Buy and sell crypto with a card, non-custodially

Three parties, with clearly separated roles. You hold the wallet and the card. A licensed payment provider processes the card transaction, performs identity verification, and holds the licences that make taking card payments for crypto lawful in your country. The blockchain settles the transfer to your address.

The terminal you started from is not in that list, and that is the point. It connects you to a provider and passes along your wallet address; it does not process your payment, hold your money, or take custody of the crypto at any stage.

This is why the provider's terms, fees, and limits govern the transaction rather than ours, and why the verification is theirs to run. They are the regulated financial party in the arrangement.

You choose an amount and a token, and the provider quotes a rate that holds for a short window. You complete identity verification if it is your first purchase with them — usually a document and a selfie, and usually minutes rather than days, though larger amounts can trigger further checks.

You pay by card, with the provider handling authentication through your bank. Once payment clears, the provider sends the purchased crypto on-chain to your wallet address. Arrival is typically within minutes, though a first purchase can take longer while checks complete.

The crypto arrives directly in your wallet. There is no exchange account holding it, no withdrawal step, and nothing to move afterwards. From the moment it lands, it is under your keys.

Selling runs the same path in reverse. You request a quote for the amount you want to sell, and the provider gives you an address to send the crypto to along with the network to use. You send it from your wallet, signing the transaction yourself.

Once the provider receives and confirms it, they pay out fiat to your card or bank account. That leg follows normal banking timelines, so same-day to a few working days depending on the method and your bank.

The network you send on matters enormously here. Sending on a different chain from the one the provider specified means sending to an address that may not be under their control on that chain, and there is often no recovery. Check the network as carefully as the address.

The headline cost is usually a few percent, which looks steep next to an exchange's spot fee. The comparison is not like for like, and it helps to see where the money goes.

Card processing alone is a significant cost for the provider, and crypto purchases carry high chargeback and fraud risk, which prices in further. On top of that sit compliance costs — identity verification, monitoring, licensing in each jurisdiction — and a spread on the exchange rate itself, which is often the largest single component and the least visible.

The practical read: card on-ramps are convenience infrastructure, not a trading venue. They are a good way to get funds on-chain and a poor way to trade in and out repeatedly. If you are moving size or moving often, a bank transfer route usually costs a fraction of card rates.

Compare the total received, not the advertised fee. A provider with a low stated fee and a wide spread can easily deliver less crypto than one charging more openly.

At no point does anyone hold crypto on your behalf. The provider holds your money briefly while processing a payment, exactly as any merchant does, and then sends the asset to an address only you control.

Once it arrives, it is yours in the full sense: no withdrawal to request, no account to keep in good standing, no platform whose solvency you depend on. If every service involved disappeared the next day, the coins would still be in your wallet and your recovery phrase would still restore it.

The identity verification does mean these transactions are not private. The provider knows who you are and which address they sent to, and is generally required to keep that record. Self-custody and anonymity are separate things, and buying with a card sits firmly inside the regulated system.

The address, character by character, and ideally by pasting rather than typing. Clipboard-hijacking malware exists specifically to swap an address at the moment of pasting, so a final visual comparison is worth the few seconds.

The network, on both legs. The same token exists on several chains, and the provider's supported network for a given asset is not always the one you use most.

Availability in your region, which depends on the provider's licensing rather than on us. Coverage, limits, and payment methods vary by country and can change.

The total you will receive after all costs, held next to the quote's expiry. Quotes are time-limited, and a stale one recalculates at the current rate.