MetaMask Card Review (August 2026): 1% Free, and Signups Are Paused

MetaMask's free Virtual card pays a flat 1% back in mUSD with no annual fee, no monthly fee and no cap. The $199/year Metal tier pays 3% — but only on the first $10,000 you spend per year, and once that fee is priced in it beats the free tier by roughly eight cents a month at $1,000/month spend. Start with the free one.

Before anything else: as of 2026-07-21, new US and UK card signups were paused. If you're reading this planning to apply, check MetaMask directly first — the numbers below are accurate but may not be available to you right now.

What it actually pays

The free Virtual tier is refreshingly simple: 1%, in mUSD, uncapped, with a $15,000/day spend limit. There's no tier ladder to climb, no stake to post, no subscription. For a category where the standard move is gating the real rate behind something, that's worth noting.

Metal is where it gets interesting, and not in a good way. Its 3% applies to the first $10,000 of spend per year, not per month — that's the detail most write-ups miss, and it changes the math completely. At $1,000/month you spend $12,000/year: $10,000 earns 3% ($300), the remaining $2,000 earns 1% ($20), total $320. Subtract the $199 annual fee and you keep $121/year, or about $10.08/month. The free tier over the same year pays $120 flat, or $10/month.

Eight cents a month. That's the entire advantage of paying $199.

Metal does buy real things — no foreign transaction fees (the Virtual tier's FX fee isn't confirmed at all), free ATM withdrawals up to $1,200/month before the 2% kicks in, and a $30,000/day spend limit. If you spend heavily abroad, that FX difference alone can justify it. Just don't buy it for the cashback rate.

Fees

The Virtual tier's FX fee is the one open field here — MetaMask doesn't state it on metamask.io/card or in the card FAQ, so it renders as unconfirmed rather than assumed-zero. Given Metal explicitly advertises "no foreign transaction fees" as a perk, the reasonable inference is that Virtual does charge one, but an inference isn't a confirmed number and this site doesn't publish those.

Self-custody, which is the actual pitch

This is a self-custody card: it spends against your own MetaMask wallet rather than a balance the issuer holds. No custodian to fail, and no account freeze risk of the kind that applies to exchange-issued cards — traded for smart-contract risk and your own key management instead. Neither model is safer in the abstract; they're different failure modes, covered in are crypto cards safe?.

Rewards pay in mUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, so unlike the Bitcoin- and CRO-denominated cards on this site there's no reward-asset volatility to discount.

No referral program, and there never has been

I checked metamask.io, support.metamask.io and Consensys's site exhaustively: there is no affiliate or publisher program for this card at all. Not closed — never existed. So there's no code on this page and nothing for me to earn if you sign up, which is worth saying plainly given every other card page here does carry an offer.

Who it's for

Existing MetaMask users who want to spend from the wallet they already use, at a clean 1% in a stablecoin, without joining a tier ladder. The free tier is the product; treat Metal as an FX-and-limits upgrade rather than a rewards one.

Who it's NOT for

Big spenders — even Metal's bonus rate stops after $10,000 of annual spend, and then you're on 1% having paid $199 for it. Also not for anyone who needs a card today, given the signup pause.