Shakepay Card

What the Shakepay Card is

Shakepay is a Canadian bitcoin platform that has offered a Visa prepaid card since 2020, and the card is now available in both virtual and physical form. You spend from your Shakepay Canadian dollar balance and earn bitcoin on every purchase, with rewards settled straight into your bitcoin balance rather than as points or statement credit.

Why it is regarded as a benchmark

In a category full of offshore issuers and opaque fee sheets, Shakepay is a domestic, regulated product. The card is issued by Peoples Trust Company under licence from Visa, the company is FINTRAC-registered (#M17065696), and it is a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization and registered as an Investment Dealer with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers and securities regulators in every province and territory.

How the rewards are structured

Cashback runs up to 1.5% in bitcoin, settled automatically to your Shakepay bitcoin balance where you can hold it or send it to a wallet you control. Shakepay also runs #shakepaid, a random giveaway that pays back individual purchases in bitcoin — the payouts featured on its site range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of satoshis.

What to know

There is no annual fee and no credit check, and the card is available to all Shakepay customers across all 13 provinces and territories. The balance is a Canadian dollar balance rather than a crypto balance, so spending draws on dollars you have funded, and the funds are not insured by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Shakepay's Visa prepaid card is issued by Peoples Trust Company and pays bitcoin cashback on every purchase, making it Canada's best-established crypto card. The Fold Card does the same job in the US, and The Bitcoin Company sells prepaid cards bought with Bitcoin. The crypto cards directory compares the reward rates.

Earning

• Up to 1.5% cashback in bitcoin on every purchase at eligible merchants worldwide.
• Rewards settled automatically to your Shakepay bitcoin balance.
• Withdraw rewards to a bitcoin wallet you control at any time.
• Random #shakepaid purchase paybacks for card users.

Spending

• Spend directly from your Shakepay Canadian dollar balance.
• Shop online and in stores worldwide wherever Visa is accepted.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay supported where available.
• Virtual card issued instantly, with a physical card now shipping.

Account and security

• No annual fees and no credit checks — this is a prepaid card, not credit.
• Instantly lock your card from the app if it goes missing.
• Two-factor authentication and a responsive support team in a few taps.
• Top up by funding your Shakepay account, including by Interac e-Transfer.

Bitcoin is the reward asset

Shakepay is built around bitcoin rather than a long list of tokens, and its card reflects that. Cashback is paid in bitcoin, and you can hold it in the Shakepay account or withdraw it to a wallet you control at any time.

Spending from dollars, not crypto

The card spends from a Canadian dollar balance rather than converting crypto at the checkout. That keeps the transaction mechanics simple and predictable, and it means your bitcoin holdings are untouched by spending — you top up dollars and spend those.

Account products around it

Shakepay also offers a cash account, a savings account, recurring buys, bitcoin-backed line of credit through Shakepay BLOC, and business accounts, so the card sits inside a broader Canadian crypto account stack rather than being a standalone product.

Card costs

• Annual fee: none
• Credit check: none — it is a prepaid card
• Card availability: all 13 Canadian provinces and territories

Reward structure

Cashback runs up to 1.5% in bitcoin, subject to Shakepay's card terms and merchant eligibility. The rate and programme conditions can change, and the bitcoin you earn fluctuates in value once credited, so the dollar value of rewards is not fixed.

Funding

The card spends from your Shakepay Canadian dollar balance, which you fund by topping up your Shakepay account — Interac e-Transfer being the usual route in Canada. Shakepay publishes a separate fees page covering funding and account costs, and card-specific FX or ATM charges are not itemised on the card page.

Protection note

Shakepay states that funds held on the card are not insured by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation. The platform does note that your cash is protected by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund up to $1 million in the context of its investment dealer registration, which is a different protection from deposit insurance.