Paying for study tools without an international card

The problem nobody building these tools has

A pre-med student outside the US can have the money, the motivation and the MCAT on the horizon, and still be unable to buy a subscription — because the checkout wants a card their bank does not issue, or issues without international authorization, or authorizes in a currency that fails at the payment processor.

This is not a niche edge case. It is a standing tax on students who already have the fewest options, and it is invisible to anyone whose card just works.

A price you cannot pay is not a price. Payment method is part of the product, not part of the checkout.

What Med Guru Pre-Med accepts

Med Guru Pre-Med is built to be paid for without an international card. There are three ways in:

• Card, through Paddle. The standard route. Paddle is the merchant of record, which is also what handles tax.
• Whish Money transfer. You send the transfer yourself in the Whish app, file the claim, and a person approves it — usually within a day.
• Stablecoin or crypto transfer. USDT and USDC, plus bitcoin and ether. USDT settles on Tron, Ethereum, BSC or Solana; USDC on everything but Tron. You pick the asset and the network together, because the same coin lives at a different address on each chain.

There are two plans, 3 Months and 6 Months. Both open the whole product; only the term differs, and either can be paid by card, by Whish Money or in crypto.

A plan can carry a transfer price a little below its card price. It is set per plan, not as a blanket discount. Once you are signed in, the pricing page shows it beside the card price, so you see both figures before you commit to either.

How the transfer route works, step by step

• Pick your plan — 3 Months or 6 Months — on the pricing page and choose the transfer option rather than card checkout.
• Send the amount to the number shown, from your own Whish account.
• File the claim with the phone number you sent from, plus the transfer reference or a screenshot of the receipt. The sender number is what ties the payment to you, so it has to be yours.
• A person checks it against the incoming transfers — right amount, right sender — and approves.
• Access starts on approval. Approval is the only thing that grants it; nothing is unlocked before a human has matched the transfer.

It is slower than a card, and deliberately so. A manual rail that one person checks is honest about what it is: not instant, but not closed to you either. The crypto route works the same way — send, file the claim, wait for the confirmations and a person.

Before you pay for anything

Use the three-day free trial first. It covers the whole product — the study assistant, the prep course and the question bank — and it does not ask for a card, so there is no payment question to solve until you already know whether the tool is worth it. It is one per person, and it starts when you choose to start it.

Want to know what you would be checking during those days? Read how citations work first.

Plans and prices are on the pricing page, and the transfer options appear there alongside card checkout.