BitPay closed its card in 2023 — this is what that means for you

Updated October 2026

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The BitPay card is gone. That is not a figure of speech and not a marketing line you have to read twice: the prepaid Mastercard programme run by BitPay stopped loading on 1 June 2023 and stopped spending and ATM access on 15 June 2023, and in 2026 the company’s own site no longer shows a card at all. If you searched for this card hoping to apply, you have not lost a page — there is nothing left to apply for. If you still have a balance, a cheque, or an unanswered question from 2023, the interesting part for you starts here.

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

This is not a snapshot of a live product, so I want to be clear about what kind of page this is. It is an explanation of a closed programme: what happened and when, what it means for anyone who was still holding money when it shut, what can go wrong with a prepaid crypto card in general, and what people are looking at now. Almost none of the card’s own terms survive to be quoted, and I would rather say that plainly than invent a fee schedule.

Verdict: 1.7 out of 10

The score is 1.7 out of 10. It is not a close call, and it is not a judgement about BitPay the company. It is a judgement about one thing: whether you could use this card today. You could not, because the card does not exist any more. The card existed as a product between 2018 and June 2023 and was then wound down.

Cost gets 3 rather than 0 for a specific reason: the historic numbers are recoverable, and they were ordinary. That is not praise. An ordinary fee schedule on a card that no longer exists is not a feature you can spend. Top-up options get the same 3 because loading existed until 1 June 2023 and the routes are simply not described any more.

Who this page is really for: former cardholders trying to track down a leftover balance, and anyone who saw the card advertised recently and is trying to work out whether an old advert is still true. For the second group the answer is short — no, it is not still true.

Who it is not for: anyone choosing a card to spend from today. There is nothing to choose. I have included live alternatives further down, but I want to be honest that none of them is a replacement for a BitPay card, because a BitPay card cannot be replaced.

What happened to the programme

This is the timeline, and it is short. In January 2023 Metropolitan Commercial Bank announced it was exiting crypto banking. On 17 May 2023 BitPay cardholders were emailed to say the prepaid Mastercard programme was winding down. Loading stopped on 1 June 2023. Spending and ATM access ended on 15 June 2023. Remaining balances were mailed as cheques, around 30 June 2023.

That is five months from the bank announcement in January to the end of card service in June 2023. If you were using the card in early 2023, you had weeks of notice and then a hard stop, not a gradual run-off.

Sources disagree on one point and I would rather show you the disagreement than pick a side. One review says the promised replacement card never launched. CryptoCardHub says new applications are paused and a waitlist is open, undated. Both cannot be current in the same sense, and neither is a statement from BitPay’s card pages. As of 2026 the BitPay site shows no card product.

The history matters too, because this was the second time. In 2018 the non-US prepaid Visa programme shut down after Visa revoked Wave Crest’s licence — and Wave Crest was the issuer behind a whole family of crypto card brands, not only this one. So an issuer licence being pulled is a known failure mode for this product category, and it is not the first time BitPay’s card programme has been caught by it.

What BitPay itself says: its site states it is “licensed to engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services”. That is a company-wide statement about the crypto business, not about the card. The card issuer is not stated officially. NMLS ID#1496848 appears alongside.

On cost and fees, the honest position is this: the card’s public pages no longer state anything. Not the fee schedule, not the eligibility rules, not the limits, not which networks were supported. If you find a page that appears to quote BitPay card fees today, treat it as historical. What circulates is the historic schedule, unofficial: a 3% foreign transaction fee, $2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal, a $5 per month dormancy fee after 90 days of inactivity, and $10 for a standard card replacement. None of that is confirmed by the card itself any more, and none of it can be checked against a live agreement. What BitPay’s own app and site still carry is a download set — App Store, Google Play, Windows, Mac — with no ratings shown. Store ratings I did not read.

One thing to keep in view: BitPay is a crypto wallet business first. The card sat on top of it. The wallet, whatever you think of it, is a separate product with its own support, and the two should not be confused when you are reading anything about your money.

If you already have the card

If you are reading this because you had one, you are in a narrower and more practical situation than a prospective buyer.

What was supposed to happen: remaining balances were to be issued as a cheque to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days after the 15 June 2023 cut-off. That is the mechanism. A cheque, by post, to an address on file. If you have moved since 2023, that is the first thing to worry about — a cheque to an old address is a cheque you may never see.

What I could not find: an official statement of the refund amount, and any claims process. Neither is published. So if your cheque did not arrive, or arrived short, or was never issued, there is no published route described on the card pages that I can point you to. What exists is the general support channel — BitPay has a help library and support reachable from the app. Card support itself has ceased. Languages and support hours are not stated.

The historic day-to-day terms of the card are now not stated either: ATM network, limits, funding routes, dispute process. The last day to load was 1 June 2023. The only limits and fees you will find are unofficial historic ones — a $10,000 daily purchase cap and a $25,000 monthly ATM cap, both per a third-party review, and both now meaningless as terms.

My read on where that leaves you: the money question is not really a card question any more, it is a money-transfers question — a cheque that has not arrived is a lost cheque, and lost cheques are handled like lost cheques, not like a support ticket. Check whether the address on the account is still yours, and expect that the practical answer to “what did my balance become” is postal.

What can go wrong

This section is broader than BitPay, because the failure modes are the ones any prepaid crypto card carries, and BitPay demonstrated several of them live.

Your provider’s licences can end without you choosing anything. A card is not a company. It runs on an issuer bank holding a network licence, on top of a crypto company. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers, and they can suspend a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. Wave Crest was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Your card disappearing is a licensing event, not a service level failure.

Closures follow a shape. Notice, then loading stops, then spending stops, then you are asked to withdraw what is left. BitPay ran through that sequence between January and June 2023. One 2026 closure reported by a secondary source had new loads ending 8 July 2026 and spending stopping 8 August 2026 — single source, unconfirmed, but the shape is consistent.

Complaints about the company are not about the card, and I am keeping them separate. On Trustpilot, the BitPay company rating is 1.2/5 across 299 reviews, read on 2026-10-20, with 89% one-star. The recurring themes are funds that cannot be withdrawn or sent (June to October 2026), KYC that is burdensome or declined — including a report of KYC demanded for a $15 payment in October 2026 — support reachable only by bots with no phone, in 2026, and refused account closure in December 2025. BitPay does not reply to negative reviews. Some reviews promote recovery services for scam losses; those are unverified claims and I would treat them as advertising, not evidence.

KYC can fail and lock you, and that is by design. Regulated businesses must verify customers and assess risk under anti-money-laundering law, with ongoing monitoring and suspicious-activity reporting. In the EU, due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality and identity documents, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship, and whether you are a politically exposed person. In the US, the customer identification programme requires name, date of birth, address and an identification number, and electronic systems check proof-of-address documents. If due diligence cannot be completed, EU rules require the institution to refrain from the transaction or relationship and, where necessary, end it. That is why accounts close or freeze pending documents. Nationality is screened separately from residence because sanctions screening and issuer policy apply to citizenship and country of birth, not just to where you live.

Custody risk is the quiet one. With a custodial wallet the provider holds the credentials and you must trust it completely. A seed phrase — typically 12 to 24 words — is an unencrypted form of the private key, and anyone who has it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Crypto transfers are typically irreversible and a stolen private key has no recovery: the network cannot freeze or return anything. The record is not theoretical: Mt. Gox about US$350 million reported stolen 2011–2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022.

Payments get declined for reasons that have nothing to do with you. A merchant category code is a four-digit number classifying a business under ISO 18245; MCC 7995 covers gambling, and many issuers block it by policy rather than law, with a different list per issuer. Address Verification compares the numeric parts of the billing address you typed against issuer records; it is mainly available in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs, because the BIN lookup shows the card type and the issuer country — which is also why a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another. And a declined authorisation can leave a hold on your money for several days, typically up to 7.

Refunds are not automatic. A chargeback is a refund the issuer orders to settle a dispute, with reason codes for 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; prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed. Under 3-D Secure, liability for fraudulent online payments can shift from the merchant to your bank — or, per critics, to you.

Taxes follow the money, not the card. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss. Gain is measured in local fiat currency at fair market value on the transaction date, so each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. That is a reporting question for your own accountant, not something I can advise on.

What to take instead

Since the BitPay card cannot be replaced, here is what people are actually choosing. These are alternatives in the market now — none of them is a BitPay card, and each has gaps that you should weigh yourself.

Cardex markets itself as “One crypto card, 200+ countries”, with no country list and no stated exclusions — the absence of a list is itself something to notice. Its App Store listing is Naira-focused, with the card in Naira. It converts crypto to fiat at the moment of payment, and its site describes an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchange rates and picks the best one when you spend; no fee percentage is stated. Funding comes from USDT, USDC and BTC wallets, networks not stated. No rewards stated, no cost stated.

MSX scores highest of the three at 6.4 / 10, and I want to be straight with you: I could not read an official page stating who can get it, what the card is, what it costs, what the fees are, what funds it, or what it pays back. The score is not something I can unpack for you.

Whop Cards is the most specific of the three about where it works. Consumers: 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, Wyoming. Businesses: 41 states. Unsupported consumer countries are listed explicitly: Belarus, China (Mainland), Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam. Russia and Belarus are also unsupported for corporate use. Whether eligibility turns on citizenship or residence is not stated. The card is Visa, working anywhere Visa is accepted online and in stores; cards can also be issued to team members. Cost is stated as “No extra fees”, with no issuance or monthly amounts listed. Spending comes from a Whop balance, with a pending balance usable as soon as a payment arrives while standard withdrawals use settled funds, backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet — coins and networks not stated. Rewards: 5% cashback at select merchants, currently Uber, more planned, with payout currency and conditions not stated.

Before you pick any of them, check the four things none of them publish clearly: the fee percentage on conversion, the countries served, how you get money out, and what happens to your balance if the provider’s issuer pulls its licence.

Who I would recommend it to

To someone in your position, if you are choosing today: not this one, and not any of the three above without reading their current terms yourself. What I would actually do is check ESMA’s interim register of authorised crypto-asset service providers, white papers and non-compliant entities, and confirm the provider is on it. In the EU the framework is MiCA, which ESMA states took legal effect in June 2023; its rules on stablecoins and asset-referenced tokens applied from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider rules, from 30 December 2024. E-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution (Article 48), and a provider authorised in one member state can serve the EU. The transitional period lets providers already operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first. Note also that a card is a payment service regulated separately from the crypto side — so a crypto card often rests on two licences, and you should ask which two.

If you are a former holder, ignore all of the above and deal with the cheque. If you are weighing a self-custody-linked card instead, understand the trade: the funds stay in your own wallet until the moment of payment, and you take on sole responsibility for key loss, phishing, and clipboard-hijacking malware that swaps copied addresses. Network choice is where people lose money quietly — Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option; ERC-20 gas must be paid in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT and no ETH cannot send; Tron fees are paid through bandwidth and energy resources, often burning TRX. Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity, so stablecoins are not censorship-proof. And blockchain transfers are irreversible: a deposit on an unsupported network, or to an address of another network, can be lost entirely.

One practical note on paying by phone: Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific Device Account Number held in the Secure Element, never on Apple servers, and each payment uses a one-time dynamic security code. An issuer can still restrict a tokenised number — blocking it on magnetic stripe, phone or website — so adding a card to a wallet is not a way around an issuer’s controls.

Frequently asked questions

What was the BitPay card?

It was a prepaid Mastercard that drew on a crypto balance you loaded in advance, from 2018 until 2023. Loading stopped on 1 June 2023 and spending and ATM access ended on 15 June 2023, after the issuing bank exited crypto banking. Balances were then mailed out as cheques.

Is BitPay a bank?

No. BitPay states it is licensed for Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NMLS ID#1496848), which is a company-level statement about the crypto business. The card’s issuing bank was never stated officially, and that issuer’s departure from crypto is what ended the card.

Can I still get a BitPay card?

No. The card is not on BitPay’s site as of 2026, and the programme closed in June 2023. One source says new applications are paused with a waitlist; another says the promised replacement never launched. Neither is an offer you can rely on.

What happened to balances left on the card?

They were to be issued as a cheque to the address linked to the card, within roughly 30 days of the 15 June 2023 cut-off. No official refund amount and no claims process are published. If the cheque never arrived and you have moved since, that is the first thing to sort out.

What did the BitPay card charge?

Its public pages no longer state any fees, so there is nothing official left to quote. Unofficial historic figures circulating: 3% foreign transaction fee, $2.50 per domestic ATM withdrawal, $5 per month dormancy after 90 days of inactivity, $10 for a standard replacement. Treat all of them as history.

Was the BitPay card safe to use?

The card had ordinary card safeguards — 3-D Secure checks on online payments, tokenised mobile wallets — but the bigger risk was structural: your money sat with a provider and an issuing bank, and either can withdraw. Stablecoin issuers say they freeze funds tied to illicit activity, and blockchain transfers are irreversible with no recovery path.

Why do crypto cards get declined at shops?

Often the merchant’s rules, not a problem with your card. Address Verification is mainly available in the US, Canada and UK and generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards; some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs because the lookup shows the issuer country; and gambling code MCC 7995 is blocked by many issuers as policy rather than law.

Who owns BitPay?

BitPay is a crypto wallet business, and the card was a product on top of it — not the same thing, and worth keeping separate when you read about your funds. Its wallet provider is named as BitPay Software, LLC. On Trustpilot the company sits at 1.2/5 across 299 reviews, read 2026-10-20.

Can I move a stablecoin balance to another card now?

Not by moving it here — there is nothing here. What you can do is check ESMA’s interim register of authorised crypto-asset service providers before choosing a provider, and confirm which two licences stand behind the card you are considering, since a payment card and a crypto service are regulated separately.

What is the closest thing to the BitPay card today?

Whop Cards is the most transparent about where it works, though it is US-focused — 31 states for consumers, 41 for businesses, with a long list of unsupported countries. Cardex covers 200+ countries with Visa, Mastercard, VERVE and UnionPay. MSX scores highest but publishes almost nothing I could read. Check the fees yourself; none of the three states a conversion percentage.

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