Peanut Card

What is the Peanut Card?

Peanut is a self-custodial money app, built by Squirrel Labs, that puts a card on top of a dollar balance you hold yourself. The Peanut Card is a virtual Visa that spends that balance online and in stores, with tap-to-pay through Apple Pay or Google Pay where those wallets support it. It was launched into closed beta in May 2026, is free to issue, carries no monthly or annual fee, charges nothing extra on dollar purchases, and passes on only Visa's own 1% International Service Assessment when you spend in another currency.

The ordering matters. Most crypto cards are a card first and a wallet second; Peanut inverts that. Your dollars sit in a smart wallet secured by passkeys that Peanut says it cannot freeze or seize, and card spending draws on USDC held in a dedicated smart contract. The card is simply the newest way to spend money that stays yours until the moment you spend it.

Free, and honestly priced

Card issuance costs nothing, the card itself costs nothing to hold, and loading it costs nothing — Peanut covers the crypto network cost on deposits. Spending in dollars against a dollar balance adds nothing at all. The only charge on the card is Visa's 1% assessment on non-dollar purchases, which Peanut discloses plainly and which goes to the network rather than to Peanut. For a market where 3% to 7% is normal, a card whose only fee is a network assessment is a genuine outlier.

There is no cashback, though, and no token to farm. Anyone who measured cards purely on rewards would do better elsewhere.

Where the card earns its place

Peanut is built for people whose money does not live in one country: nomads, expats, remote workers paid in stablecoins, travellers. Verification accepts a passport or national ID from any country — no local tax number, national ID or residency document required to open the account — and the wider app carries free bank rails across SEPA, ACH and wires, UK Faster Payments, Mexico SPEI and Colombian peso transfers, plus QR payments at Mercado Pago in Argentina and Pix in Brazil at direct market rates. The card reaches the same 150 million Visa-accepting merchants as any other Visa.

The card programme is separate from those core features and has its own gate: identity verification is mandatory for every cardholder, must be 18 or older, and the application is subject to approval.

Verification is real, and it is not light

Peanut accepts documents that most banks turn away, but it does not skip checks. The card is issued through Rain, which reuses the Sumsub identity documents you already submitted to Peanut, and then runs a card-specific check: a tax ID, an SMS code, an email code and a short regulatory questionnaire, with an ID or selfie only if something is missing. That is a normal regulated onboarding, not a no-KYC card — and it is the reason the card can exist at all with a named issuer behind it.

The self-custody trade-off

Because the wallet is yours, a company failure cannot take your balance — there is no exchange balance sheet holding your dollars. The flip side is brutal and worth stating plainly: access depends on your passkey, and if you lose the device without a working backup in iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager, nobody can restore the wallet. Support cannot do it, Squirrel Labs cannot do it, and there is no password reset route that ends in your funds coming back. Set up the passkey backup before you deposit anything.

How it rates

Four stars. A free, genuinely self-custodial Visa with a disclosed fee structure, a named issuer in Rain, bank rails across two continents and verification that works from any passport is a strong product — one independent tracker scores it 3.9 out of 5 and another places it fifth of thirty-two cards. What holds it below the top tier is the beta: a waitlist inside an invite-only app, no cashback, virtual-only with a physical card merely registerable, unpublished spending limits, and a self-custody model where losing a passkey means losing the money.

If you are comparing cards that hold your money differently, weigh it against Kripicard and Hyperbeat Pay Card, or browse the full crypto cards directory.

Card features

• Virtual Visa spending your Peanut balance, accepted at 150 million+ Visa merchants, online and in app.
• Free issuance with no monthly and no annual fee.
• 0% added on dollar purchases; foreign currency spending pays Visa's 1% assessment only.
• No loading fee — Peanut covers the crypto network cost when you fund from your balance.
• Self-custodial funding: card spending draws on USDC held in a dedicated smart contract, funded from your own wallet.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay supported through a manual add of the virtual card, where those wallets are available in your region.
• Adjustable card limit from the Card screen at any time, controlling how much of your balance is set aside for card payments.
• Instant freeze available in the app.
• 3-D Secure confirmation inside the app, so you approve purchases yourself.
• Card details in the app: number, expiry and CVV once your application is approved.
• Apply before funding — you can complete the application and add money once the card is ready.
• Passkey-protected account access with no Peanut ability to freeze or seize the underlying balance.
• Invite-only beta with a separate card waitlist inside the app; admissions arrive in waves.

What sits underneath the card

• Self-custodial dollar account in USD, EUR, GBP, MXN or Colombian pesos.
• Free bank rails to eligible verified accounts: SEPA, ACH and wire, UK Faster Payments, Mexico SPEI and COP transfers.
• Latin America rails including QR payments at Mercado Pago merchants in Argentina and Pix in Brazil at direct market rates, with Pix key payments supported.
• Crypto deposits across 11 networks, with gas covered by Peanut.
• Zero per-operation charge on deposits, withdrawals, Links, Requests and sends — routes may still carry network or conversion costs shown in the final quote.

Not available or not disclosed

• No physical card, and no announced date for one
• No cashback, points or token rewards
• No published spending or balance caps
• No published ATM terms, and no documented cash access on a virtual card
• No published country list, restricted list or eligibility checker
• UK residents are excluded from every Peanut bank route, as are New York residents
• Some merchant categories are restricted by the card provider
• Passkey loss is unrecoverable — support cannot restore the wallet

What you can fund it with

The account is built around digital dollars rather than a long list of assets. USDC is the balance currency and the currency card spending draws on, with USDT and DAI auto-converting at market rate and no conversion fee. There is no Bitcoin, Ethereum or Monero funding route here — this is a stablecoin card, not a broad multi-asset one.

• USDC — the primary balance currency, and what the card's smart contract holds
• USDT — deposit and auto-converts to your balance at market rate
• DAI — same treatment as USDT

Eleven deposit networks, gas covered

Deposits and withdrawals work worldwide with no limits and, for crypto transfers, no verification required. The live app accepts deposits on eleven networks: nine EVM chains on a single address — Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, Optimism, BNB Chain, Polygon, Katana, Gnosis and Celo — plus Solana and Tron. Peanut covers the network cost on digital-dollar deposits, which is why funding the card from your own wallet costs nothing. Withdrawals to a wallet are also free of any Peanut charge, though Ethereum, Tron and Solana show a delivery cost on the route screen.

Why self-custody changes the calculation

Your dollars sit in a smart wallet secured by passkeys, and Peanut states it cannot freeze, seize or lend them. Practically, that removes the counterparty risk that defines most crypto card products: there is no operator balance sheet holding your USDC and no issuer wind-down scenario in which your money is part of the estate. What replaces it is personal custody risk. If your passkey backup is not working and you lose the device, no support process, no identity check and no issuer can recover the wallet — the money is simply gone.

Card spending is a step removed even from that: funds move from your Peanut balance into a dedicated smart contract that the card draws on. It stays non-custodial, but the card balance is a purpose-built spending pool rather than your whole wallet, and the app lets you control how much of your balance is set aside for it.

Bank rails sit alongside the crypto ones

You are not limited to crypto on-ramps. Peanut supports free SEPA transfers across the eurozone, ACH and wire deposits in dollars, UK Faster Payments, Mexico SPEI and Colombian peso transfers, available to eligible verified accounts. Accounts can be opened in USD, EUR, GBP, MXN or Colombian pesos wherever you live, subject to the eligibility rules — and UK residents, New York residents and residents of some restricted countries cannot use bank routes at all, though they may still hold and use the digital-dollar balance.

Latin America is the sharpest edge

QR payments are live for Mercado Pago merchants in Argentina and Pix in Brazil after identity verification, with Pix key payments supported in Brazil. Conversions use the direct market rate rather than the regulated card rate, which Peanut says runs substantially better in Argentina and sidesteps Brazil's transfer tax. For someone earning in stablecoins and spending in pesos or reais, that is the feature that makes the app worth having, more than the card itself.

What the card costs

This is about as clean a fee page as a crypto card gets. The card is free to obtain, free to hold and free to load, Peanut adds nothing to purchases, and the only charge that ever lands on a dollar spender is the one Visa itself imposes on foreign currency. Everything else in the account — deposits, withdrawals, sends — carries no Peanut flat fee.

Cost per $100 spent

Spend dollars against a dollar balance and the cost is zero. Spend in another currency and it is roughly $1 per $100, all of it Visa's assessment rather than a Peanut markup — an independent tracker that verified the card puts it at $1.00 per $100 spent, and its model counts the 1% as a real cost even though it is a network fee. Compare that with the 3.5% to 7% typical of crypto cards, including the ones charging a few dollars per $100 just to load.

Bank rail costs

Bank routes carry no Peanut flat fee, but the quote is where the cost lives: a EUR, GBP, MXN, ARS or BRL route includes conversion in the all-in figure, USD ACH and wire deposits need no conversion unless your bank charges, and a withdrawal's cost and minimum depend on the currency and the route. Peanut's own guidance is to check the final screen before confirming, and the route screen is authoritative.

The free-rides the fee page does not advertise

• Peanut covers processing on digital-dollar deposits.
• Crypto deposits have gas covered across 11 networks.
• Links, Requests and in-app movements carry no charge.
• QR payments at Mercado Pago and Pix convert at direct market rates — the direct rate Peanut quotes is reported to run meaningfully better than the regulated card rate in Argentina, and Pix avoids Brazil's transfer tax.

What to confirm before you commit

• The cardholder terms, since Peanut's card page refers spending limits and standard transaction fees to them rather than publishing numbers
• Whether your country is served at all — Peanut publishes no list, and one tracker excludes India, Egypt, Nigeria, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and New Zealand
• Whether you can pass the card-specific verification: tax ID, SMS code, email code and a regulatory questionnaire
• Your passkey backup, which is the only thing standing between a lost phone and a lost balance