- How to make good use of the virtual bank card series
- "Virtual Bank Card Usage Scenarios and Consumption Traps"
- "wise: How to open a virtual bank card and a physical bank card"
- "wise Virtual Card: Successfully subscribe to DeepL and enjoy efficient translation"
- "Registration and Deposit Activation with Quppy Transferwise"
- "Wise/duppy pro/onekey cost comparison"
Recently, I finally successfully usedwiseMy virtual card subscribed to DeepL, which also concluded the matter mentioned in the previous article. Therefore, I will write a set of articles in the near future: how to hold a foreign currency card with a low threshold and easily subscribe to foreign apps. This article is to provide an idea for friends who don’t understand. Friends who can’t wait can still search for tutorials through related keywords even if they don’t read my follow-up content.
1. Why should you hold a foreign currency card?
When subscribing to applications such as ChatGPT Plus or DeepL, you usually encounter a problem: Visa/master/Express and other credit cards issued in mainland China cannot be subscribed normally. At the same time, when we subscribe to some foreign services, for the sake of safety, we are not willing to fill in our commonly used credit cards.
In addition, friends who are engaged in cross-border e-commerce will also need an account to receive and pay foreign currencies. This kind of people are definitely more familiar with related tools than me, and they are definitely not within the audience of this manuscript.
At this time, many friends will turn to various virtual bank card service providers for help.
[I saw that some friends can use domestic credit cards to subscribe to ChatGPT. I have not verified it, but it does not affect the following content]
2. Is virtual bank card easy to use?
How should I put it? In my opinion, a considerable number of service providers that provide virtual bank cards are not formal. They are completely free market behaviors of enterprises and lack strong constraints from financial regulatory agencies. If we are accustomed to the formal services and efficiency of domestic banks, we will encounter various "payment traps" when using such virtual bank cards, causing various psychological discomforts.
Generally speaking, using a virtual credit card involves the following fees:
- Card opening fee
The first card may be free, but additional cards may be charged. Why do you open more cards? Because you will be blocked by various "opaque" rules; - exchange rate loss
This money is a big hidden cost. For example, the official USD/CNY ratio is 7.1, but the platform you choose may be 7.5 or 8. In this way, if you convert RMB into U.S. dollars, you will lose a sum first; when you later want to convert U.S. dollars into RMB and then return it to your bank card, you will lose another sum. - Card fee
If you want to hold a virtual bank card for a long time, there may be a monthly handling fee for each card, such as US$1/month. - Recharge fee
Charges are based on the recharge amount, such as 1%. The card holding fee and recharge deduction may be deposited into one. If you have both, congratulations. - Loss of digital currency exchange for legal currency
Some virtual bank card platforms do not support domestic WeChat/Alipay deposits (top-ups). At this time, what you have to do is to first use RMB to buy digital currency (such as BTC or USDT), and then convert BTC or USDT to USD. Generally speaking, this loss is not very different between platforms.
As for the overall loss, it fluctuates greatly, ranging from 5% to 20%. The more frequent small-amount exchanges are, the higher the cost will be. Therefore, if you only use it occasionally, such as using ozan's virtual card to purchase Plex in Turkey, it is better to find a ready-made payment agent and pay a handling fee.
duppy virtual card fees
Of course, don’t think it’s too expensive. If it’s a normal small-amount overseas remittance, the handling fee will be even more “outrageous”!
For example, when I transferred US$100 to my American account at China Merchants Bank, the total cost was about 278 yuan, and the loss was as high as 39%.
However, normal people would not do this.
3. The journey of using a virtual bank card
If you have certain expectations about holding a virtual bank card, let's take a look at what applications you will use and what steps you will go through when using a virtual bank card.
Generally speaking, virtual bank card deposits (top-ups) support digital currencies and foreign currencies. Most of those that can support WeChat/Alipay recharge have additional costs in terms of exchange rates and transaction fees. Because the cost of direct cross-border remittance is high, it is necessary to master a little bit of digital currency purchase and transaction skills.
Take wise as an example. Although it does not support digital currency transactions, it can use other electronic wallets to transfer funds to complete fund recharge. The complete fund flow is as follows:
By the way, although wise, duppy and onekey all have virtual bank cards, the positioning of these three companies is different.
Wise specializes in cross-border remittance business, and also cooperates with Alipay/WeChat. Because it is involved in personal remittance business, it provides virtual bank card services, as well as Wise physical bank cards;
DuppyIt is a company that provides digital currency bank cards, andonekeyIt is engaged in digital currency transactions and electronic wallets, and has only recently begun public testing of its virtual bank card business.
In short, it is not simple to hold and use virtual bank cards at low cost. When subscribing to various overseas app services, it is more important to act according to your ability. Sharing accounts and asking for help for purchasing is also a way out.
4. Recommended virtual bank card applications
Because I use wise myself, I naturally recommend it first. In addition, duppy pro (formerly deppy) and onekey are also good. Regarding how to register, activate and deposit funds for these three companies, we will discuss it in a separate article later.
Taking Wise as an example, let’s list the losses in capital circulation for your reference:
- Binance: USDT is about 121 USD, converted to Litecoin (LTC)
- Quppy: LTC exchanged for GBP 92.81 (Binance transfer to Qupp, handling fee 0.001LTC, approximately RMB 0.5)
- Wise: Deposit £92.81 (0 handling fee)
[The purpose of using LTC and Quppy here is to reduce handling fees. We will explain in detail when Wise deposit is activated]
I deposited this USDT into Binance very early, so the exact RMB purchase price cannot be calculated. Calculating only the loss of funds from Binance to Wise, it is about 2.63 pounds, which is 2.7%.
In addition, wise can apply for physical cards and virtual cards, and can be bound to WeChat and Alipay. It is a convenient channel for making money abroad and spending money at home.
As for duppy and onekey, some YouTube bloggers have done a detailed comparison. Roughly speaking, the fees listed on the official websites of the two are slightly higher for onekey than duppy; but after the actual deposit, considering the exchange rate difference, duppy is slightly higher than onkey.
However, onekey’s current public beta can only accept invitation registration.Activation for users in mainland China has also been temporarily stopped., we can only wait and observe to see if it will be opened in the future.
To be honest, I'm quite annoyed by the invitation-to-registration method. But this is the case with this type of applications. Some of them seem to be very localized and support both WeChat registration and Alipay recharge, but there are a lot of "traps" in real use. On the contrary, those that restrict both regions and activation have various services. good. I have no choice but to use it and cherish it.
I put my invitation link below. Interested friends can help me get involved, and I will also receive discounts on transfer limits or other rewards. It’s a win-win situation.
- Wise :Registration link click here
- Quppy:Registration link click here
- Duppy pro:Invitation code: 454948 Registration link click here
- Onekey:Invitation code: 0OQH09 Registration link click here
- Binance:Registration link click here
