Start with the kind of card you need
A debit card spends money you already hold, while a credit card lets you borrow now and settle later. The cards on our Credit and debit cards page sit on different sides of that line, so the first question is which side your spending belongs on.
bunq lists its card as credit and records the card type as debit, which is worth noticing when you read listings side by side. The Varo Believe Secured Credit Card is a credit card aimed at rebuilding a credit record, and its APR is 0%.
Who each card suits matters just as much. bunq points at expats, so if you have moved country recently and want an account in euros with a card attached, that is the audience it is built for. A secured card answers a different need, where the priority is a credit record rather than everyday spending room.
Work out what the account costs in a year
Across our card listings, annual fees run €0 to €570.03, so a headline price on its own tells you very little. Line the number in front of the card you are considering up against that spread and you get a fair sense of whether it sits at the cheap end or the costly end.
bunq charges an annual fee of €0 and a monthly fee of €0 on its easy access plan, and it asks for a minimum deposit of €10 to open the account. Fees of €0 a year take pricing out of the argument, and the deposit becomes the only real outlay you commit to.
The Varo Believe Secured Credit Card also lists an annual fee of $0, though the figures sit in different currencies, so confirm which currency you will be charged in before treating the two as level. The bunq review adds the day to day detail behind these numbers.
Check what foreign spending costs
Foreign exchange is where a card that looks free on paper quietly charges you. bunq applies a fee of 0.5% to 3% on foreign exchange, covers 8 currencies and runs on the mastercard network.
For context, fx fees across our listings run 0% to 10.38%. A card near the top of that range costs you meaningfully more on every foreign purchase, whatever its annual fee suggests, and for anyone spending in another currency regularly that difference outweighs a small saving on the year price.
If foreign spending is a real part of your month, treat the exchange fee as a headline figure in its own right rather than a footnote.
Look at what happens to the money if something goes wrong
Safety of the money comes before rewards, and it is the part most readers skim. bunq carries deposit protection of EU DGS up to EUR 100,000, and the account sits with bunq B.V. in NL.
Holdings in investments fall under EU ICS up to EUR 20,000 instead, and the account is supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank and SIPC, covering De Nederlandsche Bank and SIPC. Licence details are published as well, including SIREN 893970970 and 909737, so you can check the entity behind the name yourself.
A generous protection limit is worth more than a small saving on fees, so read this line before the price line when you compare.
See how the account behaves day to day
The account kind is easy access and the plan model is monthly, so the running costs arrive on a schedule you can predict. Monthly payments: yes, which means the €0 monthly fee is a line you can see coming instead of a surprise at the end of the month.
Access terms set a limited monthly allowance of free withdrawals, and that allowance rises the longer you stay with the account, with interest paid weekly. If you withdraw often, read that paragraph before you compare anything else, because a low annual fee means little if the everyday access is awkward.
Daily banking runs through bunq app for use, and support is available on email and help centre. bunq has been operating since 2012. The useful question is not how long a provider has existed, but whether the support channels match the times you would need them.
Do not stop at the card
bunq lets you hold stocks, etfs and crypto and adds crypto, fractional shares and mobile app to the same account, so the card can sit at the centre of saving and investing instead of only spending. The headline rate is 3.01% and it is variable, which is the wording to read carefully: a variable rate is a starting point, not a promise.
Trading has its own costs, with fees of 0.25% to 1.99% on crypto orders and holdings starting from from 350. Those numbers matter only if you plan to use that side of the account, so decide which of these costs you will actually pay before you compare.
Once you know which lever matters most to you, widen the search. The Credit and debit cards rankings place Starling Personal Account Debit Card, Chime Card (Secured Visa Credit Card) and Creditilia ES alongside bunq and the Varo Believe card, and the Varo Visa® Debit Card review shows a different approach to the same everyday spending job.