Fee tables publish rates without saying when the money leaves, which is why cards with similar headline numbers produce very different statements. The four fees are collected at four separate moments on four different bases, and a fifth cost sits outside all of them: the capital several issuers require to be staked before their advertised rate applies at all. This article sets out how crypto card fees are collected across nine cards, and how to total a real month of spending.
The four collection points
| Fee | When it is charged | What it is calculated on | How it appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top-up or conversion | When crypto becomes spendable balance | The amount being loaded, or the amount being spent on cards that convert at payment | Deducted from the load, so the card credits less than was sent |
| Monthly or annual | On a fixed schedule while the card is open | Nothing, it is flat | Deducted from the balance whether or not the card is used |
| Transaction or authorization | At the moment a purchase is authorized | A percentage of the purchase, or a flat amount per transaction | Added to the purchase |
| Cross-border or FX | At authorization, on non-base-currency transactions | A percentage, or a flat amount per transaction | Added alongside the transaction fee |
The collection point decides how the fee behaves, not the rate. A top-up fee is paid once per load regardless of how many purchases follow. A transaction fee is paid on every purchase, so a card with a low top-up fee and a high transaction fee gets more expensive the more it is used. The two answer different questions and cannot be compared in the abstract.
A fifth cost applies on several cards and is not a fee at all. Crypto.com, Nexo and KAST each condition their advertised cashback on something committed up front, which is capital cost rather than fee cost and does not appear in any fee table.
Where each card charges, side by side
| Card | Top-up or conversion | Recurring fee | Transaction fee | FX fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BenPay Alpha | 0% | $0 | 1% | 1.5%, min $0.01 |
| BenPay Sigma | 1.5% | $1/mo | 0.5%, min $0.5 | $0.5 flat per non-USD transaction |
| BenPay Delta | 0.5% | $1/mo | $0.05 per USD authorization, $0.40 per non-USD | 1.5% |
| Nexo | Not stated | No monthly, annual or inactivity fee | Not stated | 0.2% EEA/UK/CH weekdays, 2% rest of world |
| MetaMask Card | Converts at payment, minimal per-transaction fee | Not stated | Not stated separately | No foreign transaction fee on the metal card |
| Crypto.com Ruby Steel | Not stated | $4.99/mo or $49.90/yr | Not stated | Not stated |
| Crypto.com Jade Green | Not stated | $29.99/mo or $299.90/yr | Not stated | Not stated |
| KAST Standard | Not stated | Free | Not stated | Not stated |
| KAST Private | Not stated | $10,000/yr | Not stated | Not stated |
ATM fees and the capital each issuer requires before its advertised cashback applies are covered in their own sections below, since neither fits a fee-timing comparison.
Two things stand out from the blank cells rather than the filled ones. Most issuers in this category publish a cashback rate prominently and a fee schedule sparsely, which is why so many cells above read as not stated. And the recurring-fee column contains three different pricing philosophies: nothing at all, a small monthly charge, and an annual fee large enough to be a purchase decision in its own right.
BenPay publishes all four fee lines per tier, and pays no cashback. Nexo publishes FX in unusual detail, including a weekend surcharge that few issuers disclose at all.
The top-up fee, charged on the way in
Loading a card is a conversion event and the fee comes out of the amount being loaded rather than being billed separately.
At BenPay’s rates, loading $1,000 credits $1,000 on Alpha, $995 on Delta and $985 on Sigma. The fee is a percentage, so load frequency does not change the total: four loads of $250 cost the same as one of $1,000. Where an issuer charges a flat amount per load instead, the opposite holds and fewer larger loads are cheaper.
MetaMask Card moves this step to the moment of payment rather than the moment of loading, which removes the load fee from the comparison and puts the whole cost on the per-transaction line.
The recurring fee, charged for holding rather than using
This one accrues whether or not the card is touched.
Alpha charges $0 per month, while Sigma and Delta each charge $1 per month. The live application page is the current fee source.
Twelve dollars a year is immaterial next to a percentage fee on real volume, and it is the entire cost of a card that sits idle. At the other end, a $10,000 annual fee needs roughly $333,000 of spending at 3% cashback simply to break even against a free 1.5% card, which is the arithmetic that decides whether a premium tier is a product or a status purchase.
The transaction fee, charged per purchase on two bases
This is where the market genuinely splits.
Percentage fees scale with the purchase. Flat authorization fees do not.
| Purchase | Alpha at 1% | Sigma at 0.5%, min $0.5 | Delta at $0.05 USD authorization |
|---|---|---|---|
| $20 USD | $0.20 | $0.50 | $0.05 |
| $200 USD | $2.00 | $1.00 | $0.05 |
| $2,000 USD | $20.00 | $10.00 | $0.05 |
Delta’s live application page uses a fixed $0.05 authorization fee for USD purchases. Sigma’s $0.5 minimum makes it the most expensive of the three on a $20 purchase and the middle option on a $2,000 one.
The FX fee, charged only on non-base-currency transactions
This is the fee discovered after the fact, because it is invisible domestically and appears on every line of a travel statement.
| Non-USD purchase | Alpha 1.5% | Sigma $0.5 flat | Delta $0.40 + 1.5% | Nexo 2% rest of world | Nexo 0.2% EEA weekday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50 | $0.75 | $0.50 | $1.15 | $1.00 | $0.10 |
| $500 | $7.50 | $0.50 | $7.90 | $10.00 | $1.00 |
| $5,000 | $75.00 | $0.50 | $75.40 | $100.00 | $10.00 |
The crossover between a flat $0.50 and a 1.5% rate sits at roughly $34, and the gap after that grows without limit. Nexo’s geographic split is the other structure worth noting: 0.2% inside the EEA, UK and Switzerland on a weekday is the lowest rate in this comparison, and 2.5% elsewhere at a weekend is the highest.
MetaMask states no foreign transaction fee on its metal card, which is the single zero in this column.
📌 On weekend pricing: Nexo raises its FX rate at weekends, from 0.2% to 0.7% inside the EEA, UK and Switzerland and from 2% to 2.5% elsewhere. Few issuers publish a weekend differential, and fewer readers check for one.
The fees below the headline table
Five charges appear only when something is reversed, declined or withdrawn.
- ATM withdrawal. Nexo charges 2% after a free allowance that runs from €200 to €2,000 per month by loyalty tier, with a €1.99 minimum. Crypto.com sets free allowances from $200 to $1,000 monthly against caps of $5,000 to $10,000. BenPay does not publish an ATM fee on the pages checked.
- Refund fee. Sigma charges $2 per refunded transaction. Delta’s live application page lists a 0.5% refund fee.
- Declined transaction fee. Delta’s live application page lists $0.50 per failed transaction.
- Card issuance. The current card description directs applicants to the application page for real-time pricing.
- Network gas. Moving stablecoins on-chain is charged by the network, not the issuer, and appears in no fee table anywhere.
A real month, totalled
$1,000 loaded, 20 transactions, $600 of it non-USD across 6 transactions.
- Alpha: $0 top-up, $0 monthly, 1% of $1,000 is $10.00, 1.5% of $600 is $9.00. Total $19.00
- Sigma: $15.00 top-up, $1 monthly, 0.5% of $1,000 is $5.00, six non-USD transactions at $0.5 is $3.00. Total $24.00
- Delta: The live application page lists a 0.5% top-up fee, a $1 monthly fee, $0.05 USD authorization, $0.40 plus 1.5% for non-USD authorization, a 0.5% refund fee and a $0.50 declined-transaction fee. A total requires the actual mix of USD and non-USD settlement transactions.
Change one input and the order changes. Raise non-USD spending to $3,000 across the same six transactions and Sigma falls to $24.00 while Alpha rises to $55.00. Delta then adds six non-USD authorization fees and must be totalled from the same application-page schedule. No general ranking of these fee structures exists, only a ranking against a specific spending pattern.
Frequently asked questions
Is the top-up fee taken from the amount sent or added on top?
Deducted from the amount being loaded, so the card credits the net figure. Sending $1,000 to a card charging 1.5% credits $985.
Which crypto card has the lowest fees?
It depends on the shape of the spending rather than on any single rate. Flat authorization fees win on large or frequent transactions, percentage fees win on small ones, and a card charging no monthly fee wins on a card that sits idle.
Do cashback cards work out cheaper overall?
Only after the precondition is counted. Crypto.com’s rates require CRO staked for twelve months and Nexo’s require a $5,000 portfolio, so the comparison is between a fee saved and capital committed rather than between two fees.
When is the FX fee charged?
At authorization, on transactions not settled in the card’s base currency. A merchant abroad that bills in USD does not trigger it on a USD-based card, and a domestic merchant billing in another currency does.
What is an authorization fee?
BenPay Delta directs readers to the application page for real-time fees. The application page captured for this review lists a $0.05 USD authorization fee and a $1 monthly fee.
The two numbers worth writing down
Average transaction size and the share of spending settled outside the base currency decide which structure is cheaper, and both come from last month’s statement rather than from guesswork. Above roughly $34 per non-USD transaction a flat FX charge beats 1.5%, and above roughly $100 per transaction a flat authorization fee beats a 0.5% rate. Everything else in a fee table is secondary to those two thresholds.
Data verified: 2026-09-08 from each issuer’s own product pages and from the BenPay card application page and help centre. Fields marked as not stated were not published on the pages checked.