Pay shut its card programme down: what that means for you now

Updated October 2026

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If you are weighing a crypto payment card and Pay has come up in your search, the single most useful thing you can learn in the first thirty seconds is that there is nothing left to sign up for. Pay was a DeFi payments wallet that listed “Manage your prepaid cards” and bought those cards through a partner called Wyre. On 5 December 2022 the app’s version 1.1.12 disabled prepaid card purchases with Wyre “until further notice”. The notice never came. The last version of the app is 1.2.0, dated 18 February 2023, and there has been nothing since. Card buying was never switched back on.

That is the review in one line. Everything below is the detail behind it: what the card was, what happened to the programme, what it means if you are one of the people who still has an old Card Pay wallet, and which of the live alternatives actually replaces the thing you were probably looking for.

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

Verdict: 1.8 out of 10

Pay scores 1.8 / 10. That is not a low score attached to a card with rough edges; it is a near-zero score attached to a product that has been switched off. Two of the six criteria score zero outright, because the feature they measure no longer exists.

Who does this suit? Honestly, almost nobody in the position most people searching for “Pay card” are in. The 5 out of 10 for cost is not a compliment either — it is an absence of information rather than an absence of charges. A free card with no disclosed fees is not worth anything if you cannot obtain the card.

The one group this page is written for is the holders of the old Card Pay wallet. If you downloaded Cardstack’s wallet, claimed a card you can see in the app, or parked crypto in it expecting to spend it, you are not a prospective customer — you are a person with an open question about money. That is a different job, and I have given it its own section below.

Before you go further, check the following summary. The card’s public pages do not state who was eligible, what identity verification involved, what fees were, which currencies were supported, what limits applied, how ATM withdrawals worked, or how disputes were handled. Not “these were zero” — not stated. Where a fact is missing I will say so at the point where it matters to you. That matters because a missing fact and a good fact look identical on an app store listing, and you cannot tell them apart without being told.

What happened to the programme

The timeline is short, and it is worth walking through it because the failure was not sudden.

• Before December 2022. Pay existed as a wallet app with a “Manage your prepaid cards” listing entry. Users could obtain prepaid cards through the app, funded from crypto balances. Version notes for 1.1.13 mention that you claim each “rewards” item individually, and that Polygon support was removed.
• 5 December 2022 (version 1.1.12). Prepaid card purchases with Wyre were disabled “until further notice”. This is the official incident record for the card.
• 18 February 2023 (version 1.2.0). The last version of the app. Cards were not restored.
• 2023. The partner at the centre of it collapsed. Unofficial but widely reported: MetaMask ceased Wyre support in January 2023 as Wyre was reportedly closing (Benzinga), and Wyre announced its wind-down in June 2023 (The Block). I found no source that links Cardstack directly to those announcements, so I am presenting the Wyre closure as reported context, not as something Cardstack confirmed.
• Google Play. Not stated. Whether the app was ever listed for Android is something I could not establish from the public pages, and it is relevant to you only if you were hoping for an Android download.

What is left standing is the shell. The app still exists in the App Store, supports iOS 13.0+, macOS 11.0+ on Apple M1+ and visionOS 1.0+, and still carries a 5.0 rating — from 3 ratings. A rating that high, from a sample that small, tells you almost nothing; it should not be mistaken for evidence that the service works.

The company behind it is named in the app store listing as CARDSTACK SERVICES PTE. LTD., and the homepage footer refers to a Cardstack Foundation. The issuer of the cards — the bank or licensed institution actually behind the plastic — is not stated anywhere on the pages I read. For a card product that absence is more than a gap in a FAQ. You cannot assess a card without knowing who is liable for it.

If you already have the card

This is the section I would read twice if the wallet is already on your phone.

The honest summary is that the public pages do not tell you what happens to a balance. What they do tell you is a sequence of small signals that the product was left unfinished: version notes for 1.0.11 mention “Reward withdrawal” bug fixes, and 1.1.13 says each reward is claimed individually. Neither says anything about withdrawing a card balance, and nothing anywhere describes the balance after closure.

So let me list what is simply not stated, because the list is the advice:

• Whether you can still spend. Not stated. Card purchases were disabled in December 2022, which is about card acquisition; the pages do not describe what happened to cards already in circulation.
• Whether the balance is still yours, and reachable. Not stated.
• How to withdraw it. No withdrawal route is described. Version notes mention reward withdrawal fixes, which is a different thing from withdrawing the funds behind a card.
• Limits, ATM access, top-up methods. Not stated. The only paid item in the listing is the in-app purchase “Account on Gnosis Chain” at GBP 0.99, which is not a top-up.
• Support. The App Store listing links no support page — only the developer site cardstack.com and a privacy policy. That is thin. A closed service with a listed contact-free app store entry is a bad combination, because the people who most need a way in are precisely the people who cannot find one.
• Disputes, chargebacks, complaints. Not stated. And there is nothing to complain about publicly: I found no Trustpilot page and no Reddit threads for Card Pay; my searches on 20 October 2026 returned unrelated companies. The absence of complaints here should not be read as a clean record. It is closer to the silence of a service nobody is still talking about.

If you have crypto sitting in that wallet, my judgement is that the question you need answered is not “how do I use the card” but “can I get the value out, and who do I ask”. Nobody at Card Pay will answer that for you through the app store listing. The realistic starting points are the developer site named on the listing, and — if your funds are stablecoins or coins you recognise — a general stablecoin and network background you should check before you move anything.

Which brings me to the one piece of general background that matters more here than anything else on this page.

A crypto card is usually not one thing but several: a card network (Visa or Mastercard) that routes the payment and writes the rules, an issuer — a bank or licensed electronic money institution that actually holds the card programme — and a crypto brand that is often only the programme manager or the interface you look at. Pay’s listing shows you the last layer. The layer that moved your money was Wyre, and the layer that would have been legally responsible for your balance is the issuer, and that issuer is not named. When a programme dies, the layer that disappears is usually the visible one.

A few things that make this harder rather than easier, in case you are deciding how urgently to act:

• Blockchain transfers are typically irreversible. If you send funds on a network the service does not support, or to an address belonging to another network, recovery depends on manual support work with no guarantee.
• A custodial wallet means the provider holds the credentials and you must trust it completely. A seed phrase is typically 12 to 24 words in unencrypted form; anyone who obtains it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Cryptocurrency transfers have no built-in recovery — the network cannot freeze or return them.
• This is not hypothetical. Mt. Gox reported roughly US$350 million stolen between 2011 and 2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, and Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022.
• Closures follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw remaining balances. If a card is wound down and the balance is never returned, the ordinary remedy is weak. In the US, debit card reversal rights come from Regulation E and credit card rights from Regulation Z, but prepaid-card coverage varies and should not be assumed.

I am not going to tell you to send funds anywhere, or which chain to use, or how to route around anything. The point is only that time and a clear destination matter more than clever moves.

What can go wrong

Beyond the closure itself, which is the largest risk and is already a fact rather than a possibility, there are risks that apply to this card as a category. I am listing them because they are the things that went wrong for other people, and because the Pay case shows how quickly a card programme can become unusable.

• The partner disappears. This is what happened here. Wyre’s reported wind-down in 2023 removed the rail that Pay’s card purchases ran on. You are exposed to every company between you and your money, and you rarely see all of them.
• The network pulls the programme. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers and 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.
• The merchant declines the card. A card number starts with a 6- or 8-digit issuer identification number that merchants can look up, revealing the issuer and country. Some shops apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address, and some decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards outright. Address Verification Service is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines.
• Holds sit on your money. A declined authorisation can leave a hold that remains for several days, typically up to 7.
• Your funds are not bank deposits. Electronic money institutions must safeguard customer funds by segregating them in dedicated accounts or insuring them, but such funds are not the same as bank deposits and may not be covered by a deposit guarantee scheme. Note also that MiCA covers the crypto side while a card is regulated separately as a payment service, so a crypto card often rests on two licences.
• 3-D Secure cuts both ways. It adds an identity check to online payments, and under it liability for fraudulent online payments can shift from merchant to the cardholder’s bank — or, per its critics, to the cardholder.
• Stablecoins are not what the name suggests. “Despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable”: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC temporarily lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. On Tron, fees are paid through bandwidth and energy resources, often burning TRX; on Ethereum, gas is paid only in ETH, so a wallet holding USDT with no ETH cannot send.
• Taxes are not the card’s business. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local currency at fair market value on the transaction date. Each card payment funded from crypto may be a separate disposal. Whether that applies to you is a question for a professional, not for me.

What is reassuring, in fairness: Pay’s own app said transactions are confirmed with Touch ID or Face ID, and the usual category safeguards are two-factor authentication, instant card freeze, spending limits, 3-D Secure confirmation and tokenised mobile wallets. Note the absence in that list of anything about custody: whether the app was self-custody is not stated.

What to take instead

If you were looking at Pay because you want to spend crypto without a traditional bank card, the alternatives below are live, priced and structured. I am not telling you which one to pick — that depends on where you live and what you need — but I am telling you what each one commits to, because the differences are large.

MetaMask — 7.1 / 10

The most recognisable name here, and the strongest of the three. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories, with examples including Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay; other regions join a waitlist. Proof of residence is required. The citizenship rule is not stated, and US and UK sign-ups were temporarily closed per the FAQ — worth checking, because those two are exactly where people most often assume access.

The card is Mastercard. You get a virtual card issued instantly, and after Virtual approval a Metal card can be pre-ordered in the app. One card per user. Issuer Monovate, card provider Crypto Life. Card currency is not stated.

It spends directly from the connected wallet, on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana. Tokens named include mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. Cashback arrives in mUSD into the Money Account. Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit.

KAST — 6.1 / 10

The most transparent on fees and the most demanding on identity. Eligibility is residence-based, checked at KYC: if your country is not listed, KAST is not available there. The country list is not published, and a Restricted Locations list is referenced without naming countries. Identity document nationality matters too — you may live in a supported country and still be ineligible on the basis of your ID, while dual citizens holding an ID from a supported country may pass. Only your own ID is accepted and a VPN does not bypass this. An account can be created in an unsupported country, but KYC stays locked.

Three tiers, billed annually upfront with no monthly option:

Also: up to 10 cards per user, extra designs in Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin, USD account balance with stablecoin deposits converted 1:1 at 0% spread. Cost details to keep in view — a Standard physical card carries 0 USD card fee plus 40 USD delivery, Premium and Private physical cards are included; an extra virtual card is 2 USD (“in some regions” 2 USD also applies to included Standard virtual cards); there is a 1 USD/month inactivity fee after 12 months; and renewal and reactivation fees exist, amounts not stated.

Its fee list is the clearest of the three: stablecoin top-up 0%, card spend in USD 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple and Google Pay 0%. Then the ones that cost: non-USD FX fee 0.5%–1.75% depending on your residence country, transaction country and card programme; non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD; a declined transaction for insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD; and non-stablecoin tokens may be auto-converted at a fee shown in the app.

Funding is stablecoins — USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD, with USDT/USDC on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and TRON per the app’s current network list. No bank account needed. One inconsistency to be aware of: the Terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”, which conflicts with PYUSD and RLUSD appearing in the app. Spending is from your own balance, deducted per purchase, not credit.

Zeal — 6.1 / 10

The one where the fine print is thinnest. Zeal says you can spend in 150+ countries, with issuance depending on eligibility and regional availability; the Gnosis Pay docs list the card programme live in the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, and Zeal’s update notes also mention Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia.

The card is Visa, with a virtual card for online use that can be added to Apple Pay. Accounts are held in EUR, USD and GBP. A physical card is not stated. You spend from balances in the card Safe — EUR/USD/GBP stablecoin accounts on Gnosis Chain and Celo per the docs — with the exact coins not stated for Zeal.

At a glance

One comparison worth making explicitly: the differences that will actually cost you are not the headline cashback rates. They are the eligibility rules and the non-USD fees. A 4% reward that you cannot claim because you live outside the supported countries, or a 3% reward eaten by a 1.75% FX fee, is worth less than a flat 1% you can bank. Check where you live against the eligibility rules before you check the reward table.

Who I would recommend it to

I would not recommend Pay to anyone looking for a card to spend with, because there is no way to get one — card purchases were disabled on 5 December 2022 and the app has not been updated since 18 February 2023. That is not a judgement about quality; it is a statement about availability.

I would recommend this page to three groups instead:

• You were about to download it. Stop here and read the verdict. The 5.0 App Store rating comes from 3 ratings and reflects how the app looked, not whether it works.
• You still hold the old Card Pay wallet. Your question is not which card to switch to. It is whether the value in that wallet can be reached, who is responsible for it, and how long you have. The issuer is not named on the public pages and the app store listing links no support page, so you are starting from a weaker position than you would be with any live product.
• You want a crypto card and were only ever going to look at one name. Look at all three. MetaMask is the strongest on score but its US and UK sign-ups were temporarily closed; KAST publishes its fee schedule in more detail than anyone but is the strictest on identity documents; Zeal covers the most countries but publishes no fee schedule at all.

If you are choosing between the three, my order of checking is: your country first, then the identity-document rules, then the non-USD fee, and only then the cashback rate.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Pay card?

Pay was a DeFi payments wallet from Cardstack whose app listing read “Manage your prepaid cards”. Users could obtain prepaid cards through the app and spend a balance loaded from crypto. Neither the network nor the currency was stated publicly. The app is free to download; its only in-app purchase is “Account on Gnosis Chain” at GBP 0.99.

Who owns Pay?

Two names appear. The developer is CARDSTACK SERVICES PTE. LTD. according to the App Store listing, and the homepage footer refers to a Cardstack Foundation. Cards were bought through Wyre, a separate partner. The issuer — the institution actually responsible for the card programme — is not stated anywhere on the public pages.

Why can I not get a card anymore?

Prepaid card purchases with Wyre were disabled “until further notice” in version 1.1.12, dated 5 December 2022, and were never restored. The notice did not come. The last app version is 1.2.0 from 18 February 2023, and buying a card is no longer part of what the app does.

Is Pay a bank?

Nothing on the public pages says it is. There is no stated issuer, no stated fees and no stated regulatory status. That is not the same as saying it was not regulated — it means the pages do not tell you, and a card with no named issuer behind it is one you cannot properly assess.

Does Pay require KYC?

Not stated. The card’s public pages say nothing about identity verification, who was eligible, or what documentation was needed. This is a gap in the record, not a confirmation that no checks existed. If you are still inside the wallet, assume that your standing with the service matters more than any feature it once offered.

Can I still use a Pay virtual card?

Nobody can say from the public record, and that is the honest answer. Card purchases being disabled describes acquiring a card, not using one already held. The pages describe prepaid cards inside the wallet and never mention physical delivery at all. If you have one, its status is an open question for the operator, not something documented anywhere I could read.

What happened to my money if I still hold a wallet?

Nobody has published an answer. Withdrawing a card balance is not described anywhere. The version notes mention “Reward withdrawal” bug fixes in 1.0.11 and say each reward is claimed individually as of 1.1.13, which is not the same thing. Blockchain transfers are typically irreversible, so a mistake while moving funds cannot simply be undone.

How do I withdraw money from a closed card wallet?

There is no documented route, and I am not going to invent one for you. Start with the developer site named on the app store listing, since the listing links no support page. Before transferring anything, confirm the network and the destination, because sending funds on an unsupported network can be lost with no guarantee of recovery.

What can I use instead of Pay?

The three live options here are MetaMask (7.1 / 10, Mastercard, virtual free, Metal $199/year), KAST (6.1 / 10, Visa, membership from 0 to 10,000 USD a year, transparent fee list) and Zeal (6.1 / 10, Visa, spend in 150+ countries, no published fee schedule). Check eligibility for your country before comparing rewards.

Is Pay card worth it?

The question no longer applies in the form people usually mean it, because there is nothing to sign up for. What remains worth knowing is why: a card programme that depends on a partner like Wyre can stop working in a single release note, and that is exactly what happened on 5 December 2022.

Where can I use a crypto card, and why is it sometimes declined?

Card numbers start with a 6- or 8-digit issuer code that merchants can look up, revealing the issuer and its country. Shops may apply extra scrutiny when that country differs from your billing address, and some decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards outright. Address Verification Service is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK, which is why foreign-issued cards can be declined at checkout.

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