The card programme is over: what SORA closure means for your balance

Updated October 2026

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If you are weighing SORA against other crypto cards, the question is no longer which card is better. SORA stopped issuing cards, and its card functions stopped working after 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT. The interesting part now is what that closure does to money you may already have sitting in the card account, and what to look at instead. I went through the card’s own pages, its fee table, its app listings and the incident notice, and this is what I found.

My score for SORA as a card to hold today is 2.2 out of 10. That is not a judgement of how the product worked while it ran — a free first card, free domestic spending and a low annual membership were genuinely attractive terms. It is a judgement of what exists now: a stopped programme, an issuer that suspended some accounts, and balances that in some cases are visible but not reachable.

The conditions described on this page are current as of October 28, 2026.

What happened to the SORA card programme

The shape of it, in short: a notice dated 10 January 2026 announced that the card, the app and the card functions inside the app would stop after Friday 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT. Before that cutoff, users were told to empty their GateHub wallets. The issuer, Unlimit, had suspended some accounts earlier. The SORA Wallet itself, as distinct from the card, was stated to continue.

That distinction matters more than it first appears. The card programme and the self-custodial wallet are two different things, run on different rails, with different risk. What died is the part that let you hold a balance and spend it in a shop.

Who the card was for: EEA residents who passed KYC, and — this is the part people miss — eligibility was decided by residence, not nationality. Residents of Russia, Iran and the DPRK were not eligible, with the full list at the site’s /blacklist page. For everyone else, that route is closed now.

What it was physically: a physical and a digital debit card. The card network was not stated on the pages I read, so I will not guess at it.

What it cost while it ran, on a fee schedule dated 17 September 2024: card issuance, virtual and physical, first card €0; monthly fee €0; a client membership of €39 per year charged after the first year. International card payments €0.90 plus 1.1%. Domestic spending free for the first 10 online and 10 point-of-sale transactions. Top-up €0. ATM withdrawals in the domestic group of EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway €1.20 plus 3%, international €1.75 plus 3%, with one free balance inquiry per month. SEPA outgoing and SEPA Instant outgoing transfers €0.50 each.

It was a single product, not a tiered one. The €39 membership is the only paid level and there are no other tiers.

Funding worked through XOR to EUR conversion or a SEPA transfer — there was no way to load crypto directly onto the card. Conversion went through a partner, and the spread was not stated, which means the real cost of converting sat somewhere I could not read. Apple Pay and Google Pay had been promised for a “Phase 2” that never arrived, and the list of blocked merchant categories was not stated either.

KYC meant a selfie, an ID document and proof of address. No tier structure and no processing time were published. Apps were listed on the App Store and Google Play; I did not read their ratings.

If you already hold the card

Here is the part I would read twice.

After 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT, the app gives you no access to balances. That is the plain wording of the closure terms. The only route is Unlimit support, at [email protected]. On accounts Unlimit had suspended, a balance may still display while remaining inaccessible until Unlimit completes its review. And SORA cannot submit release requests on your behalf — that has to come from you, through the issuer.

If you hold a balance, my read is that this is now a customer-service problem with an e-money institution, not an app problem. Nobody can tell you how long it will take, because no timeline was published.

What is still described as working:

• SORA Wallet, the self-custodial side, continues. Your keys stay with you.
• The support channels remain listed on the SORA support portal, with contact details at [email protected], plus Discord, Telegram, X and Reddit. The site runs in English and Spanish; Russian is not offered. Hours were not stated.
• The card fees page still exists, which is where you would look for the missing numbers.

What I could not find on the pages I read: spending limits, which the site points to at the SORA card fees page but were not present; dispute handling; replacement card cost; and any fee specific to the closure.

Two things worth separating in your head. First, crypto still held in your own wallet under self-custody was never the card’s money and is not part of this problem. Second, anything that reached the card account went to an e-money institution, and e-money balances are not bank deposits — see the risk section below.

Scorecard

The cost line is the only one that looks like a healthy product, and it deserves a caveat: you cannot spend a €0 monthly fee on a card that does not work.

What can go wrong

Your balance can be visible and still untouchable. This is the specific failure mode described: suspended accounts may show a balance that stays inaccessible until Unlimit’s review. It is worse than not seeing the money, because it looks like the money is there.

Nobody is going to file the paperwork for you. SORA explicitly cannot submit release requests for users. The request has to originate from you.

The card’s money was never bank money. SORA Biome, in Bulgaria, runs the site and the apps. The card itself was issued by Unlimit EU Ltd, an e-money institution in Cyprus licensed by the Central Bank of Cyprus under licence 115.1.3.7. An EMI holds customer funds in a way that is not the same as a bank deposit — EU rules require safeguarding, through segregated accounts or insurance, but funds held by an EMI are not covered by the Cyprus Deposit Insurance scheme. That was true while the card ran, and it is the framework your claim now sits inside.

Funds in the wrong rail can be unrecoverable. If you had sent a blockchain transfer on a network the provider did not support, or to an address belonging to another network, the transfer is irreversible and recovery depends on manual support with no guarantee.

Spending limits were never published. Limits are referred to on the fees page but the amounts are absent, which leaves a real question open for anyone who had loaded a large balance.

Self-custody cuts both ways. SORA’s own security design kept crypto in the user’s wallet, with two-factor authentication and biometrics mentioned. That removes custodian risk entirely — but it also means nobody can recover a lost seed phrase. A seed phrase is typically 12 to 24 words and anyone who obtains it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. There is no reversal for a blockchain transfer, and no built-in way to freeze stolen funds.

Fee details you cannot see. The spread on crypto conversion was not stated. The list of blocked merchant categories was not stated. A card with a free monthly fee and a €0.90 + 1.1% foreign-purchase fee can still be expensive if the conversion spread is unstated.

A note on wider history. Programme shutdowns in this category are not exotic. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 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. Custodial platforms have their own record: Mt. Gox, about US$350 million reported stolen 2011–2014; Coincheck, about US$400 million in 2018; Ronin Network, US$625 million in 2022.

On complaints specifically. There is a Trustpilot page for soracard. As of 2026-10-20 I found no Reddit or Trustpilot reports describing the closure in user posts — which tells you more about where people write than about whether anything went wrong.

What to take instead

All three alternatives below score higher on the same criteria I used for SORA. What matters is that they differ structurally: two of them let crypto move straight from your own wallet to the till, and one is a stablecoin account with the most published fee schedule of the three.

MetaMask is the strongest of the three on my scoring. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories — Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Uruguay among the examples — with other regions on a waitlist. Proof of residency is required; the citizenship rule is not stated, and US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ. It issues a free virtual Mastercard instantly, with metal at $199/year, one card per user, the issuer being Monovate and the card provider Crypto Life. Spending draws directly from the connected wallet on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, across mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. The fee wording is “minimal fee for each transaction” with no additional MetaMask fees and no foreign transaction fee; the amount is on a linked table I did not read. Cashback is paid in mUSD: 1% on Virtual, and a 3% headline on Metal that the footnote limits to the first $10,000 spent, then 1%, plus a $FLY bonus of 5X or 7X through the Blackbird dining app. One catch worth knowing: Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit.

KAST publishes the most complete fee schedule of the three. Availability is residence-based and shown at KYC — “if your country isn’t listed, it means KAST is not available there” — and the list itself is not published, though a Restricted Locations list is referenced without names. Citizenship and ID also matter: living in a supported country with only an ID from a restricted region can still fail KYC, dual citizens with a supported-country ID may pass, only the account holder’s own ID is accepted, and a VPN does not bypass it. You can create an account in an unsupported country but KYC stays locked. Cards are virtual and physical, up to 10 per user, in Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium) and Visa Infinite gold plated (Private), with other designs including Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin. The account balance is USD, with stablecoin deposits converted 1:1 at 0% spread. Annual membership is Standard 0 USD, Premium 1,000 USD/year and Private 10,000 USD/year billed upfront with no monthly option; an extra virtual card is 2 USD, the Standard physical card has a 0 USD card fee plus 40 USD delivery, and an inactivity fee of 1 USD per month kicks in after 12 months. Stablecoin top-up 0%, USD card spend 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple and Google Pay 0%; non-USD FX runs 0.5%–1.75% depending on your residence country, the transaction country and the card programme, non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD, and a declined transaction for insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD. Funding is stablecoins — USDT, USDC, PYUSD, RLUSD — on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and TRON, no bank account needed, and the Terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”, which conflicts with the PYUSD and RLUSD listing. Spending is from your own balance and each purchase is deducted immediately; this is not credit. Cashback is USD: 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD/month at Standard, 2% on the first 10,000 USD/month at Premium, 3% on the first 40,000 USD/month at Private, with KAST Points adding +1% and +2% of eligible spend on Premium and Private and none at Standard.

TokenPocket is the weakest of the three, mainly on fees. The card is a Mastercard/Visa debit running on Arbitrum, with a country-dependent card network: Visa debit for a list of European countries and territories such as Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland, Mastercard debit for Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK among others, with the Americas “planned for Q2 2025”. Fiat24 cards are virtual, no physical card is mentioned, and balances sit in EUR24 and USD24. The NFT creation fee is partly covered by TokenPocket with the user paying “a small portion” — amount not stated — and beyond that “TP Card does not charge any additional fees”. But a 1% fee is charged on depositing cryptocurrency, to be refunded later through rewards and reduced transaction fees; the FX fee is not stated, and extra fees can arise from inter-institution settlement. There is no cashback as such. Specific coins and networks are not listed in the FAQ beyond the Arbitrum wallet.

If your problem is that a normal bank card is hard to get

All three alternatives have a country list, and in each case the list does not include your country unless the provider’s page says it does. MetaMask is the one where the mechanics are stated most openly — sign-up in 45 listed countries and territories, ineligible regions limit sign-ups rather than spending, and other regions join a waitlist. KAST will let you register anywhere and then leaves KYC locked. TokenPocket’s coverage is split by card network, which makes it the hardest to reason about in advance.

Two general points on why a card can be declined for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Merchants look up the issuer identification number at the front of the card number to see which institution and country issued it, and may apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards for exactly that reason. Address verification compares the numeric parts of the billing address you type with issuer records; it is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines.

I am not in a position to tell you which of these will work for you, and I would not want to guess. The country rules are the ones the provider publishes, and they change.

Who I would recommend it to

Nobody, as a card to open or keep. With issuance closed and card functions stopped, there is nothing to recommend — this is not a card where I am weighing the trade-offs.

If you already had money in it, my advice is narrow and practical:

1. Write to [email protected] about balance release, and keep a copy of whatever they send you. SORA cannot file it for you.
2. Separate what is in your own wallet from what is in the card account. The wallet side is self-custodied and continues; the card side is an e-money claim against Unlimit EU Ltd.
3. Do not expect deposit-insurance treatment on the card balance. It is not a bank deposit.
4. Assume anything that takes more than a few weeks is worth following up in writing, and check what your own jurisdiction’s rules give you for e-money complaints.

If you are looking for a replacement, start from the country list, not from the fees. MetaMask is where I would look first on the strength of the scoring and the clarity of the eligibility wording, KAST if you want every fee printed, and TokenPocket if the Arbitrum route is already part of how you hold money. None of them is a promise about your own situation, and none of them is a substitute for reading the provider’s own terms.

One last thing on what a card cannot do for you. These are payment instruments, not credit. And they are not tax instruments: the IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss measured in local currency at the fair market value on the date of the transaction — which means each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. Nothing here is tax advice; check your own position.

Frequently asked questions

What was the SORA card?

It was a physical and digital debit card for EEA residents, run by SORA Biome in Bulgaria and issued by Unlimit EU Ltd, a Cypriot e-money institution. Spending drew on a balance you loaded by converting XOR to EUR or by SEPA transfer. Issuance is closed and the app’s card functions stopped after 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT.

Is SORA a bank?

No. SORA Biome is a company that ran the site and the apps; the card was issued by Unlimit EU Ltd, an electronic money institution licensed by the Central Bank of Cyprus under licence 115.1.3.7. An EMI cannot lend, and its safeguarded customer funds are not the same as bank deposits — they are not covered by the Cyprus Deposit Insurance scheme.

Who owns SORA?

SORA is not a network in the way Visa or Mastercard are. SORA Biome marketed the programme, Unlimit EU Ltd issued the card under its EMI licence, and the card network itself was not stated on the pages I read. This three-layer structure — brand, issuer, network — is common across crypto cards and is the reason one company’s closure does not necessarily shut the whole thing down.

Can I still apply for a SORA card?

No. Ordering was open to EEA residents passing KYC, eligibility was decided by residence rather than nationality, and residents of Russia, Iran and the DPRK were excluded with a full list at /blacklist. But issuance is closed entirely now, so none of that is actionable.

Is the SORA card safe?

The crypto side was self-custodial, meaning you kept the keys and no custodian could move your funds. The card side was an e-money balance at an issuer not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. As of 2026-10-20 I found no Reddit or Trustpilot user reports about the closure; there is a Trustpilot page for soracard, and no cause for the programme ending was stated.

How do I get my money back from SORA?

After 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT the app gives no access to balances, so Unlimit support at [email protected] is the only route. On suspended accounts a balance may show but stay inaccessible until Unlimit’s review completes. SORA cannot submit release requests on your behalf, so the request has to come from you.

What happened to my crypto that was in a GateHub wallet?

The notice dated 10 January 2026 required GateHub wallets to be emptied before the cutoff of Friday 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT. Anything still there is outside the card programme. SORA Wallet, the self-custodial side, was stated to continue, so a wallet you hold the keys to was never part of this closure.

Was the SORA card free?

The first card was €0, both virtual and physical, and the monthly fee was €0. A client membership of €39 per year was charged after the first year, and that was the only paid level. International card payments were €0.90 plus 1.1%, ATM withdrawals €1.20 plus 3% domestically and €1.75 plus 3% internationally. None of that matters now that the card is closed.

Is it worth switching to MetaMask, KAST or TokenPocket?

All three score higher than SORA on the criteria I used — 7.1, 6.1 and 5.8 against 2.2 — but they serve different needs. MetaMask spends directly from your connected wallet with a free virtual card. KAST prints nearly every fee but gates on residence and ID at KYC. TokenPocket runs on Arbitrum and charges 1% on crypto deposits.

Are crypto cards legal where I live?

Usually, but the rules differ by country and by what sits underneath. In the EU, MiCA took legal effect in June 2023, with rules on asset-referenced and e-money tokens applying from 30 June 2024 and CASP rules from 30 December 2024; e-money tokens may only be issued by a credit institution or an EMI. A card is regulated separately as a payment service, so a crypto card often rests on two licences. In the US, FinCEN guidance treats administrators and exchangers of convertible virtual currency as money transmitters. Always check whether your country is on the provider’s list before you move anything.

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