What "verified" means here, and how to check a card yourself

Why we bother

Crypto card terms change often, differ by country, and are scattered across help articles, fee tables and PDFs. Aggregator lists copy each other, so one old number can sit on many sites for months.

We want a page you can trust enough to act on, and one you can check in a minute if you do not. Both depend on being exact about what we know, and honest about what we do not.

Where our data comes from

We only use the issuer’s own pages: fee schedules, terms, country lists and help articles. Lists on other sites can help us find a new card, but never count as a source for a fee or a country.

Each page is fetched on a regular schedule and a copy is stored as evidence. If a page has not changed, we only refresh its “last checked” date. If it has changed, the new values go through the steps below.

How a value becomes verified

1. It is read from the page. Software extracts the value, and for every value it must also return the exact sentence it came from. If it cannot, the value is left empty.
2. The quote is checked by code. A plain script looks for that sentence, word for word, in the stored copy of the page. If it is not found, the value is thrown away. No AI is involved in this step.
3. The value is checked for sense. Types, currencies, country codes and ranges have to make sense.
4. It is compared with what we already show. A new, changed or removed value is flagged.
5. A person approves it. Changes to fees, eligibility, limits, rewards or program status never go live without a person reading them. Only after that does a value change from “extracted” to “verified”.

Affiliate links play no part in any of this. They do not change what we verify or how we rank, and the scoring code does not read affiliate data. The disclosure page lists which cards have one.

The labels you will see

• Verified. The fees and the country rules we show were approved by a person and carry a source and a date.
• Partly verified. Some values are approved and others are not. Each value still shows its own status, so look at the row, not just the label on top.
• Extracted, not reviewed yet. The values were read from the issuer’s pages and passed the code checks, but no person has approved them yet. Treat them as a draft.
• Not verified. We have no approved value. A fee or country row that is missing means “we do not know yet”. It does not mean there is no fee, or that the card is not available.

Next to a date you may also see a tag: aging or stale. These describe how long ago the page was last checked, and a recent check carries no tag. Stale data is flagged, never hidden, so you can still see what we last knew and judge it yourself. The methodology page lists the labels Verified, Aging and Stale and their exact thresholds.

What verified does not mean

It does not mean the card is good. We check what the terms say, not whether you will like the service. It does not mean the terms cannot change tomorrow, which is why the date matters. And it does not cover support quality, reliability or how a company treats its customers in a dispute.

Check a card’s terms yourself

You do not have to take our word for it. A short routine takes a few minutes and works on any card, including ones we have not covered:

1. Open the card page and follow the source links. Every verified value links to the page it came from. Open it and find the sentence.
2. Look for the date on the issuer’s page. If the page shows no date, assume it can change at any time.
3. Read the fees in the terms, not the homepage. The homepage sells. The cardholder terms or fee schedule is what applies to you.
4. Check your country, not just the card. Three things are separate: whether you can apply, whether a physical card ships to you, and whether the card can be used where you will be. A card can be fine on one and not the others.
5. Look for conditions. Words like “up to”, “from”, “subject to”, “first three months” and “with staking” usually mark a fee or reward that is not the default.
6. Search the help centre for the awkward words. Try “inactivity”, “withdraw”, “limit”, “dispute” and “closure”.
7. Test with a small amount. Top up and spend a little before moving anything that matters, and compare the statement to what you expected.

If you find something that does not match what we show, tell us. Corrections are how the data stays accurate, and the methodology page says how to send one.

Where to go from here

Use the Card Finder to see which verified cards are open to you. If a term in a card’s fee table is unfamiliar, the glossary explains it in plain words, and the verified entry there is the short version of this guide.