The BitPay card is no longer issuing — here is what happened, who got caught, and what to use instead
Available in US
The BitPay card, once a straightforward prepaid Mastercard for spending Bitcoin and a handful of other cryptocurrencies at shops and ATMs, is no longer being issued. The programme was wound down in mid-2023, and three years on there is still no working replacement that the company sells under its own name. If you are weighing up the BitPay brand today, or you held one of the old cards and are still trying to square things away, this review walks you through what actually happened, what your options are, and which cards from other providers are worth a look.
The conditions and news below are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict
The BitPay card lands at 1.7 out of 10, and that score reflects a programme that has been closed for more than three years rather than a card you can sign up for today. There is no fresh sign-up flow, no published fee schedule for the old card, and no replacement that the company has brought to market in its place.
Here is the breakdown by criterion.
| Criterion | Mark | Why it scores where it does |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 0 / 10 | The programme is closed. The card issuer left crypto in June 2023, support and ATM access ended on 15 June 2023, and the card no longer appears on the BitPay site. |
| Cost | 3 / 10 | Unofficial, historical only. Foreign transactions were 3%, domestic ATM withdrawals $2.50, dormancy $5 per month after 90 days, card replacement $10. Nothing is published officially any more, and the card cannot be opened. |
| Top-up options | 3 / 10 | Not disclosed now. The last day to load the card was 1 June 2023, and there is no current way to put money onto a closed product. |
| Reliability and complaints | 1 / 10 | Programme closed on 15 June 2023, remaining balances were sent out as cheques. Trustpilot scores the BitPay company at 1.2 out of 5 across 299 reviews, with the overwhelming majority one-star. A promised replacement card never launched. |
| Everyday use | 2 / 10 | There is no card to use. The conditions for the virtual and physical versions, the wallet, and ATM access are not disclosed publicly. |
| Total | 1.7 / 10 |
If you are an ex-cardholder trying to track down a leftover balance, that is the situation this score is built around, and the rest of the review is shaped to your position. If you arrived here looking for a card to apply for, the short answer is that this is not one of them, and the alternatives section further down is where your reading should be.
What happened to the BitPay card
The headline is simple. The BitPay prepaid Mastercard programme was wound down in mid-2023, and as of the most recent check, no replacement card is being issued under the BitPay name. To understand why, it helps to follow the chain of events in order.
In January 2023, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, the institution that had been issuing the BitPay prepaid Mastercard, announced it was stepping back from crypto banking. That decision set a clock running for any card programme the bank was running. On 17 May 2023, cardholders received an email telling them the prepaid Mastercard programme was being shut down. Loading, the act of topping the card up from a BitPay wallet, was cut off on 1 June 2023. ATM access and spending stopped on 15 June 2023. Balances left on the cards were to be mailed as cheques to the address on file around 30 June 2023.
That is the closing sequence. There is no public detail on the issuer of any successor card, no published fee schedule, no published KYC requirement, and no current list of supported wallets, currencies, rewards or tiers. The card section of the BitPay site, the place you would expect to find a sign-up form, simply does not exist any more.
Unofficial, third-party sources from before the closure describe the old card’s pricing as a $2.50 fee per domestic ATM withdrawal, a $5 monthly dormancy fee that kicked in after 90 days of inactivity, and a $10 standard card replacement. A 3% foreign transaction fee is also reported by review sites. None of this is on the BitPay site any more, and it is not confirmed by the card itself, so treat it as a historical snapshot of what the product used to cost, not as anything you can opt into today.
The news coverage also notes that BitPay had been here before, in a different form. In 2018, the earlier non-US BitPay prepaid Visa was shut down after Visa revoked the licence of Wave Crest, the card issuer that had been supplying several crypto brands. That closure is the historical mirror of the 2023 shutdown: a card network quietly withdrawing support from an issuer, with the customer front-end left to pick up the pieces.
The status of any replacement is contested. One review of the situation says the promised replacement card never launched at all. A separate site, CryptoCardHub, says new applications are paused and a waitlist is open, but does not date that statement, and the main BitPay site does not back it up. The cautious read is that no live card is on offer, and the waitlist claim, if real, has not been converted into a working product.
What BitPay does still publish is a wallet app, with download links for the App Store, Google Play, Windows and Mac, none of which carry visible star ratings, and a company-level statement that BitPay is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services, with NMLS ID 1496848. That licence covers the wider BitPay business, not the card product, which has no stated issuer on the public site.
If you already have the card
If you are reading this because you once held a BitPay card and have a question about your money, the practical position is the one outlined above. Loading closed on 1 June 2023. ATM and point-of-sale access ended on 15 June 2023. Anything left on the card at that point was supposed to come back to you as a cheque to the address the issuer had on file, with refunds being posted roughly a month after the cut-off.
The official position does not include a published claims process, a refund amount schedule, or a helpline number for chasing missing cheques. The site’s help library and in-app support are still reachable, and that is the channel to use if a refund did not arrive or you are unsure whether one was sent. Unofficial historical figures, from a CryptoSlate review of the old product, place the daily purchase cap at $10,000 and the monthly ATM cap at $25,000, but these are the operating limits that applied while the card was live, not anything you can lean on now.
For your own to-do list, three checks tend to cover most situations. First, look in your email from May and June 2023 for the closure notice and any reference number. Second, check whether a cheque arrived at the address the card programme had on file, including any forwarding arrangements with a former address. Third, if you can still sign in to the BitPay app, look for a closed-card screen or a message thread with the support team. If none of those resolve the question, the support route in the app is the one to push.
A separate, more general concern sits underneath all of this. Reviews of the BitPay company, on Trustpilot, sit at 1.2 out of 5 across 299 reviews, with the large majority of those one star. The themes that come up over and over, in reviews dated from late 2025 into 2026, are that customers cannot withdraw or send their funds, that KYC has been declined or made unusually heavy (one example describes a $15 payment triggering KYC in October 2026), that support is bot-only with no phone line, and that account closure has been refused when customers asked for it. Some reviews also promote recovery services that promise to get money back for a fee, and the company does not reply to negative reviews. None of that is the same as saying your situation is hopeless, but it does frame what to expect if a balance is still missing: written channels, slow responses, and a need to keep your own records.
What can go wrong
Three risks are worth naming clearly, because they are the ones that have actually materialised with this product.
The first is the issuer-risk risk. A crypto card depends on a bank or e-money institution to issue the card under a network licence. When that partner pulls out, the card programme stops, and the customer is the one left to find out what happens to their balance. The 2018 Wave Crest shutdown and the 2023 Metropolitan Commercial Bank exit are the same pattern, two years apart, and the BitPay customer was on the receiving end of both, in different forms.
The second is the cheque-refund risk. When balances are returned by cheque rather than by transfer, several things can go wrong. The cheque can go to an old address, can be sent after the recipient has moved, can be below a banking threshold that makes it hard to cash, or can expire before deposit. The official line is that the address on file was used, so the responsibility for keeping that address up to date sat with the cardholder, but in practice this is one of the ways a small balance quietly disappears.
The third is the customer-service risk, which is the wider BitPay problem rather than a card-specific one. The pattern in the Trustpilot reviews is that support is hard to reach by voice, that written support is slow, and that KYC decisions can come back negative or require more documents than expected. For a current product, that is inconvenient. For a closed product where a balance is in transit, it can be the difference between getting your money back and spending a year chasing it.
A broader category of risk runs underneath those three. Crypto cards, in general, sit on a chain of parties: the user, the wallet, the programme manager (here, BitPay), the issuer (a bank or e-money institution), and the card network (Visa or Mastercard). If any link in that chain stops, the card stops. With self-custody wallets the user keeps control of the underlying crypto, but with custodial wallets and pre-loaded balances, the customer is exposed to the programme manager and the issuer. That is the structural reason a card programme can disappear overnight with your balance on it.
What to take instead
There is no shortage of crypto cards on the market, and the three below were chosen to give a spread of approaches: a card with a token-rewards structure, a card aimed at emerging-market use, and a US-issued Visa with a published fee schedule. None of them is a direct drop-in for what the BitPay card was, and each has trade-offs to weigh.
Young Card — 5.7 out of 10
Young Card runs a Club tier structure, with cashback paid in YNG tokens. The published rates are 0.1% at the Essential tier, 1.8% at Gold and 3.6% at Platinum, with the Bronze and Silver tiers not stated publicly. If you are the kind of user who would have liked the BitPay card for its simplicity, the catch here is that the rewards are paid in a token, not in the cryptocurrency you started with, and the rate depends on which tier you sit in. Who can get the card, what the fees are, and which cryptocurrencies fund it are all not stated on the official page, which is a meaningful gap when you are choosing a card to live with.
Cardex — 5.6 out of 10
Cardex describes itself as one card, available in more than 200 countries, and ships as a debit crypto card on the Verve, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay networks, with both virtual and physical versions. The app store listing shows the card denominated in Naira, and the company says it uses an AI-driven conversion rate that scans exchanges at the moment of payment to pick the best rate. Real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion happens when you pay, and the supported wallets are USDT, USDC and BTC, with the networks not stated. Cost is not stated. If you are outside Nigeria the Naira denomination is something to check carefully, and the absence of a published fee schedule is a real gap.
International Visa Card — 6.7 out of 10
The International Visa Card is a US-issued Platinum Visa, currently virtual, with a physical version on the way. Card use in US dollars is free on all plans, and the foreign-currency fee is the Visa exchange rate plus 2%. There is a $5 one-time issuance fee for the virtual card, no maintenance fee, and three monthly plans: Classic free, Pro at $9.00, and Max at $19.00. Deposits of any kind are free, and you can fund the card with USDC or USDT into a USD account at 1:1, with USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT and FedNow deposits also supported. The catch is the country list. The card is not available to residents or legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela or Vietnam, with FATF grey-list countries reviewed case by case. Purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Eligibility is by residence or registration, with citizenship not mentioned as a separate test.
How they compare
| Card | Score | Cashback | Card networks | Funding coins | Notable gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BitPay (closed) | 1.7 / 10 | Not stated | Mastercard (historical) | Not stated | Programme closed June 2023 |
| Young Card | 5.7 / 10 | 0.1–3.6% in YNG | Not stated | Not stated | Fees, eligibility not stated |
| Cardex | 5.6 / 10 | Not stated | Verve, Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay | USDT, USDC, BTC | Fees, eligibility not stated; Naira denominated |
| International Visa Card | 6.7 / 10 | None stated | Visa | USDC, USDT, plus USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT, FedNow | Long country exclusion list |
The honest read is that the International Visa Card is the most transparent of the three, because its fees and country rules are stated in plain language, but it shuts out a long list of countries. Young Card and Cardex are more permissive on country coverage but less transparent on fees, and rewards, where they exist, are paid in the card’s own token or in Naira, not in the cryptocurrency you started with.
A few general points apply to the category, not just these three. Crypto cards typically convert your crypto into a fiat balance at the point of payment, which means the merchant sees a normal card transaction and does not know you started in Bitcoin. The conversion rate, including any markup on top of the spot price, is where most of the cost hides, and a card that does not publish that markup is a card you should test with a small payment before relying on it. Custodial cards hold your crypto with the provider until you spend, which means the provider, not you, bears the security responsibility and the counterparty risk. Self-custody cards keep your crypto in your own wallet until the moment of payment, which means you keep the security responsibility and the network fees, but you also keep control if the card programme closes.
A second general point is about the underlying stablecoins, since most cards on the market will route through USDC or USDT. Both are US-dollar-pegged, both aim to hold a 1:1 value, and both have a track record of small wobbles. USDC, in particular, briefly lost its peg during the March 2023 US banking stress, and the more dramatic case, the TerraUSD collapse in May 2022, is the standing reminder that “stablecoin” is a description, not a guarantee. If a card is funded in stablecoins, the funding layer is also a layer of risk.
A third general point is about the network the deposit rides on. Crypto cards that take USDC will usually take it on a specific blockchain, such as Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum or Stellar, and the choice matters because blockchain transfers are irreversible. A USDC deposit sent on a network the card does not support is not coming back automatically, and that is a category of loss that has nothing to do with the card itself.
Who I would recommend it to
In the strict sense, no one. The BitPay card is not being issued, so it cannot be recommended for new applicants, and the only meaningful audience for this page is ex-cardholders who are still trying to resolve a balance or a missing refund.
For that audience, the practical recommendation is to use the official support channel in the BitPay app, to keep the original closure email and any reference number, and to follow up in writing if a phone line is not available. If a balance is genuinely missing, the long customer-service wait described in the Trustpilot reviews is the realistic expectation, and the alternative cards above are not a substitute for that refund, only a separate decision about what to do next.
If you arrived here looking for a card to apply for, the recommendation is to skip BitPay and look at one of the three alternatives in the previous section, with the International Visa Card as the most transparent of the three on fees, Young Card if token rewards are a priority, and Cardex if emerging-market coverage matters most. None of them is a direct replacement for what BitPay used to offer, and each one asks for a different trade-off, so the right read is to pick the trade-off you can live with rather than the card with the highest score.
Frequently asked questions
What is the BitPay card?
The BitPay card was a prepaid Mastercard that converted Bitcoin and a handful of other cryptocurrencies into a fiat balance you could spend at shops or withdraw from ATMs. The programme was wound down in mid-2023 and is no longer being issued.
How did the BitPay card work?
You would load the card from a BitPay wallet, the balance would be converted to US dollars, and the card would spend that dollar balance at merchants or ATMs. The conversion happened at the point of loading, and the card itself behaved like a standard prepaid Mastercard at the till.
Is BitPay a bank?
No. BitPay is a virtual currency business licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, and the card was issued by a partner bank, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, not by BitPay itself.
Who owns BitPay?
BitPay, Inc. is the company behind the wallet and the former card programme. The site lists BitPay Software, LLC as the wallet provider and carries the NYDFS virtual currency licence and NMLS ID 1496848, but ownership beyond that is not stated on the public pages.
Is the BitPay card available in my country?
The card is not being issued anywhere. The closest the public material comes to a country answer is the historical fact that the programme was closed for all cardholders at the same time, regardless of country, on 15 June 2023.
Can I use the BitPay card in my country?
No. ATM and point-of-sale access ended on 15 June 2023, and balances were returned by cheque. A card that was loaded before 1 June 2023 could have been used up to that cut-off, but that window has now been closed for more than three years.
How do I get a BitPay card?
You cannot, as a new applicant, at the time of writing. One secondary site mentions a waitlist, but the main BitPay site does not back that up and no working replacement card has been launched.
Does the BitPay card require KYC?
The KYC requirements for the closed card are not stated on the public site, but the wider BitPay company’s reviews describe KYC being applied, sometimes heavily, to wallet activity as well as to card activity, with at least one user reporting KYC for a $15 payment in October 2026.
How do I activate a BitPay card?
Activation steps for the closed card are not stated, and the card cannot be activated today. If you have a physical card from the old programme, the support channel in the BitPay app is the route to ask whether activation is still possible for any residual purpose.
How do I top up a BitPay card?
You cannot. The last day to load the card was 1 June 2023, and there is no current way to add money to a closed product. Any balances that were on the card at the cut-off were to be returned by cheque to the address on file, around 30 June 2023.
How do I withdraw money from BitPay?
If you have a balance in a BitPay wallet today, the withdrawal route is through the wallet’s standard send and receive features, which depend on which cryptocurrency you hold and which network you send it on. The card-based ATM withdrawal route that the old card offered is closed.
Is the BitPay card free?
The historical card was not free in any meaningful sense. Unofficial, third-party sources from before the closure cite a $2.50 domestic ATM fee, a 3% foreign transaction fee, a $5 monthly dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity, and a $10 standard card replacement fee. None of that is published officially any more.
How do I add the BitPay card to Apple Wallet?
Instructions for adding the closed card are not stated, and the card cannot be added today because it is no longer being issued. For a live card from one of the alternatives in this review, the relevant app store listing is the place to look for the current procedure.
Where can I use the BitPay card?
Nowhere. ATM and point-of-sale access ended on 15 June 2023, and the card no longer functions as a payment instrument. While it was live, it worked at any merchant that accepted Mastercard and at any Mastercard-branded ATM, subject to the issuer’s merchant and country rules.
Is the BitPay card safe?
Safety for the closed card is no longer a question you can act on, since the card is not in use. For the wider BitPay company, Trustpilot scores it at 1.2 out of 5 across 299 reviews, and the recurring themes are slow support, KYC friction, and difficulty withdrawing funds. That is not the same as saying BitPay is unsafe, but it is a fair description of what customers report.
How do I delete my BitPay account?
Account deletion is not described in the public material, and some Trustpilot reviews describe account closure being refused when customers asked. The route that tends to work is the in-app support channel, with a written request and the documents to verify your identity.
Is the BitPay card worth it?
The closed card is not a current option, so “worth it” is the wrong frame. For a live product, the right question is whether the fees, the funding mechanism, the rewards, and the country rules match the way you actually want to spend crypto, and the alternatives section above is a starting point for that decision.
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