BitPay closed its card in June 2023. I check what that means for anyone still holding a balance.
Available in US
There is a version of this review I could have written. BitPay was one of the first names in crypto cards, the wallet is still widely used, and the card had a virtual version, a physical version and ATM access. It would have had fees, limits, a table of countries, and a recommendation. I can’t write that review, because the programme is finished. BitPay stopped issuing its prepaid card, and the last day it could be loaded was 1 June 2023, with ATM access and spending ending on 15 June 2023. The card page is gone from the site. So the honest version of this page is about what happened, what it means if you are one of the people still holding something from it, and what exists now for the same job.
The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 1.7 out of 10, because the product itself has ended
I score the BitPay card 1.7 out of 10. That number is not a judgement about crypto cards as a category, and it is not a statement about the BitPay wallet, which is a separate product with a separate record. It is a judgement about one thing only: this card, as a card you could hold and use. It has not been issued since 2023. There is nothing to apply for, nothing to top up, and no terms on the card page to read. Scoring a product that no longer exists feels odd, but leaving the page blank would be worse, because people are still searching for this card and still finding fragments of it.
| Criterion | Mark | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 0 / 10 | The card is closed: support and ATM access ceased 15 June 2023 after the issuing bank withdrew from crypto, and there is no longer a card page on the site |
| Cost | 3 / 10 | Not officially disclosed; historical card figures from third parties: 3% FX, $2.50 ATM, $5 per month for dormancy after 90 days, $10 replacement |
| Top-up options | 3 / 10 | Not disclosed: the card is closed, and the last day to load was 1 June 2023 |
| Reliability and complaints | 1 / 10 | The programme closed on 15 June 2023, balances were sent out as cheques; Trustpilot shows BitPay at 1.2/5 across 299 reviews, and the replacement card did not launch |
| Everyday use | 2 / 10 | No cards exist; the terms of the virtual card, physical card, wallet and ATM are not disclosed |
Who this suits now: almost nobody, in the sense of someone opening a card today. The one group this page is genuinely written for is former cardholders trying to trace a leftover balance — what happened to the money, when the last day was, and what a cheque in the post means. Who this does not suit: anyone whose plan depends on getting a card in the next few weeks. There is no application to try, no waitlist confirmed by the company, and no date on which this page could become good news.
Two things worth separating, because they get mixed up. BitPay the company is not the same as the BitPay card, and the card’s death did not take the wallet down. The company states it is “licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services”, which is a company-level statement about virtual currency activity, not a statement about a card programme. The card’s issuing bank is not stated officially. If you came here to read about the wallet, the score above does not apply to it.
What happened to the programme
The shutdown was not sudden, and the order of events matters if you are reconstructing your own history. In January 2023, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, the issuing bank behind the prepaid Mastercard programme, announced its exit from crypto banking. On 17 May 2023, cardholders were emailed to say the prepaid Mastercard programme was winding down. Loading stopped on 1 June 2023. ATM access and spending ended on 15 June 2023. Remaining balances were to be mailed as cheques around 30 June 2023.
That sequence is the shape of a programme closing rather than a company failing outright. You get a notice, then a date to stop loading, then a date when the card stops working, then a last sweep of balances. It is the same pattern seen elsewhere in the category: when Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022, the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. And in 2018, Visa suspended WaveCrest in Europe, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes — the same WaveCrest that had supplied cards to several crypto brands. A crypto card is not one company’s product end to end. The card network sets the rules, the issuing bank holds the licence, and the crypto brand is often just the front. When the licensed middle layer decides crypto is not worth the risk, the card stops, and nothing at the front can change that.
Sources disagree about what came next, and I would rather tell you that than smooth it over. One review reports the promised replacement card never launched. A third-party site, CryptoCardHub, says new applications are paused and a waitlist is open, undated. BitPay’s own site in 2026 shows no card at all. So the state of play is: closed, with a rumoured replacement that no review could confirm and no official card page to check.
On the practical conditions of the card itself, the public pages simply do not say. Who could get it, what identity checks applied, what the virtual and physical versions were, what the fees and costs were, how wallets connected, what the rewards or tiers were, which currencies were held, how delivery worked, what verification looked like — none of it is stated, because the card is gone. I will say that once here and not repeat it: for the closed card, the terms are not disclosed. Where I give figures further down, I mark clearly whether they came from the card or from a third party.
If you already had the card
If you are reading this because you once held a BitPay card, your question is almost certainly about money rather than features. Here is what is documented.
The last day to load the card was 1 June 2023. After that, spending and ATM access ended on 15 June 2023. Remaining balances were to be issued as a cheque to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days after that 15 June cut-off, so around 30 June 2023. I could not find any stated refund amount and no claims process described anywhere public. That absence is itself the information: if you never received a cheque, the public record gives you no procedure to follow, which is why this section exists.
If you are still waiting on a cheque, two things are worth checking in your own files rather than on any website: the address the card was linked to, and the date you last loaded it. Both determine whether there was a balance to send in the first place. A card that was never loaded, or was loaded after 1 June 2023, would not have produced a cheque.
On the card’s own limits and costs, I have to be careful. Officially, ATM access, spending limits, funding routes, top-up methods, withdrawal terms and the dispute process are not stated, because the programme is closed. The figures circulating online are historical and unofficial, gathered from third-party reviews of the card when it still existed, and I am reproducing them as reported rather than as terms:
- $2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal.
- $5 per month dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity.
- $10 for a standard card replacement.
- A 3% foreign transaction fee.
- A $10,000 daily purchase cap and a $25,000 monthly ATM cap (historical, unofficial figures from third-party reviews; programme closed).
None of these are confirmed by BitPay now, and you should not treat any of them as a live term. Their only use is to help you sanity-check a balance or a statement from 2023 against what the card was said to charge.
Support is the other half of this section, and the honest half. BitPay’s site still carries a help library, and support is described as reachable from the app — but that is the company’s support, not card support, and card support has ceased. Languages and hours are not stated. If your question is specifically about a 2023 card balance or a cheque, the help library is where you would start, with the understanding that the card itself is no longer a supported product.
What can go wrong
The failure mode here is not a bad experience with a card that works. It is a card that stopped working and a balance with nowhere obvious to go. Support and ATM access ceased on 15 June 2023, after the last loading day of 1 June 2023 and after balances were mailed by cheque around 30 June 2023, and the root cause was the issuing bank leaving crypto banking. A replacement card that had been promised is reported never to have launched. This is also not the first time a crypto card programme has ended on the same card: the non-US prepaid Visa was shut down in 2018 after Visa revoked WaveCrest’s licence.
Complaints about the company itself are worth reading with the same care. On Trustpilot, BitPay the company — not the card — sits at 1.2 out of 5 across 299 reviews as I read them, with 89% of them one-star. The recurring themes, from reports in 2025 and 2026, are funds that cannot be withdrawn or sent, KYC that is burdensome or refused (including one report of KYC demanded for a $15 payment), support reachable only by bots with no phone option, and accounts closed without an explanation. The company does not reply to negative reviews. Some reviews are scam-loss claims promoting recovery services; those are unverified and I would ignore them entirely, as I have.
Here is the part that matters most for anyone weighing a card like this today. Vaults of this size have failed before, and not always because of anything users did: Mt. Gox reported about US$350 million stolen between 2011 and 2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, and Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022. Holding funds with a custodian carries counterparty and hack risk, and that risk is not hypothetical history. If you hold crypto with a provider rather than in your own wallet, you are trusting them with the keys, and transfers are typically irreversible: a stolen key has no recovery mechanism, because the network cannot freeze or return funds.
Card-specific risks apply on top. A declined payment can leave a hold on your money for up to seven days. Some merchants refuse prepaid or foreign-issued cards outright, because the issuer identification number at the front of the card number reveals the card type and the country of issue — and an address verification service, which compares the street number and postcode a buyer typed against the issuer’s records, is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines at checkout for no visible reason. Some issuers block the gambling merchant category code, 7995, on particular cards by policy rather than by law, and the blocked list varies by issuer. None of this is a reason to fear a card. It is a reason to check, before you depend on one, whether the merchants you actually use accept it.
I should also be straight about what I could not verify about security: the card’s own security arrangements are not stated, because the programme is closed. The wallet provider is named as BitPay Software, LLC.
What to take instead
None of these is BitPay. They are the options that exist now, drawn from the same review set, and each one carries its own problems. Scores are from the same scale, out of 10.
| Option | Score | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Young Card | 5.7 / 10 | A crypto card with tiered cashback paid in YNG tokens |
| Cardex | 5.6 / 10 | A debit crypto card on the VERVE, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay networks, virtual and physical, Naira-focused |
| International Visa Card | 6.7 / 10 | A U.S.-issued Platinum Visa, virtual, paying in USD |
International Visa Card
This is the highest-scoring of the three, and it is the one whose restrictions are written down most clearly, which is worth something on its own. It is a U.S.-issued Platinum Visa card, virtual, paying in USD; a physical card is listed as “Coming soon”. Issuance of the virtual card costs $5 one-time with no maintenance fee. Plans are Classic at no charge, Pro at $9.00 per month and Max at $19.00 per month. Card use in USD is free on every plan. Foreign currency conversion is charged at the “Visa exchange rate + 2% FX fee”. Deposits of any kind carry no fee, and USDC or USDT can be deposited into the USD account free at 1:1, alongside USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow deposits. No cashback is stated.
The exclusions are extensive, and they turn on residence or registration rather than citizenship: residents and legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam are not eligible; FATF grey-list countries are reviewed case by case with compliance approval. Purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. If you are in one of those places, this is not your card.
Cardex
Cardex describes itself as “One crypto card, 200+ countries”, with no country list and no exclusions published. It runs on the VERVE, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay networks, with both virtual and physical cards according to its App Store listing, and that listing is Naira-focused — you pay in Naira. Funding is from USDT, USDC and BTC wallets, networks not stated. The distinctive claim is the conversion: real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion at the moment of payment, with what the site calls an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchange rates and picks the best one when you spend. No fee percentage is stated anywhere on the site, which is the thing I would want answered before loading it. Cost and rewards are not stated either.
Young Card
Young Card pays cashback in YNG tokens rather than in fiat, at a rate set by club tier: Essential 0.1%, Gold 1.8% and Platinum 3.6%, with Bronze and Silver not stated. The gap between Essential and Platinum is thirty-six times, so the tier you are placed in matters more than the headline rate. Beyond that, eligibility, card type and cost are not stated. Read this one carefully rather than quickly: a cashback rate quoted at Platinum is not a rate you have been given.
Who I would recommend it to
Honestly? I would not recommend the BitPay card to anyone, because recommending it would mean recommending something that cannot be obtained or used. The card programme ended on 15 June 2023 and its pages are gone. That is the whole of the recommendation.
What I would say to the two groups who have a reason to keep reading:
- If you held a BitPay card and never got a cheque, the last loading day was 1 June 2023, the card stopped on 15 June 2023, and cheques went out around 30 June 2023. The public record describes no claims process, so start with BitPay’s help library and the address the card was linked to, and treat any third-party recovery service advertising to you as a scam risk rather than a solution.
- If you are starting fresh and want a crypto card in 2026, use the section above as a shortlist rather than this page as a recommendation. The International Visa Card has the clearest published terms and the highest score, but its country exclusions may rule you out. Cardex and Young Card both leave important things unstated, particularly fees in Cardex’s case.
The general lesson is worth more than the card. A crypto card is a stack of dependencies — a network, a licensed issuer, and a brand on the front — and only the middle of that stack is regulated in a way that protects you when something changes. When it does change, you get a notice, a stop date, and a cheque, in that order, and no fallback. Check what happens to your balance before you load, not after.
Frequently asked questions
What was the BitPay card?
The BitPay card was a prepaid Mastercard, virtual and physical, funded from a crypto wallet and usable at merchants and ATMs. It was issued through a partner bank rather than by BitPay itself, which is why the issuer’s decision ended it. The programme stopped loading on 1 June 2023 and spending and ATM access ended on 15 June 2023. BitPay’s site no longer has a card page.
Is BitPay a bank?
No. BitPay is a crypto wallet provider and payment company, and it states it is “licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services” — a company-level virtual currency licence, not a banking licence. The bank that issued the card was a separate institution. That distinction is exactly why the card could be wound down without BitPay the wallet disappearing.
Can I still get a BitPay card?
No, as far as the public record shows. One review reports the promised replacement card never launched, and a third-party site claims applications are paused with an undated waitlist, which I could not confirm. BitPay’s site in 2026 shows no card. There is no application to submit and no announced date when one will exist again.
What happened to money left on the BitPay card?
Remaining balances were to be mailed as a 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 are described anywhere public. If no cheque arrived, the address on the card and your last loading date are the two things to check first.
Did the BitPay card have fees?
Officially, the card’s costs are not disclosed now that the programme is closed. Historical figures from third-party reviews report a 3% foreign transaction fee, $2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal, a $5 per month dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity, and $10 for a standard card replacement. These are unofficial and not confirmed by BitPay, so treat them as history, not terms.
Is the BitPay card safe to use?
There is no BitPay card to use. If you mean the company, Trustpilot shows BitPay at 1.2 out of 5 across 299 reviews, with recurring complaints about funds that cannot be sent, refused KYC, bot-only support and unexplained account closures. Some of those reviews promote recovery services after scam losses; those are unverified and should be ignored.
How does a crypto card work at a shop?
A card number starts with six or eight issuer digits that identify the issuing bank and country, which merchants can look up. Most crypto cards behave like prepaid cards: you convert or top up a balance first, and the card spends only that, so it cannot overdraw. That issuer country is why a card issued in one country can be declined or scrutinised in another.
Can I add the BitPay card to Apple Wallet?
No — that is a question about a card that no longer exists, since loading ended 1 June 2023 and the card stopped working on 15 June 2023. If you are shopping a crypto card in 2026, ask any provider directly whether its card number can be added to Apple Pay. When it can, the number is replaced by a device-specific number stored in the phone’s secure hardware, with a fresh security code per payment.
Is the BitPay wallet still worth using?
That is a separate question from this card, and my 1.7 out of 10 applies only to the card. The wallet is still distributed with App Store, Google Play, Windows and Mac badges on the site, and I did not read store ratings. Judging the wallet means looking at custody, fees, supported networks and your own security habits — not the fate of a card programme that ended in 2023.
Who owns BitPay?
BitPay is a private company, not a bank, and it is not owned by the exchange or by the card networks. Its card programme depended on a third-party issuing bank, and the company-level virtual currency licence it holds from the New York regulator does not extend to a card product. If someone approaching you claims otherwise, that is worth checking before you deposit anything.
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