Shakepay Card Review: A Canadian Bitcoin Cashback Card With a 3% Default FX Fee

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Shakepay card scores 4.3 out of 10 in my assessment. That is not a casual number and I want to explain it before anything else, because the score is not a verdict on whether Shakepay is a good company — it is a verdict on whether this particular card does the job for the person reading this.

Here is the short version. The Shakepay card is a physical Visa prepaid card that spends a Canadian dollar balance, pays up to 1.5% of eligible purchases back in bitcoin, and is available to Shakepay customers across all 13 Canadian provinces and territories — Canada only. If you live in Canada, you hold Canadian dollars, you are already using Shakepay’s exchange, and the cashback is the point, this is a sensible card and the everyday-use side of it is the strongest thing here. If you are anywhere else, or if you spend abroad on a card you want to be cheap outside Canada, this is the wrong product, and no amount of good intentions changes that. The default Foreign Exchange Charge is 3% unless you climb to a higher reward status, and getting there depends on monthly exchange volumes or direct deposits.

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

One thing to be clear about before we go further: much of what people want to know about this card simply is not published. The public pages do not state several things you might reasonably expect to be told — the verification documents required, the ATM fee, the general spending-limit table, the coins or networks you can use to top the card up, the withdrawal fees, whether a virtual card exists. I have marked each of those plainly below as not stated, and I have not filled the gaps with guesses. Where a claim comes from a third-party site rather than Shakepay, I say so.

Will They Give You the Card?

They will give it to you if you are a Shakepay customer living in Canada. That is the whole eligibility rule as published: the card is available to all Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, and Canada only.

I will walk you through what that means, because “Canada only” is doing a lot of work in one short sentence. If you are reading this outside Canada, the answer to “is the Shakepay card available in my country” is no, and the rest of this review is mostly informational for you — though the sections on fees and on what happens when things go wrong apply to any crypto card you might be considering instead.

One detail worth knowing if you are already a customer: the cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency as a condition in its own wording. The availability statement says Canada only. I am not going to read that gap as an invitation — it is far more likely to reflect loose drafting in the agreement than a real route in. The published availability rule is Canada, and that is what I would plan around.

Some countries and merchants are restricted, and the card states this without listing them. The documented contact for that question is [email protected].

The availability criterion is the single biggest reason this card scores 2 out of 10 in my table, and it is worth being honest about why. Shakepay is a Canadian exchange, the card is issued under a Canadian issuer’s licence, and the balance is Canadian dollars. Nothing about that is a criticism of the company. It simply means the card has a small natural market, and if you are not inside it, none of the following matters.

How to Get It

Getting the card is a short process, and the parts that are published are reassuring: no credit check, and setup takes minutes. There is no credit history to weigh, which matters if ordinary banking has been difficult for you — that is exactly the reader I am writing this for.

You need a fully verified Shakepay account, you must be of the age of majority in your province or territory, one card per person, and there is an eligibility questionnaire inside the app. The verification tiers themselves, the processing time, and the reasons a request might be refused are not stated on the pages I read. Nor are the documents, proof of address, or age requirements laid out. I would not want to guess at those, so treat them as something to confirm with Shakepay before you rely on the process.

Here is the physical card specifically, since this matters if you are planning around a delivery date:

• The physical card is a Shakepay Visa Prepaid Card drawing on a Canadian dollar balance. Whether a virtual or metal card exists is not stated.
• You order it in the app and set your PIN during the ordering process. That PIN cannot be changed later — if you want a new one, you replace the card.
• Delivery is within 21 days by Canada Post regular mail, with no tracking. Shakepay’s own wording is that it arrives “regardless of where you live in Canada.”
• The card is free for fully verified accounts. A replacement fee is not stated.
• To replace: “Replace card” in the app. A damaged card keeps its number, expiry and CVV; a lost or stolen card gets new details. A lost card is reissued within 30 days after you report it.

If you are outside Canada, read that delivery line and stop. If you are in a northern or remote community, “regardless of where you live in Canada” is reassuring, but untracked regular mail is still untracked regular mail.

What It Really Costs: Fees, Limits and Everyday Payments

Cost is the part of this card that most rewards-first reviews gloss over, so let me be blunt: the headline is that there are no annual fees, and the catch is a 3% Foreign Exchange Charge on non-Canadian transactions at the default reward status. If you travel, that 3% is the number that decides whether this card is worth anything to you.

Several fees people expect to find are simply not stated on the public pages. The conversion fee and FX fee lines, the ATM fee, and the general limits table: not stated. What is stated is this, and it is what I have used below.

Now let me take three payments you might actually make, because a fee table on its own does not tell you what a fee feels like.

A $40 grocery shop in Toronto. This is the case the card is good at. You are in Canada, there is no conversion, no FX charge applies because the transaction is not foreign. Whatever reward status you are on, you are spending Canadian dollars from a Canadian dollar balance. The cashback on eligible purchases at eligible merchants worldwide is up to 1.5% in bitcoin — 1% at Base and Bright, 1.5% at Blue — credited automatically to your BTC balance and withdrawable to your own wallet.

A $60 hotel night in Lisbon. Here the card earns its keep or loses it. The cardholder agreement says non-Canadian transactions are converted at the Visa rate, and the agreement includes a 3% Foreign Exchange Charge on top. On $60 that is $1.80, before whatever the Visa rate does to the amount. At Bright status it is $0.90. At Blue it is nothing. The reward status is therefore not a loyalty nicety; it is the difference between a card that is embarrassing abroad and a card that is not.

A $25 withdrawal from a PLUS-network ATM abroad. The published ATM figures — $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day — are the limits, not the price. Operator fees may apply and are not stated by Shakepay, because they are the ATM operator’s, not Shakepay’s. You also earn no bitcoin rewards on ATM transactions. ATM cash abroad is the expensive corner of any card, and this one is no exception.

One more cost that catches people out, and it is a refund rather than a purchase: foreign refunds are returned at the rate you paid to Visa minus the charge, so you usually get back less than you originally paid. If the FX charge was 3% when you spent and the refund comes back net of that charge, you have quietly lost 3% in both directions on a transaction you did not choose to make twice.

The reward statuses that decide your fee

Statuses are assigned by calendar month, and the difference between them is the fee schedule:

• Base (default): 1% card cashback, 3% FX fee.
• Bright: exchange $100+ or $200+ in eligible direct deposits; 1% cashback, 1.5% FX fee.
• Blue: exchange $1,000+ or $2,000+ direct deposits; 1.5% cashback, 0% FX fee, priority support.
• Business: automatic.

No metal card is stated. And note the reset — these are monthly statuses, so a month of low volume drops you back to Base and with it back to 3%.

How to Top Up the Card

The honest answer is that the card is not topped up directly. It spends your Shakepay Canadian dollar balance, so you top up the Shakepay account and the card follows. Whether you can load the card with crypto, and on which coins and networks, is not stated on the public pages.

What is stated is this set of account funding options:

There are no activation fees and no minimum balance.

Two practical notes. First, the wire minimum of $10,000 tells you what kind of customer the wire route is aimed at; for ordinary top-ups, Interac e-Transfer is the one that matters. Second, if you were hoping to convert bitcoin into card spending without going through the exchange, that path is not documented, and you should assume the CAD balance route is the route.

On the other side of the ledger: closing the card leaves your Shakepay Wallet balance accessible and the funds do not expire with the card. That is a genuinely good thing to know, because “I cancelled the card and lost the money” is a story I have heard about too many prepaid products. Shakepay does not disclose fees for withdrawing funds from the wallet.

Paying With It Every Day

Everyday use is where this card earns its best mark, and if you are a Canadian Shakepay user who pays in Canadian dollars, the experience is a good one.

You get a physical Visa Prepaid card, Apple Pay and Google Pay supported “where available,” and spending limits high enough that a normal month will not touch them: CAD $5,000 per transaction, per day, and $50,000 per month. The mobile wallet tap limit is $250, which is the one number that will actually interrupt you, if you try to buy a flight with your phone. Limits cannot be increased.

The Shakepay Mobile App handles disputes, the card itself, and support chat. Its App Store and Google Play ratings and the number of ratings are not something I obtained, so I will not quote a star figure I have not seen.

If a payment goes wrong, the clock is the thing to remember. Notify Shakepay in writing within 60 days of the transaction through the dispute section of the app. The agreement also says a dispute must be received within 90 days or the transaction is deemed accepted — so the 60-day route is the one to use, and the 90-day line is a wall behind it. Visa Zero Liability claims for unauthorised use can take up to 120 days after the paperwork is complete and may require a police investigation. Transactions before you reported a loss may be treated as yours. Unresolved complaints go to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments on 1-888-451-4519 or FCAC on 1-866-461-3222.

Two things about this that I would rather you hear from me than from a declined payment. Authorship checks, blocked merchant categories and similar restrictions: not stated. And because a declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven, it is worth keeping some balance in the account that you do not depend on immediately.

Blocking the card and getting help

You can lock or freeze the card instantly in the app, and two-factor authentication is supported. The PIN may be disabled after three wrong entries, and remember it cannot be changed — you replace the card instead.

What Can Go Wrong

The complaints record is the part of this review I would want a reader to weigh most carefully, because it sits underneath the good everyday-use marks.

On the public complaint side, official incidents: not stated, and I found no user reports to weigh. What I do have is Trustpilot at 2.3 out of 5 across 22 reviews, read on 20 October 2026, of which only one review mentions the card at all, and that one is positive, from December 2021. So the card itself is not what people are complaining about. The themes in the user reports are about the platform: account freezes and closures without reasons given, between 2021 and February 2022 and again in July 2025; support going unresponsive for days in 2021, December 2023 and July 2025; delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires across 2022–2023; unreturned funds including a $250 bill payment not received, reported in September 2026; and source-of-funds questioning in November 2022.

I should flag that these are user reports on a review platform, not adjudicated findings, and I am not treating them as proof of anything. But a recurring theme across five years — funds held, accounts closed, support silent — is the kind of pattern a careful reader should weigh, particularly if the card is your route to ordinary spending money. A third-party site, CryptoCardHub, cited Trustpilot at about 1.5 out of 5 on 11 August 2026, which disagrees with the 2.3 I read; either figure points the same direction.

The company and the money behind the card

Shakepay is registered with FINTRAC under #M17065696, is a CIRO member, and is registered as an Investment Dealer with the AMF and provincial regulators. The card itself is issued by Peoples Trust Company under a licence from Visa International. Shakepay is the programme you deal with; Peoples Trust is the institution that issued the card.

The balance sits in a custodial wallet — Shakepay holds it — and funds are not CDIC-insured. This is not a technicality. Custodial means you are trusting the provider with the credentials, and crypto transfers are typically irreversible: a stolen private key has no built-in recovery, and the network cannot freeze or return funds. The industry’s own history is the argument here, with Mt Gox at about US$350 million reported stolen across 2011–2014, Coincheck at about US$400 million in 2018, and the Ronin Network at US$625 million in 2022.

There is also a category-level risk worth naming, because it applies to any card in this space: a card programme can simply stop. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all its Visa programmes. Closures typically mean a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw what is left.

And one last thing that has nothing to do with fraud: in the United States 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 fiat currency at the value on the date of the transaction. That is a statement of how the tax rules work, not advice — take your own advice on what it means for you. But note the structure: because this card spends a CAD balance funded from crypto, each payment may be treated as a separate disposal, and a pile of small coffee purchases is a pile of small taxable events. Ask a professional about your own situation rather than mine.

What to Take Instead

If Shakepay does not fit you, it is usually for one of three reasons: you are not in Canada, you travel and the 3% default FX charge is too expensive, or you are uneasy about a custodial balance with this complaints record. Here is how the alternatives I looked at compare. Scores are from my own assessment on the same basis as the Shakepay score.

Gemini is the natural comparison for a Canadian or US rewards-minded user, and the structural difference matters more than the numbers. It is a credit card, not a prepaid card: you pay it off in fiat, so there is no stored balance to load, no crypto conversion at the point of sale, and no foreign transaction fees. Its rewards are richer on paper — 4% on gas, electric vehicle and transit spending for the first $300 a month, 3% dining, 2% groceries, 1% everything else — and there are Vault Rewards of 10% at some merchants, capped and variable, plus referral payments of $50 in crypto each, $250 per five referrals, up to 50 a year. The catch is that what most people reading this have is a problem getting ordinary bank cards, and a credit card is precisely the product that problem excludes. Eligibility on the card page is not stated.

Lava scores highest of the four at 7.1, and if you are outside Canada it is the one I would look at first, because its pitch is built on exactly the thing Shakepay charges 3% for: “no FX fees, and no FX spread,” and spending at 150 million merchants in 150+ countries. Deposits are in local currency or stablecoins. Rewards are “up to 5% back in bitcoin on every purchase” — and I would note that the conditions are not stated, which on a claim that large is the first thing to ask about. The network and whether it is physical or virtual are also not stated.

Trastra is the weakest of the three on published detail, at 4.1. Its eligibility rule appears to be residence-based and is unusually explicit: available in 31 listed countries including Germany, France and the UK, it “will be available for all residents of the European Economic Area,” and for non-European residents, “Not at the moment.” That clarity is worth something. It is a prepaid debit card accepted at Visa merchants worldwide, topped up using cryptocurrencies in your Mover wallet, with no coins or networks named. Costs are not stated and the reward claim is not stated on the page at all.

The honest summary of the comparison: Shakepay is the strongest of these for daily use *inside Canada*, Gemini is the strongest for rewards structure but asks for a credit history you may not have, and Lava has the most attractive fee story for anyone spending across borders. None of the three publishes as much as you would like.

Who I Would Recommend It To

I would recommend the Shakepay card to a Canadian resident who already uses Shakepay, spends mostly in Canadian dollars, and wants a slice of their ordinary spending back in bitcoin without thinking about it. The cashback is automatic, the mobile wallets work, the limits are high, there is no annual fee, and the card is free once the account is fully verified. If you travel enough to care about the FX charge, get to Bright or Blue — that is the whole difference between 3% and 1.5% and nothing — and remember the statuses reset by calendar month.

I would not recommend it to anyone outside Canada, because it is not offered to you. I would not recommend it to someone who plans to live abroad on it while staying at Base status, because 3% on every foreign transaction is a real cost and the fix depends on monthly volume you may not have. And I would weigh it carefully — not reject it, but weigh it — if you are someone for whom a frozen account or a delayed withdrawal would be a serious event, because that is what the complaints record is largely about, and because the balance is custodial and not CDIC-insured.

If any of those three describe you, the alternatives section is more useful to you than this one is, and I would rather point you there than sell you a card that does not fit.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Shakepay card?

The Shakepay card is a physical Visa prepaid card that spends a Canadian dollar balance held in your Shakepay account. It pays up to 1.5% of eligible purchases back in bitcoin, credited automatically to your BTC balance and withdrawable to your own wallet. It works with Apple Pay and Google Pay, and it is issued by Peoples Trust Company. It is available to Shakepay customers in Canada only.

How does the Shakepay card work?

You top up your Shakepay account — Interac e-Transfer is free, from $5 to $10,000, arriving in minutes — and the card spends the Canadian dollar balance from it. Because it is prepaid rather than a debit card, there is no overdraft: it can only spend what is already there. Purchases at eligible merchants worldwide earn bitcoin cashback automatically, and ATM withdrawals are capped at $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day.

Is Shakepay a bank?

Shakepay is not a bank. It is registered with FINTRAC under #M17065696, is a CIRO member, and is registered as an Investment Dealer with the AMF and provincial regulators. The card is issued by Peoples Trust Company under a licence from Visa International. Shakepay holds your balance in a custodial wallet, and those funds are not CDIC-insured — they are not bank deposits.

Who owns Shakepay?

Shakepay is a Canadian company, and its card is available only to customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency as a condition, but the published availability statement says Canada only. Some countries and merchants are restricted, and [email protected] is the documented contact for that question.

Does the Shakepay card require KYC?

Yes, in practice: you need a fully verified Shakepay account, of the age of majority in your province or territory, one card per person, and you complete an eligibility questionnaire in the app. There is no credit check and setup takes minutes. The specific documents, proof of address, verification tiers, processing times and rejection reasons are not stated on the public pages I read.

Is the Shakepay card free?

There are no annual fees, and the card is free for fully verified accounts. The issuance fee is not stated, and a replacement fee is not stated either. The cost that actually matters is the Foreign Exchange Charge on non-Canadian transactions: 3% at the default Base status, 1.5% at Bright, and 0% at Blue.

How do I add the Shakepay card to Apple Wallet?

Apple Pay is supported “where available,” so you add it through the Shakepay app rather than by any special route. One limit to know: the Apple Pay and Google Pay tap limit is $250. The card number is replaced by a device-specific number in the phone’s Secure Element, not stored on Apple’s servers, and each payment uses a one-time code.

Can I use the Shakepay card abroad?

You can, at merchants that accept Visa, but that is where the 3% default Foreign Exchange Charge bites. Non-Canadian transactions are converted at the Visa rate plus the charge, so a foreign refund usually returns less than you paid. Reach Bright status to halve the charge or Blue status to remove it, remembering the statuses reset each calendar month.

Is the Shakepay card safe?

The ordinary safeguards are there: instant app freeze, two-factor authentication, PIN lock after three wrong entries, and a 24/7 lost-or-stolen line on 1-855-574-2539. The real questions are elsewhere — the balance is custodial, so Shakepay holds it, and funds are not CDIC-insured. Trustpilot reads 2.3 out of 5, with user reports about account freezes, slow support and delayed withdrawals.

How do I dispute a transaction or close my account?

Notify Shakepay in writing within 60 days of the transaction through the dispute section of the app — the agreement says a dispute received after 90 days is deemed accepted, so use the 60-day route. Unauthorised-use claims can take up to 120 days after paperwork and may need a police investigation. Unresolved complaints go to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments on 1-888-451-4519 or FCAC on 1-866-461-3222.

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