Wirex

Pavel Matveev and Dmitry Lazarichev founded Wirex in London in 2014. It is now a principal member of both Visa and Mastercard, which means it can issue cards itself instead of renting another issuer's licence. That is unusual for a crypto company, and it is why other brands use Wirex to launch their own cards.

By its own count the company serves more than 7 million users in over 130 countries. In the first half of 2026, Wirex Limited handled more than 7 million transactions worth about £600 million and added roughly 70,000 customers, according to its H1 2026 transparency report. The same report says it blocked more than £650,000 of suspected financial crime.

The core app is custodial, so Wirex holds your balance. Fiat balances sit with Wirex Limited, an FCA-regulated electronic money institution. Under UK e-money rules those funds must be safeguarded, meaning kept separate from the company's own money. That protects them in an insolvency, although it is not deposit insurance. Crypto holdings get no equivalent protection.

The crypto side has a more complicated history. In March 2022, three days before the deadline, Wirex withdrew its application to the FCA's cryptoasset register and moved crypto services for its roughly 250,000 British customers to Wirex Digital, a Croatian company registered with the regulator HANFA. The e-money business stayed with the FCA. In practice, a UK customer's pounds and crypto sit with two different companies under two different regulators.

We found no hack or insolvency event that cost Wirex users money. Wirex One is designed differently: Wirex says it is built on self-custodial ownership. If you move to it, confirm who holds the keys to your account.

Wirex has issued two tokens. WXT, the original Wirex Token, was tied to the older app and its Cryptoback rewards. WPAY belongs to Wirex Pay, the payment network launched in 2024, and it now decides membership tiers in Wirex One.

According to Wirex's membership post, Wirex One has five tiers. Your tier depends on how much WPAY you hold relative to your total Wirex One portfolio. There is no lock-up, and every tier pays cashback valued in USD, up to 8%. So the cashback itself is not paid in a volatile token, but reaching a higher tier means holding one.

Wirex does not publish the WPAY share needed for each tier on the membership page; it points to the Wirex One litepaper. Check the current threshold before buying WPAY for a tier.