Chipper Cash Virtual Card Review: My Experience with Chipper USD Card

 

Paying for services, subscriptions, and products in USD online using a Nigerian Naira-denominated card is not allowed.


I have tried cards from Visa, Mastercard, and Verve from several Nigerian banks and failed. 


Then I stumbled on the Chipper Cash virtual card, a USD card for cross-border payment, and haven’t looked back since then.


It works, no doubt. But it also has its issues. In this Chipper Cash review, I will reveal the pros and cons based on my personal experience.



How Chipper Cash Works?

Chipper Cash is a virtual card provider for cross-border payment. It can also be used for bill payment but its main use case is for making International payments. Its service is available in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom.


How Chipper Cash works is simple. You’re provided a local bank account which you can send money to. It’s the balance here you use in purchasing a virtual dollar card and funding it. 


You are not getting a physical ATM card but a virtual one, with the card number, expiry date, and CVV. It’s these details you use for online payment. The dollar to Naira exchange rate is based on the black market rate with at least, N50 addition per USD.


Key Features


  • A local bank account (Naira, in my case) is provided. You can use it like your regular bank account, but it’s more like a wallet.

  • The virtual USD card is a separate service. You need to pay for it and fund it. You can always withdraw from the card to your local wallet or even deactivate the card.

  • Payment is swift and can be used anywhere Visa is acceptable — I have used it on at least 5 websites and services and it worked.

  • There’s a charge for a declined transaction due to a low balance. But when there’s a funding problem from their end, you don’t get charged for the declined transaction.

  • You can now accept USD payments with your card via the Visa Direct service.


My Experience

I am not just a tester and reviewer of Chipper Cash, I am a user and have been using it since December 2022. I have used 2 of the Chipper USD cards. I first paid for one and used it for a few transactions.


After leaving it dormant for a while without using it, it got deactivated. When I was ready to start using their service again, I paid for the second one.



How I Got Chipper Cash Virtual Card

  1. Download the Chipper Cash app from either the Google Play Store or App Store for Android and iOS users respectively.

  2. Register an account, verify your email, and go through their KYC.

  3. For the KYC, you’ll need to upload your ID for verification. In my case, I submitted my NIN slip and got verified in less than 2 hours.

  4. Proceed to add cash and you’ll see your NGN account number. Mine is with 9 Service Bank (9SB). Users from other countries will get an account number from a local bank in their country.

  5. Send some money to the account for the purchase and funding of the card. The card will cost you N3000. To fund it, you’ll have to send the Naira equivalent of the amount of USD you want to fund. The dollar to Naira exchange rate is based on the black market rate. However, the exchange rate here is a little higher.

  6. After sending the money to the local bank account, go to the card tab and create a new dollar card.

  7. Click on the top-up button to add funds to the newly created USD virtual card.

Supported Websites

The issuer of this card says their card can be used on all merchant stores and web services that support Visa. For me, I use it mainly for paying for my web hosting and domain name. My hosting provider is AWS while domain names are from Namecheap. 


I also use it for paying for my proxies on Proxy-Seller and add it as my payment method on Apple Pay which I use for paying for Apple Music, iCloud+, and Medium membership.


From research done, it works on Amazon, Alibaba, AliExpress, Netflix, Hulu, and Bolt. You can also use it to pay for Ads and services on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other social and search engine services.


Did it work in all the cases I tried to use it? Nope, but the success rate is high. The only website I was unable to use it for is SEMrush and I have not gotten a concrete reason to date.

Funding Experience

How reliable is its card funding service? Well, things can be dicey here. While the payment service works well, topping or funding the card may pose some problems. In the past, funding has always been an easy task. All I need to do is send money to my NGN account and then use it to fund the card. 


However, sometime in February 2024, I began to experience downtime in the funding service. Chipper Cash will send notifications when funding is not available and notify you when it is back online. For this period, you could use the card for payment with the available balance. But you can’t add more funds to the balance until funding is allowed again. This happened 3 times in February alone.


I haven’t experienced that in March. But I have learned my lesson —- always top up the card and not wait until it is time as the service might not be available when needed.

Payment Speed and Ease

Paying for services, products, and subscriptions is quite fast here. All you need to do is provide the card number, CVV, expiry date, and the cardholder's name. All of these are available when you click on the card tab and navigate to your card — just click on show details.


You’ll then get an OTP via SMS for verification. For me, the verification was done by UBA Bank. I usually get the OTP within seconds with no delays. 


With the OTP entered, payment is also confirmed within seconds. I haven’t experienced any delay for the over one year I have been using this service. And never did I expedite failure or outage except when my balance was lower which only led to a declined transaction due to insufficient balance.


Security and Privacy 


I am not a security expert and as such, anything I will say here should be taken with a pinch of salt. To the best of my knowledge, Chipper Cash is secure and protects your privacy. The service has not been hacked nor have they had any data breach. 


I also haven’t had my account tempered with and my fund is always intact. The app is protected by a 4-digit password and unless you share it with someone else, you’re safe.


Here, a lot depends on you. I recommend you don’t use a guessable passcode and don’t use the code you use here somewhere else. If you adhere to this, you should be safe.


Dollar to Naira Exchange Rate


When converting your Naira to dollar for funding the Chipper USD card, the service does not use the official exchange rate. Instead, it makes use of the black market exchange rate which for a while now, has been higher than the official exchange rate. 


Sadly, the Chipper USD card service does not follow the black market rate strictly — it adds its own to it as you’ll pay anything between N50 — N70 more on top of the actual black market rate. 


While this is a sad development, there’s hardly any other alternative that is cheaper than the Chipper cash exchange rate.


Charges and Transaction Fees

The usage of the Chipper Cash USD card is not free. There are charges you will have to pay even though they are obvious to you at first. The first charge you’ll have to pay is for the card and this will cost you N3000. 

 

When you try to make a payment but have an insufficient balance, you will incur a declined transaction fee of N6.94 per declined transaction. However, if funding is unavailable at the time, you won’t incur this. 


There’s no officially stated charge for converting Naira to dollar but the added N50 - N70 per dollar charge to me is a transaction fee added unofficially.


Pros and Cons of Chipper Cash Virtual Dollar Card

Below are the pros and cons based on my experience using the Chipper USD card for payment.

Pros:

  • Funding is easy with less hassle

  • The payment service is always online and reliable

  • Works on all major sites and merchants 

  • Is legit, safe, and secure

  • KYC procedure is easy and fast

Cons:

  • Card funding service may not be available at the time you need it — always fund the card upfront.

  • The exchange rate for the dollar to Naira is high

  • Decline transaction incurred when you have insufficient balance

  • The card becomes unavailable if not used for a long period of time.

  • Funding is available only in Naira


Alternatives to Chipper USD Card?


For me, the Chipper USD card works. However, it still didn’t tick all of the boxes. If you’re like me, below are some of the alternatives available.


Changera — Recommended Alternative to Chipper Cash.


I wouldn’t say the Changera service is better than Chipper Cash. Instead, I will see it as a credible competitor that meets it head-to-head. However, the user base of Changera has got bigger with the user base of Payday moved to it since it acquired Payday.


Bitnob — Crypto Funding Option Available


Bitnob provides you with virtual dollar cards in Nigeria that serve as an alternative to the Chipper USD card. One thing you’ll come to like about Bitnob is its support for funding via Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and USDT. It also supports payment for services via other means other than card payment.


Verdict: Is Chipper Cash Legit and Payment Online?


Yes, the Chipper USD card is legit, secure, and great for making payments online from using it for making payments for your Apple, Google, or even Samsung services to paying for subscriptions on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and even Spotify. You can also use it to pay for goods purchased on Amazon, AliExpress, and the like. 


Just make sure you find your card so you have the funds already in case there’s a funding downtime at the point you need to use the card.







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