Topic: BitPay Visa - Why I Love It (Read 2915 times)

Got my card, 2 days later got letter saying EU cards are invalid, today got refund
for BTC I paid to get card, but only half because I have to pay txn fee...I guess
I'm lucky I didn't have to pay more fee than I paid for card, and go into red, lol

Thanks for the idea but it sounds far too much like hard work and I've heard enough horror stories about Neteller to not want to go there.

I assume companies like Xapo will be working hard to find other options as that's one of their main selling points. I'll wait for them to sort something out. There are too many fly by night operations in this area.

There may be a workaround for you.

You could use an e-wallet like Neteller or Skrill that has a working prepaid MasterCard
attached to your e-wallet account. Unfortunately, funds that you deposit with Bitcoin into
your Neteller account (Neteller has a Bitcoin deposit option) can´t be used for ATM withdrawals and have to be used to pay at a merchant
or for a P2P payment to another user.

However, you could sell your Bitcoin (or the altcoin of your choice) to a reputable user, who sends
you funds on Neteller. Afterwards you can easily withdraw the funds using the Net+ Mastercard without any
restrictions.

I'm not sure how Wavecrest were operating, but they certainly ain't no more. There must have been some type of Gibraltar specific kludge that they got up to.

I'm not confident there'll be another GBP card. Perhaps somewhere like the Isle of Man might but they'll be more dependent on UK banking. The Isle of Man is similarly not quite in the UK like Gibraltar.

I totally get this reason. Does this work somehow like Gibraltar(where Wave Crest Holdings Ltd. is registered) is a part of UK but not really? So it can issue cards and give you more freedom with it than your local banks? And BitPay makes it much easier to get card from them, right?

I'm in the UK, a place where banks really do not like crypto, if I'd done the same amount of sells on Localbitcoins that I did to Bitpay to fund a card they'd probably have shut my account down because they thought I was doing it as a business.

Avoiding banks was my main reason for using one.

How does bitpay (or similar) cards make your life better?
Without it:
1) Send coins from YOUR local wallet to exchange
2) Exchange
3) Send USD to your usual card issued by some more or less trustworthy bank
You probably have to be verified on exchange now but you have to go through verification to get card too
There are multiple exchange option, you can try and find best for you
Miners, exchanges and bank profit from you

With card:
1) Send coins (probably much less options for altcoins here) to bitpay-like-service
2) They are automatically exchanged (I hope the process is at least faster than manual exchange ) and you are ready to use them as USD
Seems like better option but:
-miners, exchanges (bitpay has to get USD to pay salaries, taxes and pay banks for their services, right?), banks AND bitpay profit from you
-you have to store your coins at bitpay's wallet. It is more dangerous because hackers will more likely target some huge bitpay's vault than your personal wallet on your PC. Also you don't know how many bitpay employees have access to your money.
-there are many big banks where you can get debit card but how many are willing to work with cryptocurrency services like bitpay? I think these are smaller and less stable banks. So problems with TXs, sudden denial of service or hard times finding your ATM.

So to me it seems like there so many risks and losses when dealing with bitpay-like services it is not worth it. Maybe I'm too careful here? Or trying to save mere cents? I'm not really rich XD Please tell me why do you use or want to use these cards?

great visa just shut down the Europe bitpay visa card

I'm glad you've left this review - thank you!

How long did it take for you to receive your card?

Here's a great video from Ben at the BTC Sessions on how to use a BitPay card.


Wirex has better functionality, you can exchange your cryptocurrency for multiple fiat currencies. Wirex is more versatile. But Wirex isn't available in all countries.

Thanks for the feedback. I was going to get a card, but some comments are making me think twice already. They still do have some good reviews, but I'd rather know the worst case scenario.

Debit card account funding is temporarily offline



why that???

I would not order a card from this company. They use over two weeks to reply to emails and the reply was a standard one that didn't help me. I tried to verify my documents at least 5 times already but they always fail even though all requirements are checked.

How does this service compare to Wirex?

I've been using them for a while now, and every day there just seems to be a new bug. The interface is good but every time i try to submit a transaction it seem to end in an error message, and is increasingly so. Looking for an alternative.

Do they have any sort of account for people who want to stay anonymous and is fine with lower limits?

Also you've mentioned about fees and maximums, what about the minimum transaction size?

I really can't answer that... probably best to field it to their support team.


I like how you skip over the post that explains things and then make false assumptions because you didn't read it, .

I don't think they are doing it intentionally for American people. There might be different reasons such as project funding limitation where they can fund the company to run within the USA only. Going outside the self country means lots of rules and regulations to be faced plus there is extra cost involved in it. So if they are not having the enough funding then they might be simply ignoring it.

Bitpay is good service and you can always have it to use online over thousand of shops. Plus there are alternatives too.

This is what the founders of blockstream have to say about this service offered by Visa for the cryptocurrency community:

"BitPay is fraudulently passing off btc1 as Bitcoin software to which people are required to upgrade. This is highly unethical and a violation of the bitcoin.org hard fork policy. Therefore, this pull request removes from bitcoin.org any references to BitPay and their software/services Copay and Bitcore."

These crypto cards all right in the countries like USA where there are many places implanted with bitcoin ATM but not in the rest of the world. Plus there is no way you can spend the bitcoins almost instantly as you will have to wait until the transaction is confirmed over the blockchain. How are you dealing with that problem. I mean my Starbucks coffee will get cold until my payment is confirmed really!

However it has its own pros and cons so I don't think blaming it straight away is good thing. I hope there will be more development opportunities sooner as the bitcoin price is increasing Day by day and we have lots of money to spend.  :-)

The card looks loaded with pretty cool features but is it accepted in the asian countries? What if I travel abroad and use in the Asia will it be accepted in the ATM terminal present there or it is just to be used over the internet virtually? I have seen similar case with tenx and crypto pay but not sure on how these cards work from the blockchain. What if I’m supposed to get real cash ? Will it dispense met that too?


If you own the card then please share the pictures of it, I’m interest to see it. Please respond to my post as I want answer for them. Thanks. PM me.

Not really sure on this one... I only had one support request and it was answered in a few days. Maybe try again. Not sure what you mean by a "clear answer" though...?


Their rate is on par with any other (and in a lot of cases seems higher). You can see the rates here: https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-exchange-rates

And no 0.5%+ fee like others would charge.


It doesn't convert on the fly -- you have to transfer funds to it prior to the purchase (which is credited as USD). That said, I know people that have even done their transfers while in a store and were able to use the cards. I think it's one confirmation, so YMMV on that. Once someone I know had a 1.5h delay but that was because of a slow block.

What about BTC exchange rate? I see lots of these card companies offer low or almost no fees but when you try to sell your BTC to transfer money to your card, the exchange rate is $150 lower compared to the market rate. Wirex is absolutely the worst there, over $200 under market BTC price. Dont use Wirex ever.