Deutsche Bank — db Contocarta
Deutsche Bank S.p.A. · Visa
Data verified on unchanged since the sources
Worth it if you want a genuinely free prepaid card with an Italian IBAN (€0 issuance and fee), free euro withdrawals in Italy and abroad and 1.75% FX.
Avoid it if you want the FITD guarantee up to €100,000: it is e-money protected only by safeguarding, with no cashback or points programme.
db Contocarta is Deutsche Bank S.p.A.'s reloadable prepaid card with an Italian IBAN, on the Visa network. €0 issuance and €0 annual fee: a zero-cost prepaid account-card from a traditional bank, a rarity in 2026. The IBAN supports incoming/outgoing SEPA transfers, salary crediting and direct debits; euro withdrawals are free in Italy and abroad. Being e-money it is NOT covered by the FITD: funds are protected through safeguarding (segregation), not by the up-to-€100,000 deposit guarantee. A 1.75% surcharge applies to non-euro payments.
Data & conditions
| Network | Visa |
|---|---|
| Fund custody | Custodial (platform holds funds) |
| Issuance fee | Free |
| Annual fee | Free |
| Free ATM limit | Euro withdrawals €0 in Italy and abroad; limit €500/day, €5,000/month |
| ATM withdrawal | Free |
| FX markup | 1.75% |
| Cashback | Not disclosed |
| Contactless | Yes |
| Virtual card | No |
| KYC | Full |
| Privacy | 3/10 |
| Supported countries | EEA · 1+ countries |
| Funding / solidity | Prepagata con IBAN di Deutsche Bank S.p.A., filiale italiana del gruppo Deutsche Bank |
| Regulator | Banca d'Italia · BCE (MVU) |
| Segment | B2C |
| Funding / solidity | Prepaid card with IBAN from Deutsche Bank S.p.A., the Italian arm of the Deutsche Bank group |
| MiCA / License status | Licenza bancaria (Deutsche Bank S.p.A., Albo delle Banche Banca d'Italia) Prepaid e-money card on IT banking licence (Bank of Italy) |
Plans & pricing
Strengths
- €0 issuance and €0 fee: a genuinely free prepaid with Italian IBAN from a traditional bank
- Full Italian IBAN: SEPA transfers, salary/pension crediting and direct debits
- Free euro withdrawals in Italy and abroad; top-ups via transfer/credit at €0
- Low FX surcharge (1.75%) versus the prepaid-card average
- No notable sovereignty advantage documented.
Weaknesses
- E-money: no FITD coverage, only fund safeguarding (no €100,000 deposit guarantee)
- Cash top-ups at Sisal points are paid (€3 per top-up)
- No cashback or points programme; €50,000 max balance and €500/day ATM withdrawals
- Custodial: the platform holds your funds and can freeze or lose them.
- Full KYC required: verified identity, zero pseudonymity.
- Subject to regulation (Prepaid e-money card on IT banking licence (Bank of Italy)): reporting to authorities and freezes on order.
- FATF-aligned jurisdiction: strong cooperation with authorities.
- Closed source: no way to verify what it does with wallet and data.
Verdict
db Contocarta is one of the very few genuinely zero-cost prepaid cards with an Italian IBAN (€0 issuance, €0 fee) offered by a traditional bank, with free euro withdrawals and a low 1.75% FX: an excellent cost profile for the segment. The protection limit is structural and common to all prepaid cards: as e-money it does not enjoy the FITD guarantee up to €100,000, only fund safeguarding. Rating 3.7/B: excellent on cost, held back by the lack of deposit guarantee and cashback.
Prepaid e-money on an Italian banking licence: custodial, full KYC, every operation tracked and the card suspendable or blockable by the bank on court order or for AML. No anonymity, no permissionless use: on the sovereignty lens it is the opposite of a self-custody tool.
Promp's editorial rating based on real fees and net annual cost. Promp reviews third-party products independently.
"Sovereignty" rating: score computed on privacy/anonymity (30%), fund control (20%), censorship resistance (20%), trustless/auditability (20%) and costs (10%). Same data, different weights.
Reputation
What happened to people who used Deutsche Bank — db Contocarta, and what users say. External signals: they do not feed the promp.it rating.
Incidents & regulatory actions
Notable incidentsDocumented events with consequences still open. Each entry carries a source and a date.
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Regulatory action Minor ● open
Italian data protection authority: 20,000 euro fine on Deutsche Bank S.p.A. for failing to answer a customer's request to access their own data (Articles 12(3) and 15 GDPR)
By injunction order no. 226 of 16 June 2022 the Italian data protection authority (Garante) fined Deutsche Bank S.p.A. (Milan) 20,000 euro. The established fact: a request to access their own data, filed by a customer on 13 July 2020 and sent by certified email, received no reply either “without undue delay and in any event at the latest within one month” of receipt, or by way of a communication of the reasons for non-compliance within the required time. Articles 12(3) and 15 GDPR were found to be breached. The bank's two defences were both rejected, and that is the instructive part of the decision: the fact that the request sat inside a longer, broader complaint does not make it invisible — the Garante found it clearly formulated and properly delivered; and the claim that the information was “already known” to the customer does not remove the obligation, because the right of access also serves to verify that the data are accurate. ⚠️ What this fact is NOT: it is not a data leak, no customer's data left the bank. It is a national authority's sanction over how the rights of the people whose data it holds were handled: the reason it is recorded — at `minore` severity, since it concerns a single request and the amount is modest — is that it concerns the company, not one product, and therefore applies to every Deutsche Bank S.p.A. card. `risolto: false` with `in_corso: false`, i.e. “open” rather than “under way”: the order dates from 2022 and the open sources consulted do not say whether it was paid or challenged. We state the certain fact and the unverified outcome, instead of pretending to know.
↗ source
verified on
Public reviews
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App Store ↗
4.7/5
8,767 reviews
"DB Le Mie Carte" app (id 1506876899), Italian storefront, exact figure from the iTunes Lookup API. It serves all Deutsche Bank Italy payment cards, prepaid included, and is not exclusive to db Contocarta.
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Google Play ↗
4.5/5
~
6,540 reviews
Same "DB Le Mie Carte" app (com.db.pbc.miecarte). The count shown on the page is abbreviated ("6.54K") and the exact structured figure could not be retrieved: the number is therefore indicative.
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Trustpilot ↗
2.6/5
144 reviews
dbeasy.it profile (unclaimed by the company), Deutsche Bank's Italian retail portal that db Contocarta belongs to. Reviews mostly concern processing times for applications and financing and branch support, not the card itself.
Weighted average across 3 public review platforms (15,451 reviews in total), weighted by volume. This is not our rating: it is those platforms’ average.
FAQ
How much does db Contocarta cost?
Issuance is free (€0) and the annual fee is €0. You only pay for specific services, such as cash top-ups at Sisal points (€3) and the 1.75% surcharge on non-euro payments.
Are funds on db Contocarta protected by the FITD?
No. db Contocarta is e-money, not a deposit account: it is not covered by the Italian Interbank Deposit Protection Fund (FITD) up to €100,000. Funds are protected via safeguarding (segregation) at the bank, a different mechanism from the deposit guarantee.
Sources
- Official service page Emissione · Canone · IBAN · Ricarica Data verified on Jul 12, 2026
- trasparenza.deutsche-bank.it Data verified on Jul 12, 2026