Shakepay Card Review: What a Canadian-Only Visa Prepaid Card Really Costs

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Shakepay Card is a Visa Prepaid card that spends the Canadian dollar balance inside your Shakepay account, and it hands you part of what you spend back in bitcoin. That is genuinely useful if you are a Canadian resident who already buys bitcoin and wants the cashback without thinking about it. It is a poor fit for almost everyone else. It is offered only to Shakepay customers in Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency, and some countries and merchants are restricted, but nothing in the pages I read suggests non-residents are being turned away for lack of residency.

My score for it is 4.3 out of 10. The low number is not a complaint about the card mechanics — the card works, the fees are simple, and the cashback rate is real. It comes from reach: one country, one balance currency, and an issuer relationship that leaves your funds outside deposit insurance.

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

Verdict: 4.3 out of 10, and it suits a very specific person

Who this suits: Canadian residents who want bitcoin cashback on ordinary spending. That is the case the product is built for, and if you already keep money in a Shakepay account the card is a reasonable companion to it. The cashback lands automatically, you do not have to remember to claim it, and at the top reward status you pay nothing to spend abroad.

Who it does not suit: anyone outside Canada, anyone who needs a virtual card for one specific online purchase, anyone whose savings have to sit in this balance for safety, and anyone who wants to spend crypto without converting it to Canadian dollars first. The single-country limit rules out a large share of readers on its own, and that is why the access mark is 2 out of 10 even though everything the card does, it does competently.

One thing worth saying plainly before the details: this is a prepaid card on a custodial platform, not a bank account. Those are different products with different protections, and the rest of this page treats them as different products.

Who gets the card

You get it if you can open and fully verify a Shakepay account in Canada. That is the whole gate.

• Available to all Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories; Canada only.
• The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency. Some countries and merchants are restricted — the card’s own email for such questions is [email protected].
• A fully verified account is required, plus the age of majority in your province or territory.
• One card per person, checked through an eligibility questionnaire in the app.
• No credit check, which is the part that matters most if an ordinary bank has already declined you.

The pages I read do not say what documents are required, whether proof of address is needed, how long verification takes, what the verification tiers are, or why a check gets rejected. I am not going to guess at a document list. The questionnaire inside the app is the thing that will actually produce an answer for your situation, and email is the fallback if the app is vague.

How to get it

You order the physical card in the app, set a PIN while you order, and it arrives by Canada Post within 21 days.

• The physical Shakepay Visa Prepaid Card spends your Canadian dollar balance.
• You order it in the app and set the PIN during the ordering flow.
• Delivery is within 21 days, Canada Post regular mail, no tracking.
• It is delivered “regardless of where you live in Canada”. Other countries are not listed.
• The card is free for fully verified accounts.
• Replacement runs through “Replace card” in the app. A damaged card keeps its number, expiry and CVV; a lost or stolen card gets new details.
• The replacement fee is not stated. Reissue happens within 30 days after you report the loss.

Setup takes minutes and there is no credit check, so the delay is not the application — it is the post. Three weeks of untracked regular mail means do not cancel anything in the meantime on the assumption the card is coming. If you need to pay for something before it arrives, the phone wallets are the practical stopgap.

Whether a virtual or metal card exists is not stated in what I read. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported, but that is not the same as a virtual card with its own number that you can add to a single checkout. If you have heard otherwise, check the app.

Two security details from this section worth repeating later: the PIN cannot be changed once set, and three wrong entries may disable it.

Fees: what a payment really costs

No annual fee, no disclosed issuance fee, and a foreign exchange charge that depends on which reward status you held last calendar month.

Stated limits are $5,000 per transaction and per day. If a payment is declined for size, verify the current limit in the Shakepay app or contact support to confirm your specific account terms.

Now three ordinary payments, so you can see which of those numbers actually reaches you.

Coffee, in Canada. CAD 6.00 at a café in Toronto. Your balance is already in Canadian dollars, so there is no conversion and no FX charge. You get 1% back in bitcoin at Base, 1% at Bright, 1.5% at Blue, credited automatically. This is the payment the card is designed around.

A monthly subscription billed in euros. EUR 10.00. The Canadian dollar amount comes from Visa’s rate, and the Foreign Exchange Charge is added on top: 3% at Base, 1.5% at Bright, 0% at Blue. The cardholder agreement lists only the 3% figure; the help centre breaks it down by status. If you are on Base, that recurring payment carries a three-point markup on the exchange rate alone, every month, indefinitely. If you pay anything recurring in a foreign currency, that is the number to look at.

Cash from a PLUS-logo ATM. $500 maximum per transaction, $1,000 per day. The ATM operator may charge its own fee, and no bitcoin rewards are earned on ATM transactions. There are no cash or cheque deposits at all, so the ATM is one-way.

The $250 tap limit on Apple Pay and Google Pay is worth noticing next to the $5,000 card limits: phone payments are capped far lower than chip payments, and if you pay for anything expensive by phone, the limit binds first.

Top up: how the card gets money

You do not top up the card. You top up the Shakepay account, and the card spends the Canadian dollar balance that results.

• Interac e-Transfer in: free, minutes, $5 minimum, $10,000 maximum.
• Wire in: free, 1–2 working days, $10,000 minimum.
• No activation fees and no minimum balance.
• The crypto deposit fee for the card is not stated, and the coins and networks that can fund it are not stated.
• Closing the card leaves the Shakepay Wallet balance accessible, and funds do not expire with the card.
• Withdrawal fees from the wallet are not disclosed.

That is the whole of it, and it explains the 3 out of 10 for top-up options. Interac e-Transfer is a good domestic rail — free, fast, and reversible through your own bank if something looks wrong — but it is a Canadian one. The crypto side, which is the part you would be choosing this card for, is exactly what the pages do not answer.

So treat “fund the card with crypto” as an open question rather than a feature. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, and a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. Networks also behave differently from each other: Ethereum charges gas in ETH, so a wallet holding a token but no ETH cannot send it; Tron prices fees in bandwidth and energy, often burning TRX; and Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option. None of that is Shakepay-specific, and none of it is answered on Shakepay’s pages.

The one genuinely reassuring line in this section: closing the card does not strand your money. The wallet balance stays accessible and does not expire with the card.

Paying with it every day

Chip card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, bitcoin cashback credited automatically, and disputes handled in the app.

• Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported “where available”.
• Up to 1.5% cashback in bitcoin on eligible purchases at eligible merchants worldwide, credited automatically to your BTC balance and withdrawable to a user wallet.
• The Shakepay Mobile App handles disputes, the card, and support chat.
• Blocked merchant categories are not stated in what I read.
• The app store rating and number of ratings were not obtained.

The reward structure matters more than it first looks, because the status you hold sets your cashback and your foreign exchange fee at the same time. Statuses are assigned by calendar month:

• Base, the default: 1% card cashback, 3% FX fee.
• Bright: exchange $100+ or make $200+ in eligible direct deposits. 1% cashback, 1.5% FX fee.
• Blue: exchange $1,000+ or make $2,000+ in direct deposits. 1.5% cashback, 0% FX fee, priority support.
• Business: automatic.

Reaching Blue switches the foreign exchange charge off entirely. For anyone who travels or buys in foreign currency, that 0% is what turns this from a nice card into a good one. Note that statuses are monthly, so the rate you get in a given month depends on what you did in that month.

Everyday use scores 7 out of 10 because the physical card, the two phone wallets and the automatic cashback are all straightforward and all present. What it does not get credit for is range. Blocked categories are not stated, so I cannot tell you whether gambling, alcohol or adult merchants are declined — those are commonly blocked by issuer policy rather than by law, and the blocked list varies by issuer, so that is a question for the card rather than a gap I can fill for you.

Two practical notes on being declined. Merchants can look up the card’s issuing institution and country, so a Canadian card can look foreign in another country, and some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards on that basis alone. And Address Verification Service, which compares the numeric parts of the billing address you type against issuer records, is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines on unfamiliar online checkouts.

Disputes have a clock and you should know both numbers. Notify Shakepay in writing within 60 days of the transaction through the dispute section of the app. The agreement also says a dispute must be received within 90 days or the transaction is deemed accepted — so use the 60-day route and treat 90 as the outer wall. Visa Zero Liability unauthorised-use claims can take up to 120 days after the paperwork and may require a police investigation. Transactions before you report a loss may be treated as yours.

If a complaint is unresolved, two bodies can take it: the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments on 1-888-451-4519, or FCAC on 1-866-461-3222.

What can go wrong

The likely bad outcomes are a frozen account and an unspendable balance, not a declined coffee.

The issuer is Peoples Trust Company, licensed by Visa International. Shakepay is registered with FINTRAC as #M17065696, is a CIRO member, and is registered as an Investment Dealer with the AMF and provincial regulators. Funds are not CDIC-insured. Official incidents are not stated and I found no user report of a formal incident, but “not insured” is the sentence to carry away. This is not a bank deposit.

Because the balance is custodial, you take on counterparty and hack risk that does not exist with a deposit account, and you are trusting the provider with the keys rather than holding them. That is the structural trade the category makes: control of the crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key, and with a custodial wallet the provider holds it.

On Trustpilot, read 2026-10-20, the score is 2.3 out of 5 from 22 reviews, of which only one was in the last 12 months, and only one review mentions the card at all — December 2021, and positive. Unofficial and unconfirmed by the card, and disagreeing: CryptoCardHub on 11 August 2026 cites Trustpilot at about 1.5 out of 5. The user report themes:

• Account freezes or closures without explanation, 2021 through February 2022 and July 2025.
• Support unresponsive for days, in 2021, December 2023 and July 2025.
• Delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires, across 2022 and 2023.
• Funds not returned, including a $250 bill payment reported as not received, September 2026.
• Source-of-funds questioning, November 2022.

Either score tells you less than the pattern does. The complaints cluster around account access and getting money out, not around the card failing at a till.

Some of that is normal and lawful. If due diligence cannot be completed, the institution is required to hold off on the transaction or relationship and, where necessary, end it — which is why accounts close or freeze pending documents. Being asked about source of funds is routine. The pattern’s real lesson is narrower and more useful: do not treat this balance as the place to hold money you need on a particular date.

What you can do about it:

• Lock or freeze the card instantly in the app, and turn on two-factor authentication.
• Report a lost or stolen card on the 24/7 line, 1-855-574-2539. Transactions before you report may be treated as yours.
• Remember the PIN cannot be changed once set, and three wrong entries may disable it.
• Reach support at [email protected], in-app at Settings > Help > Support Chat, or on +1(438) 802-1221. Blue and Business get priority live chat, weekdays 8am–10pm EST, weekends 9am–5pm EST.
• Escalate unresolved complaints to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments on 1-888-451-4519, or FCAC on 1-866-461-3222.

One more thing that bites without warning: a declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds that stays for several days, typically up to seven. If a large payment fails, the money may be unavailable for a week.

What to take instead

If Shakepay does not fit, these are the alternatives worth looking at, with the same caution about what is not disclosed.

Gemini is a credit card, not a prepaid one, and that difference changes everything downstream. No conversion question, no stored balance, no top-up minimum. What you get is rewards on spend — 4% on gas, electric vehicle and transit for the first $300 a month, 3% dining, 2% groceries, 1% other, paid instantly in bitcoin or 50+ other cryptos on Gemini and changeable at any time — plus 10% Vault Rewards at some merchants, capped and varying, and a referral structure of $50 crypto each, $250 per five referrals, up to 50 a year. Who can get it is not stated on the card page.

Lava scores highest here at 7.1, and its claims are the most attractive on paper: no FX fees and no FX spread, up to 5% back in bitcoin, 150 million merchants across 150+ countries. Its conditions are also entirely unstated — reward conditions, card network, physical or virtual, and the networks for stablecoin deposits. And “no annual fees” is not the same as no cost: the issuance fee is not stated.

GoMining is the one to read most carefully. Its cashback is paid in mining power rather than money, and the rate rises with VIP level, so “up to 5% cashback” describes something quite different from Shakepay’s bitcoin. It is virtual only with physical “coming soon”, its costs are not stated, and its own materials say products “may not be available in your jurisdiction”.

If your hesitation is about geography, none of these is a workaround: eligibility is set by each provider and its regulator. If it is about spending crypto directly, that is a genuine category difference — most cards in this space, Shakepay included, spend a converted balance.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend the Shakepay Card to a Canadian resident who keeps a Shakepay balance, already buys bitcoin, and wants a slice of ordinary spending refunded in bitcoin without a second thought. For that person it is a good card attached to a narrow opportunity, and the cashback plus the 0% foreign exchange charge at Blue status are what make it worth having.

Everyone else, I would tell to think twice, and not because the reasons are close calls. Outside Canada it is not offered. If you need a virtual card, what I read does not describe one. If your money needs to be safe rather than convenient, the balance is not CDIC-insured and it is custodial. If you spend in foreign currencies and cannot reach Blue, you pay 3% over Visa’s rate. And if you are making a large payment against a deadline, remember the hold of up to seven days after a decline, and the unresolved figure for the per-transaction limit.

Three things I would check before applying. Whether you can reach Blue status this calendar month, since that zeroes the foreign exchange charge. Whether your largest monthly purchase fits inside $5,000, and your phone payments inside the $250 tap limit. And whether the answer to “where does my money sit if I need it tomorrow” is one you can live with, given that it is not an insured deposit.

None of that makes the card bad. It makes it narrow, and narrow means not yours if you are reading this from anywhere but Canada.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Shakepay Card?

The Shakepay Card is a Visa Prepaid card that spends the Canadian dollar balance in your Shakepay account. You load money into the account and the card draws down that balance, so it cannot overdraw. Up to 1.5% of eligible purchases comes back as bitcoin, credited automatically. It is offered only to Shakepay customers in Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, and it is a physical card.

Is Shakepay a bank?

Shakepay is not a bank. It is a crypto platform registered with FINTRAC as #M17065696, a CIRO member, and registered as an Investment Dealer with the AMF and provincial regulators. The card itself is issued by Peoples Trust Company under a licence from Visa International. The practical point that matters most is the last one: funds are not CDIC-insured, so your balance is not a protected bank deposit.

Who can get the Shakepay Card?

It is available to all Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, and Canada only. You need a fully verified account, the age of majority in your province or territory, and there is one card per person. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency, and some countries and merchants are restricted. There is no credit check, which matters if a bank has refused you before.

Does applying for the Shakepay Card require KYC?

There is no credit check and setup takes minutes, but a fully verified account is required, which in practice means the identity and source-of-funds checks any regulated crypto platform runs. The pages I read do not state which documents, whether proof of address is needed, the verification tiers, or the rejection reasons. The eligibility questionnaire in the app will walk you through what applies to you.

How do I get and activate the Shakepay Card?

You order the physical card in the app and set your PIN during the ordering flow. It arrives within 21 days by Canada Post regular mail, untracked, anywhere in Canada. The card is free for fully verified accounts, and there is no activation fee or minimum balance. If you lose it, report it on 1-855-574-2539 and replace it through the app within 30 days.

What does the Shakepay Card cost to use?

There are no annual fees, and the issuance fee is not stated. The cost that reaches you is the Foreign Exchange Charge on spending outside Canada: 3% at Base status, 1.5% at Bright, 0% at Blue. Non-Canadian transactions convert at Visa’s rate and the charge is added on top. A foreign refund converts at the rate you paid Visa minus the charge, so it usually returns less than you paid.

Is the Shakepay Card free?

For fully verified accounts, yes: the card is free and there are no annual fees. Several other charges are simply not stated — the issuance fee, replacement fees, and wallet withdrawal fees. Do not read “not stated” as “zero”. If any of those matter to your decision, ask at [email protected], and treat the answer as the current one rather than a promise.

How do I top up the Shakepay Card?

You top up the account, not the card. Interac e-Transfer in is free, arrives in minutes, minimum $5, maximum $10,000. Wire in is free, takes 1–2 working days, minimum $10,000. There are no activation fees and no minimum balance. Which coins and networks can fund the card, and any crypto deposit fee, are not stated, so ask before sending anything on-chain.

Can I use the Shakepay Card outside Canada?

You can spend it abroad, but you pay for it unless you have reached Blue status: 3% at Base, 1.5% at Bright, 0% at Blue. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards, and Address Verification Service is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines at unfamiliar online checkouts. Living outside Canada is the barrier to having the card at all.

Is the Shakepay Card safe and worth it?

Worth it if you are a Canadian resident who already keeps a Shakepay balance and wants bitcoin back on everyday spending — reaching Blue status and its 0% foreign exchange charge makes it clearly worthwhile. Be more careful about the balance than the card: funds are not CDIC-insured, they are custodial, and complaint themes include unexplained account freezes and delayed withdrawals. Treat it as spending money, not savings.

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