View this article originally posted on alphawallet.com

Having had my MCO card for a month I think it’s about the time to write a review.

Weiwu with his new MCO card (black) and the COINJAR card (white) it replaced

No matter how blockchain users like me prefer to pay in crypto, the retail world moves at its own pace. Crypto-fiat gateway card is still a must-have item in my wallet.

The good bits: it works well as a fiat card

Having been a magnetic-strip-only COINJAR card user for four years, it’s a pleasure to have the additional security provided by a chip and the convenience provided by VISA Paywave.

It comes with airport lounge access so I get to retire my frequent flyer card in my wallet as well, reducing the number of cards I have to carry to … only one. You might wonder “what about your credit cards”. I don’t own those.

At the moment, the card is still a perk for those who live in Singapore, therefore it comes to no surprise that SGD is the card’s base currency.

The card has a Bitcoin balance, which can be used to top up the base currency SGD. It also has balances for various fiat currencies like USD and AUD, but they can only be bought using SGD (not Bitcoin), which happens automatically at the moment of purchase. Being able to connect to a Bitcoin-fiat market is a lot of work, so I accept SGD, not Bitcoin, being used as the base currency and not call it a defect. The forex rate is excellent, almost without any mark-up typically imposed by banks.

This card was born out of the Ethereum-lit crypto boom in 2017, took a year to develop and entered the market just a month ago. Unlike my previous Coinjar card which was born out of the Bitcoin crypto boom in 2013, the new generation projects have new, experimental business models. While Wirex Limited, a competitor of a traditional model, asks a down payment of 200USD to get you the first card, MCO asks each customer to move a lot more money, 10,000USD (or 100,000USD if you want some privilege), to purchase their coin Monaco (MCO). These are invested in the future of the project since MCO coins don’t have utility value. I can get MCO coins as cash-back rewards for spending though.