This is a little of topic but related to debit cards....

Nothing much to do today so was reading articles about new developments and came accross a thread here about Monese, a new startup in the UK that's essentially an online bank [just fiat, no bitcoin], no branches and just the basics, an account and a debit card. This article led me to two similar startups namely Number26, a German banking startup and Mondo in the UK. The last two are looking at establishing full banking services like loans etc..

One thing that all of them offer are zero fee transactions. Even their debit cards is free of any fees. I think its Mondo [might be wrong] that does not even charge a currency conversion fee should you use the card to pay for something which is not in the currency of the card. They do not even charge you to have the cards delivered.

The bitcoin debit cards [Bit-x, E-Coin, Xapo], in comparison, now seems to be very expensive. All of them have currency conversion fees of around 3%, some have month/yearly fees and in the case of Bit-x also a per transaction fee of 0.0002 btc and 1% banking fee. Then there is the order fee of anything from $11 to $20, the activation fee [if any] of also about $11 to $20, delivery charges of around $11 depending on the card and or a speedy DHL deliver for another $50 odd with Xapo.

I have both a Xapo and Bit-x card and will keep on using them as it offers a convenient way to spend one's bitcoin directly from one's wallet. One can however not help but take note of the fact that you are being smoked for every transaction. Xapo, Bit-x and E-Coin should take note. Their aim should be to decrease the fees and or eliminate them completely. With the current fee structure in place there is little incentive for anybody to use their cards compared to the others on offer.

Yes the others might not deal in bitcoin but its not that difficult to get your bitcoins into those bank accounts. And with their fee structures I'm pretty sure its going to work out cheaper as well.