Monolith card is closed: what the shutdown means and where to go next

Updated October 2026

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The Monolith card was a crypto-linked debit card whose programme closed on 8 October 2024. Cards were deactivated, accounts shut, and the app was delisted from stores on 17 February (the year is not stated on the public notice, but the context points to 2025). If you are reading this hoping to order a Monolith card today, you cannot: there is no new card to apply for. This review explains why the programme closed, what someone who already held a Monolith card should do about leftover balances and the crypto that sat in the wallet, what the practical risks are, and which other crypto cards are worth looking at instead.

The information below reflects the public Monolith closure notice and successor pages, checked on October 28, 2026. Conditions are current as of 2026-10-20.

Verdict

Monolith scores 1.8 out of 10 in this review, and almost all of that score comes from the historical picture rather than anything you can use today. The “who can get it” mark is 0 because the service is closed and no new cards are being issued. The “cost” mark is 5, drawn from historical third-party reporting, because there is no live fee schedule to assess. “Top-up options” is 2 for the same reason: top-ups are no longer possible, and the historical list is third-party. “Reliability and complaints” is 1, reflecting both the regulatory pressure that closed the programme and the lack of any public complaints process specific to Monolith. “Everyday use” is 0 because the cards are deactivated and the app is no longer available in stores. The one practical task the score cannot capture is the one most readers actually need: former holders redeeming leftover balances through the issuer, Solaris, via a dedicated Redemptions page.

If you are looking for a card you can actually order, the alternatives section below is the part of this review that does practical work. The rest explains what happened and what to do if you were a holder.

What happened to the Monolith card programme

Monolith was a crypto card programme: a non-custodial wallet, branded by Monolith and fronted by a mobile app, that connected to a debit card issued by a regulated bank. According to the public closure notice, the services shut down on 8 October 2024. From that date cards were deactivated, accounts were closed, and the app was delisted from the app stores on 17 February (the year is not stated on the public page, but the surrounding context places it in 2025). The notice gives the reason in plain language: “increasing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK.” It does not name MiCA or any specific piece of legislation, and it does not list country-by-country eligibility, so there is no public statement on who, by citizenship or residence, would have qualified had the programme stayed open.

The legal entity behind the brand, per the closure notice, is UAB “Belela”, a Lithuanian virtual currency deposit and exchange operator (company code 305982313). The site copyright is held by Token Group Ltd under licence to UAB “Belela”, and the card issuer is Solaris. After closure, the wallet successor is Token.com, and a pending swap of the TKN token to a new TOKEN is described in an update dated 28 February 2025, with full mechanics promised for April 2025.

Historically, before closure, the card was reported by third parties as a Visa debit card (Coin Bureau, updated 29 March 2023), with an earlier issuer, Contis Financial Services Ltd, named in 2019 coverage. Neither the current network nor the historical tier or reward structure is restated on the closure notice, so any claim about the card’s features is, by definition, historical and unofficial.

The practical upshot is short: there is no new Monolith card to order, no in-app balance you can top up, and no live customer account. What remains are two things for former holders, which the next section covers in full.

If you already have the card: what to do with money, wallet and app

If you were a Monolith cardholder, the closure notice sorts the assets you had into two distinct buckets, and they go through two different routes. Mixing them up is the most common mistake, because both feel like “Monolith money.”

The card balance, held by the card issuer

Card balances are held by the card’s issuer, Solaris, not by Monolith. To get a remaining card balance back, the closure notice directs former holders to the Solaris Redemptions page. The process it sets out is specific and worth following exactly:

• Go to the Solaris Redemptions Support page and submit a request.
• Use the subject line “Redemption funds of Monolith customer.”
• Provide the bank account details you want the refund paid into, in the card’s currency (EUR or GBP). Pick the right one: the issuer will not convert for you.
• Include a colour scan of your ID. If the email address on your request does not match the one on the card account, the ID scan is how Solaris confirms the claim belongs to you.
• Solaris aims to respond within 14 days.

The closure notice does not describe a disputes or compensation process beyond this redemption route, and it does not list opening hours or supported languages for the form. Treat the 14-day target as an aim, not a guarantee, and keep your own record of what you submitted.

The crypto, held in your own wallet

Crypto balances sat in a non-custodial wallet: Monolith never held your private keys. That is a meaningful difference, because it means the closure did not freeze your crypto. The closure notice tells you to recover the wallet with your 12-word seed phrase and import it into another wallet that supports the same standard, naming MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Coinbase Wallet as examples. If you never saved the seed, the notice says it was visible in the app at Settings > Back up Seed while the app was available. With the app delisted, that path is no longer available; if you have not saved the seed phrase, the situation is much harder, and there is no public Monolith support route that can recover it for you.

For context, seed phrases are unencrypted forms of a private key, and anyone who has them can restore the wallet and spend from it, so handle them accordingly. The closure notice is also clear that the Lithuanian deposit insurance scheme and the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) do not cover crypto activities or funds in the non-custodial wallet, so any loss of seed is your loss.

The TKN to TOKEN swap

A separate pending item is the TKN to TOKEN swap, promised in an update dated 28 February 2025, with the mechanics detailed in April 2025. This is a token-level migration, not a card balance, and the closure notice says the questionnaire and timing for the swap go through Monolith’s Telegram and email channels rather than through Solaris. The details in this paragraph are what the closure page itself states; figures, ratios and deadlines for the swap are not restated in the materials reviewed here and are not stated.

Customer support after closure

Two support channels are named in the notice, and they handle different things:

• Solaris Redemptions Support (form and email) for any card balance still owed to you.
• Monolith via Telegram and email for the TKN to TOKEN questionnaire.

Hours, languages and response-time targets beyond the 14-day Solaris aim are not stated on the public notice, which is worth knowing if you are planning around a deadline.

What can go wrong

A closed programme is its own kind of risk, and the risks fall into three groups: the card balance, the crypto balance, and the wider regulatory backdrop that caused the closure.

Risks around the card balance

• The 14-day target is not a deadline. Solaris says it aims to respond within 14 days, not that it will; the closure notice sets no maximum, so refunds can take longer.
• Wrong-currency bank details can stall a refund. Solaris pays out in the card’s currency (EUR or GBP). If you supply a USD account, the refund will not arrive as USD and the bank on the receiving end will charge its own conversion fee. This is a friction point that is easy to miss.
• Email mismatch means a manual ID check. If the address you write from is not the one on the card account, Solaris asks for a colour ID scan, and the refund waits until that check is done.
• The app is no longer in stores. Because the app is delisted, you cannot check a balance inside it or pull a transaction list; the closure notice does not describe a web-side replacement.
• No general disputes or compensation route is published. The closure notice describes only the redemption flow; chargeback or complaint rights for the card itself are not stated.

Risks around the crypto balance

• No seed, no access. The closure notice is plain: the 12-word seed phrase is the only way into the wallet, and the in-app “Back up Seed” path is gone. If you do not have the words written down somewhere safe, the assets are, in practical terms, out of reach.
• Phishing, address-swap malware and impostor support channels are the main active threats. With a closed programme, fake “Monolith support” accounts on Telegram and email are exactly the impersonation that crypto users get hit with during wind-downs.
• Crypto transfers are irreversible. If you send assets to the wrong network or wrong address while migrating, there is no network-level undo, and “manual support recovery” is a phrase that often comes with no guarantee.
• Stablecoins are not censorship-proof or risk-free. Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC can depeg, and issuers (notably Tether) have publicly frozen funds linked to sanctioned addresses, so the assumption that crypto is fully outside the regulated system is a mistake.
• Regulatory protections do not cover self-custody. The closure notice is explicit that Lithuanian deposit insurance and the UK FSCS do not cover crypto activities or funds in the non-custodial wallet.

Risks in the regulatory backdrop

The reason Monolith gives for closing is “increasing regulatory requirements in the EU and UK.” It is worth reading that in context:

• The EU’s MiCA regulation took legal effect in June 2023; the rules on asset-referenced and e-money tokens (stablecoins) applied from 30 June 2024, and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider (CASP) rules, applied from 30 December 2024. Monolith’s closure on 8 October 2024 falls in the run-up to the CASP rules, which is a useful date anchor rather than a claim that MiCA is named on the notice.
• Under MiCA, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution, so a non-bank crypto card programme in the EU needs an authorised partner or its own licence.
• A transitional period allows providers already operating under national law to continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they receive or are refused a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first. Cards in the EU/EEA that rely on a non-bank programme manager are in this race.
• A card is itself a payment service (e-money or payment-services law), and MiCA covers the crypto side, so a crypto card often depends on two licences at once.
• Visa and Mastercard themselves do not issue crypto cards to consumers; they license issuers and can suspend a programme, which is the wider mechanism behind several card closures in recent years.

The combination of these pressures is what makes “this card closed” more than an isolated event: the conditions that closed Monolith are the conditions a number of other programmes are navigating.

What to take instead

Because Monolith no longer issues cards, the “instead” question is not a comparison within a single category, it is a hunt for what does work in 2026. The three options below were checked on 2026-10-22 and are described only as far as their public pages support, with gaps marked. None is a drop-in replacement for what Monolith was, and none carries the same brand or wallet continuity.

Cardex is the broadest geographically of the three, claiming coverage in 200+ countries with cards on four networks and an “AI-powered” real-time conversion at the point of sale, but its App Store listing is Naira-focused and the public materials reviewed do not state an issuance fee, a top-up fee, an FX fee or which networks the supported stablecoins are issued on. MSX holds the highest score of the three, but its official page does not state card type, fees, top-up assets or supported countries; because these details are missing, the score is based on incomplete information and should be treated as provisional. Whop Cards is the most explicit on geography, listing 31 US states for consumers and 41 for businesses, with a separate list of unsupported consumer countries (Belarus, Mainland China, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam) and corporate restrictions that include Russia and Belarus. Whop’s page says “no extra fees” and describes a stablecoin-collateralised balance with 5% cashback at select merchants (Uber, with more planned); card currency, FX and conversion fees are not stated, and the basis for eligibility (citizenship or residence) is not stated either.

If you are choosing among these three, the practical splits are:

• Outside the US, in particular outside the Whop unsupported list, and not in a region that Cardex excludes: Cardex is the only one of the three that names a broad country footprint; MSX is opaque on geography.
• In the US, in a state Whop supports, and you want cashback: Whop’s 5% at named merchants is the most concrete reward structure in the table; Cardex and MSX state no rewards.
• You want a Visa specifically: Whop is explicitly Visa; Cardex spans four networks; MSX is not stated.

These are not endorsements, and the gaps marked “not stated” are real. Before you sign up to any of them, read their current fee pages, top-up pages and supported-country pages yourself, because the live version is what matters.

Who I would recommend this card to

The honest one-line answer is: I would not recommend it to anyone today, because the programme is closed and no new card is being issued.

The longer answer splits by who you are:

• If you are choosing a card to apply for now, skip this page and use the alternatives table as a starting point. None of the three cards listed is a Monolith replacement in any meaningful sense: they have different wallets, different issuers, different geographies and different reward structures. The reason to look at them is that they are operating in 2026; Monolith is not.
• If you are a former Monolith cardholder with a card balance still owed, the action item is the Solaris Redemptions page: subject “Redemption funds of Monolith customer”, payout details in the card’s currency, ID scan, and a 14-day response target. Do not send card-balance questions to Monolith’s Telegram; that channel is for the TKN to TOKEN swap.
• If you are a former Monolith cardholder with crypto in the non-custodial wallet, the action item is your 12-word seed phrase, imported into a wallet that supports the same standard. If you do not have the seed written down anywhere, the closure notice is explicit that there is no Monolith recovery route, and the assets are, in practical terms, out of reach.
• If you are a former holder with TKN tokens, the action item is the Monolith Telegram and email channels for the TOKEN swap questionnaire; details were promised for April 2025 and may have moved on since.
• If you are evaluating the wider crypto card category, the part of the Monolith story that generalises is regulatory: an EU/UK-facing card programme that is not itself a regulated bank or e-money institution depends on a partner issuer, and that issuer can be required to wind the programme down. Any crypto card that is not MiCA-authorised, or whose issuer is not a credit institution or e-money institution, sits inside the same set of pressures.

The card scored 1.8 out of 10, and most of that score is a record of what it used to be, not a forecast of what it can do. The score is what it is because the thing being reviewed no longer operates.

FAQ

What is the Monolith card?

The Monolith card was a crypto-linked debit card that paired a non-custodial wallet app with a card issued by Solaris. The programme closed on 8 October 2024, cards were deactivated and accounts were shut, and the app was delisted from app stores on 17 February (year not stated on the public page). The successor app is Token.com.

How did the Monolith card work?

Historically, users held crypto in a non-custodial wallet and the card drew on a card balance held by the issuer. Because the programme is closed, none of this is operational today; the historical detail comes from third-party coverage and is unofficial.

Is Monolith a bank?

No. Monolith was the trading name of UAB “Belela”, a Lithuanian virtual currency deposit and exchange operator (code 305982313). The card itself was issued by Solaris, and the closure notice is explicit that Lithuanian deposit insurance and the UK FSCS do not cover crypto activities or funds in the non-custodial wallet.

How do I get a Monolith card?

You cannot, because the programme closed on 8 October 2024 and cards are no longer issued. The alternatives section lists three other crypto cards that are operating in 2026, but none is a Monolith replacement.

Does the Monolith card require KYC?

The closure notice does not describe the original KYC steps, so the answer is not stated on the live page. For context, EU customer due diligence typically covers name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documents, a sanctions check and a politically-exposed-person check.

How do I get my money back from Monolith?

Card balances are held by the issuer, Solaris, and the closure notice routes refunds through the Solaris Redemptions Support page. The form requires a “Redemption funds of Monolith customer” subject line, payout details in the card’s currency (EUR or GBP), a colour ID scan if your email differs from the one on file, and Solaris aims to respond within 14 days.

How do I get my crypto back from Monolith?

The crypto sat in a non-custodial wallet, so it was never with Monolith. Use your 12-word seed phrase to import the wallet into another wallet that supports the same standard, for example MetaMask, Trust Wallet or Coinbase Wallet. If you do not have the seed, the in-app “Back up Seed” path is no longer available and there is no public Monolith recovery route.

Is the Monolith card safe?

The card itself no longer exists as a usable product, so the question is really about leftover assets. The closure notice is explicit that deposit insurance schemes in Lithuania and the UK do not cover crypto or non-custodial wallet funds, and the redemption process relies on the issuer, Solaris, rather than on Monolith. Treat the seed phrase as the only access to the wallet, and treat any “Monolith support” outreach on Telegram or email with the usual caution during a wind-down.

What is the TKN to TOKEN swap?

It is a token-level migration from TKN to a new TOKEN, described in an update dated 28 February 2025, with the mechanics promised for April 2025. The closure notice routes swap questions to Monolith’s Telegram and email channels, not to Solaris.

What should I do if I never saved my 12-word seed phrase?

The closure notice is plain that the in-app “Settings > Back up Seed” path is no longer available, and there is no public Monolith recovery route. In practical terms, without the seed, the wallet is not recoverable through the programme; the lesson is to back up any 12-to-24-word seed phrase for any non-custodial wallet as soon as the wallet is created, and to store it offline.

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