Traffic arbitrage card fees are rarely one number. A provider can show a low issuance price and earn on the top-up commission, or the other way round. For a team that tops up tens of thousands of euros a month, the gap between two price lists can be larger than the budget of a new creative test, so it pays to count every payment before you link the first card.
Below we list every payment you meet with a virtual card for ad accounts, show which of them actually move the total and calculate three typical setups on our Base, Mid and VIP plans. If you need the bigger picture first, including why arbitrage teams use virtual cards at all, start with Virtual Cards for Traffic Arbitrage: Complete Guide 2026.
Contents
- What You Pay For: The Full List
- Traffic Arbitrage Card Fees That Are Easy to Miss
- Which Fee Actually Moves the Total
- Calculation 1: A Solo Media Buyer on Base
- Calculation 2: A Team With 50 Cards on Three Plans
- Calculation 3: What Card Churn Costs
- How to Keep Card Costs Down
- Summary
What You Pay For: The Full List
A card service for advertising has five places where money can be taken. Check each of them with any provider, not just the headline rate.
| Payment | When it is charged | Spending Market |
|---|---|---|
| Top-up commission | Each time you add money to the balance | 3.5% Base, 2.5% Mid, 1.7% VIP |
| Card issuance | Once, when a card is created | €1.5 Base and Mid, €1.0 VIP |
| Maintenance | Monthly, for each active card | €1.5 Base and Mid, €1.0 VIP; post-paid |
| Transactions | Each charge by the ad platform | 0% |
| Withdrawal | When you take money back | 0% |
Maintenance is post-paid and applies only to active cards. A card you closed after an account ban stops costing money from that point, so you do not keep paying for a pile of old cards.
Traffic Arbitrage Card Fees That Are Easy to Miss
Hidden costs usually sit outside the main tariff page. Ask about each of these before you sign up anywhere:
- Per-transaction fees. Some services take a cut of every charge. That hurts accounts billed at a low payment threshold many times a month. Ours are 0%.
- Fees for declined payments. A fee for a failed charge turns one problem into two. Ask directly whether it exists.
- Fees for idle or closed cards. In arbitrage dozens of cards are closed every month. With us only active cards are charged for maintenance.
- Withdrawal fees. Money you no longer need should come back without a deduction. Ours are 0%.
- Minimum deposit. Not a fee, but it ties up cash. Ours is $500.
- Currency conversion. Our cards are in EUR. If an ad account bills in another currency, ask how the conversion is handled and at what rate, and where possible open ad accounts in EUR.
Two costs sit outside any card service. A crypto top-up in USDT, USDC or ETH carries a blockchain network fee that goes to the network, not to the provider. A SEPA transfer may carry a fee from your own bank. Neither changes much at €20,000 a month, but both belong in a full calculation. How crypto top-ups work step by step: How to Top Up Virtual Cards With Crypto: USDT, USDC and ETH Step by Step.
Which Fee Actually Moves the Total
Fixed fees look large in a price list and small in the bill. The top-up commission works the other way: it is a percentage of every euro you send to ad platforms, so it grows with spend, while card fees grow only with the number of cards.
In every calculation below the top-up commission makes up more than 90% of the monthly cost. That gives a simple rule: compare providers on the percentage first, then on issuance and maintenance, and only then on everything else.
Calculation 1: A Solo Media Buyer on Base
One buyer runs 10 ad accounts, one card each, and tops up €5,000 a month on the Base plan:
- issuance: 10 × €1.5 = €15, once;
- maintenance: 10 × €1.5 = €15 a month;
- top-up commission: 3.5% of €5,000 = €175 a month;
- total: €205 in the first month and €190 after that, or 3.8% of the monthly top-up.
At this size the card part, €15 a month, hardly matters. What matters is that each account has its own card, so a ban on one does not stop the other nine.
Calculation 2: A Team With 50 Cards on Three Plans
A team with 50 active cards tops up €30,000 a month. Here is the same setup on each plan:
| Plan | Issuance, once | Maintenance a month | Commission a month | First month | Following months | Share of top-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | 50 × €1.5 = €75 | €75 | €1,050 | €1,200 | €1,125 | 3.75% |
| Mid | 50 × €1.5 = €75 | €75 | €750 | €900 | €825 | 2.75% |
| VIP | 50 × €1.0 = €50 | €50 | €510 | €610 | €560 | 1.87% |
For this team the gap between Base and Mid is €300 a month, and between Base and VIP €565 a month, or €6,780 a year. Card fees differ by €25 a month at most: nearly the whole gap comes from the commission percentage.
For orientation: Base typically covers setups of 100–500 cards, Mid 300–1,000 and VIP 1,500–5,000, with an average top-up of €200–2,000. VIP terms are discussed individually and include API access and a personal manager: VIP cards for large ad spend.
Calculation 3: What Card Churn Costs
In arbitrage accounts die, and their cards go with them. Suppose the team from calculation 2 works on Mid, closes 20 cards a month after bans and issues 20 new ones for fresh accounts:
- extra issuance: 20 × €1.5 = €30 a month;
- maintenance stays at 50 active cards, because closed cards are not charged;
- cost of churn: €30 a month on top of €825, or less than 4%.
Replacing a card is cheap. The expensive part is a charge on a card that should have been closed earlier, so close the cards of banned accounts at once: it takes one click and closing is instant.
How to Keep Card Costs Down
- Top up in line with planned spend. The commission is the same either way, but money sent far ahead of spend sits idle instead of working.
- Close the cards of dead accounts the same day. They stop costing maintenance and cannot be charged by mistake.
- Issue cards for real needs. One card per ad account is the usual unit; how many your team needs is covered in How Many Virtual Cards Does Your Agency Need? A Counting Method.
- Recalculate when volume grows. At €30,000 a month the step from Base to Mid saves €300 every month.
- Compare providers on the full monthly cost of your own setup, not on the cheapest line of a price list. How fees weigh against BIN, pass rate and speed: How to Choose Virtual Cards for Media Buying.
Summary
Card costs in arbitrage come down to five lines: top-up commission, issuance, maintenance, transaction fees and withdrawal fees. In real setups the commission is more than 90% of the bill, so the percentage decides the cost, while card fees only decide how freely you can replace cards. Our rates are public: 3.5%, 2.5% or 1.7% on top-ups, €1.5 or €1.0 per card, 0% on transactions and withdrawals. The cards work on Facebook Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads and X (Twitter) Ads with a 97–99% pass rate.