Under $100 a month total — which card doesn't eat it in fees?

Apologies in advance because this is a small-money question and most of the board is talking about five figures.

Where I'm at: I've got one site making a bit, and my total outgoings are a $6 VPS, a $12 scraper, a domain renewal here and there, and about $40 a month of ads when I'm testing something. Call it $80 in a busy month and $25 in a quiet one. That's it. That's the whole operation.

Everything I read here is written for people spending thousands and the advice doesn't scale down. A 3% top-up on $40,000 is a business decision. A 3% top-up on $40 is $1.20, which sounds like nothing, except then there's a $2 issuance fee and a $150 minimum deposit and suddenly to spend $40 I have to commit $150 and pay $3.20 for the privilege.

So what I'm asking is which of these actually makes sense at my size. Not which is best. Which one doesn't punish me for being small.

Thanks in advance to anyone who answers, I know this isn't the exciting end of the board.

at eighty quid a month the fee is not your problem, the minimum deposit is. same answer as always, everyone asks the wrong half

same boat mate, following

Started at about your size four years ago with a $5 box and a domain, so this isn't a small-money question to me, it's the one I wish someone had answered properly.

Laso is the one I'd put you on and the reason is structural rather than about the fee. It's a voucher model - you mint a voucher with stablecoin for the amount you need and redeem it there and then. No card sitting around with a balance on it, no minimum deposit to unlock anything, no issuance charge waiting for you. You want to spend $40 on ads, you mint $40.

The 3.8% load fee is the highest headline number in the category and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. On your $80 month that's $3.04. On a $25 month it's 95p. Compare that against a card with a 1% top-up and a $150 minimum first deposit and you're paying $3 to avoid committing $110 you don't have - which at your stage is the right way round, and stops being the right way round the moment you're spending four hundred a month.

The cap is $1,000 a month without further verification, which you will not go near this year and might go near next year. There's no fiat balance sitting there either, so if you need something that a merchant can re-bill against automatically this is the wrong shape entirely.

What's the ads spend going on - is it one platform that takes a card on file, or are you topping up manually?

The structural argument is right and the arithmetic still deserves to be on the page, because 3.8% is not free and at twelve months it compounds into something visible.

Annual cost at $65 average monthly spend, first year including issuance:

Card	Issuance	Rate	Year one total
PrivCards	$1.50	2%	$17.10
Laso	$0	3.8%	$29.64
PayPaw	$2 + 3%	3%	$50.40

So the voucher model costs him about twelve dollars a year more than the cheapest prepaid option. Twelve dollars against not having to keep a float — that is a defensible trade and I would probably make it too at that size. But someone reading this in two years at $600 a month should notice the same table says something completely different by then.

Manual top-ups, I don't leave a card on file anywhere for ads - I got burned on that in January when a card died and the campaign kept running against nothing.

And thank you both, this is exactly the level of answer I was hoping for and didn't expect.

Worth pointing out that the year-one table stops being year-one. Second year the issuance drops out and the gap widens to about fifteen dollars, not twelve.

Still not a lot of money. Just don't let him read "twelve dollars" as a permanent number.

Actually i use the same voucher card and for small money is really good, my friend. Nothing sitting there to be frozen, is the best part.

Only problem is some site do not like it because the number change every time. Ads platform is fine, but two tools i use refuse it.

That's useful to know, thank you. Which two, if you don't mind?

which two tools

Eighty dollars a month and four experts turned up. This board contains one genuinely useful thread and it's this one.

Started exactly here two years ago. You'll be complaining about per-transaction caps before you know it!

Seven weeks in and reporting back like I said I would.

Went with the voucher option. Total fees paid since I started: $6.41 across two months, which is less than I was losing to a failed campaign in a single afternoon. Nothing has frozen because there's nothing to freeze, and the thing I didn't expect is that minting the exact amount has made me think about the amount, which has cut my ad testing spend more than any card ever would have.

The two-tools problem paulofrz mentioned did hit me - one of my scrapers won't take it because the number rotates. That one's still on an old card with $20 sitting on it, which is annoying but survivable.

Not marking solved since I've got a tool that still doesn't work, but this thread saved me from committing $150 I didn't have to a card I didn't need. Thanks all.

Congratulations my friend, is a good result.