A good card that is already gone

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you were hoping to sign up for a 1inch card, this is the first thing you need to know: the programme is being discontinued, new sign-ups are closed, and the people who already had a card have been told to withdraw or spend what is left by 18 December 2026. That is not a small inconvenience — it is a wind-down. Nothing about the basic idea was wrong; a crypto card that converts your tokens to fiat and hands you a normal Mastercard is exactly what a lot of people asked for. The timing is the problem, not the concept.

I am going to walk you through the score first, then what actually happened to the programme, then what to do if you are one of the people still holding a balance, then the risks that catch people out, then the alternatives worth looking at today, and finally who I would genuinely hand this to. Everything I say about the card’s fees, limits and features comes from the card’s own notice or, where I say so, from third-party sites that the card itself never confirmed.

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

The verdict: 4.4 out of 10

The score is not 4.4 because the card was badly built. It is 4.4 because you cannot join it any more. If you were not already inside, this is a non-event: there is nothing to weigh up, because there is nothing left to sign up for. The one mark that still matters for you is whether to hold your balance and leave, which I cover in a moment.

Let me be blunt about who this suits and who it does not.

It suits nobody as a new card. Sign-ups are closed, so the question “should I apply?” has already been answered for you. If you were reading about the 1inch card as a prospect rather than an owner, you can stop here and skip to the alternatives section, where I point you at three live programmes.

It suits existing cardholders who move quickly. The advice on the notice is to withdraw or spend your balance as soon as reasonably possible by signing in to your card account, with 18 December 2026 named as the furthest foreseeable date. That is a deadline, not a suggestion. People who act early have time to handle a support request, a stuck deposit, or a frozen account; people who act on the last week have none of that slack.

The score, criterion by criterion:

The pattern to notice is the gap between the high everyday-use mark and the zero on access. That gap is the whole story of this card: the spending experience was genuinely nice, and it is exactly the part you cannot buy your way into any more. Which brings us to what actually happened.

What happened to the programme

The card launched on 8 April 2024 with Mastercard as the network and Crypto Life (CL) as the card provider, according to the launch blog, which was updated on 8 May 2026. Then a discontinuation notice went up: new sign-ups are closed, and users are advised to withdraw or spend their remaining balance by 18 December 2026, which the notice names as the furthest foreseeable date. The date the notice itself was published is not stated on the page, so I cannot tell you how much warning you actually had.

Here is the part that catches people: almost none of the card’s specifics are on that notice. Let me be clear about what the card’s public pages say and do not say, because if you are hoping to find a fee schedule or a country list there, you will not.

• Who could get it: not stated. The notice says sign-ups are closed and lists no countries. Third-party reporting (unofficial, not confirmed by the card, from spendnode.io in August 2026) says the EEA and UK were served and that it was not offered in the US, but treat that as background colour, not as a rule.
• KYC: handled by the card provider, Crypto Life. What the requirements actually are — documents, checks, tiers — is not stated. Unofficial reporting says KYC was required with a basic tier at lower limits.
• The card itself: the launch blog describes physical and virtual cards issued by Crypto Life, “powered exclusively by the Mastercard network.” The notice itself does not restate the card type, though inputs describe it as a prepaid Mastercard.
• Cost and fees: not stated anywhere on the card’s own pages. Unofficial reporting (spendnode.io, August 2026) gives a 0 USD annual fee, a 0% FX fee and a 1.75% crypto conversion fee on every transaction; another aggregator reports a 2% card spend fee on top of the 1.75% conversion fee. These figures disagree with each other and neither is confirmed by the card, so treat them as a rough picture of the intended design rather than as a bill you will be handed.
• Wallets and mobile pay: not stated officially. Unofficial reporting names Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Rewards: not stated officially. Unofficial reporting describes 2% cashback in BXX or 1% in BTC/USDT chosen at purchase, but the same source is internally inconsistent, swinging between “1INCH tokens” and BXX.
• Currencies, tiers, delivery details, app ratings: not stated. The launch blog confirms that physical and virtual cards existed, but says nothing about delivery now that the programme is closing.
• Who is behind it: the issuers are named — Monavate Ltd (UK) and UAB Monavate (EU). The card provider is Frozen Time UNIPESSOAL LDA (EU) or Baanx Group Ltd (UK), both operating under the Crypto Life name. The card is managed in the CL card account, by web or in-account chat; app store ratings for the card specifically are not stated.

None of that is a criticism of the card. It is what a wind-down notice looks like: the marketing is gone and only the exit instructions remain. If you are a holder, the numbers that matter to you are in the next section.

If you already have the card

This is the part that matters most, so read it carefully. Here is what the card actually tells holders to do, in the right order.

Withdraw or spend your balance as soon as reasonably possible. You do this by signing in to your card account. The date the card names as the furthest foreseeable is 18 December 2026. Those timelines are set by the issuer and provider, not by you, and they are subject to change — which is another way of saying do not plan to sit on it.

Understand where your money actually sits. Balances are held in an e-wallet issued by Monavate, not by 1inch. That is a meaningful distinction: it means a regulated e-money institution is holding the funds, not the crypto brand whose logo is on the app. It also means the issuer’s terms apply to you. Under section 16 of the issuer’s card terms, remaining e-wallet funds can be redeemed for up to six years after account closure. That is a floor under your money, not a schedule — it is not an instruction to wait six years, it is the longstop if the wind-down goes sideways. Withdrawal fees are not stated.

Know who to write to. Card balance, status, KYC, closure and personal-data requests all go to Crypto Life support, by email or through the chat in your card account. If CL does not respond, you contact 1inch support with your request, the date and the channel you used; 1inch logs the case and escalates it, but it cannot action account-level requests itself. So 1inch is a escalator, not a resolver — for anything about your balance or your account, Crypto Life is the party that can actually do something. Support languages and hours are not stated.

On the numbers for daily use, treat them as unofficial. ATM fees, limits and spending caps are not stated on the card’s pages. Unofficial reporting (spendnode.io, August 2026) gives an ATM fee of 2% with a 500 USD daily ATM limit, a daily spending limit of 8,000 USD (another directory lists EUR 8K daily and EUR 5K monthly), and says the spendable assets are 1INCH, ETH, USDT, USDC, BTC, LTC, XRP and BXX. The launch blog’s own description of funding is the cleanest official line: the card needed only “crypto in your 1inch Wallet,” converted to fiat at the point of payment. None of this changes what you must do now — the balances need to leave regardless of what the limits were.

There is also no refund or dispute process described on the notice. If you have a chargeback question or a merchant problem, that is not covered by anything the card has published during the wind-down, and it is worth raising with Crypto Life support early rather than late.

What can go wrong

The headline risk is not a bad purchase; it is the clock. Here is what I would actually worry about, in the order I would worry about it.

Money stuck in transit. Reports from cardholders in autumn 2026 describe USDC deposits confirmed on-chain but not credited to the card, one from 1 October 2026 and another on 1 September 2026 where the answer was “under review” for more than 20 hours. Another report from 30 September 2026 says a card transfer never arrived. If a deposit of yours is sitting in exactly that state, do not wait for the wind-down deadline to pass it — raise it now, because the support path is Crypto Life, and every week you wait is a week closer to the date after which nobody is scheduling.

Slow, generic support. Cardholders describe slow, generic support responses across mid-2025 into mid-2026. Combined with a closure, this is the pattern that turns a small problem into a lost balance: you file, you wait, you file again. The countermeasure is unglamorous — open the case early, use the in-account chat so there is a written record, and escalate to 1inch with your request, date and channel if CL goes quiet.

Custody you did not choose. The funds are in an e-wallet at an authorised e-money institution (Monavate), not with you. That is safer than leaving crypto on an exchange, but it is still someone else’s balance sheet. The launch blog’s wording on this is genuinely ambiguous — it says users keep control “while still retaining custody,” which is doing a lot of work in one sentence. If that distinction matters to you, it is worth asking Crypto Life directly what it means for your balance before you rely on it.

Features you cannot verify are gone. No published refund or dispute process, no stated withdrawal fees, no stated 2FA, freeze or spending controls. During a wind-down, the things that are not written down are the things that will not be there when you need them.

The wider pattern is not unusual. Card programmes end. In November 2022 Visa said it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX,” and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer; in 2018 Visa suspended WaveCrest in Europe, closing every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme. Programme closures typically follow a shape: a notice period, then loading and spending stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. A secondary source reported one 2026 closure on exactly that timeline — new loads ended 8 July 2026, spending stopped 8 August 2026 — though that is a single unconfirmed source, so do not treat it as a forecast for 1inch. The lesson for you, wherever you are reading this: when a card announces a wind-down, pull your balance early. The institutions behind this card name 18 December 2026 as their furthest foreseeable date, and “foreseeable” is doing real work in that sentence.

Where your trust actually sits. It is worth remembering that the crypto brand is often only the front of a three-party structure. The card network (Mastercard here) routes the payments and sets the rules; the issuer (Monavate) holds the programme and the balance; the crypto brand (1inch) markets and fronts it. For your money, the issuer is the party that matters. That is why “who is 1inch card” is the wrong question to be asking at this point, and “who holds my balance” is the right one.

What to take instead

The 1inch card is gone as a prospect, so this section is for you: three live programmes, each described the way the card describes itself, with me noting where the fine print earns your attention.

MetaMask — 7.1 / 10

MetaMask’s card is a Mastercard, issued by the same institutions behind the 1inch programme (Monavate as issuer, Crypto Life as provider), which is worth noting — the machinery that made the 1inch card good still exists, just behind a different front end.

• Who can get it: sign-ups are open in 45 listed countries and territories (Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Uruguay among them); other regions join a waitlist. Proof of residency is required. Importantly, “ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending.” Citizenship rules are not stated. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ.
• Cost: the virtual card is free with no annual or maintenance fee. The Metal card is 199 USD a year.
• Fees: “minimal fee for each transaction” — the amount is not on the pages, but there are no additional MetaMask fees and no foreign transaction fee; the Mastercard rate applies.
• Funding: it spends directly from your connected wallet on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana. Tokens named include mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT.
• Rewards: cashback in mUSD into the Money Account — 1% on Virtual; the Metal headline is 3%, but a footnote limits 3% to the first 10,000 USD spent and 1% after that. There is also a $FLY bonus multiplier (5X Virtual, 7X Metal) via the Blackbird dining app.

KAST — 6.1 / 10

KAST is the one to look at if you want the most tiers and the most exotic cards in this comparison, but it also has the sharpest eligibility edge.

• Who can get it: residence-based, checked at KYC. “If your country isn’t listed, it means KAST is not available there” — though the country list itself is not published, only a referenced Restricted Locations list. Citizenship matters too: if you live in a supported country but only hold an ID from a restricted region, “you may still be ineligible to pass KYC.” Dual citizens with an ID from a supported country may pass. Only your own ID is accepted and a VPN does not bypass it. You can create an account in an unsupported country but KYC stays locked.
• Cost: annual membership — Standard 0 USD, Premium 1,000 USD, Private 10,000 USD (billed annually upfront, no monthly option). An extra virtual card is 2 USD; the Standard physical card is 0 USD plus 40 USD delivery; Premium and Private physical cards are included. There is a 1 USD per month inactivity fee after 12 months, and renewal/reactivation fees exist in unspecified amounts.
• Fees: stablecoin top-up 0%, USD card spend 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple/Google Pay 0%. The FX fee for non-USD is 0.5%–1.75% depending on your residence country, the transaction country and the card programme. Non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD; a declined transaction for insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD. Non-stablecoin tokens may be auto-converted at a fee shown in the app.
• Funding: stablecoins USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD, with USDT/USDC on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and TRON; no bank account needed. Spending comes straight off your balance at each purchase — this is not credit. One inconsistency to note: the terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC,” which conflicts with the PYUSD and RLUSD listed in the app.
• Rewards: USD cashback by tier — Standard 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD a month, Premium 2% on the first 10,000 USD, Private 3% on the first 40,000 USD. KAST Points add +1% (Premium) or +2% (Private) of eligible spend; Standard gets none. Cashback is paid in USD when the transaction is authorised.

Zeal — 6.1 / 10

Zeal is the simplest of the three and the widest to spend in, if you are the kind of person who just wants a Visa that works abroad.

• Who can get it: spending in 150+ countries; issuance “depends on eligibility and regional availability.” The card programme is live in the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, with Zeal updates also mentioning Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia.
• The card: a Visa, virtual for online use and addable to Apple Pay, with accounts in EUR, USD and GBP. Whether a physical card exists is not stated.
• Cost: not stated — no fee schedule is published on zeal.app or in the App Store.
• Fees: no additional FX fee from Zeal, with conversion at the Visa wholesale rate; Gnosis Pay fees (for example on ATMs) may still apply.
• Funding: spends from balances in the card Safe, which are EUR/USD/GBP stablecoin accounts on Gnosis Chain and Celo per the docs. The exact coins are not stated for Zeal specifically.
• Rewards: up to 4% cashback, paid in GNO on Gnosis Chain — but GNO must be held in the card Safe to qualify, and rates can change. The App Store also advertises up to 5% variable APY on EUR/USD balances.

A quick side-by-side, to make the choice concrete:

Who I would recommend it to

Almost nobody, in the sense of “sign up today” — you cannot. So let me split the audience the way I actually would.

Existing holders: act now, not in December. Sign in, withdraw or spend, and if you have a deposit that has not credited, open that case this week with Crypto Life support through the in-account chat so there is a record. If CL does not reply, take your request, date and channel to 1inch support and let them escalate. Remember the two structural facts that protect you: the balance sits with an authorised e-money institution (Monavate), not with 1inch, and under section 16 of the issuer’s card terms, remaining e-wallet funds stay redeemable for up to six years after account closure. Neither fact makes the balance grow; both mean you are not dealing with a brand that could simply vanish.

People who were about to sign up: move to MetaMask if you want the same Monavate-and-Crypto-Life machinery and a free virtual card, and accept that US and UK sign-ups are currently closed and that other regions are on a waitlist. Look at KAST if the multi-tier cashback genuinely matters to you and your ID and residence pass its check — and read the citizenship rule before you invest time, because living somewhere supported is not the same as qualifying. Consider Zeal if your priority is spending in many countries with no FX markup and you can live with an unpublished fee schedule and a rewards system that requires holding GNO.

Who I would steer away: anyone who needs a card urgently and cannot afford a delay, and anyone whose plan depends on the specific quirks of the 1inch card — the 1INCH-token cashback, say, or a particular conversion rate — because none of that carries over to the alternatives. Those unofficial figures were never confirmed by the card, and a programme in wind-down is the worst possible place to be reconstructing a fee schedule from memory.

Frequently asked questions

What is the 1inch card?

It was a crypto payment card launched on 8 April 2024 with Mastercard and Crypto Life, offered in physical and virtual form. It let you hold crypto and have it converted to fiat at the point of payment, spending like an ordinary card. The programme is now being discontinued and no longer accepts new sign-ups.

Is the 1inch card shutting down?

Yes. The card’s own notice says the 1inch Card programme is being discontinued, that new sign-ups are closed, and that users should withdraw or spend their balance as soon as reasonably possible. The furthest foreseeable date named is 18 December 2026; these timelines are set by the issuer and provider.

What should I do if I still have money on my 1inch card?

Sign in to your card account and withdraw or spend your balance as soon as you reasonably can rather than waiting for December. Balances sit in an e-wallet issued by Monavate, not by 1inch, and under section 16 of the issuer’s card terms remaining e-wallet funds can be redeemed for up to six years after account closure.

Who do I contact — 1inch or Crypto Life?

Start with Crypto Life support, by email or the in-account chat, for anything about your balance, status, KYC, closure or personal data. If they do not respond, contact 1inch support with your request, the date and the channel; they log and escalate but cannot action account-level requests themselves.

Is the 1inch card free, and what are the fees?

The card’s own pages do not state a fee schedule, so there is no confirmed answer. Unofficial third-party reporting from August 2026 describes a 0 USD annual fee, 0% FX and a 1.75% crypto conversion fee, with another aggregator citing a 2% card spend fee — treat all of it as unofficial and unconfirmed by the card.

Does the 1inch card require KYC?

Identity checks are handled by the card provider, Crypto Life, but the card does not publish the specific requirements or any tier structure. Unofficial reporting says KYC was required and that a basic tier with lower limits existed. As with any regulated card, these checks are a legal obligation, not something to work around.

Is the 1inch card safe?

Your balance is held in an e-wallet at an authorised e-money institution (Monavate) rather than by 1inch, which is a meaningful separation, and you control the crypto in your own wallet until you spend it. But the card’s published pages state no 2FA, freeze or spending controls, and the launch blog’s custody wording is ambiguous, so ask Crypto Life directly what “retaining custody” means for your balance.

What can I use instead of the 1inch card?

MetaMask’s Mastercard card (7.1 / 10) is the closest in feel — free virtual card, same issuer and provider — though US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed. KAST (6.1 / 10) offers tiered cashback but citizenship can block KYC. Zeal (6.1 / 10) spends in 150+ countries with no FX markup but publishes no fee schedule.

Is 1inch a bank, and who actually holds my money?

No — 1inch is a crypto platform and the card’s front end, not a bank. Under the card programme, balances sit in an e-wallet issued by Monavate Ltd (UK) or UAB Monavate (EU), with the card provided by Crypto Life (Frozen Time UNIPESSOAL LDA in the EU or Baanx Group Ltd in the UK) and the payments riding on Mastercard’s network.

What happens if I miss the 18 December 2026 date?

The card does not promise what happens after that date, which is exactly why the advice is to withdraw early. The issuer’s terms do give you a longstop: remaining e-wallet funds can be redeemed for up to six years after account closure. Contact Crypto Life support before the date if you are close to it rather than after.

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