Shakepay card: a Canadian prepaid Visa that pays cashback in bitcoin
Available in USThe Shakepay card is a Canadian Visa Prepaid card that draws on a Shakepay account balance in Canadian dollars and pays cashback in bitcoin on everyday spending. It is run by Shakepay, a Montreal-based crypto platform, and the card itself is issued by Peoples Trust Company under a Visa licence. If you live in Canada, the pitch is straightforward: load the card from your Shakepay account, tap or insert at the till, and watch a small slice of each purchase come back to you as bitcoin. If you do not live in Canada, the pitch stops at the border, because the card is only sold inside Canada and Shakepay does not describe a path for residents of other countries to get one.
The conditions described in this review are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict
The Shakepay card earns 4.3 out of 10 in my scoring, and the score reflects a clear split: what the card does well it does very well, but the eligibility box around it is so narrow that the rest of the world has to keep walking. For a Canadian who already uses Shakepay, the card is a tidy way to spend a Canadian-dollar balance and earn bitcoin back. For anyone outside Canada, the card is not a product they can buy at all, so the score lands where it does.
| Criterion | Mark | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 2 / 10 | Available to Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories; Canada only. |
| Cost | 5 / 10 | No annual fee; the foreign-exchange charge is 3% on Base, 1.5% on Bright, 0% on Blue; the card itself is free for fully verified accounts, with no published issuance fee. |
| Top-up options | 3 / 10 | The card spends a CAD balance, topped up via Interac e-Transfer with a $5 minimum and a $10,000 maximum; how crypto specifically feeds the card is not described on the public pages. |
| Reliability and complaints | 5 / 10 | The card is issued by Peoples Trust Company under a Visa licence; Shakepay is registered with FINTRAC and the CIRO; funds are not CDIC-insured; Trustpilot reading of the brand is poor, with complaint themes around freezes and slow withdrawals. |
| Everyday use | 7 / 10 | A physical Visa Prepaid with Apple Pay and Google Pay support, ATM access up to $500 per withdrawal, and bitcoin cashback on spending; a separate virtual card and any metal tier are not described. |
| Total | 4.3 / 10 | Strong for Canadian Shakepay users, narrow for everyone else. |
The card is built for a Canadian resident who wants bitcoin cashback on a Visa card that runs from a CAD balance, and it is best suited to that reader. It is not built for a non-Canadian looking for a global crypto card, a traveller who needs wide currency support, or someone who wants to fund spending directly from a non-custodial wallet.
Will they give you the card
The card is available to all Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, and only inside Canada. The help article on the card’s availability and the company materials read together describe Canada as the only market; nothing on the public pages names a path for a resident of any other country to apply. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency as a written clause, but the practical outcome is the same: Shakepay itself is a Canadian registered money-services business, and the card ordering flow is described in terms of Canadian delivery and verification. Some countries and merchants are restricted, and Shakepay’s published advice for a reader who is unsure is to email [email protected], which is a reasonable first step before committing to the sign-up flow.
For the reader, the practical test is simple. If you are a Canadian resident with a Shakepay account, the card is open to you in principle. If you are not in Canada, you should treat the card as unavailable, and the rest of this review is mostly informative rather than actionable for you.
How to get it
Shakepay describes the setup as taking minutes, with no credit check, and the card is ordered inside the Shakepay mobile app. The card itself is a physical Shakepay Visa Prepaid Card that holds a Canadian-dollar balance. You set a PIN during the ordering flow. The card is then delivered by Canada Post regular mail, within 21 days, without tracking, and Shakepay says it is delivered “regardless of where you live in Canada” — other countries are not listed as delivery destinations. For fully verified accounts the card is free; an issuance fee is not stated. If the card is damaged, you can replace it through the “Replace card” flow in the app and keep the existing number, expiry and CVV; if the card is lost or stolen, you receive new card details. The replacement fee and the precise reissue timing are not stated beyond a 30-day window after a loss is reported.
To be eligible, you need a fully verified Shakepay account, you need to be at the age of majority in your province or territory, and Shakepay says only one card per person. There is an eligibility questionnaire inside the app. Shakepay does not publish the exact verification tiers, the processing time for a card order, or the list of rejection reasons, so the public material is silent on the cases where someone might be turned down. The documents Shakepay uses for full verification — proof of address, identity documents, and so on — are not listed in the card-specific pages, so a reader who is at the very start of the process should expect to upload standard identification through the Shakepay account verification, not through the card flow.
The practical reading is this: sign in to the Shakepay app, complete or confirm full verification, answer the eligibility questionnaire, and order the card. The PIN you set during ordering is the PIN that ships with the card, and Shakepay is clear that the PIN cannot be changed later; if you want a new PIN, the supported path is to replace the card.
What it really costs
The headline cost story is friendly. There is no annual fee, and for a fully verified account the card itself is free. The cardholder agreement lists a single explicit fee, a 3% Foreign Exchange Charge that applies to non-Canadian transactions, and the help centre layers a tiered system on top of it that depends on your reward status for the calendar month.
| Fee or limit | What the card says |
|---|---|
| Issuance | Free for fully verified accounts; fee not stated otherwise. |
| Monthly fee | None. |
| Conversion fee | 3% (Base), 1.5% (Bright), 0% (Blue), on the foreign-exchange charge. |
| FX charge | 3% on non-Canadian transactions per the cardholder agreement. |
| ATM withdrawal | $500 per transaction, $1,000 per day, at PLUS-logo ATMs; operator fees may apply; no bitcoin rewards on ATM transactions; no cash or cheque deposits. |
| Spending limit | $5,000 per transaction, $5,000 per day, $50,000 per month. |
| Apple/Google Pay tap limit | $250. |
| Limits increase | Not available; the help article was updated 21 Apr 2026. |
The reward status that drives the foreign-exchange charge is a monthly tier system. Base is the default and carries a 1% bitcoin cashback rate and a 3% foreign-exchange charge. Bright is reached by exchanging $100 or more of crypto, or by $200 or more of eligible direct deposits in a calendar month, and brings 1% cashback and a 1.5% charge. Blue is reached by exchanging $1,000 or more of crypto, or by $2,000 or more of eligible direct deposits, and brings 1.5% cashback, a 0% charge, and priority support. Business is automatic. None of the tier pages describe a metal card.
To make the fees concrete, three everyday situations are worth walking through.
A $60 grocery run in Toronto on a Base month would be free of card-specific charges, would not trigger the foreign-exchange charge, and would return $0.60 in bitcoin at the 1% cashback rate. The merchant sees a Canadian Visa Prepaid card; nothing unusual happens.
A $40 purchase on a trip to New York on a Base month would be converted at the Visa rate, then the card would add a 3% foreign-exchange charge on top. That is $1.20 of explicit fee for a $40 transaction, and you would still earn 1% back in bitcoin. On a Blue month the same $40 purchase has no foreign-exchange charge and earns 1.5% in bitcoin, which is a meaningfully better outcome.
A $200 cash withdrawal from a PLUS-logo ATM in Canada on any tier is allowed up to the $500 per-transaction limit, but no bitcoin rewards apply to ATM transactions, and the ATM operator may charge its own fee on top. If the ATM is in another country, the foreign-exchange charge would apply in addition. The practical point is that the card is built for card payments, not for cash.
A subtle point worth raising, because it tends to surprise readers, is the way foreign refunds are handled. Shakepay’s help centre explains that a refund in a foreign currency is converted back at the rate paid to Visa, minus the foreign-exchange charge. The result is that a refund of a foreign-currency purchase is usually a little smaller than the original payment, even before the merchant’s own refund policy. If you are budgeting for a return, set that difference aside.
How to top it up
Topping up the card is, in practice, topping up the Shakepay account that the card draws from. The card spends the Canadian-dollar balance, so the funding flow is the wallet flow, not a card-specific flow. The most direct way to put money in is an Interac e-Transfer, which is free, lands in minutes, has a $5 minimum and a $10,000 maximum, and Shakepay describes no activation fee or minimum balance. A wire transfer is also accepted, with a $10,000 minimum, a 1-to-2-working-day arrival, and no fee on the Shakepay side.
The public card pages do not describe a separate crypto deposit that funds the card directly, or list the coins and networks that a cardholder would use. In practice the path is the same as funding the Shakepay account more generally: convert crypto into Canadian dollars inside Shakepay, then let the card spend the resulting balance. The crypto-to-card bridge is the wallet, not a card-native deposit, and the help centre does not publish a fee for that conversion specifically. If you only hold crypto and never convert it to CAD, the card has nothing to spend.
If you close the card, the Shakepay wallet balance stays accessible and the funds do not expire with the card. The fees Shakepay charges for withdrawing from the wallet to a bank or to crypto are not stated in the card-specific sources read for this review, so a reader planning regular withdrawals should check the wallet fee schedule directly.
Paying with it every day
Once the card is loaded, daily use is built around three things: a physical Visa Prepaid card, support for Apple Pay and Google Pay where those wallets are accepted, and a bitcoin cashback reward. The cardholder agreement and the help centre describe Apple Pay and Google Pay as supported “where available”, which is the standard caveat for any tokenised wallet. Shakepay does not publish a list of blocked merchant categories, so the everyday picture is the broad one of a Visa prepaid: groceries, transit, dining, online retail, and most in-store purchases. The list of categories that the card will decline is not stated, so the safe assumption is that anything Visa prepaid would normally decline is what this card would decline.
The cashback rate depends on the tier. Base pays 1% back in bitcoin, Bright pays 1%, and Blue pays 1.5% back, all on eligible purchases at eligible merchants worldwide. The cashback is credited automatically to your BTC balance, and Shakepay says it can be withdrawn to a user wallet. ATM transactions do not earn cashback. The cardholder agreement also notes that a non-Canadian transaction is converted at the Visa rate plus the 3% foreign-exchange charge, which is the same number the tiered help-centre article uses for Base.
For disputes and problems, the help centre is clear about the time frames. A dispute has to be raised in writing within 60 days of the transaction through the dispute section of the app. The cardholder agreement also notes that disputes received after 90 days may be treated as accepted. Visa Zero Liability claims for unauthorised use can take up to 120 days after paperwork is complete, may need a police investigation, and any transactions made before a lost or stolen card is reported may be treated as yours. If a complaint cannot be resolved with Shakepay, the named escalation channels are the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments at 1-888-451-4519 and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada at 1-866-461-3222.
The mobile app is where the card is managed: ordering, locking and unlocking, replacing, disputing, and reaching support are all done in the app. The App Store and Google Play ratings and the number of ratings were not obtained in the sources read, so the only public sense of how the app feels comes from the help centre and the user reviews described in the next section.
What can go wrong
The operational story of the card is split between Shakepay and Peoples Trust Company. Peoples Trust is the licensed issuer; Shakepay is the programme manager and the brand the customer interacts with. Shakepay is registered with FINTRAC under registration number M17065696, is a member of the CIRO, and is registered as an investment dealer with the AMF and provincial regulators. The card is issued under licence from Visa International. Funds held with Shakepay are not CDIC-insured, which is the standard line for a crypto platform: the deposit insurance that protects Canadian bank deposits does not extend to a Shakepay balance, and that is the single most important sentence in this section.
The other side of the story is the user experience, and the public record there is mixed. The Trustpilot page for Shakepay reads 2.3 out of 5, with 22 reviews in total and only 1 in the last 12 months as of 2026-10-20. Only one of those reviews specifically mentions the card, dated December 2021, and it is positive. The themes that come up around the brand are familiar from the wider crypto-card category: account freezes and closures without a clear reason, support that goes quiet for days, delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires, source-of-funds questioning, and at least one unreturned $250 bill payment dated September 2026. A third-party page on CryptoCardHub from August 2026 quotes a Trustpilot score of about 1.5 out of 5, which is a different number, and Shakepay’s own page does not agree, so a reader weighing the brand should not over-weight any single number.
For the card itself, Shakepay’s security and control surface is reasonable for the category. The card can be locked or frozen instantly in the app, two-factor authentication is on by default, the lost-or-stolen line is 1-855-574-2539 and is staffed 24/7, and the PIN may be disabled after three wrong entries. There is one trade-off worth knowing: the PIN is set during ordering and cannot be changed, so a new PIN means a new card. Card limits are published, can be reduced, and cannot be increased; the help article that says so was updated on 21 April 2026, so it is current. Shakepay holds the balance, which is to say Shakepay is the custodian of the funds; if Shakepay failed, the funds on the platform would not have the protections of a Canadian bank deposit, and that is the underlying risk of any custodial crypto card.
The official Shakepay help pages do not describe a public incident list for the card, and a direct user report against the card specifically was not found. The wider Shakepay brand, however, has the kind of complaint pattern a careful reader should not ignore: freezes, slow support, and unreturned funds. None of these themes are unique to Shakepay in the crypto-card category, and many of them have a regulatory explanation — source-of-funds questions are a routine part of KYC, and a freeze during that process is allowed under the law. The point is to read the brand record alongside the card record, not instead of it.
What to take instead
A few alternatives to compare against, in case the Shakepay profile is not the right fit.
| Card | Score | Form and network | Eligibility | Cost | Rewards | Funding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Credit Card | 4.9 / 10 | Mastercard World Elite credit card; form and currency not stated | Not stated on the card page | No annual fee; no foreign-transaction fees; crypto conversion not applicable | Up to 4% on gas, EV and transit on the first $300 per month, 3% on dining, 2% on groceries, 1% elsewhere, paid instantly in bitcoin or 50+ other cryptos on Gemini | Credit card paid off in fiat, not a prepaid balance |
| Lava | 7.1 / 10 | “Lava Card” accepted at 150 million merchants in 150+ countries; network and form not stated | Not stated | No annual fees, no FX fees, no FX spread, and no exchange fees or spread on bitcoin | Up to 5% back in bitcoin on every purchase with the Lava Card; conditions not stated | Local currency or stablecoins; networks not stated |
| Trastra | 4.1 / 10 | Prepaid debit card accepted at Visa merchants worldwide; physical/virtual not specified; currency euro per batch notes | Available in 31 listed countries, including Germany, France and the UK, with a stated intention to cover the EEA; non-European residents: “Not at the moment.” | Not stated | Not stated on the page | Topped up with cryptocurrencies held in a Mover wallet; coins and networks not named |
The shape of the choice is clear. Gemini is a credit card that pays crypto back on spending, with no foreign-transaction fee, which is the right pick for a reader who wants a credit instrument and US-style category rewards. Lava is the most generous of the three on cashback, claims no FX fees and no spread, and accepts deposits in local currency or stablecoins, which is the right pick for a reader outside Canada who wants a global prepaid. Trastra is a Visa prepaid in euro with a 31-country footprint, which is the right pick for a reader inside the EEA who wants a Visa prepaid funded from crypto. Shakepay is the right pick for a Canadian Shakepay user who wants a Canadian Visa prepaid that funds itself from a CAD wallet and pays bitcoin back on spending.
Who I would recommend it to
I would recommend the Shakepay card to a Canadian resident who already has a fully verified Shakepay account, who plans to keep a meaningful CAD balance in Shakepay, and who is comfortable with bitcoin-denominated cashback that arrives in their Shakepay BTC balance. I would also point this reader to the Blue tier, because the difference between a 3% foreign-exchange charge and 0% is the difference between a card that punishes you for a weekend in New York and a card that does not, and the 1.5% cashback rate on Blue is meaningfully better than the 1% on Base or Bright.
I would not recommend the Shakepay card to a reader who lives outside Canada, because the card is not sold outside Canada and there is no published path to a foreign-resident account. I would not recommend it to a reader who wants to fund spending directly from a non-custodial wallet, because Shakepay holds the balance. I would not recommend it to a reader who plans to draw large amounts of cash, because the ATM limit is $500 per transaction and ATM transactions do not earn cashback. I would not recommend it to a reader who treats the card as a place to park savings, because the balance is not CDIC-insured and Shakepay is the custodian of the funds.
If any of those limits matter, the alternatives in the previous section are the right places to look. The card is well-suited to its narrow target reader, and that narrowness is the reason the score is what it is.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Shakepay card?
The Shakepay card is a physical Visa Prepaid card that draws on a Canadian-dollar balance inside your Shakepay account, with Apple Pay and Google Pay support, ATM access at PLUS-logo ATMs up to $500 per withdrawal, and bitcoin cashback on eligible spending. It is run by Shakepay and issued by Peoples Trust Company under a Visa licence.
How does the Shakepay card work?
You load your Shakepay account in Canadian dollars through Interac e-Transfer or a wire, you order the card inside the app, and the card spends the resulting CAD balance at any merchant that accepts Visa. The conversion from crypto to CAD happens inside the wallet, not on the card, and the cashback is paid back to you in bitcoin.
Is Shakepay a bank?
No. Shakepay is a Canadian crypto platform registered with FINTRAC under number M17065696 and a member of the CIRO; the card itself is issued by Peoples Trust Company, a Canadian financial institution, under a Visa licence. Funds in a Shakepay account are not CDIC-insured, and that is the single most important difference from a bank deposit.
Who owns Shakepay?
The card and the account are run by Shakepay, a Montreal-based crypto company. The card programme is held by Peoples Trust Company, which is the licensed issuer under the Visa arrangement. Shakepay is the brand and the front-end, Peoples Trust is the regulated bank that actually issues the card.
Is the Shakepay card available in my country?
The card is sold to Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, and the public pages do not name any other country as an active market. If you are outside Canada, the safe working assumption is that the card is not available to you, and Shakepay’s published advice for an edge case is to email [email protected] before you start the sign-up flow.
How do I get the Shakepay card?
Open the Shakepay mobile app, complete or confirm full account verification, answer the eligibility questionnaire, and order the card. The card is delivered by Canada Post regular mail within 21 days without tracking, and the PIN is set during the ordering flow. There is no credit check, and the card is free for fully verified accounts.
How do I top up the Shakepay card?
Top up the Shakepay account that the card spends from, most commonly with an Interac e-Transfer, which is free, arrives in minutes, has a $5 minimum and a $10,000 maximum. Wires are also accepted with a $10,000 minimum and a 1-to-2-working-day arrival. The card-specific sources do not describe a direct crypto deposit that bypasses the wallet.
How do I add the Shakepay card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay?
The card supports Apple Pay and Google Pay “where available”, which is the standard phrasing for any tokenised wallet. The setup is the same as adding any other Visa: open the wallet app on your phone, choose to add a card, and follow the prompts with the card details from inside the Shakepay app. The tap limit is $250 per transaction.
Is the Shakepay card safe?
The card has the standard safeguards for the category: app-based card lock and freeze, two-factor authentication, a 24/7 lost-and-stolen line at 1-855-574-2539, and PIN-disable after three wrong entries. The underlying risk is the same as for any custodial crypto card: Shakepay holds the balance, the balance is not CDIC-insured, and Shakepay is the counterparty for the funds. The brand record on Trustpilot is 2.3 out of 5 with complaint themes around account freezes, slow support and delayed withdrawals, which is worth weighing against the card’s own design.
Is the Shakepay card worth it?
It is worth it for a Canadian Shakepay user who plans to keep a CAD balance in Shakepay, who is comfortable with bitcoin-denominated cashback, and who is on the Blue tier, where the foreign-exchange charge drops to 0% and the cashback rate rises to 1.5%. It is not worth it for a reader outside Canada, for a reader who wants to fund spending directly from a non-custodial wallet, or for a reader who treats the card as a place to park savings. The score of 4.3 out of 10 reflects a narrow but well-built product.
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