A card that no longer exists

Updated October 2026

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Available in US

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Most searches for a BitPay card review begin with one question: can I get one? The honest answer is no. BitPay’s prepaid card programme stopped accepting card loads on 1 June 2023 and stopped spending and ATM withdrawals on 15 June 2023, after the issuing bank left the crypto business. The card is gone. What remains is a closed programme, some leftover balances that were mailed out as cheques, and a web of lessons worth reading before you pick any crypto card today. This review is for you if you are weighing a crypto card, or if you are one of the former cardholders still tracking down a leftover balance. I am not going to pretend a product that no longer exists can be rated like a live one, but I can tell you exactly how it ended, what it means if you still hold one, and what to look at instead.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

What I found: the verdict

I score the BitPay Card 1.7 out of 10. Not because crypto cards are a bad idea in general — several are running competently today — but because there is no card here to score. Support and ATM access ended on 15 June 2023, the card is no longer issued, and the card’s own site no longer lists it. This is a review of a closed product, so my marks mostly measure how it ended rather than how it performed while it lived.

Who does this suit? Almost nobody, as a card to apply for. Who does it still serve? Former cardholders trying to trace a residual balance or understand why their card died. And who should read this anyway? Anyone comparing crypto cards today, because the way this programme collapsed — a partner bank exits, and the card dies with it — is the single most important structural risk in this category.

The audience this page really serves is former cardholders tracking down leftover balances, and secondarily anyone learning from a very clear example of how a crypto card can vanish.

What happened to the programme

This is the part worth reading even if you never held the card, because it is the whole story in a few dated steps. In January 2023, Metropolitan Commercial Bank announced it was exiting crypto banking. That bank was the financial partner behind the card, so the sequence that followed was largely out of BitPay’s hands.

Here is the timeline as it is publicly documented:

• January 2023 — Metropolitan Commercial Bank announces its exit from crypto banking.
• 17 May 2023 — cardholders receive an email saying the prepaid Mastercard programme is winding down.
• 1 June 2023 — the last day to load the card; card funding stops.
• 15 June 2023 — ATM access and card spending cease.
• Around 30 June 2023 — remaining balances were mailed out as cheques.

So a card that had been usable for years became unusable following the bank’s exit, and then the money itself had to be recovered by post. Even the end-game is unclear: one review says the replacement card that had been promised never launched, while another source says new applications are simply paused with a waitlist. I could not find a single consistent official account, and the card’s own pages no longer settle it. In 2026 the BitPay site shows no card at all, though it does state that the company is licensed for virtual currency business by the New York State Department of Financial Services and carries NMLS ID #1496848.

Two facts about how cards are built make this shutdown easy to understand, and neither is stated by the card any more because there is no card. A payment card has several moving parts. The network — Mastercard here — routes the messages and sets the rules. A licensed bank or e-money institution issues the card and holds the programme and your balance. The crypto brand is often just the front end that markets it and shows you an app. When the issuing bank — the part that actually holds your balance and authorises each purchase — pulls out, the front end cannot keep the card alive. That is what happened here, and it is a structural feature of this whole category of card, not a one-off mishap. When you read any crypto card’s terms, the first question to answer is not “what does it cost” but “who is the issuer, and are they still in the crypto business.”

I want to be straight with you about what I could not confirm, because a review that hides its gaps is worse than useless. The card’s public pages no longer state who could get it, what identity checks it required, its fees, its limits, its top-up methods, its ATM network, its delivery terms, its app details, or any rewards or tiers. That information simply is not published any more. So if you meet a specific figure for this card somewhere online, treat it as unofficial unless BitPay itself states it, and note that most of it is history rather than something you could act on.

The app is the one part that still exists. The site shows download badges for App Store, Google Play, Windows and Mac, with no ratings shown; I did not read the store ratings. The wallet app clearly lives on, because the company still operates as a wallet and payments business. It is the card that was retired. That distinction matters if you are still a customer: the app may be a working wallet while being a dead card wallet, and support for the card side of it has stopped.

This is not the first time this pattern has shown up in this category, and the examples are worth knowing. Visa and Mastercard themselves do not issue crypto cards to consumers; they license issuers, and they can suspend a programme. In November 2022 Visa said it had terminated its global agreements with FTX, and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer. Separately, Wave Crest — a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands — was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all Wave Crest-issued Visa programmes, which is what killed an earlier version of this very card. So the pattern of “a big partner or a network pulls out and the card ends” is well established in crypto cards, not a quirk of one company.

If you already have the card

If you are one of the people still holding a BitPay card or chasing an old balance, here is the honest situation, step by step. The card stopped working for spending and ATM withdrawals on 15 June 2023. The documented path for money left on the card was this: after that cut-off, the remaining balance was to be issued as a cheque mailed to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days. In practice, cheques were reported going out around 30 June 2023.

That is where the good news ends. I could not find any stated refund amount, any formal claims process, or any confirmation of who to contact if your cheque never arrived, or arrived for less than you expected. Card support itself has ceased. What remains on the site is a help library and support reachable from the app, but the card support function is gone, and no support languages or hours are published. So the money was meant to come back to you by post, and if it did not, the ordinary channels to chase it are not clearly published any more. That is a genuinely difficult position to be in, and I am not going to dress it up.

If your situation sounds like that, the practical steps are these. Work through the app and the help library first, since those are the channels that still exist. Keep your own paper trail — screenshots of any balance you saw before the cut-off, the address the card had on file, and the dates you noticed the card stopped working. And be realistic about what you are owed versus what you are chasing: a cheque for a balance is a return of funds you once held, not a reward or a claim, so treat any shortfall as a customer-service matter with the company rather than a debt it owes you on paper. Whether a leftover amount counts as a claim, and for how long, is a question for BitPay and, if you need to, a regulator or ombudsman — not something this page can decide for you.

A few historical, unofficial numbers are floating around for the old card, and I am passing them on only so you recognise them if you meet them, not as current terms. A CryptoSlate-era review cited a 2.50 USD fee per domestic ATM withdrawal, a 5 USD monthly dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity, a 10 USD standard card replacement, a 3% foreign transaction fee, and limits of 10,000 USD daily on purchases and 25,000 USD monthly on ATM withdrawals. These are unofficial figures for a card that no longer functions, so do not plan around them or treat them as anything you can still be charged.

One more thing that catches former holders out: crypto balances and card balances are not always the same pot. If you moved funds around your BitPay wallet before the shutdown, it is worth checking whether what you are looking for is a card balance (which became a cheque) or a wallet balance (which is a separate question about the company today). I could not confirm from the public pages how these were split for any given holder, so treat that as something to ask about directly rather than something I can tell you from here.

What can go wrong

This section is the one I would read twice, because these failure modes are not unique to BitPay. They are how this category breaks, and they apply to whatever card you are considering next.

Losing the issuing bank. As mentioned in the collapse summary, the collapse here started with a bank leaving crypto. Every crypto card rests on a licensed issuer, and that issuer answers to regulators and to its own risk appetite, not to the crypto brand’s marketing or to its users’ needs. When the issuer goes, so does the card. This is the defining structural risk of the category, and it is the one that ended the BitPay card.

A second shutdown on the same brand. BitPay’s card had already died once. In 2018, the non-US prepaid Visa version was shut down after Visa revoked the licence of its supplier, Wave Crest. A promised successor to the 2023 card is reported never to have launched. So this brand’s card history contains one closure that was fixed and one that was not, and the second one is the one still relevant to you.

Being a front end, not a bank. A common and costly misunderstanding is to assume the crypto brand holds your money and therefore owes you a refund. Usually the issuer holds the balance and the brand is the interface in front of it. BitPay’s site describes itself as licensed for virtual currency business by the New York State Department of Financial Services, but that is a company-wide statement; the card’s own issuing bank is not officially stated. That distinction matters enormously when something goes wrong, because it decides who you call and who is actually responsible for returning your balance. In this case, the answer turned out to be neither easy nor clear.

Losing your recovery path at the worst moment. Closures typically follow a pattern: a notice period, then loading stops, then spending stops, then you are asked to withdraw or are sent what is left. Here the “withdraw” step became a cheque by post with no clear claims process behind it. When the recovery path is a piece of post rather than a click in an app, things go wrong more often — wrong address on file, missing cheque, a cheque that arrives after you have stopped checking that mailbox.

Weak recourse when things do go wrong. A chargeback is a refund a card issuer orders to settle a dispute, with reason codes such as fraud, duplicate billing, or goods not received. In the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, but prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. If your balance was converted into a cheque that arrived short, or never, you are relying on an informal goodwill process, not a statutory one, and that is a much weaker position.

The reputational and support picture. On Trustpilot, the BitPay company (not the card specifically) sits at 1.2 out of 5 across 299 reviews, read as of 20 October 2026, with 89% of them one-star. Themes in recent reviews include funds that cannot be withdrawn or sent, identity checks that are burdensome or get declined (one report describes KYC trouble over a $15 payment), support reachable only by bots with no phone option, and refused account closure. Some scam-loss reviews promote recovery services; treat those as unverified and ignore them. The company does not reply to negative reviews. Whatever the cause of each individual complaint, the pattern to take from it is about expectations: if a provider’s support is hard to reach when something is routine, it will be harder to reach when something is serious.

I am not predicting any of this for other cards. It is a record, and it tells you what to weigh before you load funds: who actually holds your money, whether that issuer is stable and in good standing, whether there is a real, reachable support path, and what happens to your balance if the whole thing shuts down.

What to take instead

If the reason you wanted a BitPay card is that an ordinary bank card is hard to get where you are, or you simply want crypto spendable at shops without opening a bank account, that need is real and there are live options. I looked at three that are running now. All of them, like BitPay once was, depend on an issuer and a jurisdiction, and each has its own country and citizenship rules — so the first thing to check is your own eligibility, not the fees. I will not rank them for you; each trades off differently, and the right pick depends on where you live, how you fund it, and whether you want a prepaid-style balance or to spend straight from your own wallet.

A few things stand out as you read that table, and they are worth a second paragraph each.

On RedotPay, the two official country lists genuinely disagree — one is about citizenship and passing identity checks, the other about residence and being able to get a card — and the second one is newer (August 2026) and broader. Before you spend 100 USD on a physical card, confirm your exact status against both lists. RedotPay is also the only one of the three that names a specific network clearly in its Singapore terms and publishes a detailed fee table, including small-transaction and declined-transaction charges, so it is the most transparent on cost even though its eligibility rules are the most tangled.

On Bybit, note the explicit European Economic Area prohibition, and note that its fiat services — deposits, withdrawals, and One-Click Buy — carry their own restricted-country list that is separate from the card itself, so “the card is fine in your country” does not automatically mean “the money can move in and out.” Its cashback is unusually generous on paper, up to 10% at the top tier, but only on crypto-funded transactions; fiat-funded spending earns nothing, which is exactly the kind of detail that catches people out.

On MetaMask, the model is different from the other two. It spends directly from your connected self-custody wallet across supported networks, with cashback in its own stablecoin, and the virtual card is free while the Metal version is a paid annual product. It is the most self-custodial of the three and the least like a prepaid card, and its 45-country sign-up list with a residency requirement is the gate.

Whichever you choose, apply the BitPay lesson above: find out who the issuer is and whether it is stable, because that is the link that broke here.

Who I would recommend it to

Honestly? Almost nobody, as a card to use today. I would not recommend the BitPay Card to anyone shopping for a crypto card in 2026, because it does not exist as a product. Recommending a closed card to anyone would be pointless, and pretending otherwise to be helpful.

I would recommend it — as a case study — to three groups. First, anyone who remembers the BitPay card and is wondering where their old balance went; the answer is that it was to be mailed as a cheque after the 15 June 2023 cut-off, and the trail now runs through the app and the limited help library. Second, anyone choosing between live crypto cards today: this is the clearest available demonstration that the issuer is the fragile part of the arrangement, and that the crypto brand is often just a front end. Third, anyone who treats “is this crypto safe” as a simple yes/no question — the answer is that safety here is mostly about the specific issuer, its jurisdiction, and whether a real refund path exists, and all three of those can change without much warning.

If you want my steer toward a live option, tell me your country and how you would fund the card, and I can tell you which of the three above is even open to you. But pick on the strength of the current issuer and the current fee table — the ones I put in the table above — not on the name. If nothing on that list fits your country, the category has other providers, and the same questions apply: who is the issuer, what happens to my balance if they leave, and can I actually reach a human if it goes wrong.

Frequently asked questions

What is BitPay card?

BitPay’s prepaid card let people load crypto, convert it to a fiat balance, and spend that balance at shops and ATMs like an ordinary Mastercard, with no bank account in the country required. It was a front end over a licensed issuing bank. The programme is now closed: the card is no longer issued and no longer listed on BitPay’s site, so this page reviews a product that has ended rather than one you can sign up for.

Why did the BitPay card close?

The issuing bank left the crypto business first. In January 2023 Metropolitan Commercial Bank announced its exit from crypto banking, and because that bank held the card programme and the balance behind it, the card could not survive without it. Cardholders were told by email on 17 May 2023 that the prepaid Mastercard programme was winding down, and the card stopped working shortly after. This was a partner-bank failure, not a wallet-software failure.

When did BitPay card stop working?

Two dates matter. Loading — adding money to the card — stopped on 1 June 2023, the last day to load. Spending and ATM withdrawals stopped on 15 June 2023. Around 30 June 2023, remaining balances were mailed out as cheques to the address on file. So the card went from usable to unusable after the 15 June cut-off, and the money came back by post over the following month. If you are still waiting on something, the cheque process is the one that was in motion.

Can I still get a BitPay card?

No. The programme is closed and the card is not on the BitPay site as of 2026. Accounts were still being shown as paused with a waitlist by at least one source, and a replacement card was reported never to have launched, but neither is a way to get one. If you are deciding what to use now, treat BitPay as history and look at live options instead. And if you are still waiting on an old balance, chase that through the app rather than an application.

What happened to money left on the BitPay card?

The documented plan was that, after the 15 June 2023 cut-off, the remaining balance would be issued as a cheque to the address linked to the card, delivered within roughly 30 days, with cheques reported going out around 30 June 2023. No stated refund amount and no formal claims process could be found, and card support has since ceased. So if your cheque is missing or short, you are dealing with an informal recovery, and it is worth escalating through BitPay’s app and support channels.

Was the BitPay card free?

Not quite — even historically, and nothing is officially published now. Unofficial third-party figures for the old card put a standard replacement at 10 USD and a 5 USD monthly dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity, alongside a 2.50 USD domestic ATM withdrawal fee. There was no clear monthly fee figure for ordinary use. Because the card is closed and these figures are unofficial, treat them as history, not as a price list you can rely on or be charged.

Is BitPay a bank, and is the card safe?

BitPay is a crypto wallet and payments company, licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services for virtual currency business (NMLS ID #1496848) — but the company describes that as a company-wide licence, and the card’s issuing bank is not officially stated. The card is not now a live product, so “safe” no longer applies to it. The broader safety lesson is that the issuer behind a crypto card is the fragile link, and here that link broke.

Does the BitPay card require KYC, and who could use it?

The card no longer exists, so its identity-check rules and eligibility are not published — the card’s public pages do not state who could get it or what verification it required. In general, crypto cards of this type do run identity checks under anti-money-laundering law, typically name, address, date of birth, and an identification document. For any live card you consider, check that card’s specific country and citizenship rules, because they differ sharply between providers.

How does a crypto card like this get compared fairly?

Compare them on what decides whether you get caught out: who the issuer is and whether it is stable; whether your country is eligible for citizenship and for residence (two lists that can disagree); the total fee stack including foreign-exchange and ATM costs; how money gets in; and whether a real support and refund path exists. Ignore headline cashback until you check whether it applies to crypto-funded spending only, as it does on some cards. Use the same checklist on every card, including any replacement you consider for BitPay.

What are the alternatives to the BitPay card today?

Three live options worth comparing, each with real limits. RedotPay (6.9/10) offers virtual and physical Visa cards funded by crypto deposit, with published fees but two conflicting country lists to check. Bybit Card (6.0/10) is regional and explicitly not for European Economic Area customers, with generous cashback on crypto-funded spending only. MetaMask (7.1/10) spends from your own wallet across several networks, with a free virtual card and a paid Metal option, limited to a 45-country sign-up list. Pick on issuer stability and fees, not brand name.

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