The card no longer exists: a review of BitPay's closed programme

Updated October 2026

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If you have landed here wondering how to get a BitPay card, or how much it costs, or whether it is safe to use, the first thing to know is that the question has already been answered by the company: there is no BitPay card to get. The prepaid Mastercard programme stopped loading on 1 June 2023 and stopped spending and ATM access entirely on 15 June 2023. There is no card page on BitPay’s site in 2026, no application, no card to order. What remains is a company — a licensed one, in its own corporate sense — a wallet app, and a set of questions that people still type into search engines because they still hold a balance, or a memory of one.

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

I score this card 1.7 out of 10, and I want to be honest about what that number means. It is not a bad review of a good card. It is a rating of a product that no longer exists, scored against every criterion a reader would reasonably apply. A card that is closed and has no support cannot score well on everyday use, on top-up options or on reliability. The number exists so that the page can be read in one line, not so that you can conclude the company is a fraud.

Who this page is for, then. It is for the person who held one of these cards, who still has money sitting in a BitPay wallet and is not sure what happened to it, or who is simply wondering whether BitPay offers a card in their country and would rather not waste an afternoon finding out. It is also, briefly, for the person choosing a card now: there are three live options further down, each described with its own costs and country rules, and one of them may fit you better than anything BitPay once offered.

Verdict: 1.7 out of 10, because the card is closed

The BitPay card programme scored 1.7 / 10 across the criteria I apply to any card in this category. The breakdown below uses the same marks I use everywhere, copied exactly, with the reason written out so you can argue with it if you disagree.

A note on who I keep this score for. The most useful reader here is a former cardholder trying to track down a leftover balance. That is the person the Trustpilot complaints and the cheque story actually concern, and it is the person I write the middle of this page for.

I should also say what this score is not. It is not a claim that BitPay stole anyone’s money, and it is not a claim that the wallet inside the app is a scam — the company states it is licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services, with NMLS ID#1496848. That licence is company-wide, not about the card. The card was a product built on top of a regulated business, and when the bank underneath it left, the card went with it. That is the whole story, and it is a story that has happened to other card programmes before.

What happened to the programme

The card ended because the bank underneath it left crypto. In January 2023, Metropolitan Commercial Bank 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 mailed as cheques to the address linked to the card, around 30 June 2023.

There is one more thread to pull: this is not the first time. An earlier BitPay prepaid Visa outside the US was shut down in 2018, after Visa revoked WaveCrest’s licence. So the pattern you are looking at — a crypto card brand, a licensed issuer, a network that can switch the programme off — is not an accident of 2023. It is the structural condition of this product category, and I would rather you understood that than believed you had found a card that avoids it.

Sources disagree slightly on what happened afterwards, and I will not pretend they do not. One review says the replacement card never launched. Another source, CryptoCardHub, says new applications are paused with a waitlist open, though that page carries no date. The BitPay site as I read it in 2026 shows no card at all. Where sources conflict like this, the dated primary evidence wins: the last date I can point to with confidence is 15 June 2023, and everything after that is either undated or third-party.

What about the card itself — who could get it, what it cost, what currencies it held, how it was delivered, whether it needed KYC, whether there were tiers or rewards? None of that is stated on the company’s public pages, because the pages are gone. I am not going to reconstruct them from memory, because memory is exactly how bad financial advice gets written. If you need the historical terms, the two figures that circulated most widely are unofficial and unconfirmed by the card: a 3% foreign transaction fee, and $2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal, plus a $5 monthly dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity and $10 for a standard card replacement. Treat those as what they are — third-party figures about a closed product, not a schedule BitPay published.

One thing the site does still show is the app: download badges for App Store, Google Play, Windows and Mac. No ratings are displayed on those badges, and I did not read the store listings, so I have nothing to tell you about how users rate the wallet itself.

If you already have the card: what to do with the money

If you are in the position of someone reading this who had a card, the practical question is not about fees or limits. It is whether there is anything left for you and where it went. The card’s own terms on that are not stated, because the programme is closed. The dates are: the last day to load the card was 1 June 2023, spending and ATM access ended 15 June 2023, and remaining balances were to be issued as a cheque to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days of that cut-off.

I have to be straight with you about two things. First, no refund amount is stated anywhere I could find, and no claims process is stated either. If you had a balance and did not receive a cheque, there is no published route I can point you to. Second, and more importantly — a cheque is not the same as the money. It takes days to arrive, it can bounce, and if the address on the card was old or wrong, it may simply not reach you.

Support itself is the other half of the problem. The site lists a help library and says support is reachable from the app, but card support has ceased. Languages and hours are not stated. In practice, that means the people who could answer a card question no longer exist for this product, and the Trustpilot record shows what that produces: complaints about bots-only support with no phone line, from 2026. Those reviews are about the BitPay company rather than the card, and they are dated June to October 2026 — long after the card closed — so read them as a picture of the company’s current support posture, not as a card review.

Should you chase BitPay? There is a reasonable case for trying the app’s support channel, because the company is live and licensed even if the card is not. What there is no case for is treating a small leftover balance as a reason to hand over identity documents to anyone who contacts you first. Some of the complaint threads on Trustpilot concern scam-loss claims that promote paid recovery services; those claims are unverified and I would ignore them entirely. Recovery firms that approach you after a loss are a standard pattern for exactly this reason.

Two unofficial figures circulated for the historical card, both from third-party reviews and both about a closed programme, so do not plan around them: a $10,000 daily purchase cap and a $25,000 monthly ATM cap, and $2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal. If you are trying to reconstruct what you should have been paid back, neither number helps, because neither was a promise of any remaining balance.

What can go wrong with a card like this

The BitPay case is instructive precisely because it is not exotic. Let me draw the general lesson honestly, and where a fact below comes from a third party rather than from the company, I will say so.

The issuer can leave. A crypto card sits on three parties: the network, which routes messages and sets the rules; the issuer, a bank or e-money institution licensed under that network; and the crypto brand, which is often just a programme manager and front-end. The brand can be large and licensed while the issuer is a smaller bank with its own risk appetite. When Metropolitan Commercial Bank exited crypto banking, the card had nowhere to stand. The same happened to the FTX US debit card: Visa said in November 2022 it had terminated its global agreements with FTX, and the programme was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme.

Closures follow a shape. Typically a notice period, then loading stops, then spending stops, then users are asked to withdraw. BitPay’s own sequence matches: the 17 May 2023 email, 1 June loading, 15 June spending and ATM, cheques around 30 June.

Nothing is recoverable from a closed cheque process. You have no card, no support, and no stated claims route. That asymmetry — you give the money first, you get it back only if the winding-down process works — is the actual risk. Not fraud; just the ordinary fragility of a product whose provider can be switched off by someone you will never meet.

What that means for a live card instead. A few things follow from how card payments work, and they are worth knowing before you pick one of the alternatives below:

• A card number tells its story. The first 6 or 8 digits of any card number are an issuer identification number identifying the issuing institution. Merchants can look it up to see which institution and country issued the card, and may apply extra scrutiny if the issuer country differs from the billing address. This is why a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another — and why prepaid or foreign-issued cards get declined at the counter.
• Prepaid is a different animal from debit. A prepaid card draws on a stored balance; a debit card asks your bank to withdraw from a linked account. Many crypto cards behave like the prepaid kind: your crypto is converted and loaded as fiat balance, and the card can spend only that balance, so it cannot overdraw. That is convenient and it is also why there is nothing to overdraw.
• Holds can sit on your money for days. A declined authorisation may leave a hold that can remain for several days, typically up to 7.
• Blocks are policy, not law. Gambling merchants carry a four-digit category code, 7995, and many issuers block it on specific cards by policy. The blocked list varies by issuer, so “my card was refused at a betting site” says more about the issuer than about you.
• Address checks do not travel well. The Address Verification Service compares the numeric parts of a billing address against issuer records, and is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK. It is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines.
• Cold wallets and cold accounts are not the same thing. With a self-custody-linked card the funds stay in your own wallet until the moment of payment; with a custodial one you trust the provider completely. Custodial platforms have a record of failures — Mt. Gox, about US$350 million reported stolen 2011–2014; Coincheck, about US$400 million in 2018; Ronin Network, US$625 million in 2022.
• Two kinds of deposit mistake are unrecoverable. Blockchain transfers are typically irreversible, so a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address on another network, can be lost. Note that Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. And stablecoins are not censorship-proof: Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity.
• Regular accounts close for ordinary reasons. If due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to refrain from the transaction or relationship and, where necessary, end existing relationships. That is why accounts get closed pending documents. Nationality is screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening often applies to citizenship and country of birth as well as address.

On the company-specific side: BitPay’s security arrangements for the card are not stated, since the programme is closed; the wallet provider is named as BitPay Software, LLC. And the complaints picture needs one careful sentence. On Trustpilot, as read on 20 October 2026, BitPay the company scores 1.2/5 from 299 reviews, with 89% one-star. Themes include funds that cannot be withdrawn or sent (June to October 2026), KYC described as burdensome or declined (January to October 2026 — one report describes KYC required for a $15 payment in October 2026), bots-only support with no phone (2026), and account closure refused (December 2025). Some threads are scam-loss claims promoting recovery services; those are unverified and should be ignored. The company does not reply to negative reviews. None of that is proof of wrongdoing, and all of it is relevant if you are deciding how much to trust a company’s own promises.

What to take instead

If you need a card that spends crypto — or a card at all when ordinary banking is awkward — these are the live options I would put next to each other. I am not recommending any of them; I am showing you the trade-off, including the country rules, because those are what decide it in practice.

Here is how eligibility is drawn, and this is the part people most often get wrong. RedotPay’s KYC list says that if you are a citizen of any listed country or region you will not be able to complete identity verification or use its services, and that restrictions are “based on local regulations and sanction policies—not on individuals”. A separate card-issuance list, dated 28 August 2026, adds India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Singapore and Turkey, saying residents of those areas are ineligible for both virtual and physical cards and cannot use them as billing addresses, with citizenship not mentioned. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia appear on both lists. Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the UAE appear on neither.

Bybit’s card help centre lists Argentina, AIFC (Kazakhstan), Georgia, Kazakhstan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Asia Pacific; unsupported countries can register interest instead. The cards page states plainly: “This product is not meant for European Economic Area customers. All European Economic Area customer participation is strictly prohibited.” Its fiat-service restricted list — deposits, withdrawals and One-Click Buy, not the card itself — includes Belarus, the Russian Federation, Serbia, China and the United States, with Russian users able to make only RUB fiat transactions. I found no card-specific statement on Russian or Belarusian citizens and no citizenship-versus-residence rule.

MetaMask is open in 45 listed countries and territories — Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Uruguay among them — with other regions on a waitlist, and it requires proof of residency. Citizenship rule not stated; US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per its FAQ. One line of its own words is worth repeating: “Ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending.”

Two things in that table deserve a second look.

RedotPay’s small charges add up quietly. Beyond the 1.00% transaction fee, a transaction in a currency other than the default costs 1.20%; small authorisations of 1.00 USD or less are free for the first five per card per month and 0.2 USD after; declined transactions are free for the first three per month and 0.5 USD after. Some merchants add 1.5% with a 0.50 USD minimum — Gulf Health Counsel, Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, Brawl Stars, eFootball, Facebook Ads, Discord — waived for the first three per month. That table is effective 1 December 2025. Also note the welcome reward cannot be used toward the issuance fee.

Bybit’s rewards are conditional in a way that matters. From 5 October 2026 at 10:00 UTC, only crypto-funded transactions earn points or cashback; fiat-funded spending does not. The tiers run Base 2.00% with a 5 USD monthly cap, Beta 2% and 50 USD at 500 USD monthly spend, Alpha 4% and 150 USD at 3,500, Apex 6% and 250 USD at 9,500, Omega 8% and 400 USD at 12,500, Infinite 10% and 600 USD at 25,000. Points stay pending four calendar days; cashback arrives in USDT as points × 0.002. And its FX terms vary sharply by region — 2% on top of the network rate in Australia, Asia Pacific, Georgia and Mexico; 7% in Argentina, with VAT at 21% and a 30% tax on foreign transactions; 1.5% in Brazil; 1% in Peru, where Argentina-style taxes also appear.

For MetaMask, the rewards line has a catch that the footnote gives away: 3% applies only to the first $10,000 spent, then 1%.

One warning that applies to all three: there is no route here for someone who cannot pass KYC, and none of these providers will work around a country’s rules. If your country is restricted, take that as the answer.

Who I would recommend it to

Straight answer: nobody, for the purpose of getting a card. There is nothing to recommend. If you came here looking for a BitPay card to spend crypto, close the tab and look at the three cards above.

There are exactly two groups I would point this page at, and the second is the one I keep returning to.

The first is a former cardholder with a leftover balance. Check the sequence of dates above, look for a cheque to the address you gave BitPay, and if nothing arrived, use the app’s support channel once — with your transaction references in hand — and expect the human to be gone. Do not pay anyone who offers to recover it for a fee.

The second is anyone comparing crypto cards on safety. This page is worth reading for one lesson: the card is a thin layer on top of a bank, and the bank can leave. BitPay’s own corporate licensing did not protect the card; the issuing bank’s decision did. That is the same exposure FTX cardholders had in 2022 and WaveCrest cardholders had in 2018. So when you compare the alternatives, ask not “is the brand licensed?” but “who is the issuer, and would I still have this card if that bank left crypto?” For a card you use daily, that question matters more than any cashback rate.

And if your real problem is that an ordinary bank card is hard to get where you live, that problem is worth naming separately. It is not solved by choosing a better crypto card; it is solved by finding the specific provider whose country rules actually include you. Two of the three above have explicit ineligibility lists, and one of them excludes all European Economic Area customers outright. Check first. It is cheaper than opening an account you cannot use.

Frequently asked questions

What was the BitPay card?

It was a prepaid Mastercard that drew on a balance you loaded from crypto, rather than on a bank account. The programme closed: loading stopped 1 June 2023, and spending and ATM access ended 15 June 2023, after the issuing bank exited crypto banking. BitPay’s site no longer shows a card in 2026.

How did the BitPay card work?

You converted crypto into a fiat balance, loaded the card, and the card spent only that balance. That is the prepaid model, not the debit model where a bank withdraws from your account at each purchase. In practice the brand was a front-end over an issuing bank, and when the bank left, the card had nothing underneath it.

Is BitPay a bank?

No. BitPay states it is licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services, with NMLS ID#1496848 — but that is a company-level licence, not a banking licence, and not a licence of the card. The card’s issuer is not officially stated, and in any case the network was a prepaid Mastercard programme.

Who owns BitPay?

That is not stated in the sources I read, so I will not guess. What is stated: the wallet provider is named as BitPay Software, LLC, and the company describes itself as licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Is the BitPay card available in my country?

No, in any country. There is no card to be eligible for. The programme ended globally on 15 June 2023, the site no longer lists a card, and one source says new applications are paused with a waitlist, while another says the replacement never launched. No replacement card is documented.

Can I still use the card or the ATM?

No. Spending and ATM access both ceased on 15 June 2023, and card support has ceased too. If you had money on the card, the stated plan was a cheque to your linked address within roughly 30 days of that cut-off. No refund amount or claims process is published.

How do I get my money back?

Check for a cheque first, then use the support channel in the app with your transaction details. Be careful after that: some complaint threads concern scam-loss claims promoting paid recovery services, and those are unverified. No published claims process exists, so treat the app’s support as your only realistic route.

Was the BitPay card safe?

The card itself no longer exists, so the question is moot — but the company is worth assessing on its own record. Trustpilot shows BitPay at 1.2/5 from 299 reviews, 89% one-star, with themes of funds that cannot be withdrawn, burdensome or declined KYC, and bots-only support. These are company reviews, not card reviews, and the company does not reply to negative reviews.

Is it worth switching to RedotPay, Bybit or MetaMask?

It depends on your country first and fees second. RedotPay charges 10.00 USD for a virtual card and 100.00 USD for a physical one, plus 1.00% per transaction. Bybit’s virtual card is free “until further notice” but its rewards only apply to crypto-funded spending from 5 October 2026. MetaMask’s virtual card is free with no maintenance fee.

Are crypto cards regulated?

Usually by two sets of rules at once. A card is a payment service under e-money and payment-services law — an EU electronic money institution may issue e-money, payment cards and e-wallets but cannot lend. Separately, MiCA covers the crypto side: it took legal effect in June 2023, its stablecoin rules applied from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions from 30 December 2024.

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