SharPay Card Review: What It Costs and Who It Actually Works For

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

If you have been turned away by ordinary banks — because of where you live, what documents you hold, or how thin your address history is — the SharPay card is built as an alternative. It is a Mastercard debit card that spends the balance sitting in a SharPay account, which you can fund with euros or with crypto. It works with Apple Pay and Google Pay, it works at ATMs, and the plastic is issued by a licensed e-money institution in Lithuania rather than by a name you have never seen before.

I scored it 5.9 out of 10, and that number hides an uneven card. The everyday-use side is genuinely strong. The cost side is the problem: a 3 EUR monthly card fee sits on top of a 2.99% currency mark-up, and loading the card from another card costs 2.00 EUR plus 1.99%. If you spend in euros, hold a euro balance, and top up by bank transfer, this card works well. If you live outside the eurozone and load it repeatedly from another card, you are paying three separate charges on the same money before you buy anything.

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

The verdict: 5.9 out of 10, and who it is for

SharPay suits non-EU residents who want a Mastercard with Apple Pay and who can fund an account with euros or stablecoins. It does not suit EU residents: the card’s own pages say crypto services are “not to EU residents”, which is a striking limitation from a European operation and one to read as a hard boundary rather than a preference. Nor does it suit residents of “restricted or prohibited” countries. The published list of prohibited countries includes Russia and Belarus, along with Crimea, DNR, LNR, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Iran, Cuba and Syria, among others. The rule is by residence, not citizenship — so the country you live in does most of the deciding, and your passport’s country of issue mostly has to be a document the verification system can read.

One thing the card does not publish is how many countries it serves. Some pages give a user count — the homepage claims “15k +” — but no country figure. That matters only if you are trying to predict whether your own address will be accepted before you upload a passport.

Will they give you the card

Yes, if you are a non-EU resident with a foreign passport and documentation that survives inspection. No, if you are an EU resident or a resident of the prohibited list. Three specific rules decide most applications, and it is worth knowing them before you start rather than after a rejection.

The first is residence. The card states plainly: “You musn’t be a resident of restricted or prohibited country”. The prohibited list comes from a SPEKA Payments Corp document and names Russia and Belarus, plus Crimea, DNR, LNR, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Iran, Cuba, Syria and others.

The second is the EU exclusion. Crypto services are described as “not to EU residents”. If you live in Frankfurt, Paris or Warsaw, the crypto side is closed to you. The pages do not spell out whether a fiat-only payment account survives separately, so treat the whole product as out of reach in the EU until you have read the current wording yourself.

The third is identification. Non-EU citizens must verify with a foreign passport; EU citizens with a passport or an ID card. No separate citizenship rule is stated. In practice the residence address does the deciding, and the passport’s country of issue matters mainly because the verification system has to be able to read it.

One gap: no age requirement is published. Cards of this type are generally available to adults at 18 or over, and some issuers set higher limits, but SharPay’s own pages do not state a minimum age. If you are under 18, ask before you upload anything.

How to get it

The path is register, verify, order — and the part that catches people is that there are two verification levels, so know which one you need first. Level 1 follows the standard verification. Level 2 is needed for fiat accounts and cards and comes after an additional check that can take up to 5 days.

Your documents: a passport, full page, good quality, plus bank statements in English. Cropped copies are rejected outright, so scan the whole page rather than photographing only the photo page. The questionnaire asks about turnover, the source of your funds, and any links to politically exposed persons or to US persons. Then a video selfie. Document review runs from 1 to 72 hours.

The rejection triggers are worth reading twice, because they are the difference between a same-day decision and a week of guessing:

• Cropped copies of documents
• Documents that are not passports
• Video selfie taken in poor light
• Video selfie with a hat, glasses or filters

None of these are exotic traps. All of them are avoidable, and all are listed on the card’s own verification page.

Once verified, you order the card in the app. A virtual card is active immediately after ordering. A physical plastic card is “typically shipped within 15 working days”, with times varying by destination — and here the card does not state which countries it ships to, what delivery costs, or how a replacement physical card is handled. A virtual card replacement costs 1.00 EUR. You can hold up to 5 cards per account, which the app store listing and the homepage both claim.

Fees: what it really costs

This is the section that decides the score. SharPay publishes its fee schedule, and it includes a figure I have not seen elsewhere in this category: 40 EUR to handle a chargeback. That is a large number, and it is a real cost the moment you need to dispute a payment.

There is one tier and one only — no card tiers or plans are named, and pricing is listed per product rather than per plan.

Now three everyday payments, so the table becomes something you can feel rather than just read.

A 30 EUR coffee in Amsterdam, paid contactless. You tap, the card spends its euro balance, and because the balance is already in EUR you are looking at no conversion and no top-up fee — the purchase fee line shows as “-”. This is the case SharPay does well: euro spend from a euro balance, no surcharge named.

A 30 EUR dinner in a non-euro country, paid by the physical card. The purchase price is converted, and on a personal card the FX mark-up is 2.99%. The card does state that it opens in EUR “but you can purchase in any you wish”, so spending abroad is permitted — just at that mark-up. Whether any additional spread applies beyond the 2.99% is not stated, and that unknown is worth asking about before you rely on the card outside the eurozone.

A 30 EUR top-up from your bank card, then that same 30 EUR dinner. The load costs 2.00 EUR plus 1.99% on the amount, then the mark-up applies again on the purchase if the merchant is not in the eurozone. Two fees before you have bought anything, then a third on the way. This is the pattern that pulls the cost mark down to 3 out of 10, and it is why I would rather see you top up in EUR by SEPA transfer — which the card supports — than repeatedly by card.

Two limits deserve a second look. Card POS and e-commerce together cap at 10,000 EUR daily and 30,000 EUR monthly, and SEPA crypto transactions at 14,500 EUR per day; crypto purchases by card have monthly limits with the amounts shown in the app. And note what is missing: ATM withdrawals are possible — the pages say you can make them — but the fee page lists no withdrawal fee and no free allowance. If cash is part of your plan, ask before you rely on it.

How to top it up

You have more options than the fee table alone suggests, which is why top-up scored 6 out of 10 rather than lower. Supported currencies are EUR, USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC and BCH; the price page also lists DAI and TUSD. Transfers can go to SEPA, to cards, to e-wallets and to crypto, processed “from 1 to 60 minutes”.

Two things to know before your first deposit, because both are the classic ways money disappears in this category.

The network is not named in the FAQ. The instruction is to “select the currency and network” in the app, but the public pages do not say which networks each coin is accepted on. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so a deposit sent on an unsupported network, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee. Copy the address from the app, match the network it asks for, and send a small test amount first.

XRP and Stellar need a memo or tag. Without it the funds can sit uncredited. If this is new to you, a SEPA euro transfer sidesteps both problems entirely.

The minimum top-up is not published as a figure — the page tells you to read it in the top-up amount input field, which makes the app the authority. Crypto deposited in a currency other than the card’s is “automatically exchanged at the system exchange rate”, and no rate or guarantee is published. Card-to-card transfers only work if the card was previously topped up, so the first load has to come from a bank account.

Closing the account costs 25.00 EUR for a personal account and 100.00 EUR for a business one. What happens to the balance left inside on closure is not stated.

Paying with it every day

This is where SharPay earns its best mark, 9 out of 10.

Contactless payment works. Google Pay and Apple Pay both work, which for most people is the difference between a card in a drawer and a card in your phone. The virtual card is active the moment you order it, so you can fill your phone wallet before the plastic arrives — and the physical card follows in about 15 working days. Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific number held in the phone’s Secure Element rather than on Apple’s servers, and each payment carries a one-time code. The issuer can still restrict that tokenised number, for example blocking it on online or contactless use, so a card that works in a shop can still be refused online.

Some merchants refuse cards like this, and it has nothing to do with you. A card number carries a six- or eight-digit issuer identification number that tells the shop which institution and country issued it, and a shop may apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. Address verification — comparing the numeric parts of your billing address against the issuer’s records — is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for a foreign-issued card, which causes declines at checkout. Gambling merchant categories are blocked under SPEKA’s prohibited-activities list, which also covers adult content; that list is the provider’s own policy, not a legal ban, and it can change.

A declined payment can still leave a hold on your money for several days, sometimes up to seven.

Duplicate debits are handled automatically: if your account is debited twice during a payment, the money is returned. Everything else goes through a chargeback, which costs you 40 EUR in handling. A refund policy is linked as a PDF from the app but the time frames are not stated, and no cashback is mentioned anywhere in the pages I read.

What can go wrong

Two realistic threats, in order: operational, and counterparty.

Operational: a wrong network, or a closed account. Send crypto on the wrong chain and it is gone, with no reversal available on the blockchain. A provider that closes accounts under anti-money-laundering rules stops your access until documents arrive, and walking away costs 25.00 EUR.

Counterparty: the money is custodial. SharPay holds your balance. Your crypto is not in a wallet you control; it is an account balance at the provider, with the key on their side. The history of this category is not encouraging — Mt. Gox (about US$350 million reported stolen, 2011-2014), Coincheck (about US$400 million, 2018) and the Ronin Network (US$625 million, 2022) are the standard reference points. None of those is SharPay. They describe the structural risk you accept by holding a balance with anyone.

The safeguards SharPay does describe are ordinary and adequate: one-time codes at login, the ability to block and unblock the card in the app, 3-D Secure 2.0, and a possible request for proof of funds. What the pages do not state is whether customer funds are safeguarded or insured. E-money institutions are generally expected to safeguard customer funds by segregating them or insuring them, and such funds are not the same as bank deposits — but that is the general rule, not a statement on this page, so ask.

On complaints, the honest answer is that there are none to read. A Trustpilot search returned only unrelated brands, and a dedicated search for SharPay complaints found no user reports and no news. No incident, no controversy — and no independent track record either. A card with no complaints is either new, quiet, or not widely used yet, and the “15k +” user claim suggests the last may be partly true. Treat the silence as absence of evidence, not as reassurance.

Who stands behind it matters more than the complaint file. GTM Exchange Ltd (Cyprus) designs and operates the website and app. The card is issued by UAB Walletto, Lithuania, under Bank of Lithuania e-money licence no. 33. Payment services run through SPEKA Payments Corp., Canada, registered as FINTRAC MSB M22046940. Two licensed institutions stand behind the product, which is more than many cards in this category can show — but note that the crypto services run “outside the EU and not to EU residents”.

Support is a phone number (+357 2503-09-49), an email address, a website widget and social media. The site runs in English, Ukrainian and German. Hours are not stated.

What to take instead

I compared three alternatives on their own published terms. Two score higher than SharPay; one scores lower.

International Visa Card is the one to look at hardest, because its costs are easier to predict than SharPay’s. Its exchange rate is a straight Visa rate plus a flat 2%, there is a genuinely free monthly tier, and deposits of any kind are free — you can fund with USD, EUR, SEPA, SWIFT, FedNow, or with USDC or USDT into the USD account. Its eligibility list is narrower than SharPay’s in one direction and wider in another: it excludes residents and legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam, reviews FATF grey-list countries case by case, and blocks purchases in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela.

UNi Card has no annual fee and no foreign transaction fee, converts at live OTC rates, and pays up to 3% back — a genuinely attractive shape on paper. But its eligibility is not stated, its issuance fee is not stated, and its funding routes are not stated either.

Whop Cards is largely irrelevant outside the US: eligibility is by state, listed at 31 for consumers and 41 for businesses, with unsupported countries named from Belarus to Vietnam. Inside the US the rewards are the selling point, but the card currency and any conversion fees are not given.

Where SharPay holds its own is speed of access and reach: a virtual card the moment you order, Apple Pay and Google Pay, ATM withdrawals, and a euro account fundable by SEPA as well as by eight crypto assets. Where the Visa alternative holds its own is cost predictability and a free tier. If your spending is mostly in dollars and your only alternative is a bank that will not open an account for you, the comparison is closer than the scores make it look.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend SharPay to a non-EU resident with a foreign passport who needs a usable Mastercard today, needs it in a mobile wallet, and can fund it with a SEPA euro transfer rather than repeated card loads. For that person the card does what it says: an instant virtual card, Apple Pay, physical plastic in about 15 working days, no premium tier to pay for, and spending that just works.

I would not recommend it to an EU resident, to anyone in a prohibited country, or to someone whose income is in a non-euro currency and who spends in that same currency. That last person eats a 2.99% mark-up on every transaction and then pays to load the card on top. The arithmetic does not work for them, and the 3 EUR monthly fee is a small insult beside it.

Before you commit, check four things in the app, because the public pages do not answer them: the minimum top-up, which networks each coin is accepted on, the ATM fee, and what happens to a remaining balance if you close the account.

Frequently asked questions

What is SharPay card?

SharPay is a Mastercard debit card that spends a balance held in a SharPay account, which you can fund with euros by bank transfer or with crypto including USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC and BCH. The plastic is issued by UAB Walletto, a Lithuanian e-money institution, and the crypto side runs through SPEKA Payments Corp. in Canada. It is a payment tool attached to a platform account, not a bank account.

How does SharPay card work?

You top up the account and the card spends that balance. Most cards of this kind behave like a prepaid card rather than a true debit card: crypto is converted and loaded as a euro balance, and the card cannot spend more than is there. The virtual card activates immediately after ordering; the physical one arrives in about 15 working days. From the shop’s side it is an ordinary Mastercard purchase.

Is SharPay a bank?

No, and the pages do not describe it as one. The card is issued by UAB Walletto under Bank of Lithuania e-money licence no. 33, and payment services are handled by SPEKA Payments Corp., registered with FINTRAC as MSB M22046940. The site and app are operated by GTM Exchange Ltd in Cyprus. E-money balances are not the same as bank deposits.

Who owns SharPay?

GTM Exchange Ltd, a Cyprus company, designs and operates the sharpay website and app. The card programme is issued by UAB Walletto in Lithuania, and the crypto services sit with SPEKA Payments Corp. in Canada. So there is a brand, an issuer and a crypto operator, and they are three different entities in three different jurisdictions.

Does SharPay card require KYC?

Yes, and it is the main gate. You need a full-page passport of good quality — cropped copies are rejected — plus bank statements in English, a questionnaire on turnover and source of funds including any PEP or US-person links, and a video selfie. Level 2 verification is needed for fiat accounts and cards and can take up to 5 days.

How much does SharPay card cost?

Opening a payment account costs 10 EUR and the card 1.00 EUR, with a 3.00 EUR monthly service fee per card. Loading the card from another card costs 2.00 EUR plus 1.99%, and the FX mark-up on a personal card is 2.99%. A crypto account is free, and handling a chargeback costs 40 EUR. There is one tier, no premium plans.

How do I top up the SharPay card?

Use a SEPA euro transfer, or deposit crypto from your own wallet. Transfers to SEPA, cards, e-wallets and crypto are processed from 1 to 60 minutes. The FAQ does not name the network for each coin, so check the app before sending and start with a small test amount. XRP and Stellar transfers need a memo or tag.

Can I add SharPay card to Apple Wallet?

Yes. Google Pay and Apple Pay are both supported, and contactless payment works. The virtual card is active the moment you order it, so you can add it to your phone before the physical card arrives in about 15 working days. The tokenised number is stored in the phone’s Secure Element, and the issuer can still restrict it for particular uses.

Is SharPay card safe?

The ordinary safeguards are in place: one-time codes at login, card freeze and unfreeze in the app, 3-D Secure 2.0, and possible proof-of-funds requests. But the balance is custodial, so the provider holds it, and the pages do not state whether funds are safeguarded or insured. No complaints or reviews were found in my searching, which means no track record rather than a clean one.

Is SharPay card worth it?

Worth it if you need a Mastercard quickly, live outside the EU, and can fund it by SEPA in euros. Not worth it if you load it repeatedly by card, if you spend in a non-euro currency, or if a 3 EUR monthly fee plus a 2.99% currency mark-up is more than you want to carry. For euro spending from a euro balance the card is genuinely good; for everyone else the costs eat the benefit.

Content created by the «cryptocardfacts» team