If you just want the short version: open the Arculus app, tap into your Bitcoin balance, hit Send, scan or paste the receiving address, enter the amount, check the fee/speed option under the gear icon, tap Send and enter your PIN, then hold your physical Arculus card against the back of your phone to complete the NFC signature. Once the app shows "Assets sent," the transaction has been signed and broadcast to the Bitcoin network. Arculus doesn't charge its own fee for sending or receiving crypto — you're only paying the Bitcoin network fee — and like basically every blockchain transfer, once it's broadcast, you can't call it back.
What Arculus Actually Is, Before You Send Anything
Arculus isn't a plain software wallet. It's a cold-storage setup built from a mobile app paired with a physical metal card, made by CompoSecure, the same company that has been manufacturing premium metal payment cards for banks for years. CompoSecure went public through a SPAC merger with Roman DBDR Tech Acquisition Corp back in late 2021, trading as CMPO, and in September 2025 the company moved its stock listing from Nasdaq over to the New York Stock Exchange. That's useful context, but don't over-read it: the fact that the parent company is a publicly traded, SEC-reporting business tells you something about corporate transparency, not about whether your wallet transactions are insured or reversible. Arculus itself is non-custodial. Your keys live across your phone and your card, not on a company server, so if something goes wrong on your end, there's generally no support ticket that magically gets your coins back.
The Real Send Flow, Straight From Arculus Support
According to Arculus's own help center, sending any asset, Bitcoin included, follows a fairly consistent path. From the bottom navigation you tap Send, or you open Wallet, pick Bitcoin, and hit Send from there. On the send screen you either tap the QR icon and scan the recipient's address or paste it into the address field by hand. You type in the amount of BTC you want to move. You tap Send and enter your PIN. Then, and this is the step that sets Arculus apart from a lot of app-only wallets, you tap your physical Arculus card against the back of your phone so the NFC chip can complete the signature. Once that handshake succeeds, the app shows an "Assets sent" screen, and the transaction shows up in your History tab. PIN plus physical card is the whole point: even if someone had your phone and somehow knew your PIN, they still can't push a transaction through without the card physically present. That's what Arculus means by three-factor authentication when it comes to actually moving funds, not just viewing your balance.
Fees: Arculus Doesn't Charge You, But the Network Still Does
Per Arculus's own FAQ, the wallet doesn't charge fees for sending or receiving crypto, full stop. What you do pay is the Bitcoin network fee, the same miner fee every BTC transaction requires no matter which wallet you're using. On the send screen there's a gear-shaped fee setting that lets you pick between a faster, pricier option and a slower, cheaper one. Worth knowing: per Arculus's own support FAQ on transaction fees, this adjustable speed setting isn't available across every asset Arculus supports. Coins like ADA, DOT, HBAR, LTC, SOL, TRX, XLM, and XRP don't offer that manual speed toggle, while Bitcoin does. If you're holding a mix of assets in the same wallet, don't assume every send screen behaves the same way. Check whether the coin you're actually moving gives you that choice before you assume you can dial the fee down.
If You're Buying Bitcoin Inside the App First
If your BTC isn't coming in from an external wallet and you're instead buying it directly with fiat inside Arculus, that purchase isn't something Arculus itself is matching against another buyer. It's routed to third-party liquidity partners. Based on Arculus's own documentation and public reporting, the Buy/Sell/Swap feature runs through aggregators including OnRamper, Transak, and Changelly, and in September 2025 Arculus also announced a partnership with N.exchange, layering in what the company calls a Smart Order Router that compares pricing across sources and tries to route your order to whichever venue offers the better execution price. Each of those partners charges its own spread or percentage fee, and Arculus says that pricing is shown clearly at checkout, but the exact number moves with your payment method, your location, and market conditions at that moment. A handful of review sites have estimated that combined spread landing somewhere in the 2 to 5 percent range, but that's an outside observation, not a rate Arculus or its partners publish as a fixed guarantee, so treat it as a rough ballpark and trust whatever number the checkout screen actually shows you when you place the order. You should also expect identity verification when buying or selling. The specifics depend on which partner handles your order and which country you're in, and Arculus doesn't publish one universal global threshold, so be skeptical of anyone claiming the process is verification-free everywhere.
Two Paths Compared: Sending From Your Own Wallet vs. Buying, Selling, or Swapping In-App
| What you're doing | Sending BTC from your own wallet | Buying, selling, or swapping inside the app |
|---|---|---|
| Who charges fees | Arculus charges nothing; you only pay the Bitcoin network fee | OnRamper, Transak, Changelly, or N.exchange charge a spread or percentage fee |
| Is the rate adjustable | Yes for BTC, via a fast/slow toggle; no for coins like LTC or SOL | Rate is set by whichever partner is quoting; the Smart Order Router compares options |
| ID verification | Not required; an on-chain send just needs a valid address | Usually required, terms vary by partner and jurisdiction |
| Authorization method | PIN plus a physical card NFC tap, three factors total | Confirmed in-app, but funds route through a third-party processor |
| Can you reverse it | No, not once it's broadcast | No, not once the order is submitted and processed |
Private Keys and Recovery: Three-Factor Security Isn't a Safety Net
Arculus's marketing leans hard on three-factor authentication: your device, your PIN or biometric, and the physical card's NFC chip all have to line up before anything moves. In practice that does make remote theft harder than with a wallet secured by a single password, because an attacker who doesn't physically have your card can't complete a signature. But that protection has nothing to do with what happens if you lose your own recovery materials. Arculus's support documentation on recovery phrase issues confirms that after your keys are generated, the app displays a standard BIP39 recovery phrase, 12 or 24 words, exactly once, and expects you to write it down on the spot. That phrase isn't stored on the card or on your phone. In other words, the card raises the bar for day-to-day signing, but if you lose the card and never wrote down that phrase, there's no backdoor that gets your funds back for you. Photographing the phrase and saving it to cloud storage, pasting it into a notes app that syncs across devices, or texting it to yourself "just in case" quietly cancels out the exact security advantage the physical card is supposed to give you.
Where People Actually Mess This Up
The most common mistake here isn't a dramatic hack, it's sloppy address checking, treating "the first and last few characters match" as proof the whole string matches. Scan the QR code when you can. If you're pasting, re-read the full address afterward, because clipboard-hijacking malware that silently swaps a copied address for an attacker's own is a real, ongoing risk across the whole industry, not something unique to Arculus. Second, with Arculus supporting somewhere north of 10,000 coins and tokens across more than 50 chains, it's easy to grab the wrong address format if you're juggling several assets at once. Double-check that what you're sending is genuinely BTC on the Bitcoin network and not a similarly named token living somewhere else. Third, the NFC tap itself trips people up: card-to-phone alignment varies by phone model and case thickness, so if the tap doesn't register on the first try, that's usually a positioning issue rather than a broken wallet. Check Arculus's own troubleshooting guidance rather than repeatedly hitting send. Fourth, people mix up the two fee systems described above. The Bitcoin network fee you pay when sending from your own wallet is a completely different cost structure from the spread a liquidity partner charges when you buy, and confusing the two leads to bad assumptions about what a transaction should cost.
Scam Awareness, Specific to This Setup
Arculus's official web presence runs through getarculus.com and support.arculus.co, so bookmark those directly rather than trusting a link from a search ad or an unsolicited message. No legitimate Arculus support agent will ever ask you to read out your PIN, photograph your recovery phrase, or tap your card against some remote device or QR code that someone else sends you. The physical-card requirement is a genuine advantage against remote drains, but it does nothing to stop a social-engineering scam that convinces you to voluntarily tap your card and send funds to an address you were tricked into trusting. Picture someone posing as "Arculus security" during a fake account-alert scenario, walking you through tapping your card and moving your coins to a so-called safe wallet. If anyone claiming to represent Arculus is creating urgency, asking for your recovery phrase, or asking you to move funds anywhere for "verification," treat it as a scam no matter how official the messaging looks.
A Practical Checklist Before and After You Hit Send
- Confirm the recipient genuinely wants BTC on the Bitcoin network, not a token or wrapped asset living on a different chain.
- Scan the QR code when possible; if you paste the address, re-verify it character by character before sending.
- Send a small test amount first when paying a new address for the first time.
- Check the fee/speed gear icon and pick a setting that matches how urgently you need the transfer to confirm, and remember this toggle isn't available for every coin.
- On the final confirmation screen, check the address, the amount, the fee, and the remaining balance before you tap through.
- Complete both authorization steps, the PIN and the physical card NFC tap, and don't let anyone else handle either one for you.
- If you bought the BTC in-app first, check the actual quoted rate and any ID verification requirement on that screen before confirming.
- After sending, confirm status in both the app's History tab and an independent Bitcoin block explorer; don't rely on the app screen alone.
- Keep your recovery phrase handwritten and offline only: never photographed, never cloud-synced, never shared with anyone claiming to be support.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an internet connection to send Bitcoin from Arculus?
Yes. The signing step involves your phone, the app, and the NFC tap with your card, but getting that signed transaction actually broadcast to the Bitcoin network, and any in-app buy or swap through a partner, requires a working connection. If your connection is spotty, you might see delays or a stuck status. Check whether the transaction actually broadcast before assuming you need to resend it.
What should I watch for when sending BTC from Arculus to an exchange?
Make sure the exchange gives you a BTC deposit address specifically, not a generic multi-asset address, and understand that the exchange sets its own confirmation requirements before it marks the deposit as available. That's a separate process from the fee/speed setting you picked inside Arculus. Seeing "Assets sent" in your app doesn't mean the exchange has credited your balance yet.
Can I cancel a Bitcoin transaction after I've sent it?
Generally, no. Once the card has completed the NFC signature and the transaction has broadcast, it's out of your control. That's exactly why the PIN-plus-card confirmation screen exists in the first place: it's there to stop mistakes before they happen, not to give you a way to undo one afterward.
Why can't I send my entire BTC balance?
Because the network fee has to come out of your balance too, so your spendable amount is always a little less than what's displayed. If you picked a faster, pricier speed setting, that reserved amount gets larger still. Try a slightly smaller amount and recheck the fee setting rather than repeatedly hitting send.
Is Bitcoin I bought in the app less secure than Bitcoin I transferred in myself?
Not once it's sitting in your wallet. Either way, the same PIN, card, and phone combination controls the keys. The difference is only in how the coins got there: an in-app purchase passes through a partner like OnRamper, Transak, or Changelly, which comes with its own fee and verification step that a direct wallet-to-wallet transfer simply doesn't have.
Where's the most reliable place to check if my transaction actually went through?
Start with the History tab in the Arculus app, then take the transaction hash to a Bitcoin block explorer and confirm it independently. An app screen that looks stuck or slow to update isn't proof the transaction failed. The blockchain's own record is always the final word.
When it comes down to it, three things matter more than anything else here: is the address really a Bitcoin address belonging to the person you think you're paying, is the asset you're moving actually BTC and not something with a similar-sounding name, and did you actually read the confirmation screen in full before tapping your card to sign. Get those three right every single time, and you'll dodge the overwhelming majority of mistakes that trip people up on Arculus, or on any wallet for that matter.
Disclaimer: This article is based on Arculus's own support documentation, official blog posts, and publicly available third-party reviews, and it's meant to explain general procedures and publicly disclosed fee and partner information. It is not investment, legal, or tax advice. Identity verification requirements, applicable regulations, and actual fees vary by region and change over time, so rely on what Arculus and its partners display on screen at the moment you transact rather than on anything summarized here. Cryptocurrency transfers are typically irreversible, so verify the recipient address, the asset, and the network yourself before sending, and keep your PIN, physical card, and recovery phrase secure.