The Pay card no longer issues new cards — what happened and what to do now

Updated October 2026

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If you landed here looking for a crypto card to spend from, the short answer is that Pay card no longer issues new ones. The card-buying feature through Wyre was disabled on 2022-12-05, and the last version of the app (1.2.0) shipped on 2023-02-18. This is not a card you can sign up for today. What I can still do is walk you through what the programme was, who it suited, what it means if you are one of the people still holding it, and which of the alternatives on the market are actually working right now. The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

I scored the card 1.8 out of 10, and I want to be straight with you about why before anything else.

Verdict: a closed programme is not a card you can use

The score is low for one overriding reason: the programme is closed. That is not a criticism of how the card worked while it did work — it is a statement about what is available to you in 2026. A card that cannot be applied for cannot be recommended, whatever its features once were.

Here is how the score breaks down, criterion by criterion.

Who did this card suit? The audience was, in the main, holders of the old Card Pay wallet — people who already had the app and the wallet behind it. For someone starting from zero today, it suits no one, because there is no way in. For someone who already holds it, the question stops being “is this a good card” and becomes “what do I do with what is left.” That is the rest of this page.

One thing the card’s public pages never stated, and I want to flag once and then not repeat: the card’s public pages do not tell us who could get it. There is no stated eligibility list, no stated KYC procedure, and no named issuer. So when you read elsewhere that “Pay card is available in X country” — take it with a grain of salt, because the card itself never said that.

What happened to the programme

Here is the timeline as the card’s own materials record it.

The App Store listing for the app describes it as a DeFi payments wallet where you “Manage your prepaid cards.” It does not state the network or the currency. The app itself is free to download, and the only in-app purchase listed is “Account on Gnosis Chain” at GBP 0.99. Card fees are not stated anywhere.

Then the turn. On 2022-12-05, with version 1.1.12, the developers disabled prepaid card purchases with Wyre “until further notice.” That notice, as it turned out, was close to permanent. Around the same period, outside the card’s own materials, MetaMask stopped supporting Wyre in January 2023 because Wyre was reportedly closing, and Wyre announced its wind-down in June 2023. I want to be careful here: those last two are third-party reports (from Benzinga and The Block respectively), and the card itself does not link any source to them, so treat them as unofficial context rather than as something the card confirmed.

The last app release was version 1.2.0 on 2023-02-18. After that, nothing. The App Store (UK) rating for the app is 5.0 out of 5, but from only 3 ratings — a number far too small to tell you anything reliable. The app runs on iOS 13.0+, macOS 11.0+ (Apple M1 or later), and visionOS 1.0+. Whether there is a Google Play version is not stated.

In short: the card stopped being something you could obtain, and the app stopped being something that was being maintained. The “until further notice” from December 2022 has, on the evidence of the last release, stretched into permanent silence.

If you already have the card

If you are reading this because you already hold a Pay card or a balance in the old Card Pay wallet, this is the section that matters most to you. I am going to be direct: the card’s public pages do not tell you what to do with your balance, and that is the single most important thing to understand here.

Here is what the card’s materials do and do not say.

• ATM access: not stated.
• Spending or transaction limits: not stated.
• Funding your card: not stated. The listing mentions crypto balances, and Polygon was removed in version 1.1.13.
• Top-up: not stated, because the programme is closed. The only paid item listed in-app is “Account on Gnosis Chain” at GBP 0.99.
• Withdrawing money: not stated. The version notes mention “Reward withdrawal” bug fixes in 1.0.11, and 1.1.13 says each reward has to be claimed individually — but there is no information about withdrawing a card balance, or about what happens to a balance after the closure.
• Support: not stated. The App Store listing links no support page, only the developer site the Cardstack website and a privacy policy.
• Disputes: not stated.

That is an uncomfortable list. The blunt version: the card’s own materials tell you almost nothing about how to get money out or who to contact about a stuck balance. That does not mean your money is gone — it means the card is not the place to look for an answer.

What I would do, without telling you how to get around anything: treat the card as closed, and look for your answer outside it. That means checking the developer site linked in the listing (the Cardstack website) for any closure or wind-down notice, and if you cannot find one, treating “no notice” as itself a signal. If you have a balance you cannot access or cannot spend, that is a specific, concrete problem, and it is the kind of thing that sometimes needs a written record and, if it goes unresolved, external help — a regulator, a consumer-protection body, or a legal advice service in your country. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, so treat that as a direction to explore, not a recommendation.

On support specifically: the fact that the App Store listing links only a developer site and a privacy policy, and no support page, is itself a signal about how much help you should expect.

What can go wrong

The risks here are not the usual card risks (which I will cover in the alternatives section, since the alternatives are what you are actually choosing between). The risks specific to this card are the risks of a closed programme.

• The programme stopped issuing cards on 2022-12-05 and the app stopped being updated after 2023-02-18. There is no maintenance, so a bug you hit now will not be fixed.
• The issuer is not named. The developer is listed as CARDSTACK SERVICES PTE. LTD. on the App Store, and the Cardstack homepage footer refers to a Cardstack Foundation — but who actually issued the card is not stated, and that is the entity whose rules would govern a dispute or a balance.
• Wyre, the route through which prepaid cards were bought, was disabled and then, per third-party reports, wound down in 2023. Those reports are unofficial and the card does not link a source to them, but the disabling itself is on the record.
• There is no stated support page, and no stated process for withdrawing a card balance. If your balance is inaccessible, nothing on the card’s public pages tells you what the remedy is.
• On custody and self-custody: the card does not state whether funds were held in self-custody. What it does say is that transactions are confirmed with Touch ID or Face ID. Biometric confirmation at the point of payment is a convenience feature; it is not the same thing as control of your funds.
• On complaints: there is no Trustpilot page and no Reddit discussion for Card Pay that I could find. My searches on 2026-10-20 returned unrelated companies. That is not a clean bill of health — it is closer to the absence of a public footprint, which for a closed service is what you would expect.

One incident is on the official record, and it is the defining one: prepaid card purchases with Wyre were disabled “until further notice” on 2022-12-05. If you were using this card and it stopped working, that is why, and it is not something that went wrong on your end.

What to take instead

Because the Pay card is closed, the useful question is not “should I pick this one” but “which of the alternatives actually works.” I looked at three that are live, and scored each on the same footing. Here they are side by side, with the scores and the key facts.

Now the details on each, so you can see which fits your situation.

MetaMask (7.1 / 10) is the strongest of the three for most people. 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, and — importantly — ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending. The citizenship rule is not stated, and US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ. The card is Mastercard: a virtual card issued instantly, with a metal one you can pre-order in the app after the virtual is approved, one card per user, issued by Monovate with Crypto Life as card provider. The virtual card is free with no annual or maintenance fee; the metal card is $199/year. Fees are a “minimal fee for each transaction” (amount not stated on the pages I read, with a fee table linked), no additional MetaMask fees, no foreign transaction fee. It spends directly from your connected wallet, on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, using tokens like mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. Cashback goes to a Money Account: 1% on virtual, and on metal a headline 3% that the footnote caps at 3% on the first $10,000 then 1%. There is also a $FLY bonus (5X virtual, 7X metal) via the Blackbird dining app.

KAST (6.1 / 10) is the one with the widest card range and the most explicit fee schedule, but also the highest entry cost at the top tier. Availability is residence-based and shown at KYC — if your country is not listed, KAST is not there. The country list is not published, and a Restricted Locations list is referenced without naming countries. Citizenship and ID matter: living in a supported country but holding an ID from a restricted region may still fail KYC; dual citizens with an ID from a supported country may pass; only the account holder’s own ID is accepted, and a VPN does not bypass this. You can create an account in an unsupported country, but KYC stays locked. Cards are virtual and physical, up to 10 per user: Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium), Visa Infinite gold-plated (Private), plus Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin designs. The balance is in USD, with stablecoin deposits converted 1:1 at a 0% spread. Annual membership is 0 USD (Standard), 1,000 USD/year (Premium) or 10,000 USD/year (Private), billed annually upfront with no monthly option. An extra virtual card is 2 USD; the Standard physical card has a 0 USD card fee plus 40 USD delivery (Premium/Private physical cards are included). There is a 1 USD/month inactivity fee after 12 months, and renewal/reactivation fees exist though amounts are not stated. Fees: stablecoin top-up 0%, USD card spend 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple/Google Pay 0%; non-USD FX 0.5%–1.75% depending on your country and the transaction’s; non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD; a declined transaction (insufficient balance) costs 0.50 USD; non-stablecoin tokens may be auto-converted at a fee shown in the app. You fund with USDT, USDC, PYUSD or RLUSD (USDT/USDC on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum, TRON; no bank account needed) — though the Terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC,” which conflicts with the PYUSD/RLUSD listing. Spending draws on your own balance, deducted straight away, not credit. Cashback: 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD/month (Standard), 2% on the first 10,000 USD/month (Premium), 3% on the first 40,000 USD/month (Private); KAST Points add +1% (Premium) or +2% (Private) of eligible spend.

TokenPocket (5.8 / 10) is the lowest-scoring of the three, mainly on cost. It issues a Visa debit for a list of European countries and territories (Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland among them) and a Mastercard debit for Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, the UK and others; the Americas were “planned for Q2 2025.” The card runs on Arbitrum. Fiat24 cards are virtual — no physical card is mentioned — with balances in EUR24 and USD24. On cost: the NFT creation fee is partly covered by TokenPocket and the user pays “a small portion” (amount not stated), and “apart from these, TP Card does not charge any additional fees.” But there is a 1% fee on depositing cryptocurrency into the card, to be refunded later via rewards and reduced transaction fees; FX fee is not stated, and extra fees can come from inter-institution settlement. You fund from crypto deposits in the TokenPocket wallet, with specific coins and networks not listed in the FAQ. No cashback is stated beyond the deposit-fee refund.

Which one is right for you depends on where you are and how much you care about fees versus card range versus a free virtual card. If you want the strongest all-round option with a genuinely free virtual card, MetaMask leads. If you want the most transparent fee schedule and the widest card choice and can afford the membership, KAST. If you want something with no membership tier and you are in a covered European or Asia-Pacific country, TokenPocket, with the deposit fee in mind.

Who I would recommend it to

Let me put this plainly. I would not recommend the Pay card to anyone in 2026. Not because it was a bad card in its day, but because it does not exist as an option any more — you cannot apply, and the app is unmaintained. There is no scenario in which signing up today makes sense, because there is no sign-up.

If you are an existing holder of the old Card Pay wallet, my recommendation is different and narrower: treat the card as closed, look for any wind-down notice on the Cardstack website, and if you have a balance you cannot spend or withdraw, treat that as a standalone problem worth pursuing through external help rather than through the app. Because the card’s own pages are silent on withdrawal, balances, and support, the app is not where your answer is going to be.

If you are in the market for a crypto card generally — someone who has trouble getting an ordinary bank card, or who simply wants to spend crypto without converting it by hand — then the three alternatives above are where your attention should go. MetaMask is the one I would look at first. Before you commit to any of them, do the ordinary due diligence I would do myself: check that the provider appears on the relevant regulator’s register (in the EU, ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised crypto-asset service providers), confirm what licence actually backs the card, and read the terms on fees, top-up, and what happens to your balance if the service winds up. The last of those is exactly the question the Pay card could not answer for its own holders.

I am not giving tax or legal advice here, and nothing on this page should be read as either. One general point worth knowing rather than as advice: in the US 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 the date of each transaction — which means each card payment funded from crypto can be a separate taxable event. If that is relevant to you, take it to a professional.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Pay card?

The Pay card was a prepaid card managed inside a DeFi payments wallet app, developed by Cardstack. The App Store listing described it as a place to “manage your prepaid cards,” with no network or currency stated. Card purchases were routed through Wyre. The programme is now closed: card purchases through Wyre were disabled on 2022-12-05 and the last app version shipped on 2023-02-18.

Is the Pay card a bank?

No, it was not a bank. The issuer is not stated on the card’s public pages. The developer is listed as CARDSTACK SERVICES PTE. LTD. on the App Store, and the Cardstack homepage footer refers to a Cardstack Foundation. Crypto card brands are often only a programme manager or front-end, with a licensed bank or e-money institution actually issuing the card — but for Pay, the issuer is not named.

Can I still apply for a Pay card?

No. You cannot apply for a Pay card. The card-buying feature through Wyre was disabled “until further notice” on 2022-12-05, and no new cards have been issued through the app since. The last app update was version 1.2.0 on 2023-02-18. This page is for people who already hold the card, not for people hoping to get one.

How does a crypto card like Pay work, in general?

Most crypto cards behave like prepaid cards rather than ordinary debit cards. A standard debit card asks your bank to withdraw funds from a linked account at the moment of purchase; a prepaid card draws on a balance you loaded first. In the pre-loaded model, you convert or top up a fiat or stablecoin balance and the card spends only that, so it cannot overdraw. For Pay specifically, the card’s own pages do not state the network or the currency.

What happened to Wyre, and why does it matter?

Wyre was the route through which Pay’s prepaid cards were bought. Card purchases with Wyre were disabled on 2022-12-05. Separately, and unofficial — reported by third parties, not linked by the card — MetaMask stopped supporting Wyre in January 2023 as Wyre was reportedly closing, and Wyre announced its wind-down in June 2023. It matters because that route is the reason the card programme went quiet.

I still have a balance on my Pay card. What do I do?

The card’s public pages do not tell you: withdrawing a card balance, and what happens to a balance after closure, are both not stated. The only sensible starting points are the developer site linked in the listing, the Cardstack website, and any wind-down notice there. If a balance is stuck, that is a concrete unresolved problem, and external help — a regulator, consumer-protection body, or legal advice in your country — is a direction to explore if the developer site gives you nothing.

Can I top up the Pay card, or is Polygon supported?

No. The programme is closed, so top-up methods are not disclosed. Polygon was removed from the app in version 1.1.13. The only paid item listed in-app is “Account on Gnosis Chain” at GBP 0.99, which is unrelated to topping up a card. The listing mentions crypto balances, but gives no funding instructions.

Is the Pay card safe, and is my money insured?

The card does not state whether funds were held in self-custody. It does say transactions are confirmed with Touch ID or Face ID, but biometric confirmation is a payment feature, not proof of control of your funds. There is no named issuer, no support page, and no stated process for a stuck balance — so on the specific question of protection, the card’s own materials say nothing reassuring.

What should I use instead of the Pay card?

The three live options I looked at are MetaMask (7.1 / 10), KAST (6.1 / 10) and TokenPocket (5.8 / 10). MetaMask offers a free virtual Mastercard and a $199/year metal card, spending from your connected wallet. KAST offers Visa virtual and physical cards with a very transparent fee schedule but membership up to 10,000 USD/year. TokenPocket offers virtual Visa/Mastercard debit with a 1% crypto deposit fee. Check each against your own country before choosing.

Is the Pay card worth it, or was it ever worth it?

Today, no — it cannot be obtained, so the question of worth does not arise for anyone starting fresh. For people who held it, the worth was in the wallet behind it, and what matters now is not the card’s merits but whether any balance is still accessible and who to contact about it. For anyone choosing a crypto card today, judge the live alternatives on fees, top-up, and what happens to your balance if the service ever winds up.

Content created by the «cryptocardadvisor» team