Custodial

With a custodial card, an exchange or app keeps your crypto in an account it controls, and the card spends from that balance. You don’t hold the keys — you hold a login, and the company decides when your money moves.

Why it matters: custody decides who can touch your money — one of the two questions that shape how crypto cards work. With a custodial setup you inherit three real risks: the company can freeze your account during a dispute or a volatile spell; a KYC document re-check can lock spending until you re-verify; and if the platform goes insolvent, your balance is usually not deposit-insured, so you queue with other creditors. The upside is convenience — no seed phrase, no gas, and a support line if something breaks. This is the CeFi (centralized finance) side of the DeFi divide.

For example: Crypto.com, Coinbase and Nexo are all custodial — your spendable balance, your rewards, and (on Crypto.com) your locked tokens all sit in an account the company holds. Coinbase’s own card is unusable if your account is frozen, and Nexo states plainly it is not a bank, so balances are not deposit-insured. The trade-off is the mirror image of self-custodial cards like Gnosis Pay, where only you can move the funds — and only you can lose them.