Pay for Claude with a crypto card

Claude is sold by subscription on claude.ai and by prepaid credits in the Anthropic Console. Both checkouts run through a card processor and both refuse anything that is not a card. If your money sits in USDT, or your local bank card is refused because of the country it was issued in, the usual way around is a prepaid card that the processor sees as a normal Mastercard.

That is what this card is. You pay for it once, send USDT to it, and type its number into the Claude billing form. Anthropic charges the card in US dollars every month, the way it charges anyone else.

What Claude costs

At the time of writing Claude Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month on the annual plan. Claude Max is $100 or $200 a month depending on the usage tier, and Team is priced per seat. API access through the Anthropic Console is prepaid: you buy credits in advance, from $5 upwards, and the console deducts usage from them.

All of these are billed in US dollars, which matters for a prepaid card: the balance on this card is also in dollars, so a $20 subscription takes exactly $20 plus the $0.10 service fee, with no currency conversion.

At the Claude checkout

Open claude.ai, go to Settings, then Billing, and choose the plan. The form asks for a card number, expiry, CVV, the cardholder name and a billing country. Enter the name shown in your CryptoCardex account. Anthropic may run a 3D Secure check; the code arrives in your account and by email.

For the Console, the card is added under Billing in console.anthropic.com and credits are bought with it. Keep at least the amount of the first purchase plus a dollar on the card before you press pay: processors often place a small authorisation hold before the real charge.

If the payment is declined

The most common reason is a balance a few cents short of the charge, because of the $0.10 fee or a temporary hold. Top up a little more than the plan price and try again. If Claude says the card was refused by the issuer, wait a minute and retry once; repeated attempts in a row are sometimes blocked for an hour.

If a subscription renewal fails because the card was empty on renewal day, Claude gives a few days of grace. Top up and the next retry goes through on its own.

What the card itself costs

The card costs $49.99 once and nothing per month. A top up is 3% plus the network fee. A purchase in a currency other than US dollars costs 2.5% of the amount, every approved purchase over $1 carries a $0.10 service fee, and the issuing bank's fee on a purchase is passed on at cost. All of it is in one table on the pricing page; if a charge is not there, we do not take it.

How to get the card and pay

1. Open the card. Sign up with an email address and pay $49.99 once for the virtual Mastercard. The card number, expiry date and CVV appear in your account about two minutes later. No passport and no selfie.
2. Top it up with crypto. Send USDT or USDC on TRON, BNB Chain, Polygon or Ethereum to the deposit address shown in the account. The top up costs 3% plus the network fee, and the balance is held in US dollars.
3. Pay at the checkout. Enter the card like any other Mastercard: number, expiry, CVV, the name from your account and the billing address it asks for. The merchant sees an ordinary card payment, not crypto.

Questions people ask

Does Claude accept prepaid cards?

Yes. The checkout sees a prepaid Mastercard issued in US dollars and treats it like any other card. We have no case of Claude refusing the card type itself; refusals come from an empty balance or a 3D Secure code entered late.

Can I pay for the Anthropic API this way?

Yes. The Console sells prepaid credits by card. Add the card under Billing, buy credits, and the API draws them down as you use it. You can set a monthly spend limit in the Console so the card is never charged more than you planned.

Will Anthropic see that I paid with crypto?

No. The crypto part ends when the top up lands on the card. Anthropic receives a card payment from a Mastercard issuer in US dollars.