Circula review

The monthly fee is €99, and there is a currency conversion fee of 2% on spending in other currencies. That puts Circula above alternatives such as Monzo Flex at £0 a month and Bitpanda at €0.

Circula is built for business customers, and the features listed include a virtual card and travel use. The legal entity behind it is Circula GmbH, registered in Germany, so the card is aimed at company spending rather than personal banking (business, virtual card and travel, Circula GmbH, DE).

Circula issues cards on the Visa network, so it works across the wider Visa acceptance footprint. The feature list includes a virtual card, which suits teams that would rather issue a card per project or per booking than hand out a physical one (visa, virtual card and travel).

Circula lists chat, email and a help centre as its support channels, and no phone line appears among them. That mix suits people who prefer written answers and self service guides, and suits less those who want to talk to someone on a call (chat, email and help centre).

Monzo Flex, Wise and Bitpanda all list a monthly fee of £0, £0 and €0 respectively, while Circula charges €99 a month. The reason to pay more with Circula is the business focus and the travel and virtual card features.

Circula's currency conversion fee is 2%, against a site median of 1% and a site maximum of 10.5%. On the ranking across the site it sits at position 151 of 237, so frequent spending abroad is where the cost bites.

Travel sits in the feature list, so the card is pitched at trips, and the audience is business. The catch is that the conversion fee of 2% applies to spending away from the home currency, so a card built for travel also carries a high foreign spend cost (virtual card and travel, business, 2%).

On monthly fee the ranking puts Circula at 378 out of 379, close to the back of the field, and the cost score is 1.6. The fee of €99 and the conversion fee of 2% explain the placement.