Chocopay in plain English: a Russian-language Telegram bot, three virtual Visa cards, and a 3-9% crypto top-up fee

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Chocopay is a Telegram bot that issues virtual Visa cards denominated in US dollars and funded with rubles or cryptocurrency. There is no mobile app, no website account for most users, no published issuer name, no licence number, and no published fee schedule beyond the issuance price and the crypto top-up commission. The service and its support are in Russian, the three cards target subscriptions and AI tools, general spending, and travel, and the whole flow from sign-up to first payment is meant to take a couple of minutes. If that brief sounds like a fit for you, the rest of this review walks through what the card actually costs to use, who can and cannot get one, where it works and where it does not, and what alternatives look like for the same job.

The conditions below are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Chocopay scores 4.5 out of 10 in my review. That number reflects a real mix: the card is genuinely easy to issue, accepts more than a hundred cryptocurrencies for top-up, supports Apple Pay and Google Pay on two of its three tiers, and is built around the specific use case of paying for foreign subscriptions (AI tools, streaming, SaaS). The half-points come off for things that matter to anyone thinking of this as a primary card: the issuing bank and licence are not named, the legal entity sits in a Dubai free-zone office, the conversion markup on non-USD spending is unofficial rather than published, ATM cash withdrawal is unofficial-not-supported, and a successful payment on the card is explicitly non-refundable. In plain terms, this is a niche tool, not a general-purpose card, and it is best understood as a way to top up a prepaid Visa with crypto and spend that balance in a small set of online and Apple/Google Pay scenarios.

Who Chocopay suits: users who need a USD-denominated Visa to pay for foreign AI subscriptions, hosting, streaming or SaaS, who are comfortable topping up with crypto or rubles via SBP, and who do not need cash, do not need a physical card, and are happy working inside a Telegram bot. If you are in that group, the card is fit for purpose and the issuance price is low.

Who Chocopay does not suit: anyone who needs a regulated bank-issued card, a named issuer, a published fee schedule, ATM cash withdrawal, multicurrency accounts, a physical card, a mobile app, English-language support, or the ability to recover money from the card after a successful payment. If any of those are dealbreakers for you, the alternatives at the end of this review are a better starting point.

Who will give you the card

The headline that Chocopay uses is “no documents, no verification”, and that is broadly accurate at the moment of issue: you open the Telegram bot, accept the rules, pick a card, and receive the card details in a couple of minutes. The age floor is 18, the service and the support are in Russian, and the terms do not state any citizenship or residency rule. The terms do, however, require you to confirm that you are not on the UN, OFAC, EU or UAE sanctions lists, and not a politically exposed person. That is a self-attestation, not a check at the time of issue, and it is the only gate between you and the card.

Two further points from the same terms matter even if you do pass that gate. The first is the list of restricted countries in Section 6.3 of the terms: payments to sellers linked to those countries are blocked, and Russia appears in the list. The second is the currency rule: payments in Russian rubles and Ukrainian hryvnias are prohibited, and the terms say the service “does not guarantee” payments on accounts that have a history of Russia linkage, even if the payment itself is in another currency. The portal advertises payment in “more than 140 currencies” and lists USD, JPY, EUR, KZT, TRY, ILS, GBP, THB and GEL among them.

So, in practice, you can be almost anywhere and get a card, but the card is built to spend in non-Russian, non-Ukrainian currency to merchants that are not in restricted jurisdictions. If you only need to pay a Russian vendor in rubles, this is the wrong card; if you need to pay a US-based AI or SaaS subscription in US dollars, it is the right shape.

The same terms also put a clock on verification. Even though the card is issued without documents, the operator can ask for them later, and the terms require you to provide them within two calendar days. Automated checks are said to take up to five minutes; complex cases three to ten working days. The terms also state that refunds from a web account require KYC, which means that if you want to get money back to your original source, you should expect to verify at that point even if you did not verify at issue. There are no published tiers of verification, and the reasons for rejection are not stated.

How to get it

The flow is short and lives inside Telegram. You open the bot, read the rules, choose a tariff, issue the card, and top it up. There are three tariffs and three cards:

• Subscriptions and AI — $6 for three months. Targeted at recurring online services: AI tools, streaming, domain and hosting, software subscriptions.
• Universal — $15 for 18 months ($0.83 a month on the portal’s own maths). The general-purpose card and the only one that, together with Travel, lists Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Travel — $10 for six months. Positioned for trip-related spending.

All three are virtual Visa cards in US dollars; the portal does not mention Mastercard. Because they are virtual only, there is no shipping, no delivery and no physical PIN; the card details land in the bot and you can bind them to Apple Pay, Google Pay, or use them directly for online checkout. The terms describe replacement as “possible but not in all cases”, for example if the card is blocked by a service, not accepted somewhere, or there is a technical problem, and they do not give a price for a replacement.

The portal’s tariff prices and a separate terms-of-operation page disagree on the issuance fee: the portal gives $6, $10 and $15, while the terms-of-operation page lists $2, $6 or $9 depending on tariff, and $6 or $9 when paid in crypto. That kind of mismatch is worth knowing about up front: the price you see in the bot at the moment of issue is the price you pay, but the longer document carries a different number, and it is the terms that govern a dispute.

A small but useful detail: the bot asks you to bind a phone number or a Telegram account, and any later support interaction goes through that channel. If you lose access to the account, you lose access to the card.

What it really costs: fees, markups and the everyday case

The headline numbers are low. There is no monthly fee stated in the terms, the card costs between $6 and $15 to issue, and the cards run for three to eighteen months depending on tier. The real cost is in the top-up and in the conversion, and that is where the published numbers get thin.

The table mixes official and unofficial on purpose: the column says so, and where a number is unofficial it is from a third-party review site (inokarti.com, June 2026) that I have no way to verify against the operator’s own page. Treat those lines as a heads-up, not a contract.

To make the cost concrete, three everyday scenarios, all in the same card (Universal, $15, 18 months):

• AI subscription, $20 a month, paid in USD. You send the bot $20 in crypto plus the 3-9% top-up fee, and the merchant is paid in USD, so there is no FX step. The card is then used for the monthly charge. The minimum crypto top-up of $30 means you will usually top up in advance for at least one month and keep the spare on the card.
• Streaming service, €9.99 a month. The card converts USD to EUR at the card scheme rate, and on top of that the unofficial 2-3% markup applies. This payment ends up costing the subscription amount plus the markup, before the crypto top-up fee.
• Online shop payment in rubles (Russia or to a Russian seller). Not allowed. The terms prohibit payments in rubles, and the restricted-country list covers merchants with Russia linkage. If the payment is in another currency but the merchant has a Russia link, the terms say the service “does not guarantee” the payment will go through.

Across those three cases, the cost stack is: issuance (amortised over the card’s life: Universal works out to $0.83 a month if you use the full 18 months), top-up fee, conversion markup on non-USD spending, and any per-attempt charges. The scheme is not unusually cheap for a crypto-funded prepaid Visa, but it is also not transparent, because two of the four cost layers are unofficial.

How to top it up

Top-up is split into two paths. The first is ruble top-up from a Russian bank card or via SBP, with a minimum of $15 equivalent and the ruble amount calculated inside the bot at the operator’s own rate. The second is crypto top-up, with a minimum of $30 and a commission of 3-9%. The portal advertises “more than 100” cryptocurrencies but does not list the specific coins or the networks. In a Telegram-only product, that is the single biggest operational risk: if you send the right coin on the wrong network, the funds are, in the general crypto-card background below, typically unrecoverable, and the card’s own terms do not state who pays the network fee or who pays for a mis-sent transfer.

A few operational points worth knowing:

• Top-ups are limited to your own funds. A third-party card, a card from a relative, or a corporate card is not allowed (this is from an unofficial source and not stated in the public terms).
• Card-to-card transfers are not supported. If you want to move balance between Chocopay users, you cannot do it on the card rails.
• Minimums and the ruble rate are calculated in the bot at the moment of top-up, so the dollar amount you see is the amount that lands on the card.

Refunds are the other half of the funding picture, and the policy is unusually strict for a payment product. If you use only the bot, the balance is returnable only if the card was issued within the past 30 days, you have not completed a transaction, and the card is not working or accepted. Once a single payment has gone through, the balance cannot be returned. The issuance fee and commissions are excluded from any refund in any case, and the refund window is 14 working days, extendable to 30 working days on a fraud suspicion. For web-account users, the refund goes to the original wallet, network fees come out, and KYC is required.

Paying with it every day

In day-to-day use, the card behaves like a prepaid USD Visa: you top up, the balance sits in dollars, and you spend it online or through a wallet. There is no cash access, no physical card, and no account number with overdraft. Two of the three tiers (Universal and Travel) list Apple Pay and Google Pay, but binding a card to a wallet requires a confirmation code that a manager sends in working hours, which means binding is not instant outside support hours.

There is no standalone app and no published store rating. The Telegram bot is the whole product: balance, top-up, card details, support. Manager response is advertised at up to five minutes, support hours are 09:00-21:00 MSK, and the bot itself runs around the clock. The email channel is [email protected].

The list of blocked merchant categories is a real, everyday constraint:

• Sellers linked to Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and other Visa/Mastercard-restricted countries
• Payments in rubles or hryvnias
• Adult (18+) services
• Casinos and betting

The terms say a breach can lead to a block “without refund”, which is the same rule that applies after any successful payment: once the money has left, you cannot get it back to the card balance. Disputes and complaints go through Telegram support or the email, refunds held up to 30 working days on suspected fraud or bank review, and refunds within 14 working days otherwise. The chargeback process is not stated, and an unofficial source gives a $5 fee for a refund.

The card’s reward structure is light: no cashback is stated, and the portal’s hero label mentions a $2 referral bonus. For someone using the card as a utility tool to pay subscriptions, that is a thin layer; for someone who treats the card as a payments account, it is essentially nothing.

What can go wrong

A few risks cluster around this product that are worth weighing before you put a serious balance on it.

• The issuer is not named. The card is described as “of foreign banks”, and the operator behind the bot is CYPHER GOODS WHOLESALERS LLC, registration number 1049902, Office No. 301A, Dubai Investment Properties (LLC), Al Raqqa, Dubai. No issuing bank, no financial licence, and an unofficial source (inokarti.com, June 2026) says it has no public financial licence at all. In a sector where card programmes can be suspended overnight (see WaveCrest in 2018 and FTX in November 2022 in the general background below), an un-named issuer and an un-named licence are concrete risks.
• The third-party review picture is thin. A single review site (inokarti.com) gives Chocopay 3.8 from 25 reviews and flags the data set as not enough. There is no Trustpilot page, no app-store rating, and a vc.ru ranking from 2026 reports no confirmation that Chocopay works for one specific subscription payment (Claude). I did not find any official incident in the public record, but neither is there an established reputation.
• No refunds after a successful payment. The terms draw a sharp line: any successful payment blocks refunds from the bot. The only refundable path for bot users is a card issued within 30 days, no completed transactions, and not working/accepted. Once the card is working and the first payment has gone through, the door is closed.
• Operator liability is capped. The terms cap the operator’s liability at the last month’s commission, with a maximum of $100. For a card that has been topped up with a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, that cap is well below the balance.
• Top-up risks. Crypto transfers are irreversible in general, and on this card the operator does not publish a list of supported coins or networks, and does not state who pays the network fee. A wrong network is a real risk.
• Country and currency rules. The restricted-country list and the ruble/hryvnia ban are not signposted in a single place on the portal; they are in Section 6.3 of the terms. If you do not read the terms, you can be surprised by a decline, and the terms say the service “does not guarantee” payments on accounts with a Russia linkage history, even in a non-ruble currency.
• Operational ageing. Cards freeze after expiry or after many declines at zero balance, and can be unfrozen in the bot; cards can be cancelled after 30 days of inactivity. The card is a tool, not an account, and it is treated as disposable.
• Security stack is minimal. 2FA and self-custody are not stated; the product is custodial, in the sense that the operator holds the balance, and the terms describe it as “a virtual card for international purchases for a set period”.

These are not reasons to avoid the card on their own; they are reasons to size the balance to what you would be comfortable losing if the worst-case scenario played out, and to keep the card as one of several tools rather than a primary account.

What to take instead

Three alternatives cover the same job — paying online with a crypto-funded Visa or Mastercard — with different trade-offs.

Ape Wallet scores 5.5/10 in my review. The card works “wherever Visa is accepted” and the site is in Russian. It issues a “service card” for subscriptions and online, plus an Apple Pay / Google Pay card. There is no published issuance price (promo codes change it), no published fees, and “the fee and total are shown before confirming any operation”. Top-ups run from a USDT wallet balance, and there is a two-level referral programme that pays a share of invited users’ card purchases, with no percentages published. Compared to Chocopay, Ape is more wallet-led and less bot-led, and the user experience revolves around USDT and Telegram, not around Russian bank cards and SBP.

MaxSwap scores 5.2/10. It is a virtual-only Mastercard, with no geographic restrictions claimed on the site, $50 for the card and a required first deposit of $25, for a total issuance cost of around $75. Top-up is 4.5% plus $1, transactions are $0.25 plus 0.4%, and there is no separate FX rate (the site says “take into account possible fees when paying and converting currencies”). The published crypto list is concrete: ADA, ALGO, AVAX, BCH, BNB, BTC, DOT, ETH, HBAR, HT, KRRX, LINK, LTC, MATIC, NEAR, SHIB, SUSHI, TON, TRX, UNI, USDC, USDT, XLM, XRP. No cashback is mentioned. Compared to Chocopay, MaxSwap is more expensive at the top-up step but more transparent on the coin list.

AnoCard scores 5.9/10. It issues virtual cards (VCC) in reloadable and one-time flavours from several BINs, picked with filters in the SORN web dashboard. The network and currency depend on the BIN you pick. Creation and maintenance fees, top-up percentages and minimums are not published on the page; they are shown in SORN before you pay. The starting data (unverified here) is that top-up is in SOL, BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH and others, via Telegram bot or web dashboard. There is no cashback, and the referral programme is $5 per referred card creation plus 0.25% of referred top-ups. Compared to Chocopay, AnoCard is a multi-BIN product with a web dashboard, so the experience is closer to a card-management interface than a single-purpose bot.

A quick comparison of the four:

If you want a one-coin, low-issuance tool to pay AI subscriptions and you read Russian, Chocopay is the cheapest entry point on the list. If you want transparency on the coin list and a different network, MaxSwap is the clearest. If you want a wallet-led flow with USDT and referral income, Ape Wallet fits. If you want a multi-BIN card-management experience and a web dashboard, AnoCard is the closest.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Chocopay to a reader who ticks four boxes at once. First, the card is a fit if you are comfortable using a service where support and the bot are in Russian. Second, if you are paying US-dollar or non-Russian-currency subscriptions to AI tools, streaming, hosting or SaaS, and the merchant is not in a restricted country, the card is built for that. Third, if you are comfortable topping up with crypto through a Telegram bot and you understand the irreversibility of a wrong network, the funding path is short. Fourth, if you would be comfortable losing the balance you keep on the card, given the un-named issuer, the un-named licence, the cap on liability, and the no-refund-after-first-payment rule, then the risk is sized.

I would not recommend Chocopay to a reader who needs a primary card, a physical card, cash access, a regulated EU or UK issuer, an English-language support flow, an app, or the ability to recover funds after a successful payment. For that group, the alternatives above — particularly AnoCard, which has a web dashboard and is closer to a card-management product — are a better starting point.

A practical way to use this card well is as a low-balance subscription tool, topped up in small amounts of crypto, with the bulk of any larger balance kept in self-custody until you are ready to top up. That keeps the issuer risk and the conversion risk on a balance you can afford to lose, and it leaves the rest of your funds in your own wallet.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Chocopay card?

It is a virtual Visa card issued inside a Telegram bot, denominated in US dollars, with three tariffs (Subscriptions and AI, Universal, Travel) that last three, eighteen and six months respectively. The service and support are in Russian, and the operator behind the bot is CYPHER GOODS WHOLESALERS LLC, registered in Dubai.

How does the Chocopay card work?

You open the bot, accept the rules, pick a tariff, receive the card details, and top up with Russian-ruble SBP or Russian bank cards (from $15), or with cryptocurrency (from $30, with a 3-9% commission). You then spend the balance online or through Apple Pay or Google Pay (Universal and Travel only).

Is Chocopay a bank?

No. The terms describe the card as a “virtual card for international purchases for a set period” issued by “foreign banks”, without naming the bank. The company behind the bot is a Dubai free-zone LLC, and no financial licence is published; an unofficial source says it has no public financial licence at all.

Who owns Chocopay?

The operator listed in the terms is CYPHER GOODS WHOLESALERS LLC, registration number 1049902, Office No. 301A, Dubai Investment Properties (LLC), Al Raqqa, Dubai. No parent company, no licence number and no named issuing bank are published on the public pages.

How do I get the Chocopay card?

You open the Telegram bot, read the rules, choose a tariff, pay the issuance fee ($6, $10 or $15 depending on the card), and top up. The card is virtual only, with no shipping and no physical PIN, and the details arrive in the bot in a couple of minutes.

Does the Chocopay card require KYC?

At the moment of issue, no documents are required. The terms allow the operator to ask for documents later and require them within two calendar days; automated checks take up to five minutes and complex cases three to ten working days. Refunds from a web account require KYC, and you must be at least 18 and not on the UN, OFAC, EU or UAE sanctions lists.

How do I top up the Chocopay card?

Two paths. Ruble top-up from a Russian bank card or via SBP, with a $15 minimum and the dollar amount calculated in the bot. Crypto top-up, with a $30 minimum and a 3-9% commission, from “more than 100” cryptocurrencies; the specific coins and networks are not listed in the public terms, and third-party cards are not allowed.

Where can I use the Chocopay card?

Online at merchants that accept Visa, in USD or in a non-prohibited currency, and to sellers not linked to the restricted-country list (which includes Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and other Visa/Mastercard-restricted countries). Universal and Travel also list Apple Pay and Google Pay. Payments in rubles and hryvnias are prohibited, and adult services, casinos and betting are blocked.

Is the Chocopay card safe?

The product is custodial, which means the operator holds the balance rather than you holding the private keys. The terms cap the operator’s liability at the last month’s commission, maximum $100, and refunds are not available after a successful payment. There is no published financial licence, no named issuing bank, and a thin third-party review footprint (3.8 from 25 reviews on a single site). Size any balance to what you can afford to lose.

How do I get money back from the Chocopay card?

For bot users, only if the card was issued within the past 30 days, you have not completed a transaction, and the card is not working or accepted. Once a single payment has gone through, no refund. For web-account users, refunds go to the original wallet, network fees come out, and KYC is required. Refunds are paid within 14 working days and may be held up to 30 working days on fraud suspicion.

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