I just recently found out that paying by card to buy crypto in Taiwan is so troublesome. It turns out that in 2022, the Financial Supervisory Commission issued a letter prohibiting credit card deposits into virtual asset platforms. Put simply, the FSC believes credit cards are a consumer payment tool and shouldn’t be used to invest in high-risk products. But when I looked into it, this ban doesn’t clearly distinguish between domestic and overseas institutions, so in theory there are still other channels.

I’ve tried a few times myself, and the biggest problem with using a credit card to buy coins is that the fees are really expensive. Just the processing fee alone is 1.5% to 3%, and on top of that there’s the exchange-rate spread (the exchange-rate difference is 3% to 5% worse than what you’d get through a bank). Altogether, the total cost could reach 5% to 8%. In other words, if you spend 100 yuan on coins with a credit card, you can only end up getting about 95 yuan worth of virtual currency. This is fine for small investments, but for larger amounts it just isn’t worth it.

Compared with that, wire transfers are actually cheaper because the processing fee is fixed—the bigger the amount, the smaller the fee’s proportion. However, wire transfer procedures are more complex: you have to go through intermediary banks, and the time it takes for funds to arrive is also slower. C2C trading is more flexible but has a higher risk, and the level of transparency isn’t sufficient.

If you really want to buy crypto with a credit card, my suggestion is to first buy USDT with TWD, and then exchange it for other coins on a major exchange. Alternatively, you can try credit cards from different banks—some cards can still be used. In short, buying crypto with a credit card may be convenient and fast, but the cost is indeed a real issue. For large investments, it’s still better to consider other methods that are more cost-effective.