The claim that plastic always means paperwork
Identity requirements vary by provider and card tier. A virtual card can require verification, and the requirements for ordering a physical card must be checked separately. The provider comparison links to the relevant official terms.
For CryptoCard, ordering the physical card asks for no document, no photograph of anything, and no name that has to match one. The recipient field takes whatever name receives mail at that address, and nothing compares it to a register. Your account is still an email address and a password, exactly as it was before you ordered.
What changes is not the identity file. It is that plastic has to physically arrive somewhere, and that means, for the first and only time on this service, you type a street.
| A virtual card | The plastic | |
|---|---|---|
| To get one | An email address and a password. Nothing else is asked, ever | The same account, plus a street and a phone the courier can ring |
| Identity | No document, no name, no phone number | Still no document — the recipient name is not checked against anything |
| Printed on it | Nothing. It is a number in your dashboard | No name, no branding. The metal carries a number and nothing about you |
| What it costs | The first is free, then $2 each | $35 standard, $60 with priority, taken from your balance |
| Kept afterwards | Nothing new is stored | The address is erased at dispatch; the destination country stays |
| Where it pays | Online, and in Apple / Google Pay at a terminal | The same, plus supported chip-and-PIN terminals; ATM access unconfirmed |
That is the whole trade, and the rest of this guide is about it: what the form asks for, what the envelope shows, what is deleted the day the card ships, and what honestly is not.
Whether you need one at all
Start here, because the honest answer for most readers is no.
A virtual card added to Apple Pay or Google Pay taps the same terminals, in the same shops, with the same limits. If your week is online payments and contactless in town, the plastic buys you nothing at all and the $35 is better left on your balance earning 4% a year.
Three situations can make a physical card useful:
- Terminals that still want the chip. Older readers, unattended machines, some transport barriers and a good deal of rural retail outside the big NFC markets. A phone will not open them.
- Merchants who ask to see a card. Hotels, car hire desks and anywhere a deposit is taken face to face still occasionally want plastic in hand.
- A phone that is off, flat, or one you would rather not use to pay. Plastic works with a dead battery and no data connection.
ATM availability and withdrawal fees are unconfirmed. Ask support before ordering if you need cash access. A physical form factor alone does not establish withdrawal support.
The order form follows the country, not a template
The order lives in Dashboard → Physical card and starts with one question — where is it going. That order matters: the destination is picked first because the rest of the form is redrawn to match it.
We ship to 184 countries, and a single « City / State / ZIP » form would be wrong in most of them. So the labels, the fields and their order come from the destination. 52 of the 184 are not asked for a postal code at all, because they do not have one. Japan puts the postal code first and calls the next field a prefecture. Ireland asks for an Eircode and does not insist on it. In 3 countries the free text box gives way to a closed list of states or provinces, because those are the ones where a typo silently misroutes a parcel.
This is not decoration. A required field that a destination does not use is a form nobody can complete, and an optional field that a destination does require is a parcel that never arrives.
| Field | What goes in it | What becomes of it |
|---|---|---|
| Country | Picked first — the rest of the form is redrawn to match it | Kept. It is the one line of the address that survives dispatch |
| Recipient | Any name that receives mail there | Erased at dispatch. Never printed on the card, never checked against a document |
| Street | Number, street, and the flat or building if there is one | Erased at dispatch |
| City, region, postal code | Whatever the destination actually uses — or nothing, where it uses nothing | Erased at dispatch |
| Phone | A number the courier can reach on the day | Erased at dispatch. It is never used to sign you in or to send a payment code |
| Delivery note | Gate code, floor, « leave with the concierge » | Optional, and erased with the rest |
Two fields deserve a note.
The recipient name. It is there so the courier knows who to hand the envelope to, and that is all it is for. It is not verified, not compared to anything, and never printed on the card. If mail reaches you at that address under a name, that name works.
The phone number. This is the one place a no-KYC account asks for a number, and it is worth being clear about why: international couriers refuse consignments without a reachable number, and a parcel with no contact is a parcel that goes back. It is used for this delivery, it never becomes a sign-in factor, and it is not where payment codes go — those keep going to your email address. It is erased with the rest of the address on dispatch.
Validation happens on the server, field by field. A malformed postal code for the chosen country comes back attached to that field rather than as a blanket « invalid address », and the order is refused before anything is taken from your balance — the debit and the order are written in one transaction, so there is never a charge without a shipment behind it.
What comes through the letterbox
A plain envelope. No logo on the outside, no issuer named, nothing that describes what is inside. The card within is metal, and there is no name printed on it — not yours, not a placeholder, nothing where an embossed name would normally be.
Discreet packaging is not an option you have to find: it is on by default, decided on the server rather than by the checkbox, so an order that says nothing about it ships discreetly. You can switch it off in the shipping options, which almost nobody does.
What arrives is an addition to your account rather than a replacement for it. Your balance does not move, your virtual cards keep working, and the plastic can go into Apple Pay or Google Pay as well, if you want the same card in both forms. The rules you already know still apply: freeze it and every authorisation is declined immediately, and the reasons a payment can fail are the same ones that apply online, minus the 3-D Secure step, which does not exist at a terminal.
One thing plastic does not change: the balance behind it is still funded in crypto and still earns 4% a year while it sits. Ordering a card takes $35 off that balance and leaves the rest working.
The address is deleted the day it ships
Here is the part that decides whether this product is for you, so it is written plainly.
When an order is marked dispatched, the address is not archived, anonymised or moved somewhere safer. The fields are set to null on the order row: recipient name, both street lines, city, region, postal code, phone number and any delivery note. The order keeps a record that the erasure happened and when. In your own order history the destination line then reads address erased on dispatch, which is exactly what it says.
| At dispatch | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Recipient name | Erased — set to null on the order row |
| Street lines | Erased |
| City, region, postal code | Erased |
| Phone number | Erased |
| Delivery note | Erased |
| Destination country | Kept — an order has to have gone somewhere |
| Reference, amount, dates | Kept — it is the receipt for a payment out of your balance |
| The carrier’s own copy | Out of our hands, and kept for as long as its rules say |
Two consequences follow, and both are honest rather than flattering.
You cannot change the address after dispatch, and not for the reason you would guess. It is not a policy about courier deadlines. There is no longer an address on our side to change. Before dispatch it can still be corrected — open a support ticket under A physical card order and it is handled while the record still exists.
The carrier keeps its own copy. A parcel cannot move through a postal network without the network knowing where it is going, and that company retains what its own rules require. We have no control over that, and it is precisely why the address leaves our systems as soon as it has done its job. Deleting our copy is what we can do; pretending the delivery was invisible is not.
So the correct way to think about ordering plastic is this: for the window between your order and its dispatch, one street address exists alongside an account that otherwise holds nothing but an email address. Afterwards it does not. If that window is unacceptable for your situation, the virtual card never opens it — and that is a legitimate reason to skip the plastic entirely.
What it costs, and where the money comes from
$15 for the card, $20 for worldwide shipping, so $35 in total. Priority shipping adds $25 and brings it to $60. There is no monthly fee on it afterwards, and no inactivity charge if it sits in a drawer.
It comes out of your balance the moment you order, as a single line in your ledger. If the balance will not cover it, the order screen replaces the button with the shortfall and how much you are missing, rather than letting you commit to something it cannot take. Through the API, the same condition answers 402 with the amount required.
Two small arithmetic points that people meet in the wrong order:
- The top-up fee comes out of the deposit, not on top of it. The 1% is taken from what arrives, so a deposit of $35 credits slightly less than $35. To have exactly the price of a standard order on your balance, send about $35.36.
- The first deposit has a floor of $100. Plastic is therefore never the very first thing you do — you open the account, fund it, get your free virtual card, and order the metal one out of what is already there.
On speed: priority is the lever if you are in a hurry, and the order screen shows the courier's usual windows for each tier. We deliberately do not promise a delivery date, because it depends entirely on the destination and on a customs queue nobody here controls. When production itself stalls — it has, and it is in the public incident history — orders are queued in order rather than lost.
Ordering one, in order
Seven steps, and only two of them need a decision.
- Fund the balance first. The order is paid from it, so put at least the price of the order on the account — or fund it in the same session as your first deposit, which has a $100 floor anyway.
- Open Dashboard → Physical card. The panel shows the card, the price and the form on one screen.
- Pick the destination country. Do this before filling anything else in: the fields below change to match it, and anything typed beforehand may not belong to the new form.
- Fill in the address as the destination writes it, not as an American form would. If a postal code field is not shown, that country does not use one and nothing is missing.
- Give a phone the courier can ring — with the country code, digits only. This is the field that most often turns a delivery into a return.
- Choose the two options. Discreet packaging is already on. Priority shipping is off, and costs $25 more.
- Order, then watch the status. It moves from pending to dispatched, and at that moment the address is erased. Anything you needed to correct has to be corrected before it.
One thing you cannot do from code: the API issues virtual cards in a single call, but it will not order plastic. That is deliberate. It is the one action on this account that needs a physical address, and it stays behind a screen where a human has to type one.
If you are still deciding whether the account itself is right for you, the complete no-KYC card guide covers the limits, the coins and the trade-offs, and the recovery guide covers the ten minutes of setup that protect the balance you are about to spend from.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to verify my identity to get a physical crypto card?
No. Ordering the physical card asks for no document, no photograph and no verified name. What it asks for is somewhere to send it: a destination address and a phone number the courier can reach. Your account remains what it was — an email address and a password — and the recipient name you type is never checked against anything.
What name is printed on the physical card?
None. There is no name embossed or printed on the card, which is why the recipient name on the order is only ever used by the courier. It is not a cardholder name, it is a delivery instruction, and it disappears from our systems when the card ships.
What happens to my shipping address after the card is sent?
It is erased. When an order is marked dispatched, the recipient name, street lines, city, region, postal code, phone number and delivery note are set to null on the order. What survives is that an order existed, which country it went to, what it cost and when — enough to be a receipt, and not enough to be an address book.
Is the packaging discreet?
Yes, and it is the default rather than an option you have to remember. Plain envelope, no branding on the outside, no issuer named, nothing that describes the contents. You can turn discreet packaging off in the shipping options; there is rarely a reason to.
How much does the physical card cost in total?
$15 for the card and $20 for worldwide shipping — $35 all in, taken from your balance when you order. Priority shipping adds $25, bringing it to $60. There is no monthly fee and no charge for leaving it unused.
Which countries do you ship to?
Currently 184. The order form adapts to each one: field labels, which fields appear and the order they appear in follow local postal convention, and 52 of those countries are never asked for a postal code because they do not use one.
Can I change the delivery address after ordering?
Before dispatch, yes — open a support ticket under A physical card order and it is changed while the record still exists. After dispatch, no, and not because of a policy: the address has been deleted, so there is nothing left to edit.
Why does a no-KYC service ask for a phone number?
Only for the courier, and only for one delivery. International carriers refuse consignments without a reachable number. It never becomes a login factor, it is not where 3-D Secure codes are sent — those go to your email — and it is erased along with the address on dispatch.
Can I withdraw cash from an ATM with it?
ATM availability and withdrawal fees are not confirmed by the published schedule. Ask support about availability, limits and fees before ordering if cash access is essential. Do not infer ATM support from the fact that a card is physical.
How long does delivery take?
It depends entirely on the destination, which is why no date is promised here. The order screen shows the courier's usual window for each shipping tier, and priority is the lever if you are in a hurry. Production pauses are published on the status page, and orders placed during one are queued in order rather than lost.
Can I order the physical card through the API?
No, deliberately. The API issues, freezes and deletes virtual cards, opens deposits and resolves 3-D Secure challenges, but ordering plastic stays in the dashboard because it is the one action that needs a physical address typed by a person. See the API guide for where else it stops.
Product references and further reading
Published by CryptoCard. Product terms, eligibility and third-party features can change; use the linked reference for the current details.
Get your card
An email address, a first top-up from $100, and the card is live. No document, no phone number, and the first virtual card is free.