Running an encrypted card business—choosing the wrong partner could ruin your company.
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Running an encrypted card business—choosing the wrong partner could ruin your company.
For Web3 entrepreneurs, selecting a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) partner is no longer merely a business decision—it’s a matter of survival.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Pavel Matveev
Translated by: TechFlow
TechFlow Intro:
Recently, Europe’s crypto card issuance sector has been hit by a powerful regulatory storm. Polish issuer Quicko had its license revoked; Lithuania’s financial regulator issued an enforcement order against Monavate—causing immediate paralysis of funds and payment functionality for numerous crypto projects and their users.
Pavel Matveev, CEO of Wirex, reflects on these events, pointing out that many issuers pursuing growth at the expense of compliance now face existential threats.
For Web3 founders, selecting a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) partner is no longer merely a business decision—it is a matter of survival.
Full Text Below:
If you’re building a fintech product reliant on card issuance or banking infrastructure, what follows may keep you awake at night.
What Happened
Last week, Quicko—a widely used Polish card issuer in crypto card programs—lost its operating license. The consequences were immediate and brutal: dozens of partners and thousands of end-users lost access to banking and card functionality overnight.
No warning. No transition period. Service vanished instantly.
Just weeks earlier, Lithuania’s central bank, Lietuvos bankas, issued a legally binding instruction to UAB Monavate—a top-tier issuer for crypto-related card programs—ordering it to cease providing financial services to six partners: KPTRS Investments Limited, Amnis Europe AG, ConnexPay Ireland Limited, Brighty Digital UAB, Kulipa SAS, and Immersve UK Ltd.
You can read the full announcement here:
https://www.lb.lt/en/news/lietuvos-bankas-imposes-temporary-restrictions-on-uab-monavate
The Unspoken Pattern
Here’s what’s actually happening: regulators across Europe are tightening oversight over Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), especially those serving crypto-related businesses.
Issuers that achieved rapid growth by saying “Yes” to everyone are now realizing that compliance isn’t a checkbox—it’s an ongoing operational discipline requiring real investment, genuine expertise, and authentic corporate culture.
Many such issuers built their business models around scale: onboard as many projects as possible, ask as few questions as possible, collect fees.
This model is collapsing—in real time.
Why This Matters Especially for Founders
If you’re a founder or product leader building any product involving cards, payments, or banking infrastructure, your choice of BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service) partner is literally a matter of life or death.
Not “important”—life or death.
When your issuer loses its license:
- Your cards stop working.
- Your users cannot withdraw funds.
- Your business grinds to a halt.
- Your reputation suffers catastrophic, potentially irreversible damage.
Here’s an unsettling truth: many issuers operating out of Puerto Rico or other popular offshore jurisdictions—marketing themselves under banners like “crypto card programs” or “global card issuance”—lack the compliance infrastructure needed to withstand rigorous regulatory scrutiny.
They hold licenses—but not a compliance culture.
What Due Diligence Really Looks Like
Before committing to any BaaS or card issuance partner, ask yourself the following questions:
Regulatory Track Record: How long have they held their license? Have they ever received regulatory warnings, fines, or restrictions? What is their relationship with their home-country regulator?
Compliance Infrastructure: How large is their compliance team? Is it treated as a cost center to be minimized—or as a strategic function receiving significant investment? Do they have dedicated teams for financial crime, anti-money laundering (AML), and risk management—or does one person wear five hats?
Client Portfolio: Who else do they work with? If their entire client base consists of high-risk crypto projects, this over-concentration introduces systemic risk for everyone on the platform.
Operational Resilience: What happens if they lose a banking partner? Do they have fallback arrangements? Have they stress-tested their infrastructure?
Culture: This is the hardest to assess—but the most critical. Is compliance just lip service in sales meetings, or is it embedded in every operational detail?
Wirex’s Perspective
I write this not as a neutral observer, but as a practitioner deeply immersed in this space since 2014.
Wirex invented the crypto debit card. We’ve issued millions of stablecoin-linked cards. We’ve weathered multiple market cycles, regulatory transformations, and industry upheavals—not through shortcuts, but by embedding compliance and risk management into our very foundations.
Last year, we received two awards I’m deeply proud of:
- Compliance Culture Initiative of the Year 2025
- Risk Management Team of the Year 2025
These aren’t vanity metrics. They reflect a decade of commitment—to doing the right thing, even when it’s slower, more expensive, and even when competitors sprint ahead by ignoring the rules.
The crypto card space is undergoing a painful yet necessary correction.
Issuers treating compliance as an afterthought are being weeded out. Projects choosing partners solely on speed and price are learning costly lessons.
What remains will be a stronger ecosystem: fewer players, higher standards, and more sustainable business models.
If you’re building for the long term, choose partners who think—and act—with the same long-term mindset.
This article reflects my personal views as CEO of Wirex.
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