Ready Card Discontinued: Shutdown, Funds and Replacement

Ready Card Status and Timeline

Ready Card, previously known as Argent Card, was a self-custodial Mastercard connected to Ready's Starknet smart-contract wallet. It came in paid Metal and free Lite versions. That product is no longer active.

The shutdown was not one cleanly announced migration. It happened in stages:

Ready's customer message said the July 29 stoppage came without notice to Ready itself and apologised to users whose payments declined. It also said eligible card subscriptions would be refunded automatically. The old referral offer, Metal purchase route and Lite application route can therefore no longer be redeemed and should not remain as active signup incentives.

The announced Community Card should be treated as a successor, not as the same tier system coming back under another issuer. No applicant should infer its price, cashback, countries or limits from the discontinued Metal and Lite cards.

What Existing Users Should Do

Ready separates the card shutdown from control of the underlying wallet. Ordinary Starknet assets did not sit with the card issuer, so an issuer winding down did not by itself transfer or seize those assets. Users still need to move or recover them correctly.

Transfer ordinary assets

Ready's migration guidance directs users to Ready X or another compatible Starknet wallet. Transferable tokens can be sent from the old Ready mobile account to a Starknet account in Ready X. Network fees and supported-asset rules still apply.

Import the full Starknet account when necessary

A token transfer is not enough for every account. Someone who needs to preserve the original address, NFTs, borrowing or staking positions, transaction history or other account-bound state may need to import the complete Starknet account into Ready X using Ready's recovery process.

That is a security-sensitive operation. Recovery credentials should be entered only in the official Ready X flow. Ready staff, social-media accounts and unsolicited direct messages should never receive a seed phrase, private key or recovery secret.

Do not assume the new Base account contains old assets

The updated Ready app can create a new account on Base. That account is separate from the old Starknet account. Assets, positions and history do not move automatically merely because the user updates the app or signs in with the same email.

Card refunds and subscriptions

Ready said eligible card subscriptions would be refunded automatically. That statement concerns the card purchase or remaining subscription, not every asset or reward balance in the app. Users should retain the shutdown email, card invoice, transaction history and any support correspondence until the refund is visible.

Ready's public shutdown material did not explain what happens to unused Ready Rewards points. Users with a material points balance should obtain a written answer from Ready rather than assume the points became cash, survived unchanged or transferred to the successor programme.

What Failed and What Stayed Safe

The Ready case illustrates an important boundary in a self-custodial crypto card.

Self-custody protected the source assets from being held inside the failed issuer account. It did not guarantee continuous Mastercard access. A card still depends on an issuer, processor, network, compliance services and settlement integration even when the wallet is user-controlled.

That distinction is the central lesson of Ready Card. “Self-custodial” is valuable, but it does not make the payment infrastructure decentralised or immune to a partner shutdown.

Legacy Metal and Lite Cards

The following section preserves the useful historical comparison. Every figure is labelled legacy because neither tier can now be ordered or used.

Former Metal advantages

Metal's substantive advantages were zero Ready FX markup, the monthly ATM allowance, a premium physical card, Ready Travel rates and partner offers. Earlier benefits included Layerswap fee refunds and discounts from services such as Koinly, Nansen, Airalo, NordVPN and StarknetID. Exact partner terms changed and ended with the legacy programme.

Former Lite proposition

Lite was the lower-cost entry route. The virtual card was free and the physical version required $6.99 shipping. Its trade-off was a 1% FX fee, a 2% ATM fee and fewer partner benefits.

Card material and colour are specifications, not meaningful special benefits. The decision-relevant differences were price, foreign-exchange cost, cash-withdrawal cost and the reward programme.

Reward Programme History

Ready used two materially different reward systems during the card's life. They must not be merged.

Phase 1: direct STRK cashback

Before May 1, 2026, Ready advertised direct cashback calculated in USD and distributed in STRK. Metal earned 3% on the first $5,000 of eligible monthly spend, with a published $150 monthly and $1,800 annual maximum. Lite advertised 0.5% on the first $5,000.

Ready's help page repeated a $150 monthly maximum for Lite, but 0.5% of the same page's $5,000 spend band equals $25. Those figures conflict, so the advertised $150 should not be treated as a reliable reward cap.

The final token amount could differ from the in-app USD estimate because STRK's exchange rate could move before distribution. Refunds reduced later rewards, and only settled qualifying purchases counted. Exclusions included ATM and cash-equivalent transactions, money transfers, gambling, taxes, tuition, government services, charity and other high-risk categories.

Ready said this programme was funded by the Starknet Foundation and reviewed quarterly. It was not a permanent contractual 3% entitlement.

Phase 2: Ready Rewards points

On May 1, 2026, direct STRK cashback ended. Ready's May 5 announcement says cashback accrued before May 1 would receive a final STRK payout, while new activity earned Ready Rewards points.

Metal users earned points for eligible card spending and token trades. The published base earn rates were 3 points per $1 of eligible Metal card spend and 0.6 points per $1 of in-app token buys or sells. Lite earned 0.3 points per $1 of token trading; Ready's launch FAQ did not grant Lite a card-spend earn rate.

Points could be exchanged for a full USDC refund of an eligible settled card purchase. The user needed enough points to cover the whole purchase, and the transaction generally needed to be no more than 30 days old. Points became available only after settlement and a further seven-day grace period. They were whole numbers, so fractional point earnings were rounded down.

An independently documented app capture reported 300 points per $1 of USDC refund value. At that rate, Metal's base 3 points per $1 was approximately a 1% effective return, not 3% cashback. Two temporary 2x boosters—referring two Metal users and qualifying as a top-100 frequent spender—could combine to 9 points per $1, approximately 3% at the same redemption rate.

The app showed 300 points per $1 of refund value, but accessible official text did not state that rate. It should not be treated as permanent cashback, particularly now that the card has stopped.

Ready Rewards also covered token trading and proposed future subscription discounts. Those app-wide rewards were not all card cashback. “Coming soon” Claude, Netflix and Spotify offers should not be presented as delivered card benefits.

What the shutdown means for rewards

The card stopped less than three months after Ready Rewards replaced STRK cashback. No new card spend can earn points, and purchase-refund redemption depends on a functioning eligible card transaction. The current public successor announcement does not establish that points will convert into Community Card rewards.

Neither 3% STRK nor 0.5% STRK is a reward a reader can still earn. Both belong to the card's reward history, not its current benefits.

Legacy Fees and Limits

These figures are useful for documenting the old product and evaluating refunds or past statements. They are not current spending capacity.

Limits applied per user across multiple cards. Ready formerly allowed case-by-case requests for higher card limits. Neither the standard figures nor a past support increase survives the discontinued card programme.

Metal's 120-USDC payment was a card membership price, not staking. Lite's $6.99 was physical-card shipping or issuance, not an annual fee. Neither tier required a token stake or balance lock to access its base card reward.

How the Self-Custodial Card Worked

The old Ready Card spent USDC from a Starknet smart-contract wallet. When a user activated the card, the wallet authorised a constrained settlement permission for card payments. The user could revoke that permission, while the payment partner could initiate settlement within the authorised rules after a Mastercard purchase.

This differed from loading USDC into a custodial exchange balance. Ready did not need to hold the user's entire wallet balance in a conventional omnibus account. The user retained the account recovery and onchain control model.

The design still had centralised dependencies:

• identity and address verification;
• the regulated card programme and issuer;
• Mastercard acceptance and dispute processes;
• the settlement partner and authorised session logic;
• the Ready app and support flow;
• merchant settlement and card-compliance rules.

The July shutdown demonstrates the practical boundary. Users retained access to assets, but the authorised card-spending route stopped when the issuer wound down.

Funding, USDC and Related DeFi Products

The legacy card spent USDC. Users could fund the Ready Starknet wallet from another wallet or exchange, bridge assets, receive a Ready gift or use available bank/card funding routes. Other assets could remain in the wallet, but they were not automatically spendable at Mastercard merchants.

At purchase time, Ready treated 1 USDC as $1 for the card ledger and used Mastercard's exchange rate for the merchant currency. Metal added no Ready FX markup; Lite added 1%. Dynamic currency conversion offered by a merchant or ATM could still produce a poor rate and was outside Ready's zero-markup claim.

Ready's Bitcoin borrowing product was a separate DeFi feature: users could place supported wrapped BTC into a borrowing position, borrow USDC and then spend the USDC with the card. Borrowing did not make the card itself a credit card. It introduced protocol interest, collateral and liquidation risk.

The issuer shutdown removed the card-spending endpoint. It did not automatically close every DeFi position. Anyone with a borrowing, staking or liquidity position must manage that onchain position separately and should use full-account recovery when a simple token transfer would omit it.

Ready's earlier bank-deposit and multi-currency funding claims also belonged to the legacy Starknet app. They do not prove that Community Cards will have the same rails.

Former Country Availability

Before the full shutdown, Ready restricted active card service to selected European and nearby jurisdictions: EEA countries plus the United Kingdom, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Ready exposed final eligibility during the in-app KYC flow. Merchant acceptance worldwide was a different question: an issued Mastercard could work in many countries, but that did not make residents of those countries eligible to apply.

In June 2026, some users whose cards were used primarily outside the EEA received a deactivation message on short notice. The event showed that the former “global” positioning did not guarantee continued card access in every market.

Ready's historical availability lists conflict and sometimes overlap. They are now only imperfect history for a discontinued product and do not establish eligibility for the separate Community Card.

Identity Verification

Identity and address verification involved the card programme and Persona.

Security, Issuer and Operational Risk

Ready's old security materials emphasised a user-controlled smart account, social recovery, biometric protection, card freeze controls and a long smart-contract operating history. Those were meaningful wallet strengths.

The card still required full KYC and could request transaction information for compliance review. A self-custodial wallet does not remove the issuer's obligation or ability to restrict card access.

Ready previously named Kulipa in its card and privacy material as the regulated card-programme partner. The July 2026 customer message described the current issuer as winding down, and Ready has not named the replacement issuer for Community Cards. Historical partner text should not be presented as the active successor arrangement.

Operational resilience is now the largest negative in the Ready Card history. A product can protect wallet custody while failing at the payment-rail layer. Users who rely on any crypto card as their primary payment method should keep a backup card and enough accessible funds outside a single issuer relationship.

User Feedback and Shutdown Impact

Independent card-specific feedback was limited even while Ready Card was active. The product's positive case was easy to understand: users liked spending from a self-custodial wallet, Metal's lack of an FX markup, Google Pay, the physical card and the ability to combine DeFi with ordinary purchases.

The issuer disruption matters more than minor app complaints. Ready said the July 29 stop happened without advance notice to the company, meaning cardholders could encounter a decline before receiving a planned migration window. A month earlier, community posts reproduced a Ready email giving some non-EEA users roughly one hour before deactivation. Those reports describe surprise, questions about moving assets and users looking for replacement cards.

These reports do not mean wallet funds were lost. They show that cardholders could lose payment access abruptly even though wallet recovery still worked. For a self-custodial card, those are two different service outcomes.

App-store reviews mix years of Argent wallet feedback, Ready app feedback and card feedback, so the aggregate score is not a clean card-satisfaction measure. There is not enough independent evidence to quantify what percentage of cardholders were happy before the shutdown. Observable strengths and the documented disruption are more useful than an invented prevalence estimate.

Community Card on Base

Ready's Community Finance announcement says the company is moving its app direction from Starknet to Base and plans Community Cards, initially around selected esports communities. This is a product announcement, not a complete card offer.

Ready has not yet published the information needed to evaluate the Community Card:

• named issuer and card network agreement;
• launch date and application route;
• supported applicant countries;
• virtual and physical formats;
• card price, shipping and replacement fees;
• FX, ATM, conversion and top-up fees;
• reward type, rate, cap and redemption mechanics;
• spending and withdrawal limits;
• custody and card-settlement design;
• KYC provider and regulatory scope;
• treatment of unused Ready Rewards points.

Community branding, partner communities and a Base account do not answer those questions. The Community Card should be evaluated as a new product once complete terms exist, rather than treating the discontinued Metal and Lite cards as available again.

Top-Up Methods

• Legacy Ready Card top-ups and spending are no longer available
• Existing Starknet assets remain self-custodial
• Move transferable assets to a Starknet account in Ready X or another wallet
• Import the full Starknet account in Ready X when preserving NFTs, DeFi positions, address or history
• The new Base account does not receive old Starknet assets automatically

Self-Custody True Self-Custody

• The discontinued card spent USDC through a revocable settlement permission
• Starknet assets remain in the user-controlled Ready wallet after card deactivation
• Existing users can move transferable assets to Ready X or import the full Starknet account
• The new Base account does not receive old Starknet assets automatically

Pros and Cons

Verdict

Ready Card is no longer a product to compare for signup. Metal and Lite stopped working on July 29, 2026, and the referral and purchase offers are retired.

Its history is still useful. Ready demonstrated a technically meaningful self-custodial settlement model: the issuer failed, but source assets remained recoverable in the user's Starknet account. It also demonstrated why custody is only one part of card risk. Mastercard access depended on a centralised issuer and could disappear abruptly.

Ready first paid direct STRK cashback, then replaced it on May 1 with Ready Rewards points, and shut the card less than three months later. Neither 3% STRK nor 0.5% STRK is current cashback. Users with points need a current answer from Ready about redemption rather than an assumption based on the former FAQ.

Existing users should prioritise asset recovery, open DeFi positions, subscription refunds and written confirmation for outstanding rewards. New users should wait for full Community Card terms and evaluate that successor as a separate Base product.

Sources

• Ready is moving to Base
• Introducing Community Finance
• How to migrate Starknet funds to Ready X
• Introducing Ready Rewards
• Ready Card fees and payments
• Ready Card FAQ
• Ready Card privacy and security FAQ
• Legacy Ready Card limits and funding guide
• Ready Rewards app-rate documentation
• Community report reproducing Ready's June 2026 non-EEA deactivation notice
• Ready App Store reviews