Canadian-only, cashback in bitcoin, and thin on the details
Available in US
The Shakepay card is a physical Visa prepaid card that spends a balance held in Canadian dollars, and it pays a little of that spend back in bitcoin. That is the whole idea in one sentence: no credit check, no annual fee, no foreign transaction charge if you climb to the Blue reward status, and cashback that arrives in your BTC balance automatically.
It is also, as things stand, a card for Canadians. Shakepay hands it to its own customers in all 13 provinces and territories, and Canada is the only country on offer. If you are reading this from anywhere else, the honest answer to “is Shakepay card available in my country” is no, and no part of the rest of this review changes that.
I scored it 4.3 out of 10. Not because the card is bad — the everyday-use side of it is genuinely the strongest part of the offer — but because it solves the problem it was built for only inside one country, and because several of the numbers a shopper would want to compare simply are not published.
The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 4.3 out of 10, and the reason is Canada
A 4.3 feels harsh on paper. There is no annual fee, the FX charge falls to zero at the top reward status, and there is a physical card that works with Apple Pay and Google Pay. What drags the number down is not quality but reach, plus a thin layer of published detail that leaves me guessing in places where any shopper would want an exact figure.
Let me break it down the way I scored it.
| Criterion | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 2 / 10 | Available to Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories; Canada only |
| Cost | 5 / 10 | No annual fees; FX conversion outside Canada 3% on Base, 1.5% on Bright, 0% on Blue; the issuance fee is not disclosed, and the card is free for fully verified accounts |
| Top-up options | 3 / 10 | The card spends a Canadian dollar balance; Interac e-Transfer in is free with a $5 minimum and $10,000 maximum; how to fund it with crypto is not disclosed |
| Reliability and complaints | 5 / 10 | Issued by Peoples Trust Company, FINTRAC registration #M17065696, funds not CDIC-insured; Trustpilot 2.3 out of 5, with complaints about freezes, account closures and withdrawal delays |
| Everyday use | 7 / 10 | Physical Visa Prepaid, Apple Pay and Google Pay, PLUS-network ATMs at $500 per transaction; no virtual card disclosed |
Read that table as two different stories. Everyday use scores 7 because the card does the basic things properly. Who can get it scores 2 because the address list is one country long. If you are a Canadian resident who wants bitcoin cashback on ordinary spending, those two numbers invert and this becomes a much better card than the total suggests. If you are anywhere else, the total is the only number that applies.
Who I would point it at: Canadian residents spending regularly at ordinary shops who already have a Shakepay account and want a small amount of bitcoin back without thinking about it, and who are content to reach the Blue status where the FX charge disappears.
Who I would not point it at: anyone outside Canada; anyone whose main worry is funds being protected, since the balance is explicitly not CDIC-insured and sits with a custodial wallet; anyone who needs a virtual card for online-only spending; and anyone planning large monthly volumes, because the monthly ceiling is fixed and cannot be raised.
Who they will give the card to
Canada only. The card is available to all Shakepay customers in all 13 provinces and territories. There is no separate application to a Canadian address requirement elsewhere — if you do not have a Shakepay account, the card is not the first thing you would be filling in for.
One detail worth knowing before you write in: the cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency. That is not the same as the card being open to non-residents. The published position remains Canada-only, and some countries and merchants are restricted — the address the card’s own pages give for that question is the email [email protected].
There is no credit check, and setting the card up takes minutes. Beyond that, the public pages do not state which documents are required, what proof of address looks like, or how age is handled — that is a genuine gap in what I could check, not something I am guessing at.
How to get it
You order a physical Shakepay Visa Prepaid Card inside the app. The balance it spends is in Canadian dollars. Whether a virtual or metal version exists is not stated in what I read.
To be eligible you need a fully verified Shakepay account, you must be of the age of majority in your province or territory, and it is one card per person. There is an eligibility questionnaire in the app, and there is no credit check anywhere in the process. Verification tiers, how long verification takes, and the reasons a rejection might be given are not stated on the pages I read, so I cannot tell you how patient to be.
You set your PIN at the moment of ordering, which is worth remembering: a PIN cannot be changed later, and getting a new one means replacing the card.
Delivery takes within 21 days by Canada Post regular mail, with no tracking. Shakepay says the card arrives “regardless of where you live in Canada”; no other countries are listed. The card is free for fully verified accounts.
If it arrives damaged, the replacement keeps the same number, expiry and CVV, so your existing saved cards keep working. If it is lost or stolen, the replacement gets new details — which means re-adding it to your phone wallet wherever it was saved. The replacement fee is not stated. Report a lost or stolen card and the reissue comes within 30 days.
Fees: what a payment actually costs you
Here is the honest version: most of what you would want to know about costs is either absent or simple, and the one fee that is published changes with your reward status.
| Fee or limit | What it is |
|---|---|
| Annual fee | No annual fees |
| Issuance fee | Not stated; the card is free for fully verified accounts |
| Conversion fee | Not stated on the page; conversion happens through the Shakepay balance, not the card |
| Foreign Exchange Charge | 3% on Base, 1.5% on Bright, 0% on Blue; the cardholder agreement’s fee table lists only the 3% charge |
| ATM | PLUS-logo ATMs: $500 per transaction, $1,000 per day; operator fees may apply; no cash or cheque deposits |
| Per-transaction limit | CAD $5,000 per transaction, $5,000 per day, $50,000 per month; one help article reported $3,000 per transaction and day in a more recent version, unverified |
| Mobile tap limit | $250 for Apple Pay and Google Pay |
Three everyday payments, with what applies to each.
A $40 grocery shop in Toronto. Nothing to pay. The card spends your Canadian dollar balance, there is no annual fee to amortise, and the 1% cashback on Base adds CAD $0.40 in bitcoin.
A €30 dinner in Lisbon. The 3% Foreign Exchange Charge applies if you are on Base, so roughly €0.90 on top, and the Visa conversion rate applies on top of that. On Bright it is 1.5%, and on Blue it is 0%. This is the single fee most likely to decide whether the card is worth it for you — if you travel regularly, your reward status matters more than anything else the card does. If the shop refunds the payment, the refund comes back at the rate paid to Visa minus the charge, so usually less than what you originally paid.
A $120 ATM withdrawal at a PLUS-logo machine. $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day are your ceilings, operator fees may apply on top, and ATM transactions earn no bitcoin rewards. Withdraw from your bank at home instead if you can.
One more thing to check first: your limits cannot be increased. The help article on this was updated 21 Apr 2026, and another article or the cardholder agreement has been reported with different figures — one said $3,000 per transaction and per day. Shakepay has not published a reconciliation I could find, so treat CAD $5,000 as the working number and confirm in-app before you rely on it.
Top up: funding the balance, not the card
The card does not hold crypto. It spends the Canadian dollar balance in your Shakepay account, and you top up that account. Which coins and networks can be used to get there is not stated — and that is the single most important unanswered question for anyone whose money starts as bitcoin.
| Top-up method | Fee | Speed | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interac e-Transfer in | Free | Minutes | $5 minimum, $10,000 maximum |
| Wire in | Free | 1–2 working days | $10,000 minimum |
| Crypto deposit for the card | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
There are no activation fees and no minimum balance. That $10,000 wire minimum is worth pausing on: it is a bank-transfer-shaped number, not a casual-top-up number, and it tells you something about who this is designed for.
If you close the card, the Shakepay Wallet balance stays accessible and your funds do not expire with the card. Withdrawal fees from the wallet were not stated in what I read.
Paying with it every day
The practical surface here is good. There is a physical Visa Prepaid card, Apple Pay and Google Pay supported “where available”, and a mobile app where you handle disputes, the card itself and support chat. Which merchant categories are blocked is not stated.
The reward is the hook: up to 1.5% cashback in bitcoin on eligible purchases at eligible merchants worldwide, credited automatically to your BTC balance and withdrawable to your own wallet. Statuses are set by calendar month:
- Base (default): 1% card cashback, 3% FX fee.
- Bright: reached by exchanging $100+ or $200+ in eligible direct deposits — 1% cashback, 1.5% FX fee.
- Blue: reached by exchanging $1,000+ or $2,000+ in direct deposits — 1.5% cashback, 0% FX fee, priority support.
- Business: automatic, with no qualification.
No metal card is stated.
If a payment goes wrong, you notify Shakepay in writing within 60 days through the dispute section of the app. Read the agreement’s other number too: a dispute must be received within 90 days or the transaction is deemed accepted. Visa Zero Liability claims for unauthorised use can take up to 120 days after the paperwork, may require a police investigation, and transactions before you report the loss may be treated as yours. If a complaint goes unresolved, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments is 1-888-451-4519, or FCAC at 1-866-461-3222.
What can go wrong
Two risks here are structural and two are reputational, and I would weight them differently depending on how much money you keep on the card.
Your money sits with Shakepay, not with a bank deposit. The issuer is Peoples Trust Company, under licence from Visa International. Shakepay itself is FINTRAC #M17065696, a CIRO member and an investment dealer registered with the AMF and provincial regulators. The balance is held in a custodial wallet — Shakepay holds the credentials, which is what the category calls custodial custody — and the funds are not CDIC-insured. If your money is there, it is not behind a deposit guarantee scheme.
Frozen and closed accounts are the loudest complaint theme. On Trustpilot the card scores 2.3 out of 5 across 22 reviews, one of them from the last twelve months, read on 2026-10-20. Only one review mentions the card at all — a positive one from December 2021. The themes underneath are account freezes and closures without a reason given, support going unresponsive for days, delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires, unreturned funds including a $250 bill payment that was never received (September 2026), and being questioned about the source of funds. A third-party site, CryptoCardHub, on 11 August 2026 puts Trustpilot nearer 1.5 out of 5 — a figure that disagrees with the page I read, and neither is official.
Treat the rating as a signal about support responsiveness, not about the card. An unverified rating is not a regulator’s finding.
KYC questions can stop you mid-use. Anti-money-laundering rules require ongoing monitoring and suspicious-activity reporting, and when due diligence cannot be completed the account can be frozen or closed pending documents. That is not Shakepay being unusual; it is the legal default for a regulated business. But it does mean your access depends on your answers, not only on your card.
Programmes like this do get wound down. Visa and Mastercard do not issue these cards themselves — they license issuers and can suspend a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022, and WaveCrest, which supplied 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. Because this card’s balance is your wallet balance, keep the wallet side in view separately from the card — the card is the part that goes away.
On the security controls that are there: you can lock or freeze the card instantly in the app, two-factor authentication is supported, and a PIN is disabled after three wrong entries. Lost or stolen, the 24/7 line is 1-855-574-2539. Blue and Business get priority live chat, weekdays 8am–10pm EST and weekends 9am–5pm EST; everyone else gets in-app support chat, [email protected], or +1(438) 802-1221.
One last wrinkle: the physical-card rollout. Unofficial reporting from CryptoCardHub on 11 August 2026 says ordering opened gradually by waitlist rank, announced in May 2026 and opened 21 May 2026. Shakepay’s own help article on physical card ordering does not mention a waitlist. If you are waiting on a card, ask in the app rather than trusting either story.
What to take instead
Three cards I looked at, and none of them is a clean substitute — they fail in different directions.
| Card | Score | Form | Fees | Rewards | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini | 4.9 / 10 | Mastercard World Elite credit card; physical or virtual not stated | No annual fee, no foreign transaction fees; crypto conversion not applicable | 4% gas, EV and transit on the first $300/month, 3% dining, 2% groceries, 1% other; paid instantly in bitcoin or 50+ cryptos | A credit card you pay off in fiat, so it needs credit and it is not a crypto-balance card |
| Lava | 7.1 / 10 | “Lava Card”; network and physical/virtual not stated; 150 million merchants in 150+ countries | “no annual fees”; no FX fees and no FX spread | Up to 5% back in bitcoin on every purchase; conditions not stated | Eligibility not stated on the card page, so I cannot tell you who gets one |
| GoMining | 6.6 / 10 | Virtual now, physical “coming soon”; network and currency not stated | Not stated; opening a card grants a free 1 TH miner | “Up to 5% cashback”, paid in mining power that rises with VIP level | Funding in BTC, USDT, GOMINING and other coins; products “may not be available in your jurisdiction” |
Read across the row for Lava and GoMining and you see the shape of the category: the highest scores go to cards with the vaguest published eligibility. Neither tells you, on its own page, who can get one. That is the trade this whole category makes — a better headline number in exchange for less you can actually verify before applying.
Gemini scores below Shakepay and is the only one of the four whose mechanics I can describe completely, because a credit card is a credit card: no conversion, no stored crypto balance, just spending now and being paid crypto back. If your problem is specifically “I cannot get an ordinary bank card”, a credit card is the wrong instrument, and the comparison stops being meaningful.
Who I would recommend it to
If you live in Canada, already bank with Shakepay, and want a small automatic trickle of bitcoin back from everyday spending without managing anything, the Blue status is what makes this card good rather than merely usable: at 1.5% cashback and a 0% FX charge, it stops being a way to spend abroad at a penalty and starts being a way to spend.
If you are outside Canada, my recommendation is not this card. Not because of the crypto — because of the address list.
And if the thing you actually need is a way to hold and spend crypto while a provider holds your balance, read the section on risk before you commit real money, because that is where the honest answer lives: custodial, uninsured, and reviewed by users who report being left waiting.
The card itself is fine. The ceiling on it is geography, and the fine print is thinner than a paying customer deserves.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Shakepay card?
It is a physical Visa prepaid card that spends the Canadian dollar balance in your Shakepay account, and pays part of each eligible purchase back in bitcoin — 1% on the default Base status and up to 1.5% at Blue. You do not need a credit check. It is prepaid, not credit, so it spends only what is loaded, which also means it cannot overdraw.
Is Shakepay a bank?
No, not in the sense you would want to rely on. Shakepay is registered with FINTRAC as #M17065696, is a CIRO member and an investment dealer registered with the AMF and provincial regulators. The card itself is issued by Peoples Trust Company under licence from Visa International. Your balance sits in a custodial wallet and the funds are not CDIC-insured.
Who owns Shakepay?
That is not something the card’s public pages answer, and I am not going to guess at it from a name. What the pages do establish is the regulatory picture: Shakepay as the crypto platform and programme manager, Peoples Trust Company as the actual card issuer under Visa’s licence. If ownership matters to your decision, ask them directly.
Can I use the Shakepay card in my country?
Wherever you are, yes in principle — it is a Visa card, so merchants treat it as one. But you cannot get it there unless you are a Shakepay customer in one of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. Canada is the only country on offer, and some countries and merchants are restricted; [email protected] is the address given for that question.
How do I get the Shakepay card?
Order it in the app. You need a fully verified Shakepay account, to be of the age of majority in your province or territory, and it is one card per person. There is an eligibility questionnaire and no credit check. You set your PIN while ordering, and the card arrives within 21 days by Canada Post regular mail with no tracking.
Does the Shakepay card require KYC?
Yes. A fully verified account is a condition of getting the card, and anti-money-laundering rules mean monitoring continues after that. The pages I read do not state which documents, proof of address or age checks are used, so I cannot tell you exactly what to have ready — that is a real gap, and worth asking support before you start.
How do I top up the Shakepay card?
You top up the Shakepay account, and the card spends the Canadian dollar balance. Interac e-Transfer in is free and arrives in minutes, with a $5 minimum and a $10,000 maximum. Wire in is free but takes 1–2 working days and has a $10,000 minimum. How to fund the card with crypto is not stated — the biggest thing to check first.
Is the Shakepay card free?
There are no annual fees, and the card itself is free for fully verified accounts. The issuance fee is not stated. The cost that actually lands on you is the Foreign Exchange Charge outside Canada: 3% on Base, 1.5% on Bright, and 0% on Blue. Fees also apply to ATM withdrawals on top of operator fees.
Is the Shakepay card safe?
It has the ordinary protections: instant freeze in the app, two-factor authentication, a PIN that disables after three wrong entries, and Visa Zero Liability for unauthorised use. What it does not have is deposit insurance — the funds are not CDIC-insured and sit with a custodial provider. Trustpilot shows 2.3 out of 5, with user reports of freezes, closures and delayed withdrawals.
Is the Shakepay card worth it?
In Canada, at Blue status, I think yes — 1.5% bitcoin cashback with no FX charge is a genuinely good everyday card. On the default Base status it is thinner, and outside Canada the 3% FX charge is the whole argument against it. Outside Canada the question does not arise anyway, because the card is not available there.
Credit and cashback cards in the catalogue – cryptocardcatalog
Content created by the «cryptocardcatalog» team