Shakepay Card Review: Reliable Everyday Spending for Canadians, Closed to Everyone Else

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Shakepay card is a Visa Prepaid Card that spends a Canadian dollar balance held inside the Shakepay app, with a slice of every eligible purchase returned to you as bitcoin. It is one of the more pleasant cards to hold day to day — Apple Pay, Google Pay, cash out at ATMs, a real dispute process — but it is a Canadian product, and for anyone who does not live in Canada the honest answer is that it is not available to you at all. I scored it 4.3 out of 10: strong on the everyday mechanics, weak on reach, thin on disclosed detail.

The conditions described on this page are current as of October 28, 2026.

Who it suits: Canadian residents who already use Shakepay for bitcoin, who want cashback in BTC rather than points, and who spend mostly in Canadian dollars. Who it does not suit: anyone outside Canada, anyone who needs a card that converts crypto directly at the point of sale, anyone who wants a metal or virtual card, and anyone who is uneasy about money sitting with a provider that does not offer deposit insurance.

The score at a glance

Here is how the card broke down against the criteria I use, with the total at the bottom.

Two of those marks deserve a word before we go further. The everyday-use score is the highest because the mechanics are genuinely good: a physical Visa card, both mobile wallets, ATM access. The reach score is the lowest because country restriction dominates everything else. If you are Canadian, read on — you are the audience this card is for. If you are not, the section on who gets the card will save you twenty minutes.

Will they give you the card

Yes, if you are a Shakepay customer living in Canada. The card is available to all Shakepay customers in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, and nowhere else. That is the whole eligibility rule as the card states it: Canada only.

One thing the pages leave open. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly require Canadian residency as a condition, and the help material notes that some countries and some merchants are restricted. That is not a workaround — it is a loose end in the documentation. If you are not certain whether your situation qualifies, the card’s own contact address for card questions is [email protected], and asking is the only reliable way to find out.

What the pages do not say matters here too. Whether a virtual or metal version exists is not stated, so do not plan around one. And there is a further silence: the cardholder agreement does not spell out the verification tiers, how long processing takes, or on what grounds an application could be refused. Ask about those before you assume anything.

How to get it

Getting the card is straightforward once you are eligible. There is no credit check, and the setup takes minutes. The specific documents required for proof of address and the age threshold are not disclosed in the official help pages.

What is stated about the process:

• You need a fully verified account.
• You must be of the age of majority in your province or territory.
• One card per person.
• There is an eligibility questionnaire inside the app.
• No credit check.

The card itself is a physical Shakepay Visa Prepaid Card drawing on a Canadian dollar balance.

Ordering and delivery are the practical details worth knowing. You order the physical card in the app, and you set your PIN while ordering — which matters later, because the PIN cannot be changed once set; to get a new PIN you replace the card. The card arrives within 21 days, by Canada Post regular mail, with no tracking. The card’s stated delivery scope is “regardless of where you live in Canada” — other countries are not listed.

The card is free for fully verified accounts, though the issuance fee itself is not stated as a separate line. 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. Report a loss and the reissue comes within 30 days.

One more thing about ordering, and it is unofficial. Third-party reporting (CryptoCardHub, 11 Aug 2026) says the physical-card rollout opened gradually by waitlist rank, with the opening announced in May 2026 and dated 21 May 2026. The official help article I read does not mention a waitlist, so treat that as third-party reporting, not as something the card confirms.

Fees and limits: what it really costs

The cost picture is one of the better-documented parts of this card, and it is more nuanced than a single headline number. The headline is that there are no annual fees. The detail is that your Foreign Exchange Charge depends on which reward status you hold that calendar month, and it can be 3%, 1.5% or nothing at all.

Here is the costs table, drawn from what the card publishes:

The card spends a Canadian dollar balance, and non-Canadian transactions are converted at the Visa rate plus a 3% Foreign Exchange Charge according to the cardholder agreement. The help centre breaks that charge down by status, and it is that breakdown, not the flat agreement figure, that decides what you actually pay abroad. Foreign refunds come back at the Visa rate minus the charge, so a refund usually returns less than what you originally spent.

Two or three everyday payments, and which fees bite

Because the only real charge on this card is the FX charge, the sensible way to understand the cost is through actual purchases.

Groceries in Toronto, paid by card, in Canadian dollars. No annual fee, no issuance fee, and no conversion because the transaction is in the balance’s own currency. You earn 1% cashback in bitcoin at Base, or 1.5% at Blue. This is the card at its cleanest — the fee that does not exist is the fee you never notice.

A hotel night in Lisbon, paid with the physical card. This is where the status tiers separate. The transaction is converted at the Visa rate and the Foreign Exchange Charge applies: 3% at Base, 1.5% at Bright, 0% at Blue. On a single booking the difference between 3% and nothing is real money, and it is the whole argument for chasing Blue status.

A $120 dinner paid by Apple Pay. The tap-to-pay limit is $250, so it goes through, and you earn the same cashback as any other eligible purchase. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported “where available,” and no blocked categories are stated.

The card has specific transaction limits. As stated in the help article updated 21 Apr 2026, these are $5,000 per transaction, $5,000 per day and $50,000 per month. The operator specifies that these limits cannot be increased.

How to Top up the card

The card does not have its own funding pipe. It spends the Canadian dollar balance in your Shakepay account, so topping it up means funding the account, most commonly by Interac e-Transfer, and then letting the card draw down that balance.

Here is what the card states about funding:

There are no activation fees and no minimum balance. That is the comfortable part of topping up a prepaid card: it cannot overdraw, because there is no credit line to exceed.

The uncomfortable part is the silence. Which coins and which networks you can use to fund the card is not stated, and the crypto deposit fee for the card is not stated either. That is a genuine gap, and it is worth asking about directly before you plan to run the card off crypto rather than off dollars — because if you assume a network is supported and it is not, the transfer can be lost, as stablecoin transfers generally are irreversible.

If you close the card, the balance in the Shakepay Wallet stays accessible and does not expire with the card. Withdrawal fees from the wallet are not disclosed in the card documentation.

Paying with it every day

This is the card’s strongest suit, and the 7 out of 10 in the table above reflects it. You have a physical Visa Prepaid Card, and you can add it to Apple Pay and Google Pay where available. In the app you can manage disputes, the card itself, and support chat. A virtual card is not disclosed, so the physical one and the mobile wallets are what you have.

The reward is the reason most people are here. 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 of yours. Note the two qualifiers that carry weight: “eligible” purchases and “eligible” merchants. There are no bitcoin rewards on ATM transactions.

Reward status is assigned by calendar month, and the tiers explain the FX fee differences from the costs section:

No metal card is stated at any tier.

What can go wrong

The most important risk on this card is not about the card. It is about the custody.

Shakepay holds your balance. The card draws on a custodial wallet, which means the provider holds the credentials and you trust them. Funds are not insured by CDIC — unlike a bank deposit, there is no deposit guarantee behind them. Shakepay itself is registered with FINTRAC (#M17065696) and is a CIRO member and an Investment Dealer registered with the AMF and provincial regulators, and the card is issued by Peoples Trust Company under licence from Visa International. That is a real regulatory frame. It is not the same thing as insured money.

The second risk is freezes and delays, and here the user record is worth reading honestly. On Trustpilot the card sits at 2.3 out of 5 across 22 reviews, of which only one was in the last 12 months, and the single review that actually mentions the card dates from December 2021 and is positive. So the complaint volume is thin, but the themes are consistent: accounts frozen or closed without a reason given, support going unresponsive for days, delayed or blocked withdrawals and wires, unreturned funds including a $250 bill payment, and questions about source of funds. A third-party site (CryptoCardHub, 11 Aug 2026) puts Trustpilot nearer 1.5 out of 5, which disagrees with what I read. Official incidents are not stated.

Read that list with the right amount of weight. It is not proof that your account will be closed. It is a reasonable signal that if you use this card for anything you cannot afford to have delayed — your rent, your wages, your only emergency fund — you should understand that holds happen.

There is a practical security layer around it. You can lock or freeze the card instantly in the app, and two-factor authentication is supported. The PIN may be disabled after three wrong entries. For lost or stolen cards there is a 24/7 line on 1-855-574-2539. Again: the balance is custodial, so a compromised Shakepay account is a compromised balance.

And a card-level risk that is not about Shakepay at all. The card number begins with a BIN that identifies the issuing institution and country, and merchants can look it up. Some shops decline prepaid or foreign-issued cards because that lookup reveals what they are dealing with. Visa Secure and similar checks, along with address verification, add friction online — address verification in particular is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards and can cause declines. These are category facts, not Shakepay-specific, but they are the practical reason a Canadian-issued card can behave oddly abroad.

If something goes wrong with a charge

Tell Shakepay in writing within 60 days of the transaction, using the dispute section of the app. Be aware of a second clock: the agreement says a dispute must be received within 90 days or the transaction is deemed accepted. Visa’s Zero Liability route for unauthorised use can take up to 120 days after the paperwork is complete and may require a police investigation, and transactions before you reported the loss may be treated as yours. If a complaint goes unresolved, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments is on 1-888-451-4519, and FCAC on 1-866-461-3222.

What to take instead

If Shakepay does not fit — because you are outside Canada, or you want the card to convert crypto itself, or you want lower FX costs without chasing status tiers — these are the other cards I compared, with their own scores.

Gemini — 4.9 out of 10. A Mastercard World Elite credit card, not a prepaid one, so it is paid off in fiat rather than drawn down. No annual fee, no foreign transaction fees, and the crypto conversion line does not apply to the card itself because rewards are paid in crypto. Rewards are richer in categories: 4% on gas, EV and transit (on the first $300 a month), 3% dining, 2% groceries, 1% other, paid instantly in Bitcoin or 50+ other cryptos on Gemini, changeable any time, plus 10% Vault Rewards at some merchants (capped, and they vary). Eligibility, the card form, and the currency are not stated on the card page.

Lava — 7.1 out of 10, the highest score of the four. “No annual fees,” “no FX fees, and no FX spread,” and no exchange fees or spread on bitcoin buy/sell per its page. You spend at 150 million merchants in 150+ countries. Deposits come from local currency or stablecoins. Rewards are “up to 5% back in bitcoin on every purchase,” with conditions not stated — so read the word “up” carefully. Eligibility, the card form and the networks are not stated.

Trastra — 4.1 out of 10. A prepaid debit card accepted at Visa merchants worldwide, in 31 listed countries including Germany, France and the UK, and it says it “will be available for all residents of the European Economic Area (EEA),” with non-European residents “Not at the moment.” So this is the most geographically open of the four, and it points the opposite way from Shakepay. It is topped up using cryptocurrencies in your Mover wallet, though the coins and networks are not named. Annual fee, fees and rewards are not stated.

A comparison you can hold in your head:

If your priority is simply spending dollars in Canada with some bitcoin back, Shakepay is fine. If your priority is travel, Gemini’s no-foreign-transaction-fee structure is the cleaner fit. If your priority is the lowest FX cost stated anywhere in this set, Lava’s zero-FX claim is the one to check first — with the caveat that the conditions behind “up to 5%” are not spelled out.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend the Shakepay card to one specific person: a Canadian resident who is already using Shakepay to hold bitcoin, spends predominantly in Canadian dollars, and likes the idea of every eligible purchase quietly adding to their BTC balance without thinking about it. For that person it does a clean job — no annual fee, both mobile wallets, real cashback, a functioning dispute process.

I would not recommend it to someone who needs the card to work outside Canada on a 3% charge and does not expect to climb to Blue status, because the whole value proposition narrows to a Canadian life. Nor to anyone whose main worry is what happens to money that is not bank-insured, since these funds are not CDIC-covered and sit with a custodian. And if you are outside Canada, none of this applies to you — go and read the other three.

One last practical note on safety that is not Shakepay’s own doing. Programmes like this do close: Visa terminated its agreements with FTX in November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down, and Visa suspended WaveCrest in Europe in 2018, closing its Visa programmes. Closures follow a pattern — a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then you are asked to withdraw. Keep the balance you are comfortable losing in a wallet you control, and do not treat this card as a savings account.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Shakepay card?

It is a physical Visa Prepaid Card that spends a Canadian dollar balance held in your Shakepay account. You fund the account, the balance is converted to a stored value, and the card draws down that value — so it behaves like a prepaid card rather than a debit card linked to a bank. Eligible purchases at eligible merchants earn cashback in bitcoin, up to 1.5%. It is available to Shakepay customers across all 13 Canadian provinces and territories.

Is Shakepay a bank?

No — not in the ordinary sense. Shakepay is registered with FINTRAC (#M17065696) and is a CIRO member and an Investment Dealer registered with the AMF and provincial regulators, but the card itself is issued by Peoples Trust Company under licence from Visa International. Crucially, funds are not insured by CDIC, so your balance does not have bank-deposit protection. Think of it as a custodial wallet with a payment card attached.

Who can get the Shakepay card?

Shakepay customers living in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories — Canada only. You need a fully verified account, to be of the age of majority in your province, one card per person, and you pass an eligibility questionnaire in the app. There is no credit check. The cardholder agreement does not explicitly spell out a residency requirement and notes some countries and merchants are restricted, so if you are unsure, email [email protected].

How do I get the Shakepay card?

Order it in the app and set your PIN at the same time, because the PIN cannot be changed later — replacing the card is how you get a new one. Delivery is within 21 days by Canada Post regular mail, with no tracking, anywhere in Canada. The card is free for fully verified accounts, though a separate issuance fee is not stated. A lost or stolen card is reissued with new details within 30 days of your report.

What does the Shakepay card cost?

There is no annual fee, and the issuance fee is not stated. The cost that matters is abroad: non-Canadian transactions convert at the Visa rate plus a Foreign Exchange Charge of 3% at Base status, 1.5% at Bright and 0% at Blue. ATM withdrawals are $500 per transaction and $1,000 per day at PLUS-logo ATMs, operator fees may apply, and ATM transactions earn no bitcoin. Spending limits are $5,000 per transaction and day, $50,000 a month.

How do I top up the Shakepay card?

You top up the account, not the card, and the card spends that Canadian dollar balance. Interac e-Transfer in is free, arrives in minutes, with a $5 minimum and $10,000 maximum. A wire in is free too, takes 1–2 working days, and has a $10,000 minimum. There are no activation fees and no minimum balance. Which coins or networks can fund the card is not stated, nor is the crypto deposit fee — worth asking before you plan to run it off crypto.

Does the Shakepay card require KYC?

Identity verification is required in the sense that you need a fully verified Shakepay account to order the card. The specific documents required, the proof of address, and the age threshold are not stated in the card’s published pages, and neither are the verification tiers or the reasons an application might be refused. There is no credit check at any stage. If the exact documents matter for your situation, ask support rather than assuming.

Can I use the Shakepay card abroad?

Yes, with a caveat that costs you money at lower reward statuses. Non-Canadian transactions convert at the Visa rate plus the Foreign Exchange Charge — 3% at Base, 1.5% at Bright, and 0% at Blue. Apple Pay and Google Pay work where available. Also note that foreign refunds come back at the Visa rate minus the charge, so a refund usually returns less than you originally spent.

Is the Shakepay card safe?

It has the ordinary safeguards — instant freeze in the app, two-factor authentication, a 24/7 lost-and-stolen line, and tokenised mobile wallets — but the balance is custodial, meaning Shakepay holds it, and it is not CDIC-insured. On Trustpilot the card scores 2.3 out of 5 from 22 reviews, with recurring reports of account freezes, delayed withdrawals and unreturned funds. Card programmes do close, so do not treat the balance as savings.

Is the Shakepay card worth it?

For a Canadian resident spending mainly in Canadian dollars, yes: no annual fee, up to 1.5% cashback in bitcoin, both mobile wallets, and no overdraw risk. It is worth less if you travel often at Base status, since 3% abroad erodes the cashback, and worth nothing to non-residents. If you want zero FX cost by design rather than by tier, Gemini charges no foreign transaction fee and Lava claims no FX fees or spread — both worth a look before you settle.

Content created by the «cryptocardselect» team