Shakepay Review - How Does This Crypto Exchange Compare? (2024)

About Shakepay

Shakepay is a Canadian crypto money service business where customers can easily buy and sell bitcoin and ethereum on their desktop or through the Shakepay app.

Shakepay also offers a prepaid Visa card for spenders to earn crypto rewards for all their purchases.

However, the Shakepay platform and card are only available to Canadian citizens.

The Shakepay legal team has also ensured Shakepay is a fully regulated cryptocurrency exchange and a secure place to buy and sell bitcoin and ethereum with its third-party proof of reserves Shakepay report.

So, is Shakepay safe? Is it a legit crypto exchange? Find out all this and more in this in-depth Shakepay review.

Shakepay Features and Services

Shakepay Crypto Exchange

The Shakepay crypto exchange is beautifully designed and easy to use, but, as previously mentioned, it only supports BTC and ETH.

Given many investors are only interested in those two assets, it may not be a problem. Still, there’s no denying it’s incredibly limiting compared to other cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance or FTX, which support hundreds of digital currencies.

That being said, the Shakepay user interface is exceptional and extremely user-friendly.

To add funds to your Shakepay account, you can opt for a free and instant Interac e-Transfer from your bank account (up to $10k), a free 1-2 business day EFT & wire transfer (minimum $1k), or via free crypto transfers (no limits).

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Once you deposit money, you can easily purchase crypto through Shakepay’s basic order panel, similar to other crypto exchanges. You can also just as easily withdraw crypto to your own private wallet to take hold of your private keys.

There aren’t any price charts or advanced order types for stop-losses/take-profits conducive to active crypto trading, but Shakepay does support limit orders and recurring buys for dollar-cost-averaging.

Shakepay also doesn’t charge any fees for purchases. They do, however, capture spreads as a market maker, which can translate to a meaningful difference in the price bought/sold vs. the current market price.

Notwithstanding that concern, the Shakepay crypto exchange is a beginner-friendly and affordable way to purchase BTC or ETH.

Shakepay Card

The Shakepay Visa card is a great way to earn crypto rewards for everyday purchases.

Much like the crypto exchange, however, to qualify for the Shakepay card, you’ll have to be a Canadian resident, have a fully verified account, and only be a tax resident of Canada.

It’s also important to remember the Shakepay card is a reloadable Visa prepaid card, which means you can only spend funds that are loaded to your Shakepay Canadian dollar balance.

Once you qualify and load up your balance, every purchase with the Shakepay card will automatically settle to the bitcoin balance in your Shakepay account.

You will earn up to 2% in bitcoin cashback on your first $5,000, but you can only receive rewards in bitcoin. It’s also unclear what rewards (if any) are offered after that $5,000 limit is hit.

You can store or cash out your rewards at any time and easily load your Shakepay Canadian dollar balance with the Interac e-Transfer.

Cardholders can shop worldwide (with a 3% foreign transaction fee) and pay via Apple Pay or Google Pay with no annual fees or credit checks.

How Shakepay Compares to Competitors

Because Shakepay is a Canadian-only platform, it makes sense to compare it to other Canadian-only platforms like NDAX.

NDAX is a more trader-friendly platform with charts and the usual features active traders generally require. NDAX also supports considerably more crypto assets and even supports crypto staking.

However, NDAX isn’t going to be as beginner-friendly as Shakepay, meaning it probably won’t be the best option for crypto investors interested in the simplest way to buy digital assets.

If you are only interested in setting up a recurring purchase or just looking to occasionally/casually buy either BTC or ETH, Shakepay would likely be the better option.

For anything beyond basic purchases or investing in other crypto assets, however, NDAX will be the clear winner. You can read our full review of NDAX here.

The last comparison worth diving into is the Shakepay card, but NDAX has no competing card, so the best alternative to keep in mind is the BlockFi card.

When it comes to rewards, the BlockFi card is the clear winner. With 1.5% back on every purchase (no dollar limit), 2% back after a $30k annual spend, and up to 10% back on thousands of select brands, it blows the Shakepay rewards out of the water.

The Shakepay card is technically a prepaid Visa, so it isn’t necessarily a fair comparison. Still, if the goal is earning crypto with purchases, spenders will earn more with the BlockFi card.

The BlockFi card also has no annual or foreign transaction fees and even lets you earn rewards in 15+ crypto assets. You can check out our complete review of BlockFi here.

In summary, you should join Shakepay if you’re a Canadian looking for a simple way to buy bitcoin and ethereum, but active Canadian traders will prefer NDAX, and BlockFi has a better card for earning crypto rewards.

Conclusion: Shakepay Review

After carefully walking through all of its services for this Shakepay review, we believe Shakepay is an excellent beginner on-ramp to crypto.

It’s a shame the platform is only available to Canadians and only supports BTC and ETH, but it makes buying, selling, and setting up recurring purchases incredibly simple.

Any Canadian who doesn’t fancy themself a crypto trader or altcoin enthusiast will find Shakepay to be an ideal platform.

The platform’s limitations may motivate customers to branch out to other more advanced platforms further along their crypto journey, but Shakepay remains a simple and perfect introduction to crypto investing.