Monolith is closed: what that means for anyone still holding a card or a balance
Available in USIf you are reading this because you are considering a crypto card and Monolith came up in your search, the shortest honest answer is that there is nothing to consider any more. The card programme closed on 8 October 2024: the cards were deactivated, the accounts were shut, and the app was later pulled from the app stores. My score for Monolith is 1.8 out of 10, and almost all of that number is the score of a closed product rather than a bad one. This page is for the two people who still exist in the Monolith story: the person who finds a leftover balance and needs to get it back, and the person who was told the card is gone and is now looking for something that actually works.
The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 1.8 out of 10, and the number is mostly about closure
A score of 1.8 out of 10 deserves an explanation before anything else, because a low score on a closed card says almost nothing about whether the card was any good in 2022. The marks below are not a critique of a product that failed on the merits. They are a record of a service that no longer exists to be used.
| Criterion | Mark | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 0 / 10 | The service closed on 8 October 2024; cards were deactivated and accounts closed |
| Cost | 5 / 10 | Closed; unofficial historical figures were a 1% top-up fee, up to 2% in total, 1.75% conversion outside the card currency, no monthly fee |
| Top-up options | 2 / 10 | Topping up cards through Monolith is no longer possible; the historical unofficial list was ETH, TKN, DAI, DGD, DGX, MKR, SAI, USDT |
| Reliability and complaints | 1 / 10 | Closed for growing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK; the balance sits with the issuer Solaris, returned through the Solaris Redemptions page within 14 days; the app was delisted from app stores |
| Everyday use | 0 / 10 | Cards deactivated on 8 October 2024 and the app taken off the app stores |
The mark that carries the most weight for a person reading this today is the zero for who can get it and the zero for everyday use. There is no application, no card, and nothing to use. Everything else on this page is either history or a next step.
Who does the card suit? Nobody, in the present tense. Who did it suit, historically? According to unofficial third-party coverage from Coin Bureau, updated 29 March 2023, it was aimed at the EEA — 31 European countries — and could not be used in the USA or Asia. That is a good picture of where these cards usually land: people who want a card that draws on their own crypto but live somewhere a normal bank card is awkward or unavailable. That is exactly the person I would point at the alternatives further down. And for the narrower group that matters most: former holders redeeming leftover balances through Solaris.
What happened to the programme
The closure date is 8 October 2024, and the reason given was increasing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK. The notice is explicit about the consequences: services closed, cards deactivated, accounts closed. The page does not mention MiCA, the EU’s crypto-asset regulation, so whatever the obligations were, the public wording points at regulation generally rather than at one named rule. That distinction matters if you were hoping for a technical reason, such as a licence being withdrawn; this reads as a business decision driven by a thickening compliance environment.
Two details follow the closure and are worth having straight in your head, because they explain why the product feels so thoroughly gone rather than merely paused. First, the app was delisted from app stores on 17 February — the year is not stated on the page, though the surrounding context points to 2025. Second, the app balance is no longer accurate, so the number you may still see in an old screenshot or an old support thread is not a figure you can rely on. Where your crypto actually sits is a different matter, and I come to that in the next section.
One loose end concerns a token migration rather than the card. Details of the swap from $TKN to $TOKEN were promised for April 2025, and an update dated 28 February 2025 restated that. The successor named in the notice is Token.com. This is separate from the card shutdown: it concerns the token side of the business, not your ability to spend. If you hold TKN, the questionnaire to complete ran through Monolith via Telegram and email; hours and languages were not stated.
On the company itself, Monolith was the trading name of UAB “Belela”, a Lithuanian virtual currency deposit and exchange operator, code 305982313. The site copyright was held by Token Group Ltd under licence to UAB “Belela”, and the card issuer was Solaris. That issuer detail is the one to hold on to. When a card programme ends, the brand you knew and the institution that holds your money are not the same entity, and the redemption route runs through the issuer, not through the app that no longer updates.
For the record, and as history rather than guidance: the card was, per unofficial third-party coverage, a Visa debit card, and earlier coverage from 2019 names an earlier issuer, Contis Financial Services Ltd. Neither network nor card form is stated on the closure notice, and eligibility information on the notice is simply not applicable now. Tiers are not stated either, since the programme closed.
If you already have the card: two different piles of money
This is the part of the review I would ask anyone with a Monolith history to read twice, because there are two assets and they are handled completely differently. One is your crypto. The other is any balance left sitting on the card itself. Confusing them is the expensive mistake.
The crypto stays in your non-custodial wallet. That was the design of the card all along: you held the seed phrase, not the provider. Your 12-word seed phrase imports into another wallet — MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Coinbase Wallet are all named as options. If you never wrote the phrase down, the seed was shown in the app under Settings, then Back up Seed. If the app is gone, you cannot retrieve it from there; you are relying on having saved it. Whoever has that phrase controls the funds, and nobody else, including Monolith, can move them.
The leftover card funds are a separate matter and a separate route. These are held by Solaris, the issuer. To get them, you submit a request on the Solaris Redemptions page with the subject “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”, you provide payout account details in EUR or GBP — the card’s currency — and, if the email on the request differs from the one on the account, a colour ID copy. Solaris aims to respond within 14 days. Support for card funds runs through Solaris Redemptions Support, by form and email. What the notice does not mention is any dispute route, compensation, or anything beyond this redemption path, so if your situation is more complicated than a plain leftover balance, you are outside what the notice covers.
Two things are simply not stated, and I would rather say so than fill the gap: what top-up options remain, since users can no longer top up through Monolith, and what disputes or compensation might apply, since the notice covers neither. The historical, unofficial picture — top-ups with ETH, TKN, DAI, DGD, DGX, MKR, SAI and USDT, an ATM cash limit of £350 (€378) a day and a spending limit of £7,500 (€8,113) a day — belongs to the era when the card worked and is not a description of anything you can do now.
One asymmetry is easy to misjudge. Crypto in your own wallet is yours to move at any time and does not depend on anyone’s paperwork. Card funds depend on a form, an email, an identity document if the addresses differ, and an issuer responding inside a stated window. If you have both, start with the card funds, because that is the part with a deadline and a counterparty, and leave the seed phrase where it is, offline and to yourself.
What can go wrong
The bluntest risk here is not a bad payment or a frozen account. It is that the thing you were relying on is gone. The closure notice itself is the hazard: the app balance is no longer accurate, so your own record of what you had may be wrong, and the app is delisted, so the interface you would use to check has gone with it. If you are relying on a balance figure, verify it against the issuer rather than the app.
The second risk is the money you cannot see. Funds left on the card sit with Solaris, not with you, and getting them back depends on you filling in a form correctly and Solaris answering. The stated aim is a reply within 14 days; that is a target, not a guarantee, and I would treat any specific deadline as something to confirm rather than plan around.
The third risk is the seed phrase, and it is the one people underestimate. A seed phrase is typically 12 to 24 words in an unencrypted form of the private key. Anyone who obtains it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Transfers are typically irreversible, and a stolen key has no recovery: the network cannot freeze or return anything. With a self-custody-linked card the funds stay in your own wallet until the moment of payment, which is the trade you accepted, and in exchange you carry sole responsibility for key loss, for phishing, and for clipboard-hijacking malware that silently swaps a copied address.
On protection schemes, be clear-eyed. Lithuanian deposit insurance and the UK FSCS do not cover crypto activities, and do not cover funds in the non-custodial wallet. So the money that is genuinely yours has no deposit guarantee behind it, and the money that is not genuinely yours is sitting with a regulated issuer.
On complaints, I found nothing specific to Monolith. There is no Monolith Trustpilot page, and a search on 20 October 2026 returned only unrelated card shutdowns. As context rather than as a finding: other Solaris-issuer closures have drawn Trustpilot complaints about slow refunds. I would not present that as a verdict on your claim — it is a reason to keep your own records and follow up in writing.
For general context on why programmes end: 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. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Closures tend to follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances.
What is genuinely uncertain, and what is not. It is not certain how long Solaris will take with your redemption, and the notice does not promise a compensation route. It is not certain what happened to the TKN to TOKEN swap that was promised for April 2025; no outcome is stated on the page. What is not uncertain is that the card is dead and the crypto wallet is yours.
What to take instead
I have looked at three cards that are live, each with its own rules about who can use it, its own costs, and its own way of holding money. They are not interchangeable, so I will set them out plainly and then say which kind of person each suits.
RedotPay — 6.9 out of 10
RedotPay is the most conventional of the three: a prepaid-style balance, virtual or physical, with fees set out in a table effective from 1 December 2025.
Eligibility is where you need to read carefully, because RedotPay words its two lists differently. The KYC list says that if you are a citizen of any listed country or region you will not be able to complete identity verification or use the services, and that the restrictions are “based on local regulations and sanction policies—not on individuals”. That list runs to 37 places including the United States, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Zimbabwe. A separate card-issuance list, dated 28 August 2026 and covering 47 places, adds India, Indonesia, Morocco, Nepal, Singapore and Turkey as places where residents are ineligible for both virtual and physical cards and cannot be used as a billing address — and that list does not mention citizenship at all. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia appear on both. Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the UAE appear on neither.
The card is virtual or physical, Visa debit in the Singapore terms, with a USD card on a USD BIN and an HKD card on an HKB BIN. Cost: virtual application 10.00 USD, physical 100.00 USD and not cancellable or refundable once paid, virtual replacement 5.00 USD first and 10.00 USD each later, with account maintenance waived — no monthly or annual fee and no inactivity fee mentioned. The fee comes off your balance, and the 5 USD welcome reward cannot be used toward the issuance fee. A paid tier, RedotPay Pro, costs 12.90 USD monthly or 129.00 USD a year.
On fees: a 1.00% transaction fee, which is the crypto conversion fee; waived on transactions in the default currency and 1.20% on non-default currency. Small authorisations of 1.00 USD or less: the first five per card per month are waived, then 0.2 USD. Declined transactions: the first three per month waived, then 0.5 USD. Some merchants carry 1.5% with a 0.50 USD minimum, the first three per month waived, including Gulf Health Counsel, Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, Brawl Stars, eFootball, Facebook Ads and Discord. Funding is an on-chain crypto deposit, or buying crypto with a credit card in the app (ETH, USDC, USDT, depending on region), with a minimum USDT-TRC20 deposit of 1 USDT after network fees and a free deposit fee to card balance.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| The longest country list of the three, 47 places on the issuance list | 100.00 USD for the physical card, non-refundable |
| No monthly, annual or inactivity fee | Country lists are worded differently and citizenship and residence are treated inconsistently |
| Fees published as a table with small-payment and decline allowances | 1.00% conversion fee plus 1.20% off-currency |
Suits you if you are in a listed-but-allowed country and you want a plain prepaid card with predictable published fees and no monthly charge.
Bybit Card — 6.0 out of 10
The Bybit Card is the most complicated of the three, with region-specific networks, currencies, fees and taxes, and it draws directly on a trading account rather than on a separate card balance.
On eligibility: the official help center lists card regions as Argentina, AIFC (Kazakhstan), Georgia, Kazakhstan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Asia Pacific. The application asks for country of residence, and if the country is unsupported Bybit “will register your interest”. The cards page is blunt about one thing: “This product is not meant for European Economic Area customers. All European Economic Area customer participation is strictly prohibited.” A separate restricted list for Bybit’s fiat services — deposits, withdrawals and One-Click Buy, not the card itself — includes Belarus, the Russian Federation, Serbia, China and the United States, with the note that “Russian users can only make RUB transaction in Fiat”. No card-specific statement on Russian or Belarusian citizens, and no citizenship-versus-residence rule, was found. Card currency “depends on the country of your Advanced Identity Verification”.
The card exists as virtual and physical, with a virtual card obtained first and the physical one not available in Peru. Networks vary: Argentina Mastercard prepaid; AIFC, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Australia and Mexico “Mastercard credit card” as the table has it; Brazil and Peru Visa prepaid; Asia Pacific Visa credit. Validity runs three years in AIFC, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Asia Pacific and Australia, six years in Argentina, five years in Brazil, Mexico and Peru.
Cost is where Bybit is friendliest: virtual issuance is free in all regions “until further notice”, and there is “auto interest, no annual fees”. Physical issuance or replacement is 29.99 USD in Australia, 5 USD or USDT in Argentina, 29,99 USDT in Georgia, 29,99 USDT in Kazakhstan (AIFC), 5 USDT in Asia Pacific, and none in Brazil and Mexico. VIPs holding an Australia, Kazakhstan (AIFC), Georgia or Asia Pacific physical card pay no issuance or replacement fee.
Fees: crypto conversion 0.9% over the One-Click Sell rate in Australia, Asia Pacific, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Mexico; 0.5% in Argentina; Peru not supported. FX fees vary widely — 2% on top of the network rate in Australia, Asia Pacific, Georgia and Mexico; 2% “International Fee” in Kazakhstan (AIFC) on purchases outside Kazakhstan even in USD; 7% in Argentina; 1.5% in Brazil; 1% in Peru. FX padding is 0% in the Australia group and Mexico, 5% in Argentina, 1% in Brazil, with the excess refunded. Argentine users also face VAT of 21% on foreign digital services, 30% tax on foreign transactions and provincial gross-income tax of 1%–13.2%.
The card has no balance of its own: it draws on the Funding Account and the Flexible Easy Earn balance, fiat first, and if fiat is insufficient crypto is sold at the One-Click Sell rate plus the card’s conversion fee. Supported cryptos are BTC, ETH, XRP, USDT, USDC and GRAM, with a default priority of USDT, then USDC, GRAM, BTC, ETH, XRP, reorderable in the Card Dashboard.
Rewards changed recently and the change is worth reading: from 5 October 2026 at 10:00 UTC only crypto-funded transactions earn points or cashback, and fiat-funded spending does not. The tiers run Base 2.00% with a 5 USD monthly cashback cap; Beta 2%, 50 USD, unlocking at 500 USD monthly spend; Alpha 4%, 150 USD, 3,500 USD; Apex 6%, 250 USD, 9,500 USD; Omega 8%, 400 USD, 12,500 USD; Infinite 10%, 600 USD, 25,000 USD. Points pend for four calendar days, cashback in USDT equals points × 0.002, and Auto Cashback must be on. There is a Pay Later instalment bonus of an extra 1%, a welcome offer of 10% cashback up to 110 USDT in the first 30 days, 100% cashback on must-have subscriptions for VIPs and Alpha and above, and referrals of 20 USDT or 10 USDT.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Virtual card free in all regions, no annual fees | Explicitly closed to all EEA customers |
| Six tiers reaching 10% cashback with a 600 USD monthly cap | Rewards only on crypto-funded transactions from 5 October 2026 |
| Wide regional fee transparency, with FX excess refunded | Argentina alone carries 7% FX and three separate taxes |
Suits you if you are outside the EEA, already hold a balance on Bybit, and want cashback tiers rather than a standalone card.
MetaMask — 7.1 out of 10
MetaMask is the closest thing on this list to what Monolith used to be, and it is the highest-scoring of the three. It also charges the most for the metal version.
Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories — Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Uruguay among them — with other regions on a waitlist. Proof of residency is required. One line is worth quoting because it settles a common worry: “Ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending.” A citizenship rule is not stated, and US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ.
The card is Mastercard, issued as a virtual card first and instantly, with Metal pre-orderable in the app after Virtual approval, one card per user, issued by Monovate with Crypto Life as card provider. Card currency is not stated. Cost: Virtual is free with no annual or maintenance fee; Metal is $199 a year. Fees are described as a “minimal fee for each transaction” with no amount stated on the pages read and a fee table linked, plus “no additional MetaMask fees”, no foreign transaction fee, and the Mastercard rate used.
Spending draws directly from the connected wallet. Networks are Linea, Base, Monad and Solana. Named tokens include mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT, with the page referring to nine tokens. Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit. Rewards: cashback paid in mUSD into the Money Account at 1% on Virtual and a headline 3% on Metal, with a footnote limiting 3% to the first $10,000 spent and 1% after that, plus a $FLY bonus of 5X on Virtual and 7X on Metal via the Blackbird dining app.
Suits you if you already keep your crypto in a self-custody wallet and want to spend from it directly, because that is the same model Monolith used and the one the seed phrase logic above already assumes.
Who I would recommend it to
Nobody, and that is the recommendation. Monolith scores 1.8 out of 10 because on 8 October 2024 it stopped issuing, stopped spending, and closed accounts. If you arrived here looking for a card, the search has wasted your time and I am sorry for that.
If you arrived with a Monolith history, the priority order is short. Get the card balance moving first, through the Solaris Redemptions page, with the subject “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”, payout details in EUR or GBP, and a colour ID copy if your email differs from the account. Keep your own record of what you believe the balance was, because the app figure is no longer accurate. Then make sure your 12-word seed phrase is safe and, if you want to keep spending, imported into a wallet you control.
If you arrived because getting an ordinary bank card is the problem — that is the reader this page is written for — then pick by shape rather than by brand. Choose RedotPay if you want a prepaid balance with published fees and no monthly charge. Choose Bybit Card if you live outside the EEA and already keep money on Bybit. Choose MetaMask if you already hold your own keys and want to spend straight from your wallet. In every case, read the eligibility wording for your own country and your own citizenship before you apply, because the country lists across these providers differ in wording and in what they restrict.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Monolith card?
Monolith was a crypto payment card that drew on a self-custodial wallet rather than on a bank account. You held the seed phrase, and the card converted and spent from what you funded. According to unofficial third-party coverage from Coin Bureau, updated 29 March 2023, it was a Visa debit card aimed at the EEA. The programme is over: services closed on 8 October 2024, cards were deactivated and accounts closed.
Why did Monolith close?
The closure notice cites increasing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK as the reason, and that is what it says. It does not mention MiCA specifically, so I would not describe it as a MiCA enforcement action — the public wording points at regulatory pressure generally. The card issuer was Solaris, and the app was delisted from app stores on 17 February, a year the page does not state.
Is Monolith a bank?
No, and this distinction matters for your money. Monolith was the trading name of UAB “Belela”, a Lithuanian virtual currency deposit and exchange operator, code 305982313, with the site copyright held by Token Group Ltd under licence to that entity. The card itself was issued by Solaris. Your crypto was never a bank deposit, and Lithuanian deposit insurance and the UK FSCS do not cover crypto activities or funds in the non-custodial wallet.
I still have money on my Monolith card — what do I do?
Those funds are held by Solaris, the issuer, not by you. Submit a request on the Solaris Redemptions page with the subject “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”, give payout account details in EUR or GBP since the card currency is EUR or GBP, and attach a colour ID copy if the email on your request differs from the one on the account. Solaris aims to respond within 14 days.
What happened to my crypto?
Your crypto stayed in your own non-custodial wallet and is not affected by the closure. It is reachable with your 12-word seed phrase, imported into another wallet such as MetaMask, Trust Wallet or Coinbase Wallet. If you never saved the phrase, it was shown in the app under Settings and then Back up Seed — and since the app is delisted, that route is no longer available to you. Anyone holding those words controls the funds.
Is Monolith card available in my country?
No, in any country. The programme closed on 8 October 2024 and no new cards are issued. The historical answer, from unofficial third-party coverage, was the EEA — 31 European countries — with the card not usable in the USA or Asia. That is history, not an option, and eligibility information on the closure notice is simply not applicable.
What were Monolith’s fees?
Historically, and according to unofficial third-party sources rather than the card itself: a 1% top-up fee, avoidable by topping up with DAI; a 1% community contribution, avoidable by topping up with TKN; up to 2% per top-up otherwise; and a 1.75% conversion fee outside the card’s currency, with no crypto or fiat exchange fee. There was no monthly or shipping fee if you used the card in the country where it was registered. None of this is actionable now.
How do I withdraw money from Monolith?
There are two routes and they are different things. Card funds go through the Solaris Redemptions page, with payout details in EUR or GBP and a 14-day response target. Crypto in the wallet does not go through anyone at all: it moves with your seed phrase in whatever wallet you import it into. Neither route involves Monolith’s app, which no longer shows an accurate balance and has been delisted.
Is Monolith card safe?
The question no longer has a useful answer, because there is no card to be unsafe with. What I would instead point you to is the general lesson of the model: a self-custody card keeps your crypto in your own wallet until the moment of payment, so nobody can move it — and you carry sole responsibility for key loss, for phishing, and for malware that swaps a copied address. Transfers are typically irreversible and a stolen key has no recovery built in.
Which card should I use instead?
It depends on what you were using Monolith for. RedotPay is a prepaid balance with published fees, no monthly charge, and a physical card costing 100.00 USD. The Bybit Card is free to issue virtually with cashback tiers up to 10%, but is explicitly closed to all European Economic Area customers. MetaMask spends directly from your own wallet on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, free on Virtual and $199 a year for Metal. Check each one’s eligibility wording for your country and citizenship first.
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