Uphold debit card review 2023

Now launched in the UK, the revolutionary Uphold debit card is all about making it easier to dip into assets you hold as and when it suits you.

How does the Uphold debit card work?

The card works in tandem with the app. You’ll need to set your funding source in the app, choosing from any asset you own on Uphold. Don’t worry – you don’t have to do this everytime you want to use the card – your funding source will stay the same until you change it again (which you can do as often as you like, without fee). You can also use the app to freeze or unfreeze your card, see virtual cards, receive instant alerts, browse statements broken down by funding source and manage notifications.

Then actually using the Mastercard online or at a physical merchant is just the same as any other card. All transactions are actually settled in the local fiat currency, so you won’t have to deal with your barista asking you why on earth you’re trying to pay for your latte in Bitcoin or Ethereum. Uphold does all the complex stuff behind the scenes – shielding both you and the merchant from seeing market orders being executed to liquidate assets.

You’ll earn cryptoback as you go. At the time of writing, this is 2% when you spend fiat currencies and 4% when you spend crypto. Your cryptoback is funded in XRP. You can earn up to £100-worth of XRP each month (but you’d need to spend £5,000 of fiat currency or £2,500 of crypto to hit that limit).

How much does the Uphold debit card cost?

Let’s start with funding the account. Uphold doesn’t charge you a deposit fee when you fund your Uphold account by bank transfer. There are no trading commissions when you buy or sell assets either, so we’re doing well so far. The virtual card is completely free to activate, but a physical card incurs a one-time fee of £9.95.

There are no foreign transaction fees when you use the card abroad and no annual fees to pay. However, there is a £2.50 fee for ATM withdrawals in the UK, which jumps to £3.50 for cash withdrawals made while abroad.

But if you don’t plan to use the Uphold debit card to withdraw cash, then aside from any issuance fee, what’s the catch? The good news is that there is no service fee applied to transactions made using the Uphold debit card.

However, keep in mind that Uphold does charge a spread for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. A spread is a small difference between the “bid” price (the highest price at which a buyer is willing to buy an asset) and the “ask price” (the lowest price at which a seller is willing to sell an asset). When you see that a particular asset is worth say, £1, you’re probably seeing the “mid-market rate”. In reality, market orders are executing slightly above and below this price, so that the buyer is paying perhaps £1.01 and the seller is receiving perhaps £0.99, with the £0.02 covering the exchange’s costs.

Spreads can be a bit of a moving target – changing over time depending on liquidity, and varying from asset to asset. Uphold’s spreads for UK consumers max-out at 1.25%.

Pros and cons

Our verdict: Is the Uphold crypto card any good?

There aren’t many different fees involved with Uphold (both the trading platform and the card), which is great. Some exchanges have all sorts of fees and aren’t always upfront about them. But there are spreads involved everytime you exchange one asset for another. Don’t forget that all card transactions will be settled in fiat currency, so if you’ve set your funding source to Bitcoin, for example, then that will actually need to be converted to fiat currency in order to settle the transaction.

There’s little doubt that this is set to become a really innovative product. It encourages users to think of their investments as being relatively fluid, which is in stark contrast to the traditional “buy and hold” advice. For the card to really take off, a change in mindset may be required. For most of us who aren’t Wall Street pros, the reality of jumping between assets all the time and blurring the lines between investments and day-to-day spending money, means introducing a greater degree of chance into the value of what’s in our wallet.