I decided to check out "Blockcard" as it was being talked about on Discord potentially adding "HIVE" as a supported currency. Up until now, I've used several of these "crypto" cards and found them to vary quite a lot even though the basic premise is that you're suppose to be able to spend your crypto in the real world wherever "visa" or "mastercard" is accepted. I expected "Blockcard" to be just another one of these off ramps.
Suffice to say, I was very disappointed with my experience at Blockcard, so much that I would even not recommend it to anyone and certainly won't be using it in the future, even if "HIVE" gets added.
Here are a couple of points to consider:
The site misleads you into thinking that it is a physical card offering. But it is actually a virtual one unless you pay 10 dollars to get a physical card. This also seems to be the only way to pass KYC and actually enable the virtual card.
I deposited 20 dollars in ETH which was one of their deposit options but that was instantly "converted" into "TERN", which seems to be their native currency. So whilst you may deposit a multitude of currencies, you are ultimately buying TERN just to use the service.
Buying TERN has some caveats, aside from the fact that coinbase, wirex and MCO also offer a far more competitive product in terms of deposit options, they also allow you to deposit and KEEP the coins deposited in their respective currency. Blockcard does not allow you to do this. On other competing services, you convert voluntarily, at Blockcard, any and every deposit is converted to TERN, it doesn't matter if you deposit ETH, USDC or HIVE (if it is supported in the future).
TERN is highly illiquid and this is evident from their exchange listings, of which, I've been unable to find on any credible exchange that I would dare do business with. A problem which extends out of this lack of liquidity is that the original sum deposited and subsequently converted to TERN has even wilder volatility. Infact, the 20 dollars I deposited only a few days ago, is now only worth 15 dollars. I checked the price the day my deposit was cleared and compared it to the price today. It hasn't gone down by 25%. Even if I took the highest price at the time I deposited vs the lowest price today, the difference is only 4% which should mean that my total balance is about 19.2 dollars and not the 15.25 it is right now. Something is clearly not right.
To compound the problems further, the platform says you must "select spend funds link" to begin card activation and complete KYC, but that "spend funds" link doesn't exist anywhere. I suspect that what they mean is to choose the "Select Card" link which sends you to the card selection screen of which you have 3 options, but only 1 is available.
Contrary to what you're promised, the virtual card is not activated and you have no way to pass KYC to use that. The only way to proceed with KYC is to select the plastic card and incur a 10 dollar fee.
This is a cheap and misleading way to once again, siphon your funds away.
Overall, I feel like the justification for TERN is quite minimal, there is no reason to use TERN as the base currency to spend when the spot markets for it are very illiquid and highly volatile. I suspect the whole operation is just a funnel to create some buy demand for TERN which otherwise doesn't have any real utility. Of course this could be said of other crypto card offerings like MCO, but then at least with them, you get some nicer perks, like netflix subscription, vip airport lounge access, increased limits on card usage, choice of more premium looking physical cards ..
Coinbase Card actually beats them all. You don't need to hold "Coinbase Coin" to spend, it doesn't involuntarily convert your deposit into some other coin. And you can spend from a number of supported cryptos, not just Bitcoin, and certainly not "Coinbase Coin."