Dec 5, 2025 Dec 5, 2025 2025-12-05

A while ago I wrote a mini-review for 3 digital nomad friendly debit cards. The rationale was that location independent peeps need better money tools than your usual, vanilla debit card. You need to make sure your card works in as many countries as possible, you need to have flexible limits settings and, if possible, you need to have extra services packed in (spoiler: Revolut leads big time here). Also, a big plus would be a decent crypto access layer.

Before going forward with today’s post, which is mostly a checkpoint to see how these cards are doing lately, please be aware I’m not doing this very frequently. As a matter of fact, the last post I am referring to was written more than 5 years ago. So this is not your weekly churn of product reviews, it’s my personal experience with tools I’m using daily. Also, full disclosure, some of the links I’m using are affiliate links, so I might get some commission if you engage.

Wise

During the last 5 years, TransferWise became Wise. But other than the name compaction, nothing changed. Wise remained a very stable financial tool, one that I’ve been using consistently across a couple of continents and at least 5 countries.

What you get with Wise? A physical card, as many virtual cards as you want, an app, holding and converting money in 40+ currencies, local bank accounts in 9 countries, and a very, very good UX. Business accounts get all retail features, plus a nice boost in local bank accounts, from 9 to 19. An interesting feature of Wise is that you get a little bit of cashback at the end of the month, based on how much money you held during this interval. So your money actually multiplies – not by a lot, but still.

They have a referral program in place, which gives both you and the referred user $15 in fees – which is quite nice if you use the tool a lot. If you didn’t sign up yet (highly unlikely, given Wise popularity, but who knows) you can sign up for Wise here.

All in all, Wise is my de facto standard for location independence.

Revolut

They didn’t change name since 5 years ago, so they’re still called Revolut. But that’s pretty much the only thing that stayed the same – almost everything else improved. Revolut tried to position itself from the very beginning as a service provider, not only a transfer money tool. They offered many additional services like stock trading, vaults (for savings) and, more recently, crypto trading and Rev points. And this continuous improvement approach paid back, now Revolut is way more than a debit card, is a “fat financial app”, or a “super app”.

As such, you will actually pay for these services on a monthly basis, and based on the card type you choose: Plus, Premium, Metal and Ultra (at the time of writing). So be aware that Revolut incurs monthly costs, something that Wise doesn’t.

A few words about Rev points: they’re basically a loyalty feature, the more you spend with Revolut, the more Rev points you get. The nice part is you get to spend these on actual services. For a location independent, these services are pure gold: Miles, eSim, Lounges or Experiences (there are more, feel free to search for yourself).

I personally use the Lounges feature consistently, as I still get to travel a lot, between Vietnam and Portugal, and I had good experiences. It’s nice to see you get a sleepover in an airport like Doha, on that 24-hour-long flight between Asia and Europe, and you pay for it with Rev points.

Another very interesting feature of Revolut is their crypto layer. You can seamlessly convert from crypto to fiat, or buy crypto with fiat. The service, piloted for 2-3 years on a limited set of chains, is now solid and it also has a more than decent UX, meaning it’s very, very easy to use.

They have their own referral program in place, but it works a bit differently: they have “streaks” during which the rewards are fixed. At the moment of writing, you get $50 for anyone referred to Revolut, with an extra $25 when they sign up for Pro.

All in all, Revolut is my choice of mobile financial services, with a nice debit card layer on top of it.

If you haven’t signed up for Revolut (again, highly unlikely) you can get your Revolut card here.

Krak

With this, we’re getting to the crypto-first cards, and I confess I had a hard time to make my choice. The reason: they literally exploded over the last 2 years. As you probably noticed, the legal landscape around crypto changed consistently across the world, with each continent having specific regulations in place. As a result, more and more providers of hybrid crypto plus traditional finance products are popping up, almost every week.

If you’re not familiar with this kind of product, well, it’s a regular card wrapped by Visa or MasterCard, but with specific crypto features, like converting crypto to crypto, fiat to crypto or crypto to fiat. Most of these products rely on stablecoins as the liquidity layer between crypto and fiat. Almost all of them have some cashback mechanism, or at least basic staking features – basically getting interest if you block your money in a “savings account”.

I picked Krak, a card offered by the exchange Kraken, because it is one of the oldest and most respected crypto exchanges out there. Also, the product has a very good UX (almost on par with Wise, at least for me) which makes it feel like spending native currencies, not crypto. You can also make some small gains, if you’re using their staking services, but I honestly stay away from this, and I don’t endorse it in any way – unless you are really, really well educated and you know what you’re doing. If you are, then you know it’s well worth it.

They have a nice referral program in place, where you can get up to $400 (combined) in rewards.

You can get your Krak card here.

The Contenders

As I said above, hybrid crypto + fiat cards are popping up literally every week. I put together a (heavily) filtered list of interesting products in this area. These products are primarily suited for digital nomads who are also familiar with the crypto ecosystem.

• Cypher – cross-chain card that also has its own token
• Fuse Card – Solana based card on top of the Fusewallet
• Tap – Multi chain card, with generous cashback program

As the market evolves, expect that some of these will change or become obsolete.

Final Thoughts

The most important change related to debit cards was by far the crypto compliance wave. This offers indeed more freedom, more flexibility and even more potential abundance, as the crypto world is slowly getting out of the shadows and validates itself as a mainstream finance avenue.