BitPay Card review — closed, not a working option

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you came here looking for a crypto card you can open today, I should say the main thing first: there is no BitPay card to open. The prepaid card programme stopped working on 15 June 2023, the card is gone from the company’s own website, and the loading of funds ended the day before. That is not a small inconvenience or a temporary outage — it is a closed product. My score for it is 1.7 out of 10, and almost every mark on that score reflects the same fact rather than a judgement about the wallet behind it.

So who is this review for? Two groups. If you are one of the people who still has money sitting in an old BitPay card balance, or a cheque that never arrived, or an account you cannot get an answer out of — keep reading, because the last section is about exactly that. If you are shopping for a card right now, then this page is mostly a warning about what a crypto card can do to you, and the alternatives further down are where your attention should go.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 1.7 out of 10, and the number is not really about the card’s quality

The score is low because there is nothing to score. You cannot apply, you cannot load, you cannot spend, and you cannot get card support any more. When I break the total down, the low marks come from the closure itself, and I would rather say that plainly than dress it up as a nuanced critique.

A note on that table: the cost row and part of the reliability row rest on unofficial material — third-party write-ups of a card that no longer exists, not on the company’s own pages. Where I have used it, I have flagged it as unofficial, and I would not plan around it. It is history, not a price list.

Who does this suit? Honestly, nobody, in the sense of “this is the card I recommend you open”. The one group I would write this page for is former cardholders still trying to track down a leftover balance. If that is you, the next section is the one you need. If you were considering BitPay as a way to spend crypto day to day, the honest answer is that this option closed three years ago and nothing about it changed while you were not looking.

What happened to the programme

The card did not fail on its own terms. It ended because the bank behind it left the industry.

In January 2023, Metropolitan Commercial Bank announced its exit from crypto banking. On 17 May 2023, cardholders received an email saying the prepaid Mastercard programme was winding down. The dates that matter:

• 1 June 2023 — the last day you could load the card
• 15 June 2023 — ATM withdrawals and spending ended
• around 30 June 2023 — remaining balances were to be mailed out as cheques

That is the whole story.

There are two things about this I want to be honest about, because they are exactly the parts that confuse people who find old articles.

Sources disagree about what exists now. One review says the replacement card never launched. Another source, CryptoCardHub, says new applications are paused and a waitlist is open — and that page carries no date, so I cannot tell you how current it is. What I can tell you is what I checked on the company’s own site in 2026: there is no card product there. So if you have read somewhere that you can join a waitlist, treat that with suspicion and check the company’s site yourself, because that is the version I could not confirm.

The company is still there; the card is not. BitPay’s site states that it is “licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services” (NMLS ID#1496848). That is a company-wide statement about the crypto business, not about a card. The wallet and the app are still running — the site still shows download badges for the App Store, Google Play, Windows and Mac, though the badges carry no ratings and I did not read the store ratings. Who issued the card is not stated officially, anywhere I could find.

One more piece of history, because it explains the pattern rather than excusing it: in 2018 the non-US prepaid Visa was shut down after Visa revoked Wave Crest’s licence. So this programme had already lost one card before 2023.

If you already have the card: what happens to your money

This is the section that matters most, so I want to lead with the practical position rather than the history.

The money was to be paid out by cheque. Remaining balances were to be issued as a cheque to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days after the 15 June 2023 cut-off. That is what was promised.

What I could not find is just as important. I found no refund amount and no claims process published anywhere. If your cheque never came, or you think money is still owed, there is no documented route I can point you at. Two things follow from that. First, I am not going to invent a figure for what you are owed — nobody has published one that I can find. Second, your realistic next step is BitPay support, and you should go in knowing that the site describes a help library and support reachable from the app, while card support has ceased. Support hours and languages are not stated.

The rest of the card’s mechanics are simply unknown. Because the card is gone, the public pages say nothing about:

• ATM access, or which network operated the machines
• spending or loading limits
• how the card was funded in the first place
• refunds and how disputes were handled
• identity verification requirements at the time

Two old figures circulate from third-party reviews and I want you to know they are unofficial and about a dead card: a USD 10,000 daily purchase cap and a USD 25,000 monthly ATM cap, and USD 2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal. Neither is confirmed by BitPay. If you are reconstructing what your card would have done, treat them as background colour, not evidence.

And if you are wondering whether to keep waiting — no. The programme is over, the cheque was the mechanism, and anything beyond that is a matter of chasing a company for an undocumented balance.

What can go wrong with a card like this

I am going to generalise here, because the general lesson is the useful part and the specific damage is already described above.

A crypto card is usually a thin layer on someone else’s bank account. When you pay, four parties are involved: the card network (Visa or Mastercard) routes the messages and sets the rules, the issuer is the bank or licensed e-money institution that actually holds the card programme, and the crypto brand is often just the programme manager or the marketing front. In BitPay’s case the issuing bank was the part that moved. The brand did not control that decision, and neither did you.

Networks can switch a programme off without asking the user. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers, and they can suspend those licences. In November 2022 Visa said it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX”, and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. You are buying a dependent product, and the dependency can end.

Closures follow a script, and the script has a bad part. Typically there is a notice period, then loading and spending stop, then you are asked to withdraw what remains. Here the notice was five weeks. In one 2026 closure reported by a single secondary source — and I have not been able to confirm it — new loads ended on 8 July 2026 and spending stopped on 8 August 2026. One source, unconfirmed, but the shape of it is the pattern. Your exposure during that window is real money sitting in an account that is about to stop working.

Custody is where the big losses have happened. With a custodial wallet the provider holds your credentials, so you must trust them completely. There is no second copy: transfers are typically irreversible, a stolen private key has no built-in recovery, and the network cannot freeze or return funds. The record is not reassuring — Mt. Gox (about US$350 million reported stolen, 2011–2014), Coincheck (about US$400 million, 2018) and the Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022) are all custodial failures. Self-custody flips the risk rather than removing it: the funds stay in your wallet until the moment of payment, but you carry key loss, phishing, and clipboard malware that silently swaps a copied address.

Deposits can be lost in transit. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be gone or need manual recovery with no guarantee. The networks themselves add friction: ERC-20 fees are paid only in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT but no ETH cannot send; Tron prices fees with bandwidth and energy, often burning TRX; and Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. Tether also says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity, so stablecoins are not censorship-proof.

Know your rights, and do not assume they apply. A chargeback is a refund ordered by your issuer to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing or goods not received. In the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z — but prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. That last point is exactly what a cheque payout is: the weakest form of settlement, with no dispute mechanism at all.

A few ordinary card things that catch people out. Merchants can look up the card’s issuing country and apply extra scrutiny if it differs from your billing address, and some decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards outright. Address Verification is mostly a US, Canada and UK service and generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines. 3-D Secure can shift liability for a fraudulent online payment away from the merchant — toward your bank, or by critics’ accounts toward you. And a declined payment can leave a hold on your funds for up to seven days.

One warning about the company’s wider reputation, kept separate from the card. BitPay’s wallet provider is named as BitPay Software, LLC, and its security arrangements for the card are not stated because the programme closed. Separately, on Trustpilot the company (not the card) sits at 1.2/5 from 299 reviews, read on 2026-10-20, with 89% one-star. The recurring themes are funds that cannot be withdrawn or sent (June–October 2026), KYC that is burdensome or declined — one report describes KYC demanded for a $15 payment in October 2026 — support reachable only by bots with no phone line, and a refused account closure in December 2025. The company does not reply to negative reviews. I am not endorsing the recovery services that some of these reviews advertise; treat those claims as unverified. And I want to be fair: those reviews are about the company, not about a card that has been closed since 2023.

What to take instead

Here are three live alternatives, with the caveats that matter attached. Scores are as I have them, and they are not close to BitPay’s — but they are different products with different problems.

RedotPay suits you if you want a broad crypto-to-card setup with clear pricing. Its costs are stated: 1.00% transaction fee, 1.20% if you spend outside your default currency, a 5 USD welcome reward valid 30 days usable only on spending (and not usable toward the issuance fee), and a paid tier at 12.90 USD monthly or 129.00 USD annual with the account-maintenance fee waived. You fund it by depositing crypto on-chain or buying ETH, USDC or USDT with a credit card in the app; the minimum USDT-TRC20 deposit is 1 USDT after network fees, and each asset is accepted only on the networks shown on the Deposit page, which the provider may change.

The country rules are where you must read carefully, because RedotPay’s two official lists disagree. The KYC list says that citizens of any listed country “will not be able to complete identity verification (KYC) or use RedotPay’s services”, with restrictions “based on local regulations and sanction policies—not on individuals”. Its list runs to 37 places including the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. A separate card-issuance list, dated August 28, 2026 and covering 47 places, adds India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Singapore and Turkey: “Residents of these areas are ineligible for both virtual and physical cards”, and they cannot be billing addresses — citizenship is not mentioned there. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia appear on both lists; Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the UAE appear on neither.

Bybit Card suits you if you trade on Bybit and want the card to draw on your exchange balance. The card has no balance of its own: it spends from the Funding Account and the Flexible Easy Earn balance, taking fiat first, and only converts crypto at the “Bybit One-Click Sell exchange rate plus a Bybit Card crypto conversion fee” if fiat runs out. Supported assets are BTC, ETH, XRP, USDT, USDC and GRAM, with a default priority of USDT > USDC > GRAM > BTC > ETH > XRP that you can reorder. The crypto conversion fee is 0.9% over the One-Click Sell rate in Australia, Asia Pacific, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Mexico, 0.5% in Argentina. FX fees vary sharply by region: 2% on top of the network rate in Australia, Asia Pacific and Mexico, 2% as an “International Fee” on purchases outside Kazakhstan even in USD, 7% in Argentina, 1.5% in Brazil, 1% in Peru.

Two warnings on Bybit. First, the eligibility page states plainly: “This product is not meant for European Economic Area customers. All European Economic Area customer participation is strictly prohibited.” If you are in the EEA, stop here. Its fiat-service restricted list also includes Belarus, the Russian Federation, Serbia, China and the United States, with the note that Russian users can only make RUB transactions in fiat — though I found no card-specific statement about Russian or Belarusian citizens, and no citizenship-versus-residence rule, so how the card treats you depends on where you actually live. Second, the rewards changed on 2026-10-05: only crypto-funded transactions earn points or cashback from 10:00 UTC that day, and fiat-funded spending earns nothing. The tiers run from Base at 2.00% with a 5 USD monthly cap, through Beta, Alpha, Apex and Omega, to Infinite at 10% with a 600 USD cap and 25,000 USD of monthly spend to unlock.

MetaMask suits you if your priority is spending straight from your own wallet rather than a platform balance. It supports Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, and the named tokens include mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. One practical trap: Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit. The fees are described only as a “Minimal fee for each transaction” — the amount is not stated on the pages I read, there are “no additional MetaMask fees”, and there is no foreign transaction fee, so the Mastercard rate applies. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual, and on Metal the headline is 3% but the footnote caps that at the first $10,000 spent, after which it drops to 1%.

One last piece of background worth having before you choose any of them, because it applies to all three. A crypto card depends on two licences, not one: MiCA is the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, which took legal effect in June 2023, with the stablecoin rules applying from 30 June 2024 and the crypto-asset service provider rules from 30 December 2024 — but the card itself is a payment service regulated separately under e-money and payments law. Electronic money institutions must safeguard customer funds by segregating them or insuring them, and such funds are not the same as bank deposits. Under MiCA, transitional arrangements let providers operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they are authorised or refused authorisation, whichever comes first; ESMA keeps an interim register you can check. And if your reason for wanting a card is that ordinary banking is awkward, be aware that KYC rules are law, not a product decision: EU due diligence covers identity documents, a sanctions check and politically-exposed-person screening, and if it cannot be completed the institution must refrain from the transaction or end the relationship.

Who I would recommend it to

To be direct: I would not recommend this card to anyone, because it does not exist and cannot be applied for.

If you are a former holder with an unresolved balance, this page will not settle that for you, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What it can do is tell you that the cheque was the stated mechanism, roughly 30 days after 15 June 2023; that no refund amount or claims process has been published that I can find; and that card support has ceased while company support is described as reachable from the app. Take those three facts to BitPay support rather than going in with a theory about what you are owed.

If you need a card now, pick from the three above based on where you live and where your money sits — platform balance, on-chain stablecoin, or your own wallet. Read the country lists twice, because two of these providers publish rules that do not match each other. And know that every one of these cards can be wound down the way BitPay’s was: with a few weeks’ notice and a cheque at the end.

Frequently asked questions

What is the BitPay card?

It was a prepaid Mastercard that let you load crypto-converted fiat value and spend it like an ordinary payment card, with virtual and physical versions and ATM access. It was a programme run by the BitPay crypto company together with an issuing bank, not a bank account. It no longer exists: loading ended on 1 June 2023 and spending and ATM withdrawals ended on 15 June 2023, and the card is no longer on the company’s website.

Why did the BitPay card close?

Because the bank behind it left crypto banking. Metropolitan Commercial Bank announced its exit in January 2023, cardholders were emailed on 17 May 2023 that the prepaid Mastercard programme was winding down, and the last day to load was 1 June 2023. This was not a decision by the card brand alone — it followed the issuer’s withdrawal from the sector, which is the single risk that runs through every crypto card.

Is BitPay a bank?

No. BitPay is a crypto company, and its site says it is licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NMLS ID#1496848). That is a company-wide statement about the crypto business, not a banking licence, and it says nothing about any card. Who issued the card was never stated officially.

How did the BitPay card work?

You converted or topped up a fiat or stablecoin balance, and the card spent only that stored balance, so it could not overdraw — the prepaid model rather than a debit card drawing on your bank account. Behind that sat three separate parties: the card network routing payments, the licensed issuer holding the programme, and the crypto brand managing and marketing it. That separation is why the closure was decided by the bank and not by the brand.

What happened to money left on the BitPay card?

Remaining balances were to be paid out by cheque to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days after the 15 June 2023 cut-off — so around 30 June 2023. No refund amount and no claims process have been published that I can find. If your cheque never arrived, that is a matter for BitPay support, though card support has ceased and support hours and languages are not stated.

Can I still apply for a BitPay card?

No, not through any route I can confirm. The card is closed, loading ended in June 2023, and the company’s 2026 website shows no card product at all. One third-party site claims new applications are paused with a waitlist open, but that page carries no date and I could not confirm it. Sources also conflict on whether a promised replacement card ever launched; one review says it never did.

What did the BitPay card cost?

The card’s own public pages never disclosed its fees, so treat any figure you read as unofficial history rather than a price list. Third-party reviews of the old card mention a 3% foreign transaction fee, USD 2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal, a USD 5 monthly dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity, and USD 10 for a standard replacement card. None of this is confirmed by BitPay, and none of it matters now that the card cannot be used.

Is BitPay card safe?

The card no longer exists, so the question is moot for it — but the pattern behind it is worth taking seriously. Card programmes can end when an issuing bank exits or a network suspends a licence, as with FTX in 2022 and WaveCrest in 2018, and closure payouts have come as cheques with no dispute route. Separately, BitPay the company sits at 1.2/5 on Trustpilot from 299 reviews, with complaints about withdrawn funds and burdensome KYC.

Is BitPay card available in my country?

It was available only where the issuing bank permitted it, and the answer today is the same everywhere: no. The card is closed everywhere. If you are comparing live options instead, note that RedotPay, Bybit and MetaMask each publish their own country lists, and RedotPay’s two official lists are worded differently on citizenship and on residence.

What should I use instead of the BitPay card?

It depends where your money is. MetaMask spends directly from your own wallet across Linea, Base, Monad and Solana. RedotPay funds from an on-chain deposit or a crypto purchase in the app, with a 1.00% transaction fee and stated issuance costs. Bybit draws on your exchange Funding Account, fiat first, converting crypto only when it runs out. All three check where you live before you commit.

Content created by the «cryptocardsranked» team