What is the total cost of using a card?
The four fees on the normal path are all published: a 0.5% deposit fee (flat, no tiers) + card issuance from $1 + the card-limit service fee and card top-up fee (one shared set of calendar-month volume tiers, from 2% down to 0.5%, both charged on top). Example (at the 2% tier): deposit 35 USD and 34.82 is credited; a card with a 30 limit and $2 issuance fee deducts 32.60 (including the 0.60 limit service fee), leaving a balance of 2.22. Transaction fees also depend on the BIN (none on some, $0.50–$0.60 each on others), itemized on the issuing page.
When you compare virtual card platforms, the easiest mistake is to look only at the single most eye-catching number on the landing page. For money to go from your wallet to something you can actually spend, it has to travel a full chain: funds into the platform, a card opened from your balance, then a top-up to the card — every segment can be a charge point, and the total cost is the sum of the losses across the whole chain, not any single point rate.
The other half of the question is where the pricing comes from. The four fees aren't pulled out of thin air: each one can be clearly explained — which step it is charged at, and what it buys you. Only once you understand this can you tell 'transparent pricing' apart from a 'customer-acquisition pitch'.
What each fee pays for
| Fee item | Rate | What it pays for |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit fee | flat 0.5%, no tiers | Fund consolidation and processing: matching deposits to your personal address, crediting on confirmation, and consolidating funds |
| Card issuance fee | from $1 per card, by card range | The card-issuance cost charged by the upstream issuer per card range; the platform passes it on at from $1 by range |
| Card limit service fee | Tiered 2% → 0.5% of the limit (by calendar-month cumulative top-up volume), charged once at card issuance | Risk control and operations: maintaining card-range quality and merchant-side trust (see below) |
| Card top-up service fee | Tiered 2% → 0.5% (same tier as the limit service fee), credited instantly | Same as above: every amount that goes onto a card passes through risk control and the ledger |
The first two correspond to direct external costs; the latter two are the platform's service fee, tiered by calendar-month cumulative top-up volume: 2% under $1,000, 1.5% from $1,000, 1% from $5,000, 0.8% from $10,000, 0.5% from $50,000, with the tier applying for the whole month, any overcharge refunded automatically, and the counter resetting on the 1st of each month; and what it buys is 'this card being treated as a normal card by merchants over the long term': a cap on cards per account (5 by default for a new account, raised step by step with genuine usage), protecting the card range's BIN reputation; a billing address assigned to each card by its card range's region (a US address for US ranges), viewable and editable on the card detail page; a platform ledger that uses standard double-entry accounting with automatic daily reconciliation against the upstream. The result of checking every failed charge from AI merchants (OpenAI / Anthropic) one by one, re-verified monthly — no declines by the issuing bank and no merchant-category blocks seen — is exactly the card-side quality this service fee buys.
Why the industry routinely 'hides one segment'
This chain naturally has two charge points: money into the platform (the deposit fee) and money onto the card (the card issuance fee and the card top-up fee). The industry's common 'two-tier fee schedule' prints the good-looking segment on the landing page and hides the other segment inside later steps — by the time you notice, the money is already deposited. When the two segments' rates are similar, the number on the page is only about half of the real loss. This isn't an oversight; it's a structural customer-acquisition tactic that bets on comparison shoppers looking only at the first number.
Full-chain worked example: breaking down 35 USD step by step
- Deposit 35 USD: a 0.5% fee, i.e. about $0.18, so $34.82 is credited to your platform balance.
- Open a card with a 30 limit: your balance is charged the $30 limit principal + a $2 issuance fee + a $0.60 limit service fee (at the 2% tier) = $32.60; usable on the card = the full $30.00 limit.
- $2.22 left in your balance. This minimal end-to-end loop triggers only the first three of the four fees, totaling $2.78, and every cent maps to a row in the table above; the fourth fee (the card top-up service fee) isn't used in this example and only occurs later when you top up the card.
- The minimum limit is set at 30: for US-region AI subscriptions, the $20 plan usually settles at $20–22 (some states charge sales tax), overdue back-charges reach $24–25, and API credit purchases can hit $26 — 30 covers all of these; the minimum deposit is 35 USD — it credits 34.82, which covers this card's 32.60 and leaves 2.22.
Fees we don't have
- Monthly / annual fee: none, and no idle fee either. But an honest reminder: if a subscription is still attached to the card and the merchant's retried charge fails, a card on a range that charges a failed-transaction fee is charged $0.60 per attempt (see below) — for a card you no longer use, cancel the subscription first.
- A hidden 'second markup': none. The three fee segments — deposit, card issuance, and card top-up — are exactly the rows in the table above; transaction fees also depend on the card range (none on some, $0.50–$0.60 each on others, and certain ranges charge $1 on transactions ≤ $1.30), itemized on the card-opening page.
- Failed-transaction fee: depends on the card range — some ranges charge nothing for a decline, others charge $0.60 per attempt, itemized on the card-opening page so you can see it before you choose.
- Fee for closing a card: none. After a closed card's balance is settled, it is returned to your account balance and can still be used to open cards, top up, or be refunded via Prepayment Refund; two honest notes: the upstream holds a 60–90 day fund freeze on closed cards, but the platform fronts that wait with its own funds so it never delays your refund, and moving your account balance off the platform has two routes — Prepayment Refund (no closure; any amount above the minimum — TRC20 $12 / ERC20 $3) or Account Closure (full clearance) — each charging a flat $2 per payout (the transfer fee is already included).
Four practical ways to keep the total cost down
- No amount to hit: the deposit fee is a flat 0.5% with no tiers — 35 and 5,000 pay the same rate, so deposit what you actually need instead of stockpiling funds to chase a lower rate.
- Top up via your personal deposit address: no order to place and no amount to hit, credited automatically, usually 1–5 minutes on TRC20, 1–30 minutes on other networks; the withdrawal fee is charged by your exchange and varies by network (on Binance, about 0.01 USDT on BEP20, 0.5 on ERC20 and 1.5 on TRC20), so for small amounts pick a low-fee network.
- Treat cards as slots: by default a new account can hold 5 active cards at once and open 5 in total (you can request a limit increase on the card-opening page); since the limit service fee and the card top-up fee share one tier schedule (from 2%, down to 0.5% by monthly volume), opening the minimum 30 limit first and topping up later (credited instantly) when it isn't enough costs you nothing extra, and it saves paying another issuance fee (from $1) to open a second card.
- Rein in failed retries: a sizeable share of failed charges come down to insufficient available card balance (the shortfall is mostly $5–40); card ranges that charge a failed-transaction fee cost $0.60 per failed attempt, and there was a case of 8 declines in 7 minutes for the same reason that then passed on the first try at the same amount after the limit was adjusted — when a charge fails, check the available limit first instead of retrying blindly.