A virtual Mastercard from hi — useful only for a narrow group, and even then the numbers are thin

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you already use the hi app and live somewhere in the European Economic Area, the hi card sounds tidy on paper: a virtual Mastercard that draws on a euro or pound IBAN, or on crypto sitting in your hi balance, and works at more than 90 million Mastercard merchants. The trouble is that “on paper” is doing a lot of work here. The card’s own pages do not publish fees, country lists, ATM terms, or top-up networks. What is published in public is thin, and what users have reported is thin in a different, more worrying way: a 1.8 out of 5 score on Trustpilot, a UK withdrawal that left people locked out, and rewards that were cut after launch. I went through the card’s own materials and the public complaints to give you a straight read on whether the hi card is worth a place in your wallet, and the honest answer is: only in a narrow set of circumstances, and not without checking a few things first.

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

Verdict

The hi card earns 4.9 out of 10 in my scoring, and that is a generous reading. The promise is real — a virtual debit Mastercard linked to an EEA IBAN, with the option to pay from a crypto balance held inside the hi app — but the information gap around it is so large that I cannot give it more than the low fives. Cost is the one place where the unofficial record is genuinely favourable: no transaction, foreign-exchange or issuance fees are reported, and the card itself is free once you have passed identity checks. The catch is that “fees may apply later” is also part of that unofficial record, and the card page does not commit to anything in writing. Reliability, the second heavy weight in any card review, is where the score collapses: a 1.8 on Trustpilot across 587 reviews, with consistent complaints about blocked cards, broken Google Pay, lost access during the UK exit, and the value of the HI token collapsing. If you already live inside hi, this is a card you can add to your wallet in a few minutes. If you are choosing a card from scratch, the picture is much harder to justify.

If you are an existing hi app member in Europe who is happy paying from an IBAN, the card is a reasonable add-on. If you are looking for a new crypto card from scratch, the alternatives further down this review do the same job with more disclosure and fewer complaints.

Who Can Get the hi Card

The shortest accurate answer is: the card’s own public pages do not say.

The starting data inside hi is the European Economic Area, and that is the only thing the company has confirmed in writing on the pages I checked. Unofficial coverage from Mastercard and trade press at the 2022 launch mentioned 25 or more EEA countries plus the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is no longer accurate, and the way it stopped being accurate matters: users on Trustpilot describe being told to withdraw their funds by January 2024, with some reporting they could not get money out in time. The card page itself, as of this review, does not publish a country list, and the help centre does not give one either. If you are reading this from outside the EEA, there is no public confirmation that the card is available to you. If you are inside the EEA, you should expect to be asked for the usual identity and address documents before the card activates, because the card’s own help text says the address has to be verified before activation. The exact documents and the age requirement are not stated on the public pages I could see.

A practical note: “EEA” in this context means the EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. If you live in Switzerland or the UK, the public record does not support your being eligible. If you live somewhere else in Europe — for example in a candidate country — the same applies: the page does not say yes, and I would not rely on the card until you see the country list inside the app or the help centre rather than a marketing page.

The card is a virtual debit Mastercard, which is what most “crypto card” launches in this category end up being. Virtual means the card lives inside the app and is added to a wallet; there is no plastic card in the post, and the help page on this product does not mention a physical version. It is denominated in either euros or pounds, depending on which IBAN your hi account is set up in, and it is accepted at any merchant that takes Mastercard. That covers most online stores, most subscription services, and a wide range of in-person retail. What is not stated is whether there are any merchant categories the card refuses — for example gambling, which many issuers block by policy — so you would have to test the card at the kind of merchant you actually use, or contact hi support, before relying on it for a specific category.

If you are a US resident, the card is not a US product as far as the public materials show, and the issuer named in the 2022 press coverage, Moorwand Ltd, is a UK-based e-money institution. The card programme in the US is a separate question, and the card page does not address it.

How to Sign Up

The signup flow that the public materials actually describe is short, and the gaps in it are also worth understanding.

You download or open the hi app, complete the identity and address verification that the help text describes as a precondition for activating the card, and then activate the virtual debit card from the Card section of the app. The card is added to your phone’s wallet and is ready to spend once Mastercard-side checks clear. The help text on the card page is explicit on one detail: “Once your address has been verified, you will be able to activate the card.” Beyond that one line, the card page does not describe the documents required, the age floor, the time the verification takes, or what to do if it fails.

That thinness is worth pausing on, because the same thinness is what makes the rest of this review hard to write. If you are a regulated financial product, the law in most EEA countries requires the issuer to publish a tariff of fees and a summary of customer rights. The card’s own page does not include either. That is not a knock on hi alone — many crypto card programmes do the same — but it means you are signing up on the strength of the app flow and the press coverage at launch, not on the basis of a published schedule of charges. The Mastercard coverage at the 2022 launch talked about 25+ EEA countries plus the UK, and the official pages since then have not narrowed that down in public.

What I would actually do, if I were signing up: have your passport and a recent proof of address (utility bill, bank statement) ready before you start, because those are the documents EEA e-money institutions almost always ask for under the EU customer-due-diligence rules. Be prepared for a separate screen asking about the source of your funds, and answer it accurately, because incomplete due diligence is the single biggest reason EU e-money accounts get frozen later. The card activates inside the app, and that is also where you will see whether the country you are in is on the list — if the option does not appear, the card is not available to you where you live, regardless of what the marketing page says.

If you are signing up as a business, the same flow applies in principle, but expect more documentation. Business accounts under EU anti-money-laundering rules require identification of the beneficial owner and evidence of the business’s activity, and that is on top of the personal KYC you complete as the person opening the account.

What the hi Card Really Costs

This is the section that needs the most care, because the public record is unusually thin and the unofficial record is unusually favourable.

The card’s own page does not publish a fee schedule. It does not list what it costs to issue the card, what it costs each month, what it costs to spend in a currency other than the one your IBAN is in, what it costs at an ATM, or what the daily or monthly limits are. A help-centre collection called “hi Benefits” describes tier-based membership based on how many HI tokens you hold, but the help-centre page itself was not opened at the time of this review, so the tier conditions and any fee differences are not stated on the materials I could see.

The unofficial record is more helpful. A 2022-era review of hi reports no transaction fees, no foreign-exchange fees, and no issuance fee, with the card becoming free after KYC is completed. The same source flags the obvious caveat: fees may apply later. That caveat matters. The cashback structure at launch, which 2022 press coverage put at 1 to 10% depending on tier, has already been adjusted at least once — Trustpilot users describe a drop from 8% to 1% in July 2023 — and a fee change is the same kind of business decision, applied in the other direction. If you sign up on the basis of “no fees”, what you are actually signing up to is the current state of a fee schedule that hi has not committed to in writing.

To translate that into your daily life, here is how three common situations would work, given what is and is not stated.

Paying for a coffee in euros with a euro-denominated IBAN. This is the simplest case: the card is in the same currency as the merchant, no conversion is involved, and the unofficial record is that there is no transaction fee. The cost is whatever the coffee costs, and the IBAN is debited at the same moment. There is no FX margin to think about, because no FX is happening.

Paying for a subscription in US dollars with a euro-denominated IBAN. Here the card has to convert euros to dollars at the point of sale. The unofficial record is no FX fee on top of the Mastercard rate, which is the best you can reasonably hope for on this kind of card. The Mastercard rate itself is the wholesale rate, with a small margin baked in by Mastercard that the issuer can either pass through or top up. Without a published rate from hi, I cannot tell you how wide that margin is on this specific card; you would see it on your statement after the first such transaction.

Withdrawing cash from an ATM. The card page does not address ATM use. The unofficial record does not address it either. In practice, virtual cards are usually blocked from ATM use by default, and you have to request a PIN or a physical card to enable it, but this is a generalisation, not a statement about the hi card. If cash access matters to you, contact hi before relying on it, and do not assume.

The honest summary is: if you stay in your IBAN currency and use the card like a normal debit card, the published and unofficial record is favourable. The moment you step outside that case, you are trusting hi to behave the way the unofficial record describes, without a contractual commitment on the card page.

How to Top Up the hi Card

The funding model is one of the more interesting features, and also one of the more under-documented.

The default position is that the card is linked to a personal IBAN in either euros or pounds. Transactions are covered by the funds in that IBAN, which means the card behaves like a normal debit card on a normal current account, and the funds are held by the e-money institution that issues the card rather than by hi itself. You can also pay directly from a crypto balance held inside hi, with one secondary currency at a time selected inside the app. The two are alternatives, not additions: the card spends from one balance at a time, and you pick which one in the app.

The unofficial record on this product has been steady: at launch, the IBAN and the on-balance crypto option were both emphasised. What the page does not say is which coins are supported, which networks you can transfer them on, what the address format is, or what happens if you send a coin or a network the card does not support. That is a real gap, because sending crypto to the wrong address or on the wrong network is, in this category of product, the single most common way users lose money, and the loss is usually final. Circle, the issuer of USDC, has a public list of the 38 networks it natively supports, and Tether lists multiple networks for USDT, but neither of those lists tells you which ones hi supports. The card’s own page does not tell you either.

A practical reading: if you already have a balance inside hi, the on-balance option is straightforward — the conversion happens inside the app at the rate hi sets, and the card spends from that converted balance. If you are funding from an external wallet, you need to confirm the network inside the app before sending, and you need to do a small test transaction first, because the cost of getting this wrong is the entire amount. If you are funding from a bank account, the IBAN model applies, and the usual SEPA or Faster Payments rails come into play depending on whether your IBAN is in euros or in pounds.

The IBAN model is also the reason a virtual card from an EEA e-money institution is interesting to people who have trouble getting an ordinary bank account: the account exists, the card spends from it, and the e-money institution safeguards the funds in a segregated account. The fact that those funds are not deposit-protected is a real consideration, and the e-money institution safeguarding regime is not the same as a deposit guarantee. It is closer to “your money is in a separate account at a bank, and if we go bust, the bank owes it to you, not to us” — which is better than nothing, and worse than deposit insurance.

Paying With the hi Card Every Day

Everyday use is the area where the gap between “what is in the public record” and “what a card user actually needs” is widest.

The card is virtual, so the only way to use it physically is through a mobile wallet. Apple Pay and Google Pay are the obvious options, and the card’s own page does not list either as supported. The help centre also does not, as far as I could see, give a step-by-step for either. The Trustpilot record is the more revealing source here: in August and September 2023, several users reported that Google Pay was not working on the card, and the same complaints sit alongside reports of cards being blocked. If mobile-wallet support is critical to you, the public record does not support relying on it.

Online use is the simpler case, because the card is a Mastercard and works at any merchant that takes Mastercard. The card’s own page mentions “more than 90 million merchants” — a Mastercard-wide number rather than an hi-specific one, and so it should be read as the network’s coverage rather than as a guarantee that the hi card is accepted everywhere. In practice, a Mastercard debit card is accepted at virtually every mainstream online merchant. The issues that crypto card users most often report online are 3-D Secure challenges (an extra confirmation step that some merchants trigger), Address Verification Service mismatches on US merchants (AVS is a US-flavoured check that does not work well with cards issued outside the US), and declines at merchants who screen for prepaid or foreign-issued BIN ranges. None of these are hi-specific, but they are more visible when the issuer has not published a help article on them.

Rewards: the card page says users can “earn crypto rewards” with the card, without giving rates or conditions. The unofficial 2022 record put cashback at 1 to 10% depending on tier, and the help-centre collection called “hi Benefits” describes a tier structure based on HI tokens held. The Trustpilot record is the cautionary tale here: the rewards that were promised at launch have not all survived in their original form, and a tier structure that is denominated in the issuer’s own token ties the value of your rewards to the value of that token. The 2023 cashback cut was a direct hit on the value of using the card, and HI token holders had no vote in it.

The app is where you manage all of this, and the card’s page refers to the “Card section” of the hi app. The app’s store ratings are not stated on the materials I could check — the App Store listing was not identified in a search — so I cannot tell you whether the iOS or Android app is well-maintained. That itself is a small flag, because the app is the only interface you have for the card: there is no plastic, no web console, and no separate card-management portal. If the app has a problem, the card has a problem.

The support story is “help centre with a Contact hi collection”, with the help centre published in English and French. Hours, response times, and the languages the support team actually work in are not described on the public pages. If you have a card that is blocked or a transaction that is stuck, you are relying on that help centre to be responsive, and the public record does not say how responsive it is.

What Can Go Wrong

This is the section I would read twice, because it is the part the marketing does not cover.

The most recent public complaints score, as of this review, is 1.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 587 reviews. One review was filed in the last twelve months, which is itself worth noticing — the volume of new complaints has dropped sharply, but the cumulative picture has not improved. The themes that come up again and again are the following.

UK exit and withdrawal problems in 2023 and 2024. UK members describe being told to withdraw funds by January 2024, with some reporting they could not get their money out in time. If you are reading this from the UK, the direction of travel is the relevant data point, even if the 2024 deadline is in the past: hi has already shown it is willing to exit a market, and the warning period was not always long enough for users to act on.

Reward cuts and tier changes between 2022 and 2023. The cashback rate was cut, and tier conditions changed. The card is denominated partly in the value of the HI token, and HI token holders have no contractual protection against either a fee increase or a rewards cut.

Cards blocked in mid-2023, with Google Pay not working. The combination of “card stopped working” and “mobile wallet not working” is the worst case for a virtual card, because there is no plastic to fall back on and no ATM access to bridge the gap. If your only payment method is the hi card and it stops working, you are stuck for as long as it takes the support team to respond.

HI token losing value, with some users describing the experience as a “rug pull”. The HI token is the in-app currency, the rewards are paid in it, and the tier structure is denominated in it. A drop in the token’s price is a drop in the real value of every benefit the card offers, and the issuer does not insulate you from it. “Rug pull” is a strong accusation and I would not endorse it as a fact — it is a Trustpilot characterisation, and the legal facts of the case are not in the public record I checked — but the experience of users who bought HI at launch and held through the drop is what the word tries to describe.

The company itself: the starting data inside the card materials is “hi Technology Limited”. The 2022 press coverage, which is the only place the issuer is named, said the card is issued by Moorwand Ltd, a Mastercard principal member, and that a partnership with Contis was announced for the debit card and fiat accounts. The card’s own page does not name Moorwand, does not name Contis, and does not name the e-money institution whose licence the card sits under. For a regulated product, that is unusual, and it is the kind of detail you want to confirm in the app before you load meaningful funds.

Security features: the card page does not describe them. That is a gap, because the standard set of safeguards for this kind of card includes 2FA in the app, an instant freeze, spending limits, 3-D Secure confirmation, and tokenised mobile wallets. If those are present, the card page should say so. If they are not, that is itself a finding.

There is one piece of public news that is actually positive: a help article dated 30 June 2026 confirms that virtual debit cards are “now available” on the platform. That is recent, and it is worth knowing about, because it suggests the product is not in the kind of long-term decline that the older Trustpilot record might lead you to expect. The 2022 press also covered a Mastercard NFT-customisable card launch, which is a different product line and not the one this review is about.

What to Take Instead

If the hi card is not the right product for you, the three alternatives below cover most of the same use cases with more disclosure. The scores are the review scores for each, in their own right, not a ranking.

International Visa Card, scoring 6.7 out of 10. This is a US-issued Platinum Visa, with a virtual card on the market now and a physical card listed as “coming soon”. It is available in most countries but explicitly not to residents of a long list including Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, with FATF grey-list countries reviewed case by case. The fees are published and explicit: USD 5 one-time for the virtual card, no maintenance fee, and three plans at free, 9 USD a month and 19 USD a month. Card use in USD is free; spending in other currencies adds a 2% FX fee on top of the Visa rate. Funding is by USDC or USDT into a USD account at 1:1, with deposits of any kind free, plus USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow. The rule is by residence, not by citizenship. If you are US-adjacent and want a US card, this is the cleaner option; if you are in one of the listed countries, it is not available to you.

UNi Card, scoring 6.1 out of 10. The UNi Card is a multicurrency Mastercard on the UNi.Global account balance. The card’s own page says there is no annual fee and no foreign-transaction fee, with assets converted at live OTC rates and no hidden exchange fees. Spend-to-Earn rewards go up to 3% with the card. The cards I would want to see published — issuance fee, ATM fees, supported countries, top-up networks — are not stated on the materials I checked. The fee structure is more transparent than the hi card’s, and the absence of an FX fee is unusual in this category.

Whop Cards, scoring 5.2 out of 10. Whop Cards are Visa cards that work anywhere Visa is accepted, issued on the Whop balance. Consumer availability is 31 US states (with the full state list published); businesses are in 41 states. The unsupported country list is similar in shape to International Visa’s, and includes Belarus, mainland China, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, plus corporate restrictions on Russia and Belarus. The basis of the rule (citizenship vs residence) is not stated. The cost line on the page is “no extra fees”, with no amounts published. The card spends from a Whop balance, with the unofficial record describing that balance as backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet, and 5% cashback at selected merchants (currently Uber, with more planned).

The honest comparison is that none of these three are perfect, and the trade-offs are real. International Visa is the most transparent on cost, but is restricted from a long list of countries. UNi Card is fee-free on the headline items, but does not publish enough for me to score it higher. Whop Cards is US-state-restricted and tied to the Whop balance, which is a different model. The hi card’s specific attraction — a euro or pound IBAN inside an EEA e-money institution, with on-balance crypto — is also its specific limitation: it only really works if you live in the EEA, and the published record is too thin to score higher than 4.9.

Who I Would Recommend the hi Card To

The audience that the card actually fits is narrow, and I would say yes to that audience only with a short list of things to check first.

If you are already a hi app member in the EEA, and you already hold crypto in your hi balance, the card is a useful add-on: it converts your balance into something you can spend at a Mastercard merchant, and the IBAN model is closer to a bank account than a prepaid card. If your daily spend is in the same currency as your IBAN, and you do not need cash access, the card will probably work the way the unofficial record describes. Check the country list inside the app before you sign up, because the public page does not show it. Confirm the issuer (Moorwand, per the 2022 press; the card page does not name it) before you load funds. Read the tier conditions in the “hi Benefits” help-centre collection, because your rewards and any fee differences are tied to those tiers. Treat the absence of a published fee schedule as a real risk, not a formality, and be ready for fees to appear.

If you are choosing a crypto card from scratch, I would not pick the hi card. The fee picture is too thin, the complaints record is too heavy, and the alternatives above give you more of the same product with more disclosure. If you are outside the EEA, the public record does not support you being eligible. If you are in the UK, the public record shows the direction of travel. If you are in the US, the card is not the product for you in the first place.

If you want a card that pays you in a stablecoin, look at the alternatives’ cashback terms and check the issuer. If you want a card that does not touch your crypto until the moment of payment, look at self-custody-linked cards rather than IBAN-tied ones, and make sure the network support is published in writing before you send. If you want a card you can rely on for ATM access, neither the hi card nor the alternatives above give you that on the published record, and that is a category-wide problem rather than an hi-specific one.

The shortest version of the recommendation: existing hi members in the EEA, yes, with the checks above. Everyone else, look at the alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the hi card?

The hi card is a virtual debit Mastercard issued by hi, denominated in either euros or pounds through a personal IBAN, and accepted at any merchant that takes Mastercard. You can also pay from a crypto balance held inside the hi app, with one secondary currency at a time.

How does the hi card work?

The card spends from a personal euro or pound IBAN by default, or from a crypto balance inside the hi app if you switch to the secondary payment currency in the app. The card is virtual, so you add it to a mobile wallet and use it like any other Mastercard.

Is hi a bank?

No. The starting data is that hi Technology Limited operates the app, and the 2022 press coverage names Moorwand Ltd as the card issuer under a Mastercard principal licence, with Contis named for the debit card and fiat accounts partnership. The card’s own page does not name the issuer. An e-money institution is not a bank, and e-money funds are not deposit-protected.

Who owns hi?

The public materials name hi Technology Limited as the company. The card’s own page does not name the issuer. Press coverage from 2022 named Moorwand Ltd as the card issuer. The ownership and corporate structure of the issuing entity are not laid out on the public materials I checked.

Is the hi card available in my country?

The card’s own page does not publish a country list. The starting data is the EEA, and the 2022 press coverage mentioned 25+ EEA countries plus the UK, with the UK later withdrawn. The help centre and the app are the only places to confirm whether your country is currently supported.

How do I get the hi card?

You download or open the hi app, complete the identity and address verification that the help text describes as a precondition for activation, and then activate the virtual debit card from the Card section of the app.

Does the hi card require KYC?

Yes. The help text says the address has to be verified before the card activates, which under EEA e-money rules is part of the customer-due-diligence process. The exact documents required, the age floor, and the time the verification takes are not stated on the public pages I could see.

How do I top up the hi card?

By default, the card spends from a personal EUR or GBP IBAN. You can also pay from a crypto balance held inside the hi app, with one secondary currency at a time selected in the app. Coins and networks supported for external top-ups are not stated on the public pages I checked.

How do I add the hi card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay?

The card’s own page does not list Apple Pay or Google Pay as supported. The Trustpilot record includes multiple user reports in 2023 of Google Pay not working on the card. If mobile-wallet support is critical, contact hi support before relying on it.

Is the hi card worth it?

For existing hi app members in the EEA who want to spend from their IBAN or on-balance crypto, it is a useful add-on. For everyone else, the public record is too thin on cost and too heavy on complaints to recommend it over the alternatives in this review.

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