Ok, so I done a small research to see actual funding rates at number of cards issuers. Here is what I found:
| Xapo | Wirex | Cryptopay | Spectrocoin | Uquid | Advcash |
USD for 1 BTC | 911.38 | 889.62 | 883.85 | 906.7 | 907.59 | 898.33 |
Margin from Bitstamp rate | 0.61% | 2.99% | 3.61% | 1.12% | 1.03% | 2.04% |
Price and maintance of physical card for one year (in USD) | 20 | 29 | 27 | 21 | 28.99 | 14.99 |
Loading fee | 0% | 0% | 1% | 0% | 1% | 1USD |
Final amount for 1 BTC (in USD) | 891.38 | 860.62 | 848.01 | 885.70 | 874.06 | 882.34 |
The Bitstamp rate was 917.00 at the time of calculation.
So it seems that Xapo, Spectrocoin and Advcash are the cheapest services (Advcash can become expensive if you deposit many times).
It is very strange that providers are charging hidden fees and nobody is talking about it...
You need to create an account with XAPO to see sell rates (rate they'd buy your BTC at). The rate you see at their landing page when you don't have an account is their sell rate (rate they sell BTC at). Same for Wirex, I've written more on this deceptive tactic first used by Wirex
here. Cryptopay do the same but at least are more clear about buy/sell rates.
Also, Uquid has a 1% loading fee plus a 0.5% card load fee.
Also, thanks for this. It's hard to calculate such things by hand but I admire your effort.