Tangem

A Tangem Wallet set contains two or three cards that share the same private key, and any one of them gives full access to the wallet. The chip generates the key during activation and never releases it, so the owner keeps a second or third card in another place instead of writing down a recovery phrase. An owner who prefers a recovery phrase can create a 24-word seed phrase in the app or import an existing one.

Tangem has sold six million cards in more than 200 countries since the company was founded in Zug in 2017. The Tangem Ring, launched in 2024, works like a wallet card in the shape of a ceramic ring and comes in a set with two backup cards. The cards carry an IP69K rating against dust and water, and Tangem gives a 25-year limited warranty on the hardware.

The secure element in Tangem cards is the Samsung S3D350A chip, which Tangem describes as certified to EAL6+ under Common Criteria, the ISO/IEC 15408 standard for evaluating security products. The chip has sensors against laser, temperature, light and power attacks, and its firmware is installed at the factory and cannot be updated. Every card also holds its own key pair, which the app checks before any wallet operation to detect counterfeit cards.

Kudelski Security, Riscure and Cure53 have each reviewed a different part of the Tangem hardware and software. Kudelski Security audited the smartcard firmware source code in August 2018 and confirmed adequate defenses against cloned cards and theft of assets, with no backdoor in the code, while physical attacks were outside its scope. Riscure evaluated the wallet firmware in 2023, and the full Riscure report stays confidential because it quotes proprietary source code. In November 2025, Cure53 tested the Android and iOS SDKs of the Tangem app and reported twelve findings and no critical or high-severity vulnerability, and Tangem fixed the three findings with a measurable risk. The source code of the apps and SDKs is public in the Tangem repositories on GitHub.

Tangem Pay is a Visa card issued by Rain, a Visa principal member, and offered inside the Tangem Wallet app. The owner tops up the card account with native USDC on Polygon, and the balance sits in a smart contract that the owner controls until a purchase settles and the amount is deducted. The card program is separate from the hardware wallet, so the assets on the cards stay outside the card account and the owner can spend only what was loaded.

Tangem Pay works at merchants that accept Visa, with a free virtual card in the Basic plan and paid plans that raise the spending limits and the cashback. Tangem states that the card is available in 42 countries across the United States, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, and that a launch in the EU and the UK is planned. Tangem Pay belongs to the group of stablecoin cards, where a card program converts a stablecoin balance into a card payment at the point of sale.

Tangem AG is a stock corporation based in Zug, the canton at the center of the Swiss Crypto Valley, and is entered in the commercial register of the Canton of Zug under the number CHE-390.112.525. Its registered purpose is the development, distribution and marketing of hardware and software. The company was entered in Zug in 2017 under the name Smart Cash AG, has carried the name Tangem AG since 2019 and has had a share capital of CHF 2,611,629 since 2024. Patrick Storchenegger, a corporate lawyer, chairs the board of directors, and co-founder Andrey Kurennykh is a member of the board.

Tangem states that it supplies only hardware wallets and non-custodial software and is not regulated as a financial services provider or crypto exchange. The company holds no customer assets and runs no transaction servers, while third-party providers carry out purchases, sales and swaps in the app. Its team of more than 250 people works from over 40 countries, and Andrey Lazutkin, the creator of the Tangem Wallet, is chief technology officer.

A card wallet such as Tangem is the opposite model to crypto custody by a bank or a licensed custodian, because the key sits on a chip in the hands of the owner. No custodian can restore access if all cards are lost and no seed phrase was created, and no third party approves a transfer before it is signed. Institutional custodians usually split the key across several parties with an MPC wallet or keep it in hardware security modules, with approval workflows that a single card does not provide.

A self-custody wallet is an unhosted wallet in the terms of the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation, which calls it a self-hosted address. When a crypto-asset service provider sends more than 1,000 euros to such an address or receives that amount from it, the provider must check that its own customer owns or controls the unhosted wallet. A company that holds crypto assets on Tangem cards therefore has to show its exchange or broker that it controls the address, for example by signing a message with the card.

Tangem reports no successful hack and no loss of user funds since its first cards shipped, and the private key never leaves the chip on the card. The access code has at least six characters, and after six wrong attempts the card enforces growing delays before it accepts the next try.

Tangem Pay is a Visa card in the Tangem Wallet app that the owner funds with USDC or from a bank account. Rain issues the card, the Basic plan comes with a free virtual card, and the paid Plus plan raises the daily spending limit and the cashback rate.

By default the wallet works without a seed phrase, because two or three cards hold the same key and each card alone opens the wallet on a new phone. If all cards are lost and no seed phrase was set up, the assets cannot be recovered, so an owner who wants a written backup creates a 24-word seed phrase in the app.

The ring has a shell of zirconia ceramic and the same EAL6+ certified chip as the wallet cards, and its firmware cannot be updated after it leaves the factory. It comes in a set with two cards that hold the same key, in US ring sizes 6 to 13.

Tangem AG has its registered office at Baarerstrasse 10, 6300 Zug, Switzerland. The company moved its seat to Lucerne in September 2025 and returned to Zug in January 2026, with the same address as before.