What the Shakepay card actually does, and who it is really for

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you have run into trouble getting an ordinary bank card — a decline at the till, a refusal to open an account, a salary that arrives and then sits there — the Shakepay card is worth putting on your shortlist. It is a physical Visa Prepaid Card that spends a Canadian dollar balance and pays you up to 1.5% back in bitcoin on eligible purchases. That is the good news, and it is real. The complication is that this is a Canadian product, and “Canadian product” does a lot of work in the sentence. Everything I found below was true when I checked the card’s own pages on 20 October 2026.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

I also want to be straight with you about what this review is. I have not used the card. I have read the cardholder agreement, the help centre, the reward-status article and the limits article, and I have read what other people say about the company. Where the card’s public pages leave something unsaid, I say so rather than filling the gap with a guess. That happens more often here than in most card reviews, and those gaps are themselves information.

Verdict: 4.3 out of 10, and the number is mostly about geography

The Shakepay card scores 4.3 out of 10 in my assessment. That is not a dismissal — it is the arithmetic of a genuinely good card with a genuinely narrow door. Break it into its parts and the picture is clearer than the total suggests.

Who does it suit? A Canadian resident — the card is for Shakepay customers in all 13 provinces and territories, and Canada is the only country — who already has crypto through the platform and wants ordinary spending to earn bitcoin back rather than points. If you want your everyday groceries to quietly accumulate bitcoin, and you are comfortable holding your balance with a company rather than in your own wallet, this card does that job and does it cheaply. There is no annual fee, the rewards are credited automatically without you claiming anything, and at the Blue status the foreign exchange fee disappears.

Who does it not suit? Almost everyone outside Canada, for a start: not because of a technical block, but because the balance is Canadian dollars and the product is sold only to Canadian customers. Then there is the person who cannot or will not hand over identity documents — the card requires a fully verified account, age of majority in your province or territory, and an eligibility questionnaire in the app, and the card pages do not spell out the documents or processing times, which tells you that part is not simple. And there is the person who treats a savings balance as money in a bank. The money is not in a bank. The issuer is Peoples Trust Company, and the funds are not CDIC-insured, so a failure at either Shakepay or the issuer does not have a deposit guarantee behind it. Read the section on what can go wrong below before you decide that does not matter.

The 7 out of 10 for everyday use is the part I would weight highest, because a card’s daily usefulness is what you actually live with. Physical card, phone wallets, cash withdrawals, a reward that lands automatically. It is a well-built product for its market. The problem is the size of that market.

Will they give you the card?

They will give it to Shakepay customers in all 13 provinces and territories of Canada. Canada only. That is the whole eligibility story as the card states it, and it is the single fact that decides this review.

There is one wrinkle worth knowing, because it is the kind of thing that trips people up. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency. In other words, the agreement itself is not the document saying you must live in Canada — the product’s availability is. Shakepay also states that some countries and merchants are restricted. If you are reading this from outside Canada and wondering whether your circumstances are an exception, the honest answer is that I could not find one written down. The route the card itself points to for that question is email, at [email protected].

So there are two separate gates, and it helps to keep them apart. The first is whether Shakepay will have you as a customer at all — that is a country question, and the answer is Canada. The second is whether you qualify for the card once you are a customer, and that is a verification question. A fully verified account is required. You must be of the age of majority in your province or territory. One card per person. There is an eligibility questionnaire inside the app, and there is no credit check — the card does not care what your credit file says.

The card does not disclose its verification tiers, how long verification takes, or the grounds on which an application is rejected. I would not want to guess at any of those. Nor does it list the documents, proof of address or age requirements on the pages I read. That silence is worth reading as a signal: the process exists, it involves checks, and the specifics are not something you can pre-plan around from a public page.

How to get it

You order the physical Shakepay Visa Prepaid Card inside the Shakepay app. That is where the order lives and where the eligibility questionnaire sits. There is no credit check, and the company says setup takes minutes — though that is the setup, not the arrival.

You set your PIN while ordering. This one detail deserves more attention than it gets in most write-ups: the PIN cannot be changed later. If you want a different PIN, you replace the card. So treat the PIN choice as a one-shot decision.

Delivery is by Canada Post regular mail, arrives within 21 days, and is not tracked. The card says it is delivered “regardless of where you live in Canada” — that is the exact reach of the promise. Other countries are not listed. No tracking means no precise delivery date, so if you are ordering because you are leaving the country soon, build in slack.

The card itself is free for fully verified accounts. The issuance fee is not disclosed as a separate number; the “free” statement is what the card commits to.

If the card is damaged, replacing it keeps the same number, expiry and CVV — which is convenient, because you would not have to update the card saved in Apple Pay or Google Pay. If it is lost or stolen, the replacement comes with new details. The replacement fee is not stated, and reissue happens within 30 days after you report the loss.

The physical card is a Visa Prepaid Card, and its balance is in Canadian dollars. A virtual card and any metal version are not disclosed. I mention this because search results often promise more forms than exist, and if your plan depends on a virtual card for online-only spending, you should confirm that directly rather than take it from an ad.

Fees: what a payment actually costs you

No annual fees. That is the headline and it is genuinely uncommon. Beyond it, the picture is a little more textured, so here is what is stated and what is not.

The structure to understand is the reward status, because it changes both what you earn and what you pay abroad. Statuses are set per calendar month. Base is the default: 1% card cashback and a 3% FX fee. Bright is reached by exchanging $100+ or by $200+ in eligible direct deposits: 1% cashback and a 1.5% FX fee. Blue is reached by exchanging $1,000+ or by $2,000+ in direct deposits: 1.5% cashback, 0% FX fee, and priority support. Business status is automatic. No metal card is stated.

Now three everyday payments, with the fees that actually apply.

Buying coffee in Toronto. Nothing to work out. The balance is Canadian dollars, the transaction is Canadian, no conversion happens, and you earn 1% cashback at Base, rising to 1.5% at Blue, credited automatically in bitcoin to your BTC balance.

A subscription billed in euros while you are at Base. This is where the FX Charge bites, and the arithmetic is worth doing in your head before you commit. Non-Canadian transactions convert at the Visa rate, and the help centre adds a foreign exchange charge on top: 3% at Base. So roughly three cents per dollar on everything you spend outside Canada — until you reach Bright (1.5%) or Blue (0%), where the same purchase costs materially less. That is the strongest argument for climbing the status ladder before you travel, and it is an argument worth making before you spend your holiday abroad at Base rates.

Withdrawing cash from a PLUS-logo ATM. $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day. Operator fees may apply on top — that is the ATM operator’s charge, not Shakepay’s, and it varies. No bitcoin rewards are earned on ATM transactions, so a cash withdrawal is pure cost: the limit, plus any operator fee, plus nothing back. If you are travelling, this is the line item that argues for using a card instead.

One more cost detail that only appears in the fine print: refunds on foreign purchases are converted at the rate you paid to Visa minus the FX charge, so a refund usually returns slightly less than what you originally paid. Set that against the price and it is rarely decisive — but it means a returned item does not come back whole.

Top up: the card spends a Canadian dollar balance

This is the part that trips up people who arrive from other crypto cards, so I want to be plain about it. The Shakepay card does not spend crypto. It spends a Canadian dollar balance, and topping it up means funding the Shakepay account that balance sits in.

Which coins and networks you can use to top up for the card is not stated. That is an important gap, because the wider Shakepay platform is built around crypto, and it would be reasonable to expect a crypto route. The card’s own pages do not commit to one. I am not going to invent an answer here — if funding the card in crypto matters to you, ask at [email protected] before you rely on it.

What is clear is that the everyday mechanics are simple and conventional: an Interac e-Transfer is free and arrives in minutes for anything from $5 to $10,000, which covers ordinary spending without friction. A wire is free too but slower, one to two working days, and only makes sense for larger sums given its $10,000 minimum.

Closing the card leaves your Shakepay Wallet balance accessible, and the funds do not expire with the card. Withdrawal fees from the wallet are not disclosed by the company, but the balance itself remains accessible and is not trapped in the plastic.

Paying with it every day

Apple Pay and Google Pay are both supported “where available” — the qualifier is the card’s, not mine. The mobile wallet limit is $250 per tap, which is the one ceiling in the table above that could actually catch you out at a larger shop. Which merchant categories are blocked is not stated.

The rewards are the part that distinguishes this card: up to 1.5% cashback in bitcoin on eligible purchases at eligible merchants worldwide, credited automatically to your BTC balance and withdrawable to a user wallet. There is no claim step and no monthly reconciliation. Buy something eligible, and bitcoin appears.

The Shakepay mobile app handles disputes, the card itself, and a support chat. I could not obtain the App Store or Google Play rating or the number of ratings, so I have no app-quality evidence either way — and an app rating would have been relevant, because this is where freeze controls and disputes live.

Disputes are handled in writing, in the dispute section of the app, within 60 days of the transaction. The agreement also says a dispute must be received within 90 days or the transaction is deemed accepted — so treat 60 days as your real deadline, because it is the shorter of the two and the one the help text states. Visa Zero Liability claims for unauthorised use can take up to 120 days after the paperwork is complete and may require a police investigation. And there is a hard edge: transactions before you reported the loss may be treated as yours.

If a complaint is not resolved, the paths named are the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments on 1-888-451-4519 and FCAC on 1-866-461-3222. Both are Canadian bodies. That is another way of restating the geography.

What can go wrong

Here is the material part of the review, and it is why the score is not higher than it is.

Your money is not bank-insured. The issuer is Peoples Trust Company, licensed by Visa International to run the card. Shakepay itself is registered with FINTRAC under #M17065696 and is a CIRO member and an Investment Dealer registered with the AMF and provincial regulators. But the funds are not CDIC-insured. If you are reading that as “my money is not protected the way a bank deposit is” — yes, that is what it means. This is a custodial setup: Shakepay holds the balance, so you are trusting a company rather than holding your own keys.

The complaint pattern is not reassuring. Trustpilot shows 2.3 out of 5 from 22 reviews, of which one was in the last 12 months, as I read it on 20 October 2026. Only one of those reviews mentions the card at all — a positive one from December 2021. The themes users report are account freezes and closures without stated reasons (2021 to February 2022, July 2025), support going unresponsive for days (2021, December 2023, July 2025), delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires (2022 to 2023), funds not returned including a $250 bill payment that was never received (September 2026), and being questioned about the source of funds (November 2022). An unofficial third-party site, CryptoCardHub, cited Trustpilot at about 1.5 out of 5 on 11 August 2026 — which disagrees with what I read directly. I would rather report both figures than pick the one that suits a narrative.

Fairness requires me to note the other side of that ledger: I found no official incident record on the card’s pages, and no user report beyond the reviews above. A small sample of reviews from a platform with a heavily negative average is weak evidence about a specific product, and most of these complaints are about the account and the exchange business rather than about paying at a till.

A prepaid card can still be declined and still hold your funds. Merchant category codes — the four-digit classification of a merchant’s business, where MCC 7995 covers gambling — are blocked by some issuers as policy rather than by law, and the blocked list varies by issuer. This card does not disclose its blocked categories. Address verification, which compares the numeric parts of your billing address against issuer records and is offered mainly in the US, Canada and the UK, is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards and can cause declines. And a declined authorisation may leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven.

Things can change. Physical card ordering moved to a general order flow, the limits help article was updated on 21 April 2026, and the reward-status article on 31 August 2026. One unofficial note, from CryptoCardHub on 11 August 2026, says the physical-card rollout opened gradually by waitlist rank and was announced in May 2026, opening on 21 May 2026 — the official help article I read does not mention a waitlist, so treat that as unconfirmed. The broader lesson from this category is worth stating plainly: card programmes do get shut down. 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 several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme. Closures typically mean a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw what is left.

What you can do if something goes wrong. Freeze the card instantly in the app. Use two-factor authentication. If the card is lost or stolen, there is a 24/7 line on 1-855-574-2539, and note the pin may be disabled after three wrong entries. Support is reachable at [email protected], through in-app Support Chat, and on +1(438) 802-1221. Blue and Business status get priority live chat, weekdays 8am–10pm EST and weekends 9am–5pm EST — which is one of the quieter perks of reaching Blue.

I should also be honest about a limitation on my own reading here: when two help articles and the cardholder agreement give different limit figures, that matters, and I could not resolve it. The limits article (updated 21 April 2026) gives CAD $5,000 per transaction and per day with a $50,000 monthly ceiling. Another help article was reported as differing, one said $3,000 per transaction and per day in a more recent article, and that figure is unverified. I have used the documented one, and I would suggest you confirm at signup which applies to you — this is exactly the kind of detail that turns a routine purchase into a decline.

What to take instead

If you are outside Canada, the honest starting point is that Shakepay is not a candidate and no amount of reading will change that. But if the shape of the product appeals — crypto or stablecoin spending with cashback — there are three comparison points I looked at, and they differ in the way that matters to you: whether it is a prepaid balance or a credit card, whether the FX fee is zero, and how wide the eligibility is.

Three contrasts stand out.

Credit card versus prepaid. Gemini is not prepaid. It is a Mastercard World Elite credit card paid off in fiat, which means you are borrowing rather than spending a stored balance — a completely different arrangement if your reason for being here is that a bank will not open an account for you. Its rewards structure is also the most detailed in the group: 4% on gas, electric vehicle and transit spending on the first $300 a month, 3% dining, 2% groceries, 1% everything else, paid instantly in bitcoin or one of 50+ cryptos on Gemini, changeable at any time. There are also referral figures — $50 crypto each, $250 per five referrals, capped at 50 per year — and 10% Vault Rewards at some merchants, capped and varying.

Zero FX versus tiered FX. Lava is the one with the cleanest cost story: no annual fees, no FX fees, no FX spread, and no exchange fees or spread on bitcoin buy or sell according to the page. Its reward claim is up to 5% back in bitcoin on every purchase — the highest here — though the conditions are not stated, and a claim like that always has conditions. Its eligibility is not stated either.

Breadth of countries. Trastra is the alternative with the widest stated reach of the four: 31 listed countries including Germany, France and the UK, stated as coming for all residents of the European Economic Area, with non-European residents told “Not at the moment” — a rule that appears to be based on residence. It is a prepaid debit card accepted at Visa merchants worldwide, in euro. But its fees and rewards are not stated at all, which for a card comparison is close to disqualifying. It also scores lowest here at 4.1.

One note on the shape of all of these, because it explains a lot. A payment card number begins with a 6- or 8-digit issuer identification number, and the rest is an account identifier and a check digit. Merchants can look up that prefix to see which institution and country issued the card, and may apply extra scrutiny if the issuer country differs from your billing address. That is the mechanism behind a card issued in one country looking “foreign” in another. And Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves — they license issuers, and can suspend a programme. Which is why, across this whole table, the company on your screen is often only a programme manager, and the institution holding your balance is someone you never chose.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend it if you live in Canada, you are already a Shakepay customer with a fully verified account, and you want ordinary spending to earn bitcoin rather than points. The mechanics support this: no annual fee, up to 1.5% credited automatically, Apple Pay and Google Pay, a physical Visa card delivered anywhere in Canada, and a Blue status that takes the FX fee to zero once you reach it. If you hold a balance you are not spending much of, the friction is genuinely low.

I would think hard before recommending it if any of these are true of you. You are outside Canada — the product is not for you and no workaround should tempt you into one. You need a card because a bank refused you, and the appeal of this card is precisely that it comes with CDIC-free funds and a 2.3-out-of-5 review history; that risk profile needs to be one you can carry. You are planning a foreign holiday and have not reached Bright or Blue, because at Base the FX charge is 3% on every purchase. You need cash more than card payments, because ATM withdrawals earn no bitcoin and the limits are $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day. Or you want a virtual card, which is not disclosed here.

I would point you elsewhere if what you actually want is a credit card with crypto rewards (Gemini’s structure is different in kind), or zero FX fees without tiering (Lava states that plainly), or eligibility across much of Europe (Trastra names 31 countries and the EEA, though with fees undisclosed). Pick on the axis that is blocking you: country, card type, or fee structure.

And a closing caution that applies to this card and to the category. Shakepay holds your balance, so control of the crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key — here, the provider. Transfers are typically irreversible, and a stolen key has no built-in recovery, because the network cannot freeze or return funds. Custodial platforms have a history of failure: Mt. Gox at about US$350 million reported stolen in 2011–2014, Coincheck at about US$400 million in 2018, and Ronin Network at US$625 million in 2022. None of that is a prediction about Shakepay specifically. It is the reason to keep a working balance on the card and not a life savings, and to treat the card as a spending tool rather than a store of value.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Shakepay card?

The Shakepay card is a physical Visa Prepaid Card that draws on a Canadian dollar balance in your Shakepay account. It is available to Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories — Canada only. Rather than points, eligible purchases earn up to 1.5% cashback in bitcoin, credited automatically to your BTC balance and withdrawable to a user wallet. The card is issued by Peoples Trust Company under licence from Visa International.

How does the Shakepay card work at a shop?

You pay as you would with any Visa card, and the amount comes off your Canadian dollar balance. There is no crypto conversion at the moment of payment, because the card spends dollars, not coins. Purchases at eligible merchants worldwide earn up to 1.5% in bitcoin. For context on why a Canadian-issued card can sometimes behave oddly abroad: the issuer’s country is visible in the card’s identifying prefix, and merchants may scrutinise purchases where that country differs from your billing address.

Who can get the Shakepay card?

Shakepay customers in all 13 provinces and territories of Canada. You need a fully verified account, to be of the age of majority in your province or territory, and there is one card per person. There is an eligibility questionnaire in the app and no credit check. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency, and some countries and merchants are restricted — if you are outside Canada asking about an exception, the card points to [email protected].

Does getting the Shakepay card require KYC?

Yes, in practice. A fully verified account is required before you can order, and identity checks are part of that. The card’s public pages do not list the specific documents, proof of address or age requirements, nor the verification tiers, processing times or grounds for rejection. What is documented is this: no credit check is performed, setup takes minutes, and one card per person. What that means for you is that the checks are real and the specifics are not public — plan for a process, not a formality.

How much does the Shakepay card cost?

There is no annual fee. The issuance fee is not stated, though the card is free for fully verified accounts. The real variable is the Foreign Exchange Charge on non-Canadian transactions: 3% at Base status, 1.5% at Bright and 0% at Blue. ATM withdrawals at PLUS-logo ATMs are capped at $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day, operator fees may apply, and no bitcoin is earned on them. No conversion fee is disclosed.

Can I top up the Shakepay card with cryptocurrency?

I could not confirm that, and I would not want to guess. The card’s pages describe topping up the Shakepay account rather than the card: an Interac e-Transfer is free, arrives in minutes, with a $5 minimum and a $10,000 maximum, and a wire is free, takes one to two working days, and has a $10,000 minimum. Which coins and networks can be used for the card is not stated. The card spends the Canadian dollar balance, so if funding it directly in crypto matters to you, ask before you rely on it.

Is Shakepay a bank, and are my funds safe?

Shakepay is not a bank in the sense that would reassure you, and the funds are not CDIC-insured. The company is registered with FINTRAC under #M17065696, is a CIRO member and an Investment Dealer registered with the AMF and provincial regulators. The card is issued by Peoples Trust Company. So this is a custodial arrangement — Shakepay holds the balance — with no deposit guarantee behind it. That is a different risk profile from a bank account, and it deserves a real decision rather than a shrug.

What are people complaining about?

Trustpilot showed 2.3 out of 5 from 22 reviews when I read it on 20 October 2026, with one review in the last 12 months and only one mentioning the card. Themes include account freezes and closures without stated reasons, support going unresponsive for days, delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires, funds not returned, and source-of-funds questioning. Most concern the account and exchange business rather than card payments. I found no official incident record on the card’s pages. Treat 22 reviews as a signal to investigate, not as a verdict.

How do I freeze the card or report it stolen?

Freeze it instantly in the app — that switch exists and takes seconds. For a lost or stolen card, there is a 24/7 line on 1-855-574-2539. Keep two-factor authentication on. Note two things: your PIN cannot be changed once set, so a new PIN requires replacing the card; and the PIN may be disabled after three wrong entries. A damaged replacement keeps the same number, expiry and CVV; a lost or stolen replacement gets new details and is reissued within 30 days of the report.

Is the Shakepay card worth it?

For a Canadian resident already using Shakepay who wants spending to earn bitcoin, yes: no annual fee, automatic rewards, phone wallets, and a Blue status that removes the FX fee. For everyone else, the geography ends the question before the merits begin. And weigh what you are accepting: no CDIC insurance on the balance, a custodial wallet, and reported account freezes. If you are outside Canada, Lava or Trastra may cover your country, and Gemini is a different kind of product entirely — a credit card rather than a prepaid balance.

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