Update 1/15/20: Also available on the Google Play store. Hat tip to reader Burton
Metal Pay is a payments app that is similar to Venmo. Currently you can send funds using your Metal Pay balance, using a linked bank account or with cryptocurrency it is only available on iOS. The real catch with Metal Pay is that for every transaction where you send money you’ll earn up to 5% back in cryptocurrency (metal or $MTL), there are no fees to send cash or cryptocurrency. You’ll notice that we said up to 5% and that’s because they cap the amount paid out each day to about 7,200 MTL, as they start reaching that threshold the amount paid out decreases so that it never hits 0. You can also use Metal Pay as a cryptocurrency wallet and buy and sell 16 different types of cryptocurrency as well.
Like most financial tech companies, Metal Pay uses Plaid when connecting to your bank account (used by Mint and other big players).
Sign Up Bonus
No longer offered
Normally you can get a $6 bonus when you use a referral link, but Metal Pay has agreed to give our readers a sign up bonus of $10 when using this link (we do not get any commission, we are passing the full bonus onto you). This code is limited to 1,000 redemptions and expires on May 3rd. Once it hits 1,000 redemptions it will say that the promotion is no longer valid.
Our Verdict
Unfortunately there is no debit or credit card angle here, but it could be useful if you’re a fan of Cryptocurrency and use these types of payment apps. Personally I’ll be giving this one a miss
F.A.Q’s
Note the first two questions are ones we asked Metal Pay directly.
What stops two parties just sending money to each other over and over again?
This is great questions that we get asked a lot. Basically, we are monitoring for this “payment cycling” or “payment spinning” with algorithms. We don’t want people cycling payments to each other and taking all the rewards. We reserve the right to drop someone’s ability to earn lower and lower until they eventually hit zero if we detect abnormal behavior like payment cycling.
What’s the monetization plan for metal pay?
We have a “Discover” section of the app that we plan to use first and foremost to educate people about our product and cryptocurrency. But, this section will also serve as a marketplace for other businesses (crypto or not) who want to reward or interact with our user base, which they can do for a fee. There is a small fee for selling or buying cryptocurrency (1%).
Anyone still earning MTL?
Started a couple months back sent $200 from an Android to iOS phone, never received any POP/MTL. They did credit some MTL manually, but I’ve never been able to generate any rewards automatically.
Wondering if I’m doing something wrong, support was not helpful as to the cause of no earn.
Oof that is not good. I always look out for use cases for metalpay because I really want to use it but I never transact p2p. That’s disappointing you never earned any MTL or whatever you’re supposed to earn
Thanks, you know it’s started to work some now when I transferred P2P from an IPhone to an Android phone
Beware! The “value” of the Metal Pay “currency” has crashed 98% over the last two years, from $12 to $0.25 So obviously the crypto world has almost zero faith in this whole business model.
So if you started using this app a couple of years ago, you have earned essentially nothing.
Price data here: .https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/metal/
Except that I cash out about a week after each payout. So I have made about $200 in the last few months in USD cash, that is sitting in my bank account. So i won’t bother reading the price data, i can read my account statement 🙂
I downloaded the Android version but I was not able to sign up. When entering the phone number, I get an error: “phone number is invalid”. I am using Google Voice as my phone for calls and texts but Metal Pay does not support Google Voice numbers. Anyone have a workaround?
We like to sign up P1 & P2, but we only have one “regular” mobile phone number together and I doubt that the number can be shared between two users…?
I have that issue from time to time (on various banking apps) when i try to use my google voice number instead of my cell number. I’m not aware of a workaround as there must be a way for them to tell that your google number is not a “real” cell number and they want a cell number for verification purposes.
Finally! Been using Metal pay for months for payments between p2 and myself but have had to use my old iPhone.
Note that I’ve determined after reviewing all my MTL freebies, that they cap the reward for each transaction at 25 MTL, regardless of its current valuation. I am not sure if that is per day or per transaction as I stick to 1 per day max on big sends.
Also to clarify, both the sender and the receiver, on each transaction receive roughly 5% back (up to 25 MTL) for a total of 10% (up to 50 MTL) back.
I can confirm, that this holds true even if you do several in the same day (there is no max you can earn per day overall). I did 3 large transactions in the same day and earned +25 MTL per transaction in my account, the 3rd one didn’t show up for several days, but it just did this morning.
Interested in your experience. Is this still working for you now?
Reading the Pop blog posts looks like you got the whole 25 MTL pop distribution for that 10 minute window (if the other 25 MTL went to the recipient). So I guess about $5 per transaction at current prices. Do you do the transfers at odd hours so no one else gets a portion of the distribution during that 10 minute block?
Has your POP Score dropped (assuming you haven’t purchased MTL and have been cashing out MTL fairly frequently)? or have you hit any lifetime MTL earning cap?
Thanks
I don’t worry about the time of day, or the daily cap. In my experience, if I don’t get the full 25MTL on each side, when I should, it is only slightly less (I think almost always more than 20 MTL). I still use this all the time, its free money. I stopped putting a lot of thought in to gaming it, I don’t have any issues with it. I just send or receive, and accept the free money which is always close to, if not, the max 25 MTL.
I cash out as soon as I am able.
No idea what a “Pop score” is.
Stop thinking so much, and just do it, and smile when you get your free money 🙂
🙂
Looks like doc set up a page for referrals here:
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/metal-pay-6-referral-bonus-share-your-referrals-here/
I am not sure about others but my referral says for $10. The page says $6 so i am not sure if that is the new public referral bonus or if everyones is different.
I can testify this $6 is valid as I got $6 immediately upon registration. And there was no hard pull whatsoever. I believe it was only a soft check! The sign up process took less than 5 minutes.
If you sign up by clicking the link below on you mobile device browser, which will bring you to the Apple Store, then download APP and finish registration, then both you and I will get $6 worth of the Metal cryptocurrency bonus right away, which you can instantly cash out to your bank account. Be sure to claim it after registration. Thanks in advance.
[removed]
No
Definitely not allowed to post referral links here. Referrals should be posted at the dedicated page doc set up at https://www.doctorofcredit.com/metal-pay-6-referral-bonus-share-your-referrals-here/
Not sure, don’t think so
I wonder then does the $6 link still work? I still didn’t sign up, mostly out of laziness.. but may try it this week.
Don’t do this one guys. They’re holding my money and claiming “technical errors” for about a month. It’s a nightmare.
not available in NY