The Monolith card is gone — here is what happened and what to do next
Available in USThe Monolith card was a debit card tied to a self-custody crypto wallet, and it is no longer being issued. The programme shut down on 8 October 2024, all cards were deactivated, accounts were closed, and the app was delisted from app stores in February 2025. If you came here looking for a card to order, that option is gone. If you held a card and still have funds sitting somewhere, the picture is more nuanced, and this review walks you through it.
Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 1.8 out of 10
The Monolith card scores 1.8 out of 10, and almost every category I checked dragged that score down. The programme is closed, cards have been deactivated for the better part of two years, and the app is no longer available in stores. The only category that did not get the worst possible mark was historical cost, because, before the closure, Monolith published no monthly fee, and the top-up fees that did exist were modest by category standards. None of that matters for a card you cannot order or use.
The score breaks down like this.
| Criterion | Mark | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 0 / 10 | Service closed 8 October 2024, cards deactivated, accounts closed |
| Cost | 5 / 10 | Closed; historically, no monthly fee; top-up around 1% to 2% in total; FX 1.75% outside card currency |
| Top-up options | 2 / 10 | Top-ups through Monolith are no longer possible; historically ETH, TKN, DAI, DGD, DGX, MKR, SAI, USDT |
| Reliability and complaints | 1 / 10 | Closure cited rising EU and UK regulatory requirements; the app was delisted from stores |
| Everyday use | 0 / 10 | Cards deactivated on 8 October 2024; app removed from app stores |
For the people this verdict is most relevant to, former holders with leftover balances to redeem through Solaris, the useful question is not “is this card worth ordering” but “what do I do with what is left.” The rest of the review focuses on that.
What happened to the Monolith card programme
Monolith was operated by a Lithuanian entity called UAB “Belela” (company code 305982313), registered as a virtual currency deposit and exchange operator, and the cards themselves were issued by Solaris, a regulated European card issuer. The website copyright belonged to Token Group Ltd, which licensed the platform from Belela.
On 8 October 2024 the company shut the service down. The official notice stated that “increasing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK” had made it impossible to continue. The closure was total: services stopped, cards were deactivated, and accounts were closed. The app was delisted from app stores on 17 February, which context dates to 2025. A successor app called Token.com was named, and the company promised details of a TKN-to-TOKEN token swap in April 2025. The Monolith website no longer describes what kind of card is being offered, whether there is one, and what the eligibility rules are. Public information does not state network, card form, eligibility rules, KYC requirements, fees, monthly costs, supported wallets, rewards or tiers, because the programme is closed.
The historical picture is worth knowing, because it explains what sort of card Monolith was before it shut. Unofficial third-party sources (Coin Bureau, last updated 29 March 2023) describe Monolith as a Visa debit card that spent directly from a non-custodial wallet, with no monthly or shipping fee if used in the country where it was registered, and aimed at the EEA — 31 European countries — with the United States and Asia excluded. Earlier coverage from 2019 names Contis Financial Services Ltd as the original issuer, with Solaris taking over later. None of that is official, and it refers to a card you can no longer get.
The card currency, where it matters, was EUR or GBP, and that is also the currency in which Solaris will pay out remaining balances. I could not find a country list, exclusion list, KYC procedure, card-form details (physical, virtual, both), or reward programme on the closure page, because none of those questions apply to a closed product.
If you already have a Monolith card
This is the section that matters if you are one of the people who used Monolith before it closed, and there are two separate things you might need to deal with: the crypto in your wallet, and any leftover euro or pound balance on the card itself. They go down different paths.
Getting your crypto out
Monolith was a non-custodial product, which means the company never held your private keys. Your crypto is still in your wallet on the blockchain, and you can move it using the standard 12-word recovery phrase, sometimes called a seed phrase. If you saved that phrase when you first set up the wallet, the procedure is straightforward: import it into another wallet such as MetaMask, Trust Wallet, or Coinbase Wallet, and your tokens appear there. From that point on, they are your responsibility in the usual self-custody way.
If you did not save the phrase, the official guidance is to look in the app under Settings, then Back up Seed, which displays the phrase in the app. With the app delisted from stores, that route only works if the app is still installed on the phone you used. If you do not have the app and never wrote down the seed, the situation is harder, and you should treat the wallet as effectively lost: there is no central party that can reset it, because that is the trade-off of non-custodial design.
It is also worth understanding what the closure notice says about insurance. The non-custodial wallet was not covered by Lithuanian deposit insurance or by the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and the notice makes that explicit. This is the standard situation for self-custody crypto, but it is worth re-stating now, because the closure is a moment when people ask whether they had any protection they did not realise.
Getting your euro or pound balance back
If you had fiat left on the card, that is a different situation, because Solaris, the card issuer, holds it. The official route is the Solaris Redemptions Support page, where you submit a request. The guidance Monolith gave is to use the subject line “Redemption funds of Monolith customer” and to include payout account details in EUR or GBP, matching the original card currency, plus a colour copy of an ID if the email you send from differs from the one on your Monolith account. Solaris says it aims to respond within 14 days. Whether that holds in practice is hard to say, because the underlying Solaris platform was used by several card programmes, and some of those (notably Plutus, a different programme) have drawn Trustpilot complaints about slow refund handling. That is context, not a finding about Monolith specifically, because I found no Monolith Trustpilot page and no Monolith-specific complaint thread in a 2026 search.
There is no dispute or chargeback mechanism stated for the closure, and no compensation scheme. The only route is the Solaris redemption form.
Support channels that are still open
For leftover card funds, Solaris Redemptions Support, by form and email, is the only listed route. For TKN-to-TOKEN swap questions, the Monolith team is reachable by Telegram and email. The company did not publish support hours or languages for either channel, and the usual expectation is email-style response times measured in days, not minutes.
What can go wrong
Three things are worth flagging, and they are not all the same kind of risk.
The first is the closure itself. The company described the cause as rising EU and UK regulatory pressure, and the official closure notice does not name any specific rule. MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, was passed in 2023 and started applying in stages in 2024 and the end of 2024, and a programme sitting on a Lithuanian virtual-currency licence and a Solaris-issued card would have had to navigate that transition. The notice does not mention MiCA by name, so I am not going to claim that MiCA is the reason, only that the timing and the company’s stated reason sit in the same regulatory environment. The end result is what matters to former holders: the service is gone, the cards do not work, and there is no path to revive it.
The second is operational risk around the redemption process itself. The app’s balance is described as no longer accurate, and the company has directed users to the Solaris Redemptions page. The 14-day response target is a target, not a guarantee, and given the wider history of Solaris-backed programmes, I would treat it as a starting point rather than a deadline. If you have a non-trivial amount sitting with Solaris, document everything, keep the email chain, and follow up if you do not hear back.
The third is the risk that lives with self-custody in general. A non-custodial wallet is yours alone, and the security of the funds depends on your seed phrase staying private. If you are recovering the wallet by typing the seed into a new app, do that on a device you trust, never on a shared or work computer, and assume that anyone who sees the phrase owns the wallet from that moment on. The 12 to 24 words of a seed phrase are an unencrypted form of the private key, and blockchain transfers are typically irreversible, so there is no support line that can reverse a typo or a stolen phrase. Anyone who claims otherwise is misleading you, and that includes anyone offering to “recover” your wallet for a fee. Standard phishing, clipboard-hijacking malware that swaps an address when you copy and paste, and fake “support” DMs on Telegram are all realistic risks in this situation, because former Monolith users are an obvious target for that kind of approach.
There is one more thing worth being clear about. The non-custodial design of Monolith was its main selling point, and the closure notice states plainly that Lithuanian deposit insurance and the UK FSCS do not cover crypto activities or funds in the non-custodial wallet. That is the standard situation, but it bears repeating: the wallet funds were never insured in the way a bank account is, and they still are not.
What to take instead
The Monolith card is not coming back, so the relevant question is what the alternatives look like, and the honest answer is that none of the options I looked at is a direct replacement. Monolith’s distinguishing feature was the self-custody wallet at the back end, and the alternatives I checked are mostly custodial in design. That is a meaningful difference for anyone who picked Monolith because they did not want to hand their keys to a company.
I considered three alternatives, in alphabetical order.
Cardex
Cardex is scored at 5.6 out of 10 in my evaluation. The pitch is one crypto card that works in more than 200 countries, with debit cards issued on the VERVE, Visa, Mastercard, and UnionPay networks, available as virtual and physical cards. Card currency is Naira per the App Store listing, and that is a tell: this is a product aimed at the Nigerian market, even though the company says it works more broadly. There is no stated issuance or monthly fee, and the company describes a real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion at the point of payment, with what it calls an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchanges and picks the best rate when you spend. No specific conversion or FX fee percentage is published. Funding is from USDT, USDC, and BTC wallets; the networks on which those tokens are accepted are not stated. Cashback and reward terms are not stated either. For a Monolith refugee who wants a working card, Cardex is at least a working product, but the Naira default and the lack of published fees make it a poor fit if you are in Europe and want a euro-denominated card with a known fee structure.
MSX
MSX is scored at 6.4 out of 10, but I have to flag a caveat: I could not find an official page describing who can get the card, what form the card takes, what it costs, what the fees are, what it is funded with, or what it pays back. The score is based on third-party information, and the lack of stated facts on the official site is a reason for caution rather than confidence. If you are choosing between Monolith’s old model and a new card, MSX is hard to recommend on the basis of public information, because the public information is thin.
Whop Cards
Whop Cards is scored at 5.2 out of 10, and it is the most clearly documented of the three. Consumers can get the card in 31 US states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Businesses can be issued cards in 41 US states. Unsupported consumer countries include Belarus, China (Mainland), Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam, with Russia and Belarus also excluded for corporate cards. The basis for those checks (citizenship, residence, or both) is not stated. The card is a Visa that works wherever Visa is taken online and in stores; virtual and physical forms and card currency are not stated. The site says there are no extra fees, but does not list specific issuance or monthly amounts, and does not state conversion or FX fee numbers. Funding is from a Whop balance, backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet, with coins and networks not stated. The reward is 5% cashback at select merchants, currently Uber, with more promised; payout currency and conditions are not stated. The geographic restriction to the United States is a problem for most of the readers of this review, and the unstated coin and network details are a friction.
How they compare
A short side-by-side is the cleanest way to read this.
| Card | Score | Geography | Card network | Card currency stated | Top-up coins stated | Cashback stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monolith (closed) | 1.8 / 10 | EEA historically (unofficial); service closed | Visa (unofficial historical) | EUR or GBP | Closed for top-up | None (unofficial historical) |
| Cardex | 5.6 / 10 | 200+ countries stated | VERVE, Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay | Naira per listing | USDT, USDC, BTC | Not stated |
| MSX | 6.4 / 10 | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Whop Cards | 5.2 / 10 | 31 US states (consumers); 41 US states (businesses) | Visa | Not stated | Not stated (stablecoin-backed Whop balance) | 5% at select merchants (Uber) |
The honest takeaway is that, if you want a self-custody card, none of these three is a clean fit. The category as a whole has been moving in a custodial direction, partly because that is what the major networks and regulators prefer, and partly because running a non-custodial card programme is genuinely hard. If you want a working card, Whop Cards is the most transparent on geography and rewards, but the US-only eligibility rules out most of the readers I have in mind. If you want the self-custody model, the realistic answer today is to keep your crypto in your own wallet and use a separate card or banking product, accepting that the two pieces are not joined at the hip the way they were with Monolith.
Who I would recommend this card to
No one, in the present tense. The Monolith card is not being issued, the cards that exist have been deactivated for the better part of two years, and the app is no longer in app stores. There is no path to being a Monolith cardholder in 2026.
There are two things this review is still useful for, and I would encourage you to think about them in this order.
The first is the question of how to recover what you have. If you are a former holder with crypto still in the wallet, the recovery path is your seed phrase and another wallet app. If you have a leftover euro or pound balance, the path is the Solaris Redemptions Support form, with a 14-day response window as a starting expectation rather than a guarantee. Treat the support form as the only route, document everything, and follow up.
The second is the question of what to do next, and here the answer is honest about its limits. The Monolith product filled a real gap — a card that spent from a self-custody wallet — and the alternatives I checked do not fill that same gap, partly because the regulatory environment has changed and partly because the economics of running such a programme are difficult. If the self-custody model is what you cared about, holding your own crypto and using a separate non-crypto card or banking product is the most realistic answer for now. If a working card with published fees is the priority, Whop Cards is the most transparent of the three alternatives I reviewed, but the US-only eligibility rules out most readers in Europe and elsewhere.
Either way, the underlying lesson is the one the closure underlines: when a card programme closes, the only protections you have are the ones you built in advance. Saving your seed phrase, withdrawing balances promptly, and not assuming deposit insurance applies are the three habits that would have made the Monolith closure less painful for holders, and they are the three habits worth carrying into whatever product you use next.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Monolith card?
The Monolith card was a debit card that spent directly from a self-custody crypto wallet, run by the Lithuanian entity UAB “Belela” with cards issued by Solaris. The service closed on 8 October 2024, cards were deactivated, and the app was delisted from app stores in February 2025.
How did the Monolith card work before it closed?
Before the closure, the card drew on a self-custody wallet that the user controlled with a 12-word seed phrase, and you could top up the card by sending supported tokens to the wallet, where they were converted and made available for spending. The card currency was EUR or GBP, and the only published fee structure was an FX fee of 1.75% outside the card’s currency and a 1% top-up fee avoidable by topping up with DAI.
Is Monolith a bank?
No. Monolith was a crypto card programme, not a bank. The company behind it, UAB “Belela”, was a Lithuanian virtual currency deposit and exchange operator, and the cards themselves were issued by Solaris, an electronic money institution.
Who owns Monolith?
The trading entity was UAB “Belela” (Lithuania, company code 305982313), and the website copyright was held by Token Group Ltd under a licence to Belela. The card issuer was Solaris, and the named successor app is Token.com.
Is the Monolith card available in my country?
No. The programme is closed, no new cards are being issued, and existing cards have been deactivated since 8 October 2024. Historically, third-party sources said the card was aimed at the EEA, with the United States and Asia excluded, but the official page no longer states any country list, because the product does not exist.
Can I still use my Monolith card?
No. Cards were deactivated on 8 October 2024, and the app is no longer in app stores. If you have an old card, it will not authorise at a terminal, and there is no way to reactivate it.
How do I get my crypto out of Monolith?
If you saved your 12-word seed phrase, import it into another self-custody wallet such as MetaMask, Trust Wallet, or Coinbase Wallet, and your tokens will appear there. If you did not save the phrase, the app could show it under Settings, then Back up Seed, but only if the app is still installed on the phone you used.
How do I get my euro or pound balance back?
Submit a request on the Solaris Redemptions Support page with the subject “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”, including payout account details in EUR or GBP and a colour copy of your ID if your email differs from the one on file. Solaris says it aims to respond within 14 days.
Does the Monolith card require KYC?
Yes, but the question does not apply in 2026, because the programme is closed. The closure notice did not describe a KYC procedure for new applicants, and no new applicants are being accepted.
Is the Monolith card worth it today?
No. The card is not being issued, existing cards have been deactivated, and the app is no longer in stores. If you are choosing a card to use now, look at the alternatives I describe above, and accept that none of them is a self-custody card in the way Monolith was.
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