Kraken has launched its Krak debit card in the United States, eight months after debuting the same product in the UK and EEA, where more than 135,000 cards have been issued since December. The US version lets customers spend from more than 600 currencies and assets, including bitcoin and stablecoins like USDC, with the card converting whatever balance is selected into dollars in real time at checkout. It carries no monthly or annual fees and pays up to 2% cashback in either dollars or bitcoin, settled right after the transaction clears rather than accrued as points.
The card is issued by Lead Bank on Visa’s network and powered by Stripe Issuing, an infrastructure detail that matters more than it looks: Kraken is a crypto exchange, but the card itself runs on entirely conventional bank-issuance and card-network rails. The crypto part is confined to which balance a customer chooses to spend from, not how the transaction actually clears.
That is the real signal in this launch. Kraken did not need to build or acquire banking infrastructure to put a spending product in front of US customers, it rented a bank charter and a card network the same way any neobank does, then layered crypto optionality on top. The approach lowers the barrier for other exchanges eyeing card products, since none of them need their own banking license either, only a partner bank willing to issue on their behalf.
For US crypto platforms, the card launch lands alongside Nexo’s move to bring crypto-backed lending into a regulated wrapper in Australia and continues a broader push by retail brokerages folding crypto trading into a single mainstream app. The competitive question for Kraken now is whether 2% cashback and 600-plus supported assets are enough to pull spend away from card products at Coinbase and other exchanges that can rent the same rails.
Source: Kraken
