A good card that no longer accepts payments: what the Gnosis Pay shutdown means for holders
Available in US
Gnosis Pay built one of the cleaner crypto cards in Europe: no transaction fees, no foreign-exchange markup of its own, a Visa card that spends straight from a self-custody Safe, and Apple Pay on top. And then, in September 2026, the company put out a formal notice saying the consumer card is closing. New customers cannot sign up, the card stops authorising payments on 20 December 2026, and the web app goes with it. That is the single most important fact on this page, and everything else here is either history, a job you may still have to do, or a list of cards that could take over from it. If you were considering applying, stop: there is nothing to apply to. If you already hold the card, you have work to do before December.
The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.
Verdict: 4.5 out of 10, and the reason is not about fees
The score is 4.5/10. That number looks harsh for a card that had no transaction fees, no FX markup and real self-custody, and the reason is that a score has to answer the question “would I recommend this today to a person choosing a card” — and today the answer is no, because the programme is closing. So the strong marks land on things that no longer matter, and the weak marks land on the thing that dominates everything: you cannot get the card, and the ones already issued stop working in two months.
| Criterion | Mark | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who can get it | 0 / 10 | Issuance is closed: the card and web app stop working on 20 Dec 2026, and the consumer card is replaced by partner cards |
| Cost | 8 / 10 | Card issue and delivery are free (the old price of EUR 30.23 is outdated), no transaction fees and no FX markup from Gnosis Pay, Visa’s rate; ATM 2% after the allowance |
| Top-up options | 7 / 10 | Self-custody Safe, EURe/GBPe/USDCe, USDC and EURC on Ethereum, Polygon, Gnosis Chain; unofficial: funding from another network needs a swap or a bridge |
| Reliability and complaints | 1 / 10 | The issuer Monavate (FCA) is named, but the programme is closing: support to 18 Jun 2027, disputes to 12 Jun 2028; Trustpilot 2.3; unofficial: an exploit in June 2026 |
| Everyday use | 8 / 10 | Virtual and plastic, Apple Pay and Google Pay, cash machines; unofficial: gambling categories are blocked |
Two things follow from that table. First, if you are already a holder, the cost and everyday-use marks still describe something real: the card works well right up until the day it does not, and you may as well use it for whatever remains. Second, the two marks that would decide the question for a new applicant — who can get it, and reliability — are a zero and a one. A card you cannot obtain is not a bargain at any price.
Who this suits: nobody who is choosing a card this year. It suited people who already had a Safe, wanted to spend directly from it without handing over custody, and lived in one of the listed countries. Who it does not suit: anyone starting out, anyone whose country was never on the list, and — as of today — anyone reading this hoping to sign up before December. The advice the shutdown page effectively gives to current holders is to withdraw your balance before 20 December 2026, which I will come back to.
What happened to the programme
The shape of it is a wind-down, not a collapse. Gnosis Pay stopped taking applications, and on 21 September 2026 it published a formal closure notice setting out a schedule with three dates that matter more than anything else you will read about the card’s fee history.
- 20 December 2026, 23:59 UTC — the card stops authorising payments, and the web app closes except for withdrawals.
- 18 June 2027 — general cardholder support ends.
- 12 June 2028 — support for refunds, disputes and chargebacks ends.
Around that core, a few facts explain why the closure happened rather than what it means for you. On 7 September 2026 the site was already pitching business-to-business card issuing, with two tiers — Startup (a two-year agreement) and Enterprise (a three-year agreement with a dedicated BIN), both priced by agreement and neither of them for cardholders. That is the direction the company turned: away from selling a card to individuals, towards selling the issuing platform to other companies. Two days later the consumer card’s closure notice appeared. A third-party report on 24 September 2026 says MiniPay will handle the migration and issue replacement cards on Gnosis Pay’s enterprise rails; that is not from the company’s own pages, so treat it as unconfirmed. The same report says cashback eligibility was to end on 30 September 2026 with a final distribution on 7 October. Also unconfirmed, and also of little use to you now.
What the card was, briefly. It was a Visa card issued by Monavate Limited under a Visa Europe licence, available as an instant virtual card and as a physical one, with settlement at T+1. Gnosis Pay is not the issuer: it is the trading name of Gnosis Pay Co Ltd, a UK-registered company (No. 14919639) acting as technical services provider and programme manager. UK and non-EEA cardholders were under Monavate Ltd (FCA); EEA cardholders were under UAB Monavate, supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. Monavate is an FCA-authorised electronic money institution (FRN 901097).
Who it was for was decided by residence, not citizenship: legal residents of selected European and Latin American countries, with Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus and more EEA countries among them, and a waitlist for new ones. The site now lists corridors for USD, EUR, GBP, BRL, ARS and partner apps. Identity verification ran through Sumsub in a single unified flow; the card’s public pages do not say which documents, what proof of address, or what age it required. One third-party source states 18+, a government ID or passport, and proof of address issued within the last three months, and adds that approval is not guaranteed — unofficial, and not confirmed by the card. The same source’s August 2026 reporting puts Russia on the restricted list, where card use is prohibited, and off the list of eligible application countries. Unofficial as well.
Money sat in a Safe, a self-custodial smart contract account on Gnosis Chain, and the card spent EURe, GBPe and USDCe at 1:1 — a EUR 10 purchase takes 10 EURe. There was a single consumer tier: no fee tiers, no cashback tiers, no metal card. What you top up is what the card spends, which is the pre-loaded balance model most crypto cards use.
If you already have the card: what to do, in order
The good news is specific and worth repeating, because it is the part people get wrong under stress: your money is not sitting in Gnosis Pay’s account. It sits in your own Safe, a self-custodial smart contract account on Gnosis Chain. The assets stay yours. Neither Gnosis Pay nor Monavate can take them or block transfers. If the web app disappears entirely, you can still reach the Safe through third-party Safe interfaces using the signer key you already have. That is the difference between this shutdown and the ones that have burned people, and it is why the advice below is about tidying up rather than rescuing funds.
What you should do:
- Withdraw or move your balance before 20 December 2026. Withdrawals stay open on the web app at app.gnosispay.com/withdraw, and no deadline for that is stated, but Gnosis Pay recommends acting before the 20 December cutoff. Blockchain network fees may apply.
- Export your transaction history and note the last four digits and the expiry date of the card before it stops working. You will want both when you raise anything with the issuer later.
- Expect recurring payments to fail. After the cutoff they simply fail, and they cannot be moved to another card. Move any subscriptions you care about well before December.
- Resubmit your card to a wallet if you have not already. Set up Apple Pay or Google Pay, and store the card in two places, in case you need a digital record of it after deactivation.
- If a refund lands after deactivation, it cannot be used on the card. Raise it through the channels below while they still work.
- Decide about a partner app. The move to a partner card means a new card programme, a new Safe and new terms, and possibly new identity or compliance checks. Treat it as switching products, not as a migration.
Your rights do not shrink because the programme is closing. Rights over unauthorised or incorrectly executed transactions, and card-scheme chargeback rights, are unaffected. Scheme time limits apply, so raise disputes promptly via [email protected] or the help centre, and keep your receipts. The 12 June 2028 date limits the programme’s *support* for refunds, disputes and chargebacks; your statutory rights against Monavate are not limited by it.
Where to write. The help centre is at help.gnosispay.com, general queries go to [email protected], and complaints go to [email protected], which is forwarded to Monavate, or to [email protected]. Complaints to Monavate are handled in English or Lithuanian; hours are not stated. If a complaint is not resolved, the escalation route is the Financial Ombudsman Service for the UK or the Bank of Lithuania for the EEA.
The limits you have left are worth knowing, because people only discover them at the till. Cash machines are free five times a month or up to 200 EURe/GBPe/USDCe, then 2% with a minimum of 1 EUR or GBP; the per-transaction ATM ceiling is EUR 250 and EUR 500 per day. Regular card transactions run to EUR 5,000, up to EUR 8,000 per day. Card payments carry no gas fee — gas applies only if you move funds on-chain between Safes or to another wallet. Top-up fees and minimum top-up are not stated on the help-centre fees page. Third-party reporting says there is no percentage fee on top-up from Gnosis Pay itself, but funding from another chain may require a swap or bridge with network or DEX costs; unofficial, and not confirmed by the card.
What can go wrong
Four things, in rough order of how likely they are to cost you.
A subscription you forgot about. Recurring payments fail after 20 December and cannot be transferred. You will find out at the point where something you need stops arriving — a domain renewal, a media subscription, a storage bill. This is the most common way card wind-downs actually hurt people, and it costs nothing to fix in November.
Refunds and disputes after deactivation. A refund arriving once the card is deactivated cannot be used on the card. If it does not appear in your balance, you need to claim it, and the support window for that is 18 months. Scheme time limits are much shorter than the programme’s, so push early.
Getting stuck at a till or online. Card payments and cash-machine use end on the same date. Anything you still need to pay for in the first weeks of January should be paid another way.
Support quality, historically. This is the mark I scored at one out of ten, and it is not a comment on the shutdown — it is what holders reported while the card was live. On Trustpilot the score reads 2.3 out of 5, labelled “Poor”, from 38 reviews, 21 of them in the last twelve months, with 58% one-star and 21% five-star, read on 20 October 2026 (other regional pages showed 2.5). Three themes recur. First, support that does not answer: chat, tickets and email unanswered for one to several weeks between March and July 2026. Second, missing or blocked funds — a balance that dropped after a failed payment or a failed top-up, withdrawal attempts that would not go through, transactions pending for two weeks or more between May and July 2026. Third, KYC rejections without a reason, and “country not supported” for countries that were on the list, including Italy and Mexico, across late 2025 and mid 2026, plus account deactivation and login problems in June and July 2026.
Two further points on risk. An unofficial June 2026 report says an exploit hit Gnosis Pay’s delay module and that co-founder Koppelmann said Gnosis would cover user losses; the advice on withdrawing early was reported as conflicting, and I did not check the status of any compensation. And on safeguards: the card used self-custody with your own signer key, but the card’s public pages do not say anything about freeze and unfreeze, two-factor authentication, spending controls or insurance of funds — do not assume those features existed.
The generic risks in this category are worth naming too, because they shaped what this card got right and what it left to you. Crypto transfers are typically irreversible, and a stolen private key has no recovery path. Custodial platforms have a real record of failure: Mt. Gox, Coincheck, Ronin Network. Self-custody moves that risk to you — key loss, phishing, clipboard malware that swaps a copied address. And a card can be declined for reasons that have nothing to do with your balance: merchants see the issuer’s country in the BIN and may apply extra scrutiny or refuse prepaid and foreign-issued numbers outright. A declined authorisation can also leave a hold on your money for several days.
What to take instead
None of these is a like-for-like replacement for spending from your own Safe, and I will not pretend otherwise. They are the options that exist, with what each one actually charges and who it is open to.
MetaMask Card (7.1/10). The strongest of the three on the same criteria. Mastercard, virtual card issued instantly, a metal card that can be pre-ordered in the app once the virtual one is approved, one card per user; issuer Monavate, card provider Crypto Life. 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 ineligible regions limit sign-up rather than spending. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ. Virtual is free with no annual or maintenance fee; metal is $199 a year. Fees are described as minimal per transaction, amount not stated on the pages I read, with no additional MetaMask fees and no foreign transaction fee — the Mastercard rate applies. It spends straight from the connected wallet on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, from mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. Cashback is paid in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual, and on Metal a headline 3% with the footnote limiting 3% to the first $10,000 spent and 1% after that.
KAST (6.1/10). The deepest tier structure, and the clearest prices. Virtual and physical, up to ten cards per user, Visa Platinum on Standard, Visa Infinite metal on Premium, Visa Infinite gold plated on Private. Annual membership is 0 USD for Standard, 1,000 USD for Premium and 10,000 USD for Private, billed annually upfront with no monthly option; the Standard physical card has no card fee but 40 USD delivery, while Premium and Private physical cards are included. Fees on stablecoin top-up, card spend in USD, Apple and Google Pay are all 0%; non-USD foreign exchange runs 0.5%–1.75% depending on your residence country, transaction country and programme; non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD, a declined transaction for insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD. Cashback is 1.5% to 2,000 USD a month on Standard, 2% to 10,000 USD on Premium, 3% to 40,000 USD on Private. Eligibility turns on residence shown at KYC — you can create an account in an unsupported country but KYC stays locked — and citizenship and ID matter independently: holding only an ID from a restricted region can make you ineligible even while living in a supported country.
TokenPocket (5.8/10). The one to treat most carefully. Visa debit for a list of European countries and territories (Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland among them), Mastercard debit for Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK among others; the Americas were described as planned. It runs on Arbitrum, the cards are virtual, and balances are held in EUR24 and USD24. The significant line: a 1% fee is charged when depositing cryptocurrency into the card, said to be refunded later through rewards or reduced transaction fees. Extra fees can also come from inter-institution settlement.
| MetaMask Card | KAST | TokenPocket | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 7.1 / 10 | 6.1 / 10 | 5.8 / 10 |
| Network | Mastercard | Visa | Visa or Mastercard by region |
| Card formats | Virtual, metal ($199/yr) | Virtual and physical, up to 10 cards | Virtual |
| Stated fees | Minimal per transaction, not stated | Stablecoin top-up 0%, USD spend 0%, non-USD FX 0.5%–1.75% | 1% on crypto deposit |
| Cashback | 1% virtual; 3% metal up to $10,000 | 1.5% / 2% / 3% by tier, monthly caps | None stated |
On balance: if you want to spend from a wallet you hold yourself, MetaMask Card is the one of these that keeps that property and does not charge you for the privilege. If you want predictable, published numbers and do not mind paying for a tier, KAST publishes its fees more openly than anything else in this category. If you move between networks a lot, read the fee lines on all three before committing, because funding from the wrong chain is where the cost hides.
Who I would recommend it to
Nobody, this year, for a new card. That is the whole recommendation and I would rather say it plainly than pad it out.
To existing holders I would say: this is not a lost-funds situation. Your assets are in your own Safe, you can reach them without Gnosis Pay’s permission, and the useful work is calendaring — recurring payments moved off the card, balance withdrawn or relocated, transaction history exported, card stored in a wallet, refunds chased promptly while the channels work. Do those before 20 December 2026 and the shutdown is an inconvenience rather than a loss.
And to anyone who was reading about this card as a template rather than a product — the honest lesson is worth keeping. A self-custody card with no FX markup and no transaction fees is a genuinely good design, and it still depended on a single issuer, a single brand and a company’s commercial judgement about whether retail cardholders were worth serving. The name on the tin is rarely the name on the licence, and the licence holder is the one who decides whether your card keeps working. Check who the issuer is, check whether the programme is closing or growing, and keep your own keys. Everything else is detail.
Frequently asked questions
Is Gnosis Pay a bank?
No. Gnosis Pay is the trading name of Gnosis Pay Co Ltd, a UK-registered company (No. 14919639) that acts as technical services provider and programme manager for the card programme. The card itself was issued by Monavate Limited under a Visa Europe licence; Monavate is an FCA-authorised electronic money institution (FRN 901097), and EEA cardholders were under UAB Monavate, supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. An electronic money institution can issue e-money and payment cards but cannot lend.
Can I still apply for the Gnosis Pay card?
No. New issuance is closed. Gnosis Pay published a formal closure notice on 21 September 2026 ending the consumer card and web app. The card stops authorising payments and the web app closes except for withdrawals at 23:59 UTC on 20 December 2026, general cardholder support ends on 18 June 2027, and support for refunds, disputes and chargebacks ends on 12 June 2028. Any site still offering a sign-up is not the card’s own programme.
What happens to the money in my Gnosis Pay account?
It is yours, and this is the important part. Your balance is held in a Safe, a self-custodial smart contract account on Gnosis Chain, so the assets remain the user’s and neither Gnosis Pay nor Monavate can take them or block transfers. Withdrawals stay open on the web app at app.gnosispay.com/withdraw with no stated deadline, and you can also reach the Safe through third-party Safe interfaces with your existing signer key. Network fees may apply to on-chain withdrawals.
Is Gnosis Pay card safe for my money?
The custody answer was genuinely good: self-custody with your own signer key meant the company could not move your funds. Two cautions. Gnosis Pay’s own pages do not state whether freeze and unfreeze, two-factor authentication, spending controls or insurance of funds were provided, so do not assume those safeguards existed. Separately, an unofficial report from June 2026 describes an exploit hitting Gnosis Pay’s delay module, with co-founder Koppelmann saying Gnosis would cover user losses; I did not check the status of compensation.
What are the Gnosis Pay card fees?
The card was free to order and shipping was free; an older help-centre figure of EUR 30.23 for card purchase is outdated. Gnosis Pay charged no transaction fees and no added foreign-exchange fee, and converted fiat and stablecoin at 1:1 — Visa’s exchange rate applies automatically, and the page advised choosing the local currency at terminals. Cash machines were free five times a month or up to 200 EURe/GBPe/USDCe, then 2% with a minimum of 1 EUR or GBP. Top-up fees and minimums are not stated.
Can I withdraw money from Gnosis Pay after 20 December 2026?
Official information says withdrawals remain available on the web app after that date, with no deadline stated, and recommends withdrawing before 20 December 2026 anyway. Unofficial reporting says the app stays in limited capacity for withdrawals only, and that funds in Safe accounts have no withdrawal deadline; the official help page only says the web app is deprecated “by end of 2026” and migration paths stay open “for as long as possible”. Either way, act before December.
What happens to my recurring payments and refunds?
Recurring payments fail once the card stops authorising on 20 December 2026, and they cannot be moved to another card, so move subscriptions to another payment method beforehand. Refunds that arrive after deactivation cannot be used on the card. Your rights over unauthorised or incorrectly executed transactions and card-scheme chargeback rights are unaffected, scheme time limits apply, and your statutory rights against Monavate are not cut off by the 12 June 2028 support end date.
Who do I contact about Gnosis Pay now, and for how long?
Use the help centre at help.gnosispay.com and [email protected] for general queries, and [email protected] — forwarded to Monavate — or [email protected] for complaints, handled in English or Lithuanian; hours are not stated. General cardholder support ends 23:59 UTC on 18 June 2027 and refund, dispute and chargeback support ends 23:59 UTC on 12 June 2028. Unresolved complaints escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service in the UK or the Bank of Lithuania in the EEA.
Is Gnosis Pay card available in my country?
It never was, in most places, and the rule was residence rather than citizenship: legal residents of selected European and Latin American countries, with Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus and more EEA countries listed. All of that is now academic for new applicants. If you hold a card and travel, note that usage is prohibited in certain countries and that rental-car agencies and automated fuel dispensers are restricted; one unofficial source adds that gambling categories are blocked.
Is Gnosis Pay card worth it — what should I use instead?
For an existing holder it was worth using to the end date, and it was never at risk of taking your funds, so there is nothing to rescue. For a new applicant, the alternatives worth comparing are MetaMask Card (7.1/10), which spends from your own wallet on Mastercard with no FX fee and 1% cashback on the free virtual card; KAST (6.1/10), with published fees and membership tiers from 0 to 10,000 USD a year; and TokenPocket (5.8/10), which charges 1% on crypto deposits. Judge each on the fee lines, not the headline.
Wallet card verdicts – cryptocardverdict
Content created by the «cryptocardverdict» team