A card programme switched off mid-winter: what SORA's closure means for the money left on it

Updated October 2026

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If you came here to decide whether the SORA card is worth getting, the short answer is that the question no longer applies: the card programme is closed. The card and the card functions inside the app stopped after 30 January 2026, and new cards are not being issued. There is no application to fill in, no fee schedule to compare, and no product launch to wait for. If you already hold one — or you once did and left money on it — then this page is about a different and more urgent set of questions: where your balance sits, why the app will not show it to you, and who has to answer you. The conditions described below are current as of October 28, 2026.

I want to be blunt about the framing before anything else. A review normally asks you to compare a card’s fees against its rewards and decide. Here there is nothing left to weigh, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. What I can still do is tell you exactly how the programme ended, what the card’s terms said while it existed, where the money is and who controls it, and what I would look at instead. Everything below is taken from the card’s own public pages and from what it announced; where a detail was never published, I say so rather than filling the gap.

The verdict: 2.2 out of 10, and the only audience that matters now is a holder with money to withdraw

My score for this card is 2.2 out of 10. That number is not a judgement on how the product worked while it existed — it is a judgement on what you are looking at today, which is a switched-off programme with stranded balances. A score has to describe the thing as it stands, and the thing as it stands cannot be used.

Read the bottom two rows together. Reliability scored 1 out of 10 because the programme has ended, the issuer Unlimit EU Ltd suspended part of the accounts, and balances are inaccessible until Unlimit reviews them. Everyday use scored 3 out of 10 because there was a real card to hold and real ATMs to use, but the mobile wallets were promised for a later phase rather than delivered, and now none of it works.

Who this suits now: nobody who wants a card. Who it concerns: people already holding one. If your card is in a drawer with a balance behind it, you are not choosing a product — you are collecting money that a licensed institution is holding for you, and the practical question is how to get it. That is a service-recovery problem, not a shopping decision.

What happened to the programme

The card’s own notice, dated 10 January 2026, said that the card, the app and the card functions within the app would stop after Friday 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT. On the same notice, holders of crypto in GateHub wallets were told to empty those wallets before the cut-off. The notice also referred back to Unlimit suspending some accounts earlier. The SORA Wallet itself was to continue. In other words, the crypto side of the business was presented as continuing while the card side was switched off, and the customers who had money sitting in the card programme were the ones who had to act.

That is the shape of a programme closure, and it is worth knowing because it is common. Typically there is a notice period, then spending and loading stop, and then users are asked to withdraw whatever is left. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source ended new loads on 8 July 2026 and spending on 8 August 2026 — a single, unconfirmed report, offered here only as an illustration of the pattern rather than as anything to do with SORA. SORA’s own dates are the 10 January 2026 notice and the 30 January 2026, 18:00 GMT stop.

Who the card was for, while it existed: residents of the EEA who passed KYC — by residence, not by nationality. Residents of Russia, Iran and the DPRK were not eligible, with the full list at a /blacklist page. KYC itself was required, and the card’s pages described what that meant in practice: a selfie, an ID document and proof of address. No tiers or processing times were stated. The card was a physical and a digital debit card; the network it ran on was not stated on the pages I read. Ordering was open to EEA residents, and there was one product, not a ladder of them.

The fees, as dated 17 September 2024, were genuinely competitive at the front end. Card issuance, virtual and physical, first card €0. The monthly fee was €0. Client membership was €39 per year after the first year, and that was the only paid level — there were no other tiers. Domestic payments were free for the first 10 online and 10 point-of-sale transactions; international card payments were €0.90 + 1.1%; top-up was €0. Cash withdrawals were €1.20 + 3% in the domestic zone — the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — and €1.75 + 3% internationally, with one free balance inquiry per month. Outgoing SEPA and SEPA Instant transfers were €0.50 each. The app stated that withdrawals in a currency other than the card currency are charged as international, though the card currency was not named, and conversion ran between XOR and EUR with the spread not stated. Apple Pay and Google Pay were promised for a “Phase 2”; blocked categories and rewards were not stated.

The only part of that schedule that matters to most readers now is the membership line and the balance line. A €39 annual fee is a small thing to argue about. A balance you cannot see is not.

If you already have 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 your balances. The only route stated is Unlimit’s support — [email protected]. Accounts that Unlimit suspended may still display a balance, but that balance stays inaccessible until Unlimit completes its review. And the part that will grate most: SORA cannot submit release requests on users’ behalf. You are not going to get a form filled in for you by the people whose brand is on the card.

I am not going to tell you what to write in that email, because I have no idea whether it would help and neither will the person who invents it for you. What I will say is what the facts imply. Your money is not held by SORA. It is held by Unlimit EU Ltd, an electronic money institution licensed by the Central Bank of Cyprus under licence 115.1.3.7. SORA Biome in Bulgaria runs the site and the apps and is the brand; Unlimit is the institution that actually issued the card and holds the balance. So the entity you contact is not a favour-granting support desk but a licensed firm with obligations, and the licence number is the first thing in your message. I am not offering legal advice and I cannot tell you what you are entitled to; I am telling you where the money is, which is the fact that shapes everything else.

Two more things you should know before you write. First, the funds are e-money, not a bank deposit: an e-money institution must safeguard customer funds by segregating them or insuring them, but that is not the same as a deposit guarantee scheme. Second, on the crypto side, SORA Wallet is described as self-custodial — you keep the keys — and the card pages mention two-factor authentication and biometrics. Self-custody and a frozen card balance are two different worlds: the crypto in the wallet is yours, the fiat balance behind a dead card sits with an EMI, and no seed phrase helps you reach it.

For support generally, the card listed soracard.com/support, soracard.com/contact and [email protected], plus Discord, Telegram, X and Reddit. The site ran in English and Español; Russian was not offered. Hours were not stated. And for anything about dispute handling, fees charged during closure, or the limits the pages pointed to — amounts said to be at /fees#4 that were not actually on the page — the published material is silent. If you need a number that is not there, you have to ask, and I would rather say that than invent one.

What can go wrong

Let me separate the things that are documented from the things that are structural, because only the first kind is evidence.

Documented: the programme is closed. Unlimit suspended some accounts. Balances may be displayed and still be inaccessible. SORA will not submit release requests for users. Crypto left in GateHub wallets had to be withdrawn before the cut-off. No cause was stated for any of this. When an account is frozen pending documents, EU rules expect the institution to hold off on the transaction or the relationship and, where necessary, end it — so a suspended account is not abnormal conduct on your part, but it is also not something that resolves itself without you doing something.

Structural, and worth weighing before you hand over anything else: a crypto card sits on more than one licence. The card is a payment service regulated separately under e-money and payments law, while the crypto side falls under MiCA — Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, which ESMA says took legal effect in June 2023, with the rules on asset-referenced and e-money tokens applying from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider rules, from 30 December 2024. Under MiCA, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. That is why a crypto card programme can be live on the card side and constrained on the crypto side at the same time. SORA’s issuer was an EMI; the crypto brand was a front end over it.

And there is the reserve question that the closure makes concrete. EMIs must safeguard customer funds, by segregating them in dedicated accounts or insuring them — but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by deposit guarantee schemes. SORA’s issuer was not covered by Cyprus Deposit Insurance, the card pages state. So if recovery drags, you are not standing behind a deposit guarantee scheme; you are making a claim against an e-money institution. I will not dress that up.

One more structural point about how these things end: a merchant category code — the four-digit number classifying a business under ISO 18245 — 7995 covers gambling, and many issuers block it on specific cards by policy rather than by law, with the list varying by issuer. And declined authorisations can leave a hold on funds for several days, typically up to seven. Small things, but they are the ones that bite when money is already in an awkward state.

On trust and reviews: the official incident is the 10 January 2026 notice of termination of SORA Card services. A Trustpilot page for soracard. exists. As of 20 October 2026 no Reddit or Trustpilot reports were found. I would read the absence as thin rather than as reassurance — a programme that stopped issuing cards does not generate a steady stream of new complaints, and the people with something to complain about are the people writing to Unlimit, not posting reviews.

What to take instead

None of the following is a recommendation to sign up. They are here because if you were starting again from scratch, these are the programmes that were open and verifiable when I looked, and comparing them against each other is more useful than comparing them against a closed card. Each has a published licence chain, a stated fee schedule, and a live website.

TokenPocket, on the published facts, is the thinnest of the three: a 1% fee on depositing cryptocurrency into the card, refunded later through rewards or reduced transaction fees, virtual cards only as far as the pages go, and balances held as EUR24 and USD24. KAST is the most elaborate and, for most people, the most expensive way in: 1,000 USD a year for Premium, 10,000 for Private, though Standard is free, and it charges 0% on stablecoin top-up, USD card spend, transactions and Apple/Google Pay, with a non-USD foreign exchange fee of 0.5%–1.75% depending on your residence country, transaction country and card programme. Its cashback runs 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD a month for Standard, 2% on the first 10,000 for Premium and 3% on the first 40,000 for Private, in USD, paid when a transaction is authorised, with KAST Points of none, +1% and +2% of eligible spend.

MetaMask sits between them and has the clearest everyday-use story: it spends directly from the connected wallet, over Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT named — the page says nine tokens — and Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit. It charges “a minimal fee for each transaction” with no amount stated, no additional MetaMask fees and no foreign transaction fee; the Mastercard rate is used. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual, and for Metal a headline 3% whose footnote limits it to 3% on the first $10,000 spent and 1% thereafter, plus a $FLY bonus of 5X or 7X via the Blackbird dining app.

Two warnings about that comparison. All three were open when I looked, and openness is the thing that changed here — a programme can be live on a website and closed to you personally, because eligibility is by residence and by the country on your ID, not by citizenship alone. KAST says so explicitly: if your country is not listed at KYC, KAST is not available there, and if you live in a supported country but hold an ID from a restricted region you may still be ineligible; dual citizens with an ID from a supported country may pass. That is a KYC policy, and there is no legitimate way around it. Second, every one of these needs you to read the current fee page yourself before you commit, because I have given you the figures as published and published figures are exactly what a closed programme also had.

Who I would recommend it to

Nobody, as a card to get. That is the short answer and I do not think it needs softening.

I would keep it, though, as a case worth reading if you are already in the market for a crypto-linked card — not for the product, which is over, but for the shape of the ending. The notice date, the stop time, the instruction to empty one wallet before the cut-off, the instruction to contact a different company’s support, and the admission that the brand cannot file release requests on your behalf: that is a template, and you can read it against whichever programme you are considering. Any card whose issuer is not the brand on the front is a lesson; any card whose balance you cannot see from its own app is a warning. SORA’s own structure — a Bulgarian front end over a Cypriot EMI — is not exotic. Most of this category looks like that.

If you are a holder with money in it, my one non-financial suggestion: keep copies of everything you ever had — account emails, top-up receipts, transaction confirmations, screenshots of balances. I cannot tell you what Unlimit will need from you or when, and I will not speculate. Nor will I tell you what your balance is worth or how long it will take, because the card’s own pages do not say, and a review that invents a timeline would be worse than useless to you.

And if you were among the people this was built for — the residents of the EEA who could not get an ordinary bank card and found a crypto route instead — that problem is real and the closure does not solve it. What it does is tell you which questions to ask of the next option: who holds my money, in which country, under which licence number, and what happens to my balance on the day this stops.

Frequently asked questions

What is SORA card?

SORA was a crypto-linked debit card issued through SORA Biome in Bulgaria, with the card itself issued by Unlimit EU Ltd, an electronic money institution licensed by the Central Bank of Cyprus under licence 115.1.3.7. It came in physical and digital form and drew on a balance you loaded by converting XOR to EUR or by SEPA transfer. It is closed: the card, the app’s card functions and new issuance stopped after 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT.

How did the SORA card work?

You funded the balance first, then spent from it, much like a prepaid card. Loading was done by converting XOR into EUR or by a SEPA transfer, with a €0 top-up fee; there was no direct crypto load. Spending came out of that balance, domestic transactions were free for the first 10 online and 10 point-of-sale purchases, and international card payments cost €0.90 + 1.1%. Cash withdrawals were €1.20 + 3% domestically.

Is SORA a bank?

No. SORA Biome runs the site and the apps; the card was issued by Unlimit EU Ltd, which is an electronic money institution, not a bank. An EMI may issue e-money, payment cards and e-wallets but cannot lend, and its safeguarded customer funds are not the same as bank deposits. The card pages state that Unlimit EU Ltd is not covered by Cyprus Deposit Insurance, which matters if a balance is ever disputed.

Why did SORA card stop working?

The company’s notice of 10 January 2026 said the card, the app and the card functions would stop after Friday 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT. It also referred to Unlimit having suspended some accounts earlier, and told users to empty GateHub wallets before the cut-off. No cause was stated. The pattern — notice, then spending and loading stop, then ask users to withdraw — is typical of programme closures in this category.

How do I get my money back from SORA?

After 30 January 2026 at 18:00 GMT the app no longer gives access to balances, and the only stated route is Unlimit’s support at [email protected]. Suspended accounts may show a balance but stay inaccessible until Unlimit’s review. SORA states it cannot submit release requests for users, so the request has to come from you. The funds sit with the licensed issuer, not with the brand, which is the fact that decides who you contact.

Was SORA card free?

Partly. Card issuance, virtual and physical, and the first card were €0, and the monthly fee was €0, with domestic payments free for the first 10 online and 10 point-of-sale transactions. There was a client membership of €39 per year charged after the first year, international payments at €0.90 + 1.1%, cash withdrawals at €1.20 + 3% domestically and €1.75 + 3% internationally, and outgoing SEPA and SEPA Instant transfers at €0.50 each.

Did SORA card require KYC, and could I use it in my country?

Yes, KYC was required, described on the card’s pages as a selfie, an ID document and proof of address, with no levels or processing time stated. Eligibility was by residence in the EEA, not nationality, and residents of Russia, Iran and the DPRK were not eligible. Because the programme is closed, none of this is available now. For alternatives, eligibility also turns on residence and on the country of your ID, so a waitlist or a restricted list is a policy decision, not a formality.

Is SORA card safe?

It was never a deposit. Self-custody applied to SORA Wallet, where you keep the keys, but the card’s fiat balance sat with the EMI and, as the pages state, outside Cyprus Deposit Insurance. Crypto transfers are typically irreversible and a stolen key has no built-in recovery, and custodial platforms have a history of failure — Mt. Gox, Coincheck, Ronin. Now that the card is closed, the relevant question is not safety but recovery of a balance you cannot see.

What can I use instead of SORA card?

Three programmes were open and documented when I checked: TokenPocket at 5.8 out of 10, MetaMask at 7.1 and KAST at 6.1. MetaMask issues a Mastercard, virtual first and metal pre-orderable, spending straight from a connected wallet with no foreign transaction fee; KAST offers Visa tiers from a free Standard to a 10,000 USD-a-year Private with cashback in USD; TokenPocket offers Visa or Mastercard debit by country with a 1% crypto deposit fee. Read the current fees yourself before committing.

Is SORA Wallet still working, and is SORA card worth it?

The 10 January 2026 notice said the SORA Wallet would continue, so the crypto wallet and the card are not the same thing. On worth: with the card programme closed, there is nothing left to weigh — my mark is 2.2 out of 10. The 2.2 reflects a programme that stopped issuing cards and left balances inaccessible pending the issuer’s review, not a judgement on whether the product ever worked well.

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