set of numbers to keep separate, because they come from a different source and they disagree with the card. Unofficial figures from August 2026 put the plans at One free, Plus EUR 9 a month and Pro EUR 18 a month, and put card limits at EUR 15,000 / 25,000 / 50,000 — which contradicts the official EUR 50,000 / 75,000 / 100,000 I have used above. Where an official page and a third-party page disagree, I use the official one and flag the other.

The published service tiers, from a help article dated 15/09/26, are where the real comparison lives:

The trade is legible: you pay more for a plan to get a free FX allowance and cheaper SEPA/Faster Payments out. If you barely spend and mostly hold, One is the honest starting point. Note that subscription prices for these plans are not stated on that page — the EUR 9 and EUR 18 figures above are unofficial.

Top up

This is the part Brighty does best, and it earns its 7 out of 10.

You fund the account in two directions. Crypto — Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC are named, with the NPC token featured — sits in the app, and there is also an IBAN for fiat. Incoming crypto is free on every plan with no monthly limit. Incoming fiat is not free: SEPA costs 0.3% with a minimum of EUR 10, Faster Payments 0.3% with a minimum of EUR 10, SWIFT 0.7% with a minimum of EUR 50. The monthly cap on incoming fiat is EUR 100,000. The card top-up fee and the minimum top-up are not stated.

Withdrawal networks are published and they are wide: Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, Cardano, Tezos, Islamic Coin, TON, Arbitrum, Solana, Polygon and BEP20. Outgoing crypto fees are the same on every plan with no monthly limit — ERC20 EUR 3, TRC20 EUR 3, BTC EUR 20, ADA EUR 1, XTZ EUR 1, HAQQ EUR 1, TON EUR 3, ARB EUR 3, Solana EUR 3, Polygon EUR 3, BEP20 EUR 3.

That last list is where the real cost lives, and it is worth reading twice. A Solana withdrawal costs the same as a Polygon one at EUR 3, so there is no reward for moving to a cheaper chain. Bitcoin at EUR 20 is six times the ERC20 fee, and it is charged on top of whatever the Bitcoin network itself takes. This is the shape of the whole category: on-chain network fees are charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider, so your real cost is the card’s flat fee plus the network’s fee, and the second one moves.

Two warnings that belong here rather than buried. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network Brighty does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee of recovery. And stablecoins can be blocked at the issuer’s end: Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity, so they are not censorship-proof either.

Closing the account is stated with unusual clarity, in a way that is worth crediting: on a closure you initiate yourself, the account is “scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days”. What happens to a balance still sitting there is not stated. If you are thinking of closing, ask that question in writing before you trigger the deletion, because after thirty days the answer will be whatever support can reconstruct.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, this is a virtual card in a phone. Apple Pay and Google Pay are both mentioned by the card. The specific position as of 26 May 2026: Apple Pay is currently unavailable for Mastercard cards, pending technical updates, while it is available for Visa; Google Pay works for Mastercard.

So the practical question is which card you end up holding. The card page describes a virtual Visa; the fees article calls the card a virtual Mastercard. If you get the Mastercard — which the pricing language points towards — then Apple Pay is the one wallet to plan around, and Google Pay becomes your tap-to-pay route. Blocked merchant categories are not stated.

A phone app exists and its own storefront rating is worth a glance rather than a decision. Read on 20 October 2026 in the Turkish App Store, “Brighty: Crypto Card & IBAN” showed 4.9 from nine ratings; the Google Play rating was not found. Nine ratings is not a sample size.

On rewards, the card page says only this: “Keep earning on your crypto while using it”. The rate and the payout are not stated, and cashback is not described. An unofficial source gives the fuller shape — 0.5% base cashback in USDC on all tiers, 1.25% to 1.75% in selected categories, monthly caps of 20 / 60 / 100 USDC on One / Plus / Pro, paid the following month to a “Reward Box”. Again: third-party, August 2026, not confirmed by the card. It is also worth knowing from that same unofficial source that cashback can be reversed if a purchase is refunded or charged back, which makes it a reward contingent on the shop not reversing the payment.

One more structural point, because it explains a lot of the friction people report. A crypto card of this type usually behaves like a prepaid card: crypto is converted and loaded as a fiat balance, and the card spends only that balance, so it cannot overdraw. Two consequences follow. Merchants can look up the BIN and see which institution and country issued the card, and may apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from your billing address — which is why a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another. And some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs for that reason. Address Verification Service, which compares the numeric parts of a billing address against issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines. A declined authorisation may also leave a hold on your money for several days, typically up to seven.

Finally, disputes. The help centre has articles titled “Refund Policy for Unsupported Crypto Deposits” and “Wrong Network and Unsupported Cryptocurrency” — both about deposits going astray — and I saw no card dispute or chargeback article at all. A chargeback is a refund ordered by the issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received; prepaid-card coverage varies by scheme and should not be assumed. An unofficial source says outright that no dispute or chargeback process is described. Practically: if a shop takes your money and never delivers, the help centre articles you can find are about the wrong network, not the wrong merchant.

What can go wrong

Start with the most concrete thing I found, which is a review record rather than a policy. Trustpilot shows 3.2 out of 5 from 78 reviews on the Dutch-Belgian page, read on 20 October 2026, with review dates not visible on that page. The recurring themes: accounts closed without explanation, where the company cites policy or regulation; referral bonuses not paid, where it cites suspected referral abuse; and instant transfers taking hours. Some reviewers praise the cashback. No card-specific complaints and no Reddit threads surfaced.

That pattern is not mysterious once you read the offboarding section, which is officially published: reasons include suspected fraud, an unclear source of funds, concerns about a partner provider, and PEP or sanctions status. Which means the complaints and the policy are describing the same mechanism from two ends. The card does not tell you, in advance, which of those labels will apply to you.

Next, custody. Brighty holds your funds; this is not self-custody. The official FAQ says “Brighty keeps user funds in segregated accounts that are specially secured”, for both fiat and crypto, and the card says it works with penetration testers. Segregation is the standard EMIs are required to do — safeguard customer funds in dedicated accounts or insure them — but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by deposit guarantee schemes. No insurance is mentioned. Two-factor authentication is not mentioned on the page I read. What you do get is card freeze and card terminate in the app, where freeze is temporary and termination cannot be reversed.

The partner question sits underneath all of this. The card describes itself as a financial technology company, not a bank, and says accounts, cards, custody and the on/off ramp all run through unnamed licensed partners, with no licence numbers on the pages I read. Press coverage from 2024 put Brighty in Switzerland and described crypto-exchange and digital-asset-custodian licences; that comes from a press release and is not confirmed on official pages. But the partner actually behind your card is a separate question, and on that the card is silent. For context on how programmes end: Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down, and WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Closures typically mean a notice period, then loading and spending stop, then you are asked to withdraw what is left. A 2026 closure reported by a secondary source had new loads ending 8 July 2026 and spending stopping 8 August 2026 — single source, unconfirmed, but the shape of it is the shape to expect.

Support is thinner than the product deserves. Email at [email protected] and a help centre at help.brighty.app; no phone, no live chat and no hours listed in the FAQ I read. The help centre itself is translated into English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Spanish — there is no Russian version. The languages the support staff actually speak are not stated.

And one quiet risk that belongs in every card review of this kind: taxes. In the US the IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services, dollars or other digital assets generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local fiat at fair market value on the transaction date — which can make each card payment funded from crypto a separate disposal. Your own country’s rules may differ and I am not giving advice on them; I am flagging that paying with crypto is rarely the tax-neutral event people assume it is.

What to take instead

If some part of the above is disqualifying, the honest answer is that this is a category with real substitutes and no perfect one. Here is how the three closest alternatives compare, each on its own published terms.

RedotPay is the closest substitute and scores higher. Its eligibility rule is stricter and clearer in one way and looser in another: a citizenship restriction list that blocks identity verification outright for anyone holding a passport from a restricted list of countries, and a separate card-issuance list of 47 places — dated 28 August 2026, adding India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Singapore and Turkey — where residents cannot get either card type or use the address for billing. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia appear on both lists; Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the UAE on neither. The pricing is heavier: USD 10 to open a virtual card, USD 100 for a physical one, and a 1.00% transaction fee with 1.20% on non-default currency. In exchange you get both card forms and a stated reward — USD 5 welcome credit, spending-only, valid 30 days — where Brighty publishes no rate at all.

Bitpanda suits a different person. It is a regulated exchange with a physical EUR Visa debit card rather than a crypto-first card, and it requires residence in a euro-area country. The catch is narrow: spending is from a chosen main asset — listed cryptocurrencies, precious metals or EUR — converted at payment with a minimum of EUR 1, and Crypto Indices are excluded. Its own pages contradict each other on cashback, with the body saying 1% on crypto spending and the summary saying “up to 2%”, and it does not state the crypto conversion spread at all.

Wirex has the widest published fee schedule and the least certainty. Card availability depends on your region, and in Singapore cash withdrawals are “not permitted” while transactions with prohibited countries are barred. Issuance is free in the listed regions and the metal card carries a 45 GBP order fee on the UK page. Its cryptoback is published as 0.5% on Standard, 3% on Premium and up to 8% on Elite, in WXT, with a long exclusion list covering ATM withdrawals, cash advances, crypto purchases, gambling, refunds and a set of merchant category codes. Its exchange fee has no fixed amount — the rate varies by pair and liquidity and is shown in the app before you confirm.

What none of them solves: none publishes a card dispute process clearly, none tells you which licensed institution holds your balance with the specificity you would want, and all of them run on crypto rails where a wrong-network transfer is simply gone.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Brighty to someone in the EEA who already holds crypto, does not have a usable ordinary card, and treats a virtual card plus an IBAN in one app as a good enough answer. The case for it is specific: issuance is EUR 2.99 and servicing is free, incoming crypto costs nothing at all, The service tiers are published with real numbers, the withdrawal network list is long, and the app gives you a euro IBAN that most crypto-only products cannot. If you spend in euros and convert rarely, the free allowances and the 0.4% to 0.6% exchange band are reasonable.

I would not recommend it, without hedging, to four kinds of reader. If you need a physical card, the third-party picture says orders are not being fulfilled and the card does not contradict it. If Apple Pay is your only tap-to-pay route and you hold the Mastercard, it does not work. If you intend to use ATMs, there is no dependable current feature and no published fee. And if your priority is knowing which institution holds your money and under which licence — a reasonable thing to want after reading the review record — the card does not tell you.

If any of those four are you, the comparison table above is the faster route to an answer.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Brighty card?

Brighty is a financial technology company, not a bank, offering an IBAN, a virtual card and a crypto wallet in one app. You convert or top up a fiat or stablecoin balance and spend it with the card, much like a prepaid card, so it draws on a stored balance and cannot overdraw. Accounts, cards, custody and the crypto on/off ramp all run through licensed partners whose names the card does not print.

Is Brighty a bank?

No, and it says so itself. It is a fintech that provides banking-style services through licensed partners, with no licence numbers on the pages I read. Press coverage from 2024 described Swiss crypto-exchange and digital-asset-custodian licences, but that comes from a press release and is not confirmed on the official pages. Some third-party listings name UAB Monavate as the Mastercard issuer; treat that as unofficial.

Who can get the Brighty card?

The card page is labelled “EEA only”. The app has been extended to Montenegro and Andorra, with availability that “may vary by jurisdiction”, and Russian nationals residing in those two countries cannot be onboarded for regulatory reasons. A third-party site lists 36 countries including the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Montenegro, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Moldova — unofficial, and the card publishes no full country list.

How do I apply for the Brighty card?

Sign up in the app and verification runs there, with Sumsub named as the provider in a help article. You need a clear identity photo, your full name, date and place of birth and citizenship, plus a proof of address: a utility bill or bank statement PDF from the last three months (screenshots rejected), a registration confirmation, or a second ID showing your address. If it stalls, email [email protected].

Does Brighty require KYC?

Yes, identity verification is part of sign-up and is not optional. That is standard for regulated providers under anti-money-laundering rules. The card does not state what verification levels exist or how long processing takes, and it publishes no chargeback or card dispute process — so ask before you fund the account.

How much does the Brighty card cost?

Issuing the virtual card costs EUR 2.99 on all plans, with up to 10 issues a month, and the monthly card service fee is free. In-app currency exchange is free up to a monthly allowance, then 0.6%, 0.5% or 0.4% on One, Plus or Pro. The conversion rate itself, the fee for paying in a foreign currency, and the physical card price are all not stated.

How do I top up the Brighty card?

You send crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC to the app, or use the IBAN for fiat. Incoming crypto is free on every plan with no monthly limit. Incoming fiat costs 0.3% via SEPA and Faster Payments with a EUR 10 minimum, and 0.7% via SWIFT with a EUR 50 minimum, capped at EUR 100,000 a month. The card top-up fee and minimum top-up are not stated.

Is the Brighty card safe?

Your funds are held by Brighty, not by you — this is custodial, not self-custody. The FAQ says funds are kept in segregated accounts that are specially secured, which is what e-money institutions are required to do, but such funds are not bank deposits and no insurance is mentioned. You can freeze or terminate the card in the app, though termination cannot be reversed. Review scores are 3.2 out of 5 from 78 Trustpilot reviews.

Can I use the Brighty card in Apple Wallet?

It depends which card you hold. As of 26 May 2026, Apple Pay is currently unavailable for Mastercard cards pending technical updates, while it is available for Visa, and Google Pay works for Mastercard. Since the card’s own fees page describes a virtual Mastercard, plan on Google Pay for tap-to-pay and check which card your account is actually issued before you rely on Apple Wallet.

How do I withdraw money and close the Brighty account?

Outgoing crypto fees are the same on every plan: ERC20, TRC20, TON, ARB, Solana, Polygon and BEP20 are EUR 3 each, BTC is EUR 20, and ADA, XTZ and HAQQ are EUR 1 — on top of the blockchain’s own network fee. Supported networks include Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, Cardano, Tezos, TON, Arbitrum, Solana, Polygon and BEP20. On self-initiated closure the account is scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days, and what happens to a remaining balance is not stated — ask support first.

Content created by the «cryptocardchooser.com» team