Explainer · Nov-12, 2026
Top up from another card: how a card pull works
Some apps let you add money by typing in the details of a card from another bank: the 16 digits, the expiry date and the CVVThe 3-digit code on the back of the card.. The app charges that card and the money lands in your balance, often in seconds. Here is what happens behind the screen, what it costs, and which crypto cards offer it.
What it is
You open the app, choose to add money by card, and enter the card of another bank. Russian-speaking fintech chats call it стяг, from “pulling” the money over. To your bank it looks almost like a purchase: a business charged your card, and you approve it, sometimes with a code from your banking app.
How the money moves
Visa calls this an Account Funding TransactionAccount Funding Transaction: Visa’s name for a payment that pulls money from a card to fund another account., or AFT. Visa says it works “like a purchase”: it takes the money from the account behind the card.1Visa lists the uses: topping up a prepaid card, paying for a transfer to another person, and funding some digital wallets.1Mastercard has the same thing. It calls it a Funding Transaction, used “to secure the funds from a sending card account”. It lists topping up prepaid cards and digital wallets as uses.3
Press play to follow $200 from another card into Wirex One.
- Your card is charged
- $200
- App fee
- none on local cards
- Limits
- Network limits, shown in the app
- Over
Visa
Fees and limits from Wirex, Revolut, Phantom and Send.7,4,9,13 The card number is an example. Tap a stop to read it.
Why an app is allowed to do it
Not every business can pull money from cards this way. Visa requires the company that sends the transaction to be a licensed Visa acquirerThe bank that connects a business to Visa or Mastercard so it can take card payments., or to be sponsored by one.1Mastercard says its Funding service is used by banks, acquirers and fintechs, directly or through partners Mastercard has approved.3So most crypto apps don’t do it themselves: a payment company does it for them. Send uses Coinbase Commerce, and Phantom uses Stripe.13,9
What it costs
The app’s fee on a $500 top-up from a debit card
Revolut: your card is charged $500, there is no app fee and $500 arrives. Personal cards issued in the EEA or UK. Business cards and cards from elsewhere pay a fee shown in the app.
From each company’s help page.4,7,13,9 Crypto.com’s and ether.fi’s pages are on their card pages. Tap a bar for details. Your own bank’s fees are not included.
- The app’s fee. From nothing to a few percent. Revolut makes your first card top-up free and charges only for business cards and cards issued outside the EEA and the UK.4 Wirex charges nothing for local cards.7
- Your bank’s fee. Revolut warns that some banks charge you if they see the top-up as a cash advanceTaking cash from a credit card. Banks usually charge a fee for it and interest from day one., an international transfer or a payment in another currency.4 On a credit card, that can mean a cash-advance fee and interest from the first day.
- Currency. If the card and the balance are in different currencies, someone converts. At Wirex a top-up in US dollars is processed in euros and converted.7
What it is not
Two things look similar but work differently. Buying crypto with a card through a partner such as MoonPay is a purchase from that partner, not a top-up of your balance. The partner sets its own price and fee. And a card-to-card transfer to your card number is the other direction: the other bank pushes the money to you. Kolo, for example, takes no card details at all; you send money to your Kolo card from your other bank’s app.10That push is explained in Send money to any card by its number.
Which crypto cards have it
From each company’s own pages. A card that isn’t listed hasn’t said either way. Tap a card for its sources.