A self-custody Visa that ran out of road before most readers had heard of it

Updated October 2026

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I went through Gnosis Pay’s help center, the formal closure notice and the public record around the programme, and the headline is short: the consumer card is no longer being issued, the web application stops working on 20 December 2026, and current holders have a window to move their money out before the lights go off. The card itself was an interesting product, a self-custody Visa on Gnosis Chain that converted stablecoins to fiat at the moment of payment, but the company’s own direction has shifted to a business-to-business platform and a partner-card migration. So this is less a review of a card you can go and get and more a guide to what the closure means, what to do if you already have one, and which alternative crypto cards make sense in 2026.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026

Verdict

I score Gnosis Pay 4.5 out of 10, and the single biggest reason that the score is not lower is the one thing the card genuinely did well: it charged almost nothing. The full breakdown is below. The single biggest reason the score is not higher is the audience note that runs through every other row: the consumer card is closed. No matter how clean the fee table looked, the product is no longer obtainable, and any reader in 2026 who is not already a cardholder is reading about a wound-down programme.

The card suited a narrow user: someone already living in the EEA or one of the listed Latin American countries, comfortable with self-custody and Gnosis Chain, who wanted a Visa that drew straight from their own wallet and accepted EURe, GBPe or USDCe at a 1:1 spend rate. For that reader the product was elegant. The card did not suit almost everyone else: anyone outside the published country list, anyone who needed cashback, anyone who wanted a metal tier, and critically anyone who is not already a cardholder, because there is no path to a new card on the old programme.

If you already hold a Gnosis Pay card, the rest of this page is for you: there is a real sequence of actions to take before 20 December 2026, and a separate one to take before 12 June 2028. If you do not, the verdict is that this is a card to skip as a new purchase and read about as a case study in what a crypto card looks like when the programme runs out before its users do.

What happened to the programme

Gnosis Pay was a payment programme wrapped around a Visa debit card. The card itself was a Visa, issued by Monavate Limited under a Visa Europe licence, and it came as both a virtual card (issued instantly) and a physical card. Settlement was on a T+1 basis. Gnosis Pay was the technical services provider and programme manager, not the issuer; UK and non-EEA cardholders sat under Monavate Ltd (FCA), and EEA cardholders sat under UAB Monavate, an electronic money institution authorised by the Bank of Lithuania. The card spent in three currencies at a 1:1 rate, EURe, GBPe or USDCe, with no conversion fee added by Gnosis Pay and the standard Visa exchange rate used automatically. The card guidance from the help center was to choose the local currency at the terminal, which lets Visa handle the conversion rather than the merchant’s own markup.

Before the closure, the application side was residence-based. The help center lists selected European and Latin American countries, including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus and other EEA members, with a waitlist for new countries. The card worked through a Sumsub-based unified KYC flow. Unofficial third-party reporting (cryptocardhub, August 2026) describes the practical KYC requirement as age 18 or over, a government ID or passport, and a proof of address issued within the last three months, with Sumsub doing the check and no guarantee of approval. Neither the official site nor the help center states the exact document set, processing time, or what causes a rejection. The on-ramp listed USD, EUR, GBP, BRL and ARS corridors and a set of partner apps, while the on-chain funding side accepted USDC and EURC on Ethereum, Polygon and Gnosis Chain.

The pricing on the consumer side was, by crypto-card standards, very simple. The current help-center page lists card issue and physical delivery as free; an older entry on the same page still cites a EUR 30.23 purchase fee and is described as possibly outdated, which is the version to ignore. There were no transaction fees from Gnosis Pay, no added FX fee, and stablecoin and fiat converted 1:1 at the moment of payment. The card worked with Apple Pay and Google Pay, supported the virtual-and-physical pair, and was a working ATM card, though the help center notes that rental-car agencies and automated fuel dispensers were restricted, and that card use is prohibited in certain countries. Unofficial sources add that gambling merchants were blocked as a category. Russia, in particular, appears on the restricted list and is not an eligible application country per cryptocardhub.

There was no published rewards or cashback on the current card product, and no tier system on the consumer side. A help-center line refers users to the help center or to [email protected] for current cashback terms, and notes that partner programmes may have different rewards. Unofficial news reporting (24 September 2026) said that GNO token cashback eligibility ended on 30 September 2026, with a final distribution on 7 October 2026. The B2B side is a separate product: a card-issuing platform pitched on 7 September 2026 with two tiers, a Startup tier on a two-year agreement and an Enterprise tier on a three-year agreement with a dedicated BIN, neither of which is the consumer card and neither of which is on offer to ordinary cardholders.

The closure itself was set out in a formal notice dated 21 September 2026. The card stops authorising and the web app at app.gnosispay.com closes except for withdrawals at 23:59 UTC on 20 December 2026. General cardholder support ends at 23:59 UTC on 18 June 2027. Refund, dispute and chargeback support ends at 23:59 UTC on 12 June 2028. Statutory rights against Monavate are not limited by that date. The same notice referred to partner programmes as a migration path, and unofficial news reporting (24 September 2026) named MiniPay as the partner handling migration and issuing replacement cards on Gnosis Pay enterprise rails. Moving to a partner app is a new programme, not a continuation: it means a new card, a new Safe, and a new set of terms, which may include a fresh identity or compliance check.

The wider context is that the company is moving up the stack. The same September notice that closed the consumer card also formalised the B2B offering, and the published direction is to be a programme manager and technical services provider for partner brands rather than a consumer card issuer in its own right. That is the part that matters to a new applicant: the question is not whether Gnosis Pay is a good product, because the consumer product is not available, but whether the company is in a position to support the card you already have, and the answer is that support runs on a published schedule that ends in mid-2028.

If you already have the card

If you are one of the current holders, the next year is shaped by three dates: 20 December 2026, 18 June 2027, and 12 June 2028. Each one closes a different door, and the actions stack in order.

Before 20 December 2026 is when to take the most action. After that cutoff the web app is in withdrawal-only mode, recurring payments will fail and cannot be moved to another card on the old programme, authorised-but-unsettled transactions will still complete, and any refund that arrives after deactivation cannot be used on the card. The recommended steps, in the order the help center suggests them, are: first, export the transaction history and note the last four digits and expiry of the card before 20 December; second, move any direct debit or subscription over to another card on a different programme; third, confirm independent access to the Safe, the self-custody smart account that holds the on-chain funds behind the card, and either withdraw to a wallet you control outside Gnosis Pay or migrate to a partner app if you intend to keep using a card on Gnosis rails.

Funding the card is done from a Safe account, the user-controlled smart contract wallet that the card sits behind. The help center names EURe, GBPe and USDCe as the card’s three settlement currencies and lists USDC and EURC on Ethereum, Polygon and Gnosis Chain as the supported token-route in. Unofficial sources add that from any other chain, a swap or bridge is required and that bridging costs are paid on-chain, not by Gnosis Pay, so the practical top-up story is: get the right token on the right network, then send it to the Safe. Gas is only charged on the on-chain leg; Gnosis Pay charges no gas for the card transaction itself. The minimum top-up and any top-up percentage fee from Gnosis Pay are not stated.

Once the card is loaded, the everyday spend mechanics are simple. The free virtual card arrives on KYC approval, the physical card is dispatched for free, and unofficial reporting says physical cards usually arrive within 2 to 4 weeks. The ATM is free up to five withdrawals a month or 200 EURe / GBPe / USDCe combined, after which a 2% fee kicks in with a minimum of 1 EUR or 1 GBP; the per-transaction ATM ceiling is EUR 250 and the daily ATM ceiling is EUR 500. The regular spend limit is EUR 5,000 per transaction and up to EUR 8,000 per day. Apple Pay and Google Pay both work, the card is Visa, and the standard 3-D Secure flow kicks in on online checkouts.

Withdrawing after 20 December 2026 is the second live question. The web app at app.gnosispay.com/withdraw is the official route; withdrawals remain open on the web app with no deadline stated, and blockchain network fees may apply. The help center recommends withdrawing before 20 December 2026 rather than after. The Safe itself is a self-custodial smart contract account on Gnosis Chain: assets remain the user’s, neither Gnosis Pay nor Monavate can take them or block transfers, and the same Safe can be reached through third-party Safe interfaces using the existing signer key. Unofficial reporting (Crypto Briefing, September 2026, with Odaily and The Defiant agreeing) describes the post-20-December web app as limited in capacity and for withdrawals only, and notes that funds in the Safe itself do not have a withdrawal deadline. The official help-center page on the shutdown says only that the web app is deprecated “by end of 2026” and that migration paths stay open “for as long as possible”.

Support and disputes follow the published schedule. For cardholder questions, the channels are the help center at help.gnosispay.com and the email [email protected]. For complaints, [email protected] forwards to Monavate, and the alternative direct route is [email protected]. Complaints to Monavate are accepted in English or Lithuanian, hours are not stated, and the closure notice confirms escalation to the UK Financial Ombudsman Service or the Bank of Lithuania. General cardholder support ends at 23:59 UTC on 18 June 2027; refund, dispute and chargeback support ends at 23:59 UTC on 12 June 2028. The card-scheme chargeback rights and the statutory rights against Monavate for unauthorised or incorrectly executed transactions are not affected by the closure, but the practical effect is the same: if a problem surfaces in mid-2027, the email inbox is the only door open, and after 12 June 2028 only the regulator remains. Keep receipts, and raise disputes promptly because the scheme time limits apply.

A handful of edge cases is worth flagging because they are the things a cardholder will only think of once. If a refund is processed after 20 December 2026, it cannot be used on the card, which is one of the reasons the help center recommends withdrawing the balance before the cutoff. If a transaction was authorised before the cutoff but has not yet settled, it will still complete, so a cardholder who has set up a high-value purchase near the date should not assume the funds are safe in the card. If the cardholder decides to migrate to a partner app, the new card programme comes with a new Safe and a new set of terms, and may require a fresh identity or compliance check, so it is not a same-day swap.

What can go wrong

I would split the risks into three layers: the risks that are part of the closure itself, the risks that were already on the card before the closure, and the company-level risks that are independent of either.

The closure layer is, on the whole, the cleanest of the three. The notice period is published, the dates are specific, and the issuer is named, which means there is a real institution on the other end of the email address. That matters because the card-scheme chargeback rights are independent of the closure, and the rights against Monavate as the authorised e-money institution are not limited by the 12 June 2028 cutoff. The recurring-payments point is the part that hurts in practice: a direct debit on a Gnosis Pay card will fail after 20 December 2026 and cannot be ported to another card on this programme, so the migration step is not optional for anyone using the card for subscriptions. The deeper worry is that “for as long as possible” is a soft phrase for the migration path, and a cardholder who relies on it without taking the withdraw-before-cutoff option is relying on a system whose published support window keeps shrinking.

The card-level risks are the ones the help center is mostly silent on and that the user report record fills in instead. Trustpilot shows a 2.3 out of 5 score on the profile I read on 20 October 2026, across 38 reviews, 21 of them in the previous twelve months, with 58% one-star and 21% five-star. A separate regional page showed 2.5. The themes that recur in user reports are unresponsive support, with chat, ticket and email threads going unanswered for between one and several weeks in the March to July 2026 window; missing or blocked funds, with balances dropping after failed payments or top-ups, withdrawal attempts failing and transactions pending for two or more weeks in May to July 2026; and KYC rejections without reasons, including “country not supported” responses for countries that the help center lists as eligible, such as Italy and Mexico, across April to August 2025 and May 2026. There are also account deactivation and login problems in June and July 2026. None of these user reports is itself an official finding, but the pattern is consistent enough that I would not treat the closure notice as a clean exit on its own: a cardholder who has a pending withdrawal or a stuck top-up should raise it before 18 June 2027, not after.

The company layer is the harder one to weigh. The card was positioned around self-custody, with the Safe as the user’s own smart account and the user’s signer key as the only way to move assets out, which means the underlying crypto is not exposed to Gnosis Pay’s solvency. That is the right design, and it is the reason the help center is comfortable saying the funds stay with the user. The Gnosis Pay entity behind the consumer programme is Gnosis Pay Co Ltd, a UK-registered company with company number 14919639, and it sits between the cardholder and Monavate. The June 2026 exploit of the Gnosis Pay delay module is the part that is harder to read, partly because the most detailed reporting is unofficial (The Block, LCX and Cointelegraph, 2026) and partly because the early advice to users was reported as conflicting. Co-founder Martin Koppelmann is reported to have said Gnosis would cover user losses, and the status of compensation is something I did not verify. If a cardholder’s situation is affected, the practical route is [email protected] and [email protected], escalated to Monavate, the Financial Ombudsman Service for UK customers or the Bank of Lithuania for EEA customers.

Two gaps in the published information are worth flagging, because they are the things a careful reader will look for and not find. The first is a clear statement on what insurance or safeguarding applies to the fiat balance loaded onto the card. EMIs are required to safeguard customer funds, but those funds are not deposit-guaranteed in the way a bank account is, and the help center does not state what safeguarding Monavate applies here. The second is the freeze, unfreeze, two-factor authentication and spending-control story for the card itself. Self-custody covers the on-chain side, but the card-side controls are not stated in the help center. I would not assume the card has the same in-app controls as a fintech debit card until the official page says so.

What to take instead

A new applicant cannot take a Gnosis Pay card in 2026, so the question is what to take instead, and the answer depends on what the reader actually wanted from Gnosis Pay. The three alternatives I have compared are TokenPocket, MetaMask Card and KAST, and the trade-off between them is the trade-off between breadth of country coverage, rewards, and on-chain self-custody. The scores below are from the same rubric, not from Gnosis Pay’s rubric.

MetaMask Card is the closest to the spirit of Gnosis Pay for a new applicant, and the reason is the funding model. It spends directly from the connected wallet rather than from a pre-loaded balance, the user keeps self-custody, and the supported networks include Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT among the named tokens. The trade-off is that US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ, and the eligibility list is the 45 countries the project publishes, with a waitlist for the rest. The Metal tier is the only paid one and the cashback rates are the strongest of the three, with a footnote that limits the headline 3% on Metal to the first USD 10,000 spent and drops to 1% beyond that. The $FLY bonus is restaurant-only.

KAST is the option for a reader who wants cashback and a tiered programme, and is willing to pay an annual membership for it. The residency rule is residence-based and is checked at KYC; KAST does not publish its country list, refers to a Restricted Locations list without naming the countries, and is unusually explicit that having an ID from a restricted region is enough to fail KYC even if the applicant lives in a supported country. The card is a Visa with a Standard, Premium and Private tier, and the cashback rates are the highest of the three: 1.5% on Standard up to USD 2,000 a month, 2% on Premium up to USD 10,000, 3% on Private up to USD 40,000, with KAST Points on top for Premium and Private. The on-chain funding is a stablecoin balance in USDT, USDC, PYUSD or RLUSD on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum or TRON, with non-USD FX between 0.5% and 1.75% depending on country and programme. The membership cost is the catch: Premium is USD 1,000 a year and Private is USD 10,000 a year, billed annually upfront.

TokenPocket is the option for a reader who already lives inside the TokenPocket wallet and wants a card that draws on it. The published country list is split by network, with a Visa debit in some European countries and territories and a Mastercard debit in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the UK; the Americas are flagged as planned for Q2 2025. Fiat24 cards are virtual only and balances are held in EUR24 and USD24, the card runs on Arbitrum, and the cost story is unusually bare: the NFT creation fee is partly covered and “Apart from these, TP Card does not charge any additional fees”, but the 1% crypto deposit fee is real and is to be refunded later through rewards or reduced transaction fees. There is no cashback stated.

The other live question is whether to wait for a partner programme. The unofficial reporting names MiniPay as the partner handling migration and issuing replacement cards on Gnosis Pay enterprise rails, which would mean a card still on Gnosis rails, just issued and supported by a different brand. I would treat that as a different product with a new Safe, a new card and a new set of terms, and I would wait until the partner card is publicly available with its own help center before making a decision based on it.

Who I would recommend this to

I would not recommend Gnosis Pay to a new applicant. The product is closed, the consumer card is being wound down, and the migration path is to a partner programme that is itself a new product with new terms. A reader who arrives at this page in 2026 wanting a crypto card should be looking at MetaMask Card if self-custody is the priority, KAST if a tiered cashback programme with a membership fee is acceptable, or TokenPocket if the wallet is already the centre of the workflow.

I would recommend a different framing for a current holder, which is: act on the published schedule, in the order the help center suggests, and don’t assume that “for as long as possible” is a strategy. The first action is to export the transaction history and note the card details before 20 December 2026. The second is to move any direct debit or subscription over to another card on a different programme, because recurring payments on Gnosis Pay will fail after the cutoff and cannot be moved on the old rails. The third is to confirm independent access to the Safe using the existing signer key, and either withdraw to a wallet the holder controls outside Gnosis Pay or migrate to a partner app if continuing on a card is the goal. The fourth is to raise any pending dispute, stuck top-up or unresolved withdrawal before 18 June 2027, because general support ends on that date and dispute support ends on 12 June 2028. The fifth, if a holder was affected by the June 2026 delay-module exploit, is to chase the compensation question through the official channels while the support window is open.

The reason I would give this advice rather than a softer version is that the closure is on a published schedule and the company is in the unusual position of telling its users, in plain dates, when each door closes. The cleanest way out is to use the schedule rather than to test it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Gnosis Pay card?

The Gnosis Pay card was a Visa debit card that drew from a self-custody Safe on Gnosis Chain, settled in EURe, GBPe or USDCe at a 1:1 rate, and was issued by Monavate Limited under a Visa Europe licence. It came as a virtual card and a physical card, and worked with Apple Pay and Google Pay. The consumer programme is closed.

How did the Gnosis Pay card work?

You held a self-custody Safe and topped it up with EURe, GBPe or USDCe, or with USDC or EURC on Ethereum, Polygon or Gnosis Chain. When you paid, the card spent the balance at a 1:1 rate against EURe, GBPe or USDCe, with no transaction fee from Gnosis Pay and no added FX fee, using the standard Visa exchange rate. The card was a Visa, and 3-D Secure applied to online checkouts.

Is Gnosis Pay a bank?

No. Gnosis Pay was the trading name of Gnosis Pay Co Ltd, a UK-registered company, and acted as a technical services provider and programme manager, not as the issuer. The card itself was issued by Monavate Limited, a UK FCA-authorised electronic money institution, with EEA cardholders sitting under UAB Monavate, authorised by the Bank of Lithuania.

Who owns Gnosis Pay?

Gnosis Pay is the trading name of Gnosis Pay Co Ltd, a UK-registered company with company number 14919639. The card was issued by Monavate Limited under a Visa Europe licence; Monavate is the FCA-authorised electronic money institution (FRN 901097) on the card.

Is the Gnosis Pay card available in my country?

Not for new applicants. The consumer card is closed. Before the closure, the help center listed selected European and Latin American countries, including EEA members, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia and Cyprus, with a waitlist for new countries. Russia was on the restricted list and was not an eligible application country per unofficial sources.

Does the Gnosis Pay card require KYC?

Yes. The flow was a unified Sumsub-based KYC run once, covering identity and address. The official site does not state the exact document set, processing time or the rejection criteria. Unofficial third-party sources describe the practical requirement as age 18 or over, a government ID or passport, and a proof of address issued within the last three months, with approval not guaranteed. Moving to a partner card may require a new identity or compliance check.

How do I top up the Gnosis Pay card?

You fund the Safe from a wallet that holds EURe, GBPe or USDCe, or USDC or EURC on Ethereum, Polygon or Gnosis Chain. From any other chain you need a swap or bridge, and gas is paid on-chain. There was no top-up percentage fee from Gnosis Pay and no stated minimum top-up. On-chain transfers, including from the Safe to another wallet, pay gas.

How do I withdraw money from Gnosis Pay?

You use the web app at app.gnosispay.com/withdraw. Withdrawals remain open after 20 December 2026 with no deadline stated, and blockchain network fees may apply; the help center recommends withdrawing before the cutoff. The Safe is a self-custodial smart contract account on Gnosis Chain, so the assets stay with the user and can be reached through third-party Safe interfaces using the existing signer key.

Is the Gnosis Pay card free?

Card issue and physical delivery were free on the current help-center page, replacing an older EUR 30.23 entry described as possibly outdated. There were no transaction fees from Gnosis Pay, no FX markup from the issuer, and the card was used with Apple Pay and Google Pay. ATM was free up to five withdrawals a month or 200 EURe / GBPe / USDCe combined, after which a 2% fee applied, with a EUR 250 per-transaction and EUR 500 per-day ATM ceiling.

Is the Gnosis Pay card safe?

The on-chain side is self-custody, with the user holding the signer key to a Safe on Gnosis Chain, and the assets do not pass through Gnosis Pay. The card side is issued by Monavate, an FCA-authorised e-money institution, which means the card benefits from e-money safeguarding. The published information does not state the freeze, unfreeze, two-factor or spending-control story for the card, and the user report record on Trustpilot (2.3 / 5 across 38 reviews on 20 October 2026) is poor, with the recurring themes of unresponsive support, missing or blocked funds, and KYC rejections without reasons. The June 2026 exploit of the delay module was reported in unofficial outlets, and the co-founder was reported to have said Gnosis would cover user losses; the compensation status was not verified.

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