.cards Domains: One Ending for Every Kind of Card
.cards entered the root zone on 6 February 2014, and the IANA record names Binky Moon, LLC as the sponsoring organisation. The word describes no single trade: greeting cards, playing and collectible cards, loyalty cards, payment cards and business cards all meet in it. According to the nTLDstats page accessed on 11 August 2026, the extension holds 17,546 registrations, which makes it mid-sized and still open to choice.
No published eligibility condition could be verified, so a collectible card shop and a digital business card service apply on the same terms. That breadth comes at a price: on its own the ending does not say which card you mean. The root does the separating, so carry the product or the field into it. To test several candidates at once use bulk domain search, and for a single name a domain name search.
.CARDS Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Binky Moon, LLC (Identity Digital)
- Root zone record 6 February 2014
- Eligibility condition No verified restriction
- Registered names 17,546 (nTLDstats, 11 August 2026)
- Fields of the word Greeting, playing, loyalty and payment cards
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .cards domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 1 - 13 servers
.cards Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$7.99 /year -
Transfer
$38.99 /year -
Renewal
$41.99 /year -
Restore
$129.90 -
Late Renewal
$6.73
Included With Every .cards Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.cards Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .cards domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .cards address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .cards domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $6.73 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .cards returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.cards Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.cards Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .cards domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 1 - 13 servers
.cards Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .cards Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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The word answers to five fields at once: greeting cards, playing and collectible cards, loyalty and membership cards, payment cards, and digital business cards. The registry ties the ending to no single sector, so all of them apply on equal terms. When choosing, ask one question: which card does a visitor picture on first sight of the address? If the answer misses your trade, the root needs changing.
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No published eligibility condition could be verified; the name appears open on a first-come basis. No company registration, membership certificate or declaration of sector is requested, and the ordering flow carries no extra approval step. Because the ending reached the root zone in early 2014, many single-word and obvious roots have been held for years. When drawing up a shortlist, weigh compound names and field-specific suffixes too.
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Build the root from the game or the collection, and do not expect the ending to explain anything alone. A visitor may read the same address as a greeting card shop; a game name, a series name or a word like trading closes that gap. If your brand is already known, put the brand in the root and leave the explaining to the page. Test several spellings at once with bulk domain search.
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It can — there is no verified obstacle on the registry side. Issuing cards, taking payments or storing card data is nonetheless governed by financial regulation and card scheme rules. That obligation follows from the activity rather than the domain, and the address grants you no permission of any kind. Every page touching card data needs an encrypted connection; install it from the SSL certificate page.
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Yes — according to the project's registry data, a privacy service is available on this extension. For an individual collector or a one-person shop, keeping a home address out of the public lookup is a concrete gain. With privacy switched on the domain still stays registered to you and ownership does not change. See what a given name returns today with a whois search.
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Yes, the extension is transferable. You remove the lock, collect the authorisation code and start the request at the new registrar; the name is expected not to have been registered or transferred in the previous 60 days. If your shop takes orders, plan the move outside the busy season and prepare the DNS records in advance. Run it from the domain transfer page.
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