Further Details About the Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card Revealed

A few days ago, we wrote a preliminary article on the Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card. As a result of that article, which was read by the Xapo team, their debit card program manager has reached out to me in order to clarify a few things about the card itself. And she also got me on the invites list for this week, speeding up my delivery by a few months. Pretty awesome huh?

In regards to entering your shipping address when pre-ordering a Xapo Bitcoin debit card, that is only needed once you receive the actual invite for your card. These invites are sent out quite regularly, and it will take up to 10 days in order for your Xapo card to arrive. Furthermore, when entering your shipping address, users can also select their card’s fiat currency (EUR, USD or GBP).

Some of you may have noticed the Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card program has been in a beta stage for quite some time now. There is a good reason for that, as the Xapo team wants to learn and improve the overall card experience while it is in beta. But that is not the only reason for the prolonged beta phase.

For those of you who have received their Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card, you may have noticed one very important thing : the card itself is not Xapo branded (yet). In fact, each debit card will have the “MyChoice” logo on it, as they are the actual issuers of the Xapo Bitcoin debit cards. Even though it might not carry the official Xapo branding, the debit card will work as advertised though, so no need to worry about that.

Thanks to a bit of help from the Xapo team, we also managed to locate the web page listing the exact fees associated with the Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card. However, it is very important to note that, during the beta period of the Xapo debit card program, all card creation and shipping fees are waived. Nothing can be done about the ATM fees unfortunately, but it’s a small price to pay.

In the article a few days ago, I also mentioned how users can activate their Xapo debit card by calling a UK phone number. The Xapo team is working hard on improving the card activation & PIN retrieval process, as they want to make all of it available in an online fashion. For the time being however, calling that UK phone number is the only way to activate the card and retrieve your pin code.

Last but not least, some of you may wonder why it takes up to 3 months before you get an invite to get your very own Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card. Once again, very simply to explain, as the number of requests exceeded projected expectations by quite a big margin. This leads to having far more people on the waiting list compared to the number of people with the actual card in their hands.  

If all things go smoothly, we might very well see the Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card launching publicly soon. Do keep in mind this has not been officially confirmed, and there is no ETA on when this might take place. A review of the Xapo Bitcoin Debit Card will be posted on this website in a few weeks from now, so make sure to bookmark the page and check back regularly.