Monolith Card Review: What Happened and What to Use Instead

Monolith was once a non-custodial Visa debit card tied to a self-hosted Ethereum wallet. On 8 October 2024 the company shut the programme down, deactivated every card and closed every account. This review explains what actually happened, what former holders should do about balances sitting on the card or in the wallet, and which crypto cards are still worth considering as a replacement.

Current as of 21 October 2026, based on Monolith’s closure notice.

The conditions described below are current as of 21 October 2026 based on the issuer’s closure notice and public regulatory records. Treat it as a snapshot, not an investment recommendation.

Verdict

I give Monolith 1.8 out of 10. That is not a rating of how good the card used to be, but an honest score for what someone could do with it today. By every practical measure, the card no longer exists. The score table breaks the result down by criterion so you can see exactly where the points came from.

The audience note that runs through this verdict is simple. If you are a former cardholder trying to get your leftover euro or pound balances back, the only official route is the Solaris Redemptions page, and I describe it in detail in the holders section. If you are new to Monolith and arrived here hoping to apply, you cannot, and there is no waiting list or re-launch announced. What you can do is treat this page as a short guide to why programmes like this shut down, and look at the alternatives I list near the end.

I would not recommend Monolith to anyone in 2026. The card does not exist, and the trust you once placed in a self-custodial wallet is preserved only by holding on to your 12-word seed phrase and importing it into a new wallet. If you still hold tokens from the original programme, the swap details that were promised for April 2025 are the only forward-looking piece of business left, and that is about the TKN-to-TOKEN token migration, not about a card.

What happened to the programme

On 8 October 2024 Monolith posted a notice on its customer page announcing that services had been closed, all cards had been deactivated and all accounts shut. The reason the company gave was “increasing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK.” The notice does not mention MiCA by name, and reading between the lines I take that to mean the cost of staying licensed under the new framework was no longer viable for a programme this small. A card programme that holds customer euro and pound balances must run through an e-money institution or bank; Solaris was Monolith’s card issuer, and once that relationship could not continue under the new rules, neither could the card.

Monolith’s legal entity was UAB “Belela”, a virtual currency deposit and exchange operator registered in Lithuania under company code 305982313. The site itself is operated by Token Group Ltd under licence to that Lithuanian entity. So this was a Lithuanian-licensed crypto company whose card was issued by Solaris in Germany, and the regulatory pressure came from both ends of that chain.

The app was delisted from the Apple App Store and Google Play on 17 February, with the year not stated on the notice but contextually pointing to 2025. That detail matters more than it first looks, because if you have the app installed on an old phone you may find that it still loads but no longer talks to live servers. The “balance shown in the app” is no longer accurate, the company warns. Anything you see on screen about your euro or pound balance is potentially stale.

There is also the question of who carries the Monolith name forward. The notice calls Token.com the successor app. Token.com is the consumer-facing crypto and card product that absorbed parts of Monolith’s team, and there is no public statement that Monolith itself will ever re-emerge as a card programme. Treat the name “Monolith” as retired.

The historical third-party picture helps fill in what the card used to be before the closure, even though Monolith’s own pages no longer describe it. The cards were Visa debit cards. An earlier web source from 2019 names Contis Financial Services Ltd as the original issuer before Solaris took over. According to a Coin Bureau review updated on 29 March 2023, the card was intended for residents of the EEA (31 European countries at the time) and could not be used in the USA or Asia. The card currency was either EUR or GBP depending on which country you applied from. There was no cashback programme, and there was no monthly or shipping fee for users who kept the card inside the country where it was registered.

If you already have the card

Most readers arriving here from a search engine are former holders trying to figure out what to do. There are two separate piles of money to think about, and they live in different places.

The first pile is crypto. The underlying Monolith wallet was non-custodial, which means Monolith itself never held your private keys. The crypto is still on chain, and you can move it at any time using your 12-word seed phrase. Importing that phrase into another wallet such as MetaMask, Trust Wallet or Coinbase Wallet restores access to the same Ethereum address and the same tokens. If you cannot find your seed phrase, Monolith’s original guidance was that it could be revealed in the app under Settings, then Back up Seed. Given the app is no longer connected to live servers, treat that route as fragile: do not rely on a third-party clone, and do not type your seed phrase into any website that asks for it.

The second pile is euro and pound balances left on the card. That money is held by the card issuer, Solaris, not by Monolith. The official way to get it back is to submit a request on the Solaris Redemptions page at redemptions.solarisgroup.co.uk, using the subject line “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”. You will need to give payout account details in EUR or GBP that match the card’s currency, and if your email address is different from the one on the Monolith account you will be asked to attach a colour copy of an ID. Solaris says it aims to respond within 14 days, although during a multi-thousand-customer shutdown “aims to” should be read as “no later than,” not “usually.”

There is no ATM access any more, no spending, and no way to top up. The card numbers and PINs that worked until 7 October 2024 now decline at the till. From an everyday-use point of view, the cards are inert.

For limits, the historical Coin Bureau review (unofficial, not confirmed by the card issuer) noted a daily spending cap of £7,500 (€8,113) and a daily ATM cash withdrawal cap of £350 (€378), with no explicit ATM fee stated. None of those limits matter any more because the card is closed. The TKN-to-TOKEN swap promised in the April 2025 update is about migrating a token, not about restoring card services.

What can go wrong

Closure by regulator is the headline risk in this product class, and Monolith is the textbook case. The single biggest thing that can go wrong with any crypto card is not bad customer service or high fees, but the issuer’s licence being withdrawn or its network access being suspended. Visas and Mastercards themselves do not issue crypto cards to consumers; they license issuers to do so, and they can suspend a programme. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022, and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer as a direct consequence. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied several crypto card brands in Europe, was suspended by Visa in 2018, which closed every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme at once. Monolith’s closure belongs to that same family of events: a regulated payment partner (Solaris) could not continue to operate the programme under EU and UK pressure, and the card went with it.

The second risk is around what the company calls your “crypto activities or funds.” The closure notice is explicit that Lithuanian deposit insurance and the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme do not cover Monolith’s crypto activities or funds held in the non-custodial wallet. That statement is mainly there to manage expectations, because in a non-custodial wallet there is no custodian holding your money for you to claim against. What it really means is: if you do not have your 12-word seed phrase, nobody is going to recover the tokens for you, and there is no insurance policy on the other end.

The third risk is operational drag on the redemption route. Monolith does not have an active Trustpilot presence, and reviews for the issuer Solaris mention slow refund processing for other shutdown programmes. That is a reminder to follow up politely but firmly and keep screenshots of every form submission.

The fourth risk is tax. I am not giving tax advice, but the mechanical point worth raising is that converting crypto to euro or pound on a card payment, or swapping TKN for TOKEN during the migration, may count as a taxable disposal in the country where you live. In the United States the Internal Revenue Service treats digital assets as property, so each spend or swap generally produces a capital gain or loss measured at fair market value on the date of the transaction. Talk to a local tax professional if you are redeeming a meaningful amount.

For completeness, the historical fee profile on the top-up side was reported by Coin Bureau in March 2023 as: 1% on the top-up fee (waived if topping up with DAI), 1% community contribution (waived if topping up with TKN), up to 2% per top-up otherwise, a 1.75% foreign-exchange fee outside the card’s currency, and no separate exchange fee. No monthly fee. This is unverified information from a third-party site, and Monolith’s own pages do not confirm it, but I include it because people searching for “how much did Monolith charge” will otherwise find nothing.

What to take instead

Three live crypto cards cover the main use cases Monolith used to serve. I rate them below by how well they match what a former Monolith holder is most likely to need, which is a self-custodial or quasi-self-custodial euro or pound balance they can spend on a debit card.

RedotPay — 6.9 / 10

RedotPay is interesting for readers who need both a virtual and a physical Visa card denominated in USD or HKD. Two of its official eligibility lists describe the rule in different ways. The KYC list of unsupported countries and regions reads as a citizenship restriction: “If you are a citizen of any of the countries or regions listed below, you will not be able to complete identity verification (KYC) or use RedotPay’s services,” and cites local regulations and sanction policies rather than individuals. The separate card-issuance restrictions list, dated 28 August 2026 and covering 47 places, is a residency restriction: residents of those areas are ineligible for both virtual and physical cards, and they cannot be billing addresses. Citizenship is not mentioned in the card list. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia sit on both lists. Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and the UAE are on neither.

The cost of entry is the main practical barrier. A virtual card costs 10 USD to apply, a physical card 100 USD (paid up front and not cancellable or refundable), and a virtual replacement starts at 5 USD for the first and 10 USD for each after that. A RedotPay Pro tier is offered at 12.90 USD monthly or 129.00 USD annually, which waives certain small charges. On the spending side the headline transaction fee is 1% (the crypto conversion fee), waived for default-currency transactions and set to 1.20% when you spend in a non-default currency; a fee table took effect on 1 December 2025. The welcome reward of 5 USD cannot be applied to the issuance fee.

Top-ups are by on-chain crypto deposit or by buying crypto with a credit card inside the app (ETH, USDC and USDT depending on region), with a minimum USDT-TRC20 deposit of 1 USDT after network fees; each asset is only accepted on the networks shown on the Deposit page. RedotPay lists “Points & Rewards” and “RedotPay Pro” as separate programmes, but I did not find an explicit card cashback percentage in the public material I read. For someone who used to like Monolith because it was a self-custodial wallet feeding a card, RedotPay is custodial on the wallet side, which is a real downgrade if you specifically valued that property.

Bybit Card — 6.0 / 10

Bybit issues Mastercard and Visa prepaid and credit cards in multiple regions, but not in Europe. The cards page says plainly: “This product is not meant for European Economic Area customers. All European Economic Area customer participation is strictly prohibited.” The supported card regions listed in the help centre include Argentina, AIFC (Kazakhstan), Georgia, Kazakhstan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and a generic “Asia Pacific” region, with the card currency pegged to your country of residence: USD in AIFC/Georgia/Kazakhstan/Australia/Asia Pacific, ARS in Argentina, MXN in Mexico, BRL in Brazil, PEN or USD in Peru. Bybit’s separate fiat-service restricted country list (covering deposits, withdrawals and One-Click Buy rather than the card itself) names Belarus, Russia, Serbia, China and the United States; it adds that “Russian users can only make RUB transaction in Fiat.” I could not find a card-specific statement on Russian or Belarusian citizens, so the rule of thumb is that being a Russian passport holder and being a resident of a card-issuing country are two separate questions, and only the latter is clearly answered in Bybit’s public material.

Virtual card issuance is currently free in all listed regions until further notice; physical card issuance or replacement runs 29.99 USD in Australia, 5 USD/USDT in Argentina, 29.99 USDT in Georgia, 29.99 USDT in Kazakhstan (AIFC) and 5 USDT in Asia Pacific, with no physical issuance fee currently listed in Brazil or Mexico. VIPs holding a physical card in Australia, Kazakhstan (AIFC), Georgia or Asia Pacific pay nothing to issue or replace. Spending carries a 0.9% crypto conversion fee in most regions (0.5% in Argentina) and a 2% FX fee outside the home currency, plus local taxes (for example Argentina’s VAT and provincial gross-income tax).

Funding works through a Funding Account and a Flexible Easy Earn balance, fiat first, with crypto sold automatically at the One-Click Sell rate plus the card conversion fee. The default spending priority is USDT, then USDC, GRAM, BTC, ETH and XRP, re-orderable in the Card Dashboard. From 5 October 2026 only crypto-funded transactions earn points and cashback, not fiat-funded spending. The reward ladder runs from Base (2% cashback, 5 USD cap) up to Infinite (10%, 600 USD cap), with the highest tier needing 25,000 USD of monthly spend to unlock.

For former Monolith users, the main thing to know is that Bybit is fully custodial: the card draws on a Bybit-hosted Funding Account, not on a personal wallet. If the regulated-finance risk that killed Monolith matters to you, Bybit sits closer to that risk than further from it.

MetaMask Card — 7.1 / 10

MetaMask Card comes the closest to the Monolith idea of “your wallet, your card.” It is a Mastercard issued by Monovate, with Crypto Life as the card provider. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories (examples include Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay); other regions join a waitlist. Proof of residency is required, and the FAQ says “Ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending,” which I take to mean an existing user may still be able to spend while travelling even if their home country is on the waitlist. The citizenship question is not stated explicitly, and the public material I read did not break out Russia or Belarus by name. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed.

You start with a free virtual card (no annual or maintenance fee) and can pre-order a Metal card in the app after the virtual card is approved, one card per user. The Metal tier costs 199 USD per year and unlocks a higher cashback rate. The card spends directly from the connected wallet, on networks including Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, from tokens named in MetaMask’s material as mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT (the page mentions nine tokens). Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit, which is a useful thing to know if your main holdings sit on Solana.

The reward is a flat 1% cashback in mUSD into the Money Account for the Virtual card, and a 3% headline for Metal that is limited to the first 10,000 USD of spend before reverting to 1%. An extra bonus of 5x points (Virtual) or 7x points (Metal) on Blackbird dining app purchases is also mentioned. Foreign transactions use the Mastercard rate and the page says there are no additional MetaMask fees, although it also references a “minimal fee for each transaction” without specifying the amount.

This is the closest spiritual successor to Monolith’s self-custody model, particularly because EURe and GBPe token balances let you hold euro and pound value inside your own wallet rather than at an exchange. The trade-off is that it is still a regulated card programme subject to the same issuer-licensing risk that closed Monolith, and the issuer here (Monovate) is not the same firm as Solaris.

Shortlist for former Monolith holders

• If your priority is self-custody and you can live without a wide range of tokens, MetaMask Card is the closest match.
• If you are outside the EEA and need a stable physical card with high cashback, Bybit Card is the most feature-rich.
• If you only need a virtual USD card and a flexible fee schedule, RedotPay fits, with the higher entry cost and the custodial wallet trade-off.

I do not see a single live product that combines everything Monolith used to offer, which is part of why the closure still feels like a loss to long-time users.

Who I would recommend it to

I cannot recommend Monolith to anybody in 2026 as a card to apply for. The only readers I would actively point to this page are former cardholders trying to redeem balances through Solaris, and even for them my recommendation is procedural rather than commercial: submit the redemption form, keep your seed phrase offline, and do not pay anyone who offers to “recover” your Monolith access for a fee. Past that audience, the second use of this review is as background reading on why crypto cards close and what to look for in a replacement, in which case the MetaMask Card section above is the single most useful takeaway.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Monolith card?

Monolith was a Visa debit card tied to a non-custodial Ethereum wallet, issued by Solaris and operated by UAB “Belela” in Lithuania. It let you spend crypto at shops and online without giving up custody of your private keys. The company shut the programme down on 8 October 2024.

How did the Monolith card work?

You held your own 12-word seed phrase; the wallet held your crypto on chain; the card drew on a fiat balance loaded in EUR or GBP from that wallet. Top-ups were made in crypto, then converted inside the wallet before spending. That model is no longer running.

Is Monolith a bank?

No. Monolith was a virtual currency deposit and exchange operator licensed in Lithuania (UAB “Belela”, company code 305982313). The card itself was issued by Solaris, a separate regulated e-money institution. Neither Monolith nor Solaris acted as a bank for the card programme.

Who owns Monolith?

The site was operated by Token Group Ltd under licence to UAB “Belela”. The closure notice names Token.com as the successor app. There is no public statement that any new entity will relaunch a card under the Monolith brand.

Can I use Monolith card in my country today?

No. All Monolith cards were deactivated on 8 October 2024 and the app was removed from app stores on 17 February. If you are in the EEA or the UK, you cannot apply, and no new country roll-out has been announced.

How do I get a refund from the closed Monolith programme?

Submit a redemption request at the Solaris Redemptions page (redemptions.solarisgroup.co.uk) using the subject “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”. Include payout account details in EUR or GBP and a colour copy of your ID if your email differs from the one Monolith had on file. Solaris aims to respond within 14 days.

Is the Monolith card safe in principle?

The non-custodial model is sound in itself: only you hold the seed phrase, and Lithuanian deposit insurance or the UK FSCS does not cover funds in the wallet because there is no custodian. The risk that closed the programme was not a hack but the issuer’s regulatory environment. A stolen seed phrase has no recovery path, so never type it into a website that asks for it.

How do I get my crypto out of the Monolith wallet?

Install another wallet such as MetaMask, Trust Wallet or Coinbase Wallet, choose “Import using seed phrase,” and enter the same 12 words you saved when you set Monolith up. Your Ethereum address and your token balances appear, and you can send or swap as usual.

What is the TKN to TOKEN swap?

Monolith promised in April 2025 to publish the details of a token migration from TKN to TOKEN. The migration is about a token, not about restarting the card, and you will carry out the swap in your self-custody wallet rather than through a Monolith login.

What should I use instead of Monolith?

For a self-custody-style card, MetaMask Card is the closest match. For a feature-rich card with higher cashback, Bybit Card works outside the EEA. For a USD-denominated virtual and physical card with explicit fee tables, RedotPay is the third option. None of them reproduces Monolith’s exact combination of non-custodial wallet plus European debit card.

Prepared by the Crypto Card Rating editorial staff.