What the Bipa Card is
Bipa is a Brazilian digital account founded in 2020 and built Bitcoin-first: Pix transfers, Lightning payments, Bitcoin and dollar purchases from R$1, and a Mastercard credit card that pays part of every purchase back in Bitcoin. Purchases are charged in reais and the reward — Satsback — arrives in BTC: 0.5% on Plus, 1% on Pro, 1.5% on Max, and nothing on the free plan.
What makes it unusual is how the credit limit is set. Instead of a conventional credit assessment, you deposit collateral and Bipa converts it into spending power: 100% of value in reais, 80% in USDT and 50% in Bitcoin. That lets you keep your BTC and spend against it — but the limit moves with the price, and the mechanics deserve a careful read before you rely on them.
How the collateral works
Your collateral stays locked while it backs the card and can be withdrawn up to the unused part of your limit at any time. Because the limit is a percentage of market value, it moves in real time: Bitcoin up 30% on a R$10,000 deposit takes a R$5,000 limit to R$6,500, while a 20% drop takes it to R$4,000. If the collateral falls far enough — Bipa's support pages say "more than 25%" in one article and "more than 30%" in another — the platform sells part of your BTC or USDT to restore the limit-to-collateral ratio and reserves the proceeds to cover your invoice. Limits run up to R$200,000 on Pro and R$300,000 on Max when the collateral is BTC or USDT.
Rewards in Bitcoin, on both sides
Two programmes pay in satoshis. Satsback is cashback on card spending — 0.5%, 1% or 1.5% by plan, excluding crypto purchases, redeemable once your first invoice is paid. The Cofrinho (piggy bank) and card-collateral balances earn a daily reward calculated against Brazil's CDI rate: 70% of CDI on Free, rising to 115% of CDI on Max for collateral — capped for reward purposes at R$5,000 on paid plans and on the first R$200,000 of collateral. Bipa is explicit that these are commercial bonuses, not interest or an investment, and that the Cofrinho is not covered by Brazil's FGC deposit guarantee.
What it costs
The card itself is free, and purchases in full or in instalments cost nothing — the paid plans buy cashback, limits and travel benefits. Free is R$0 with a virtual Mastercard Gold; Plus is R$14.90 a month for 0.5% Satsback; Pro is R$49.90 with 1% Satsback, Platinum, travel and rental-car insurance and a free physical card; Max is R$99.90 with 1.5% Satsback, Mastercard Black lounge access and the 115%-of-CDI collateral reward. Monthly fees halve or disappear once you spend and trade enough — R$1,500 on Plus, R$5,000 on Pro, R$10,000 on Max — and trading fees fall from up to 3% on Free to 0.2–0.5% on Max.
Where it does and does not fit
This is a Brazil-only product: Brazilian tax residency is required and the app, support and documentation are in Portuguese. Everything is charged in reais, so it is not a multi-currency travel card, and Bipa publishes no international FX spread — declined transactions can simply cite an international block. Bipa operates as a Brazilian payment institution (Bipa Instituição de Pagamento Ltda., under Banco Central Resolution 80/21) alongside Bipa Intermediação de Ativos Digitais Ltda., and does not publicly name a third-party card issuer or BIN sponsor, so the credit relationship is with Bipa itself.
If you are comparing structures: the Reah Card also extends credit against crypto collateral but is built for corporate accounts, and the Mine Card lets you spend without giving up self-custody. The rest of the field sits in the crypto cards directory.
