Nº 2 Best for ETH holders

ether.fi Cash review

Still the highest everyday rate for ETH holders, but read the small print: cashback now arrives in the ETHFI token, and euro purchases hit a much lower cap than dollar ones.

Most crypto cards make you sell to spend. ether.fi Cash is a non-custodial Visa credit card: you deposit stablecoins, ETH or other supported assets into a vault you control, and either spend your USDC directly or borrow against the rest while it stays invested. Every qualifying purchase earns cashback, and the rate depends on two things: your membership level and how much you have already spent that calendar month.

What you earn

All levels pay 3% up to a monthly cap, then step down: 1% on the next band, then 0.5% on dollar and most other spending, or 0.1% on euro spending. The catch for European readers is that euro purchases have their own, lower caps, measured in dollars. On the free Core level, 3% stops after the first $800 of euro spending, about €700, against $2,000 for dollar spending. Both kinds of purchase count towards one monthly total, so euro spending uses up your dollar allowance too, and the other way round.

Cashback is no longer paid in USDC. It is converted to ETHFI, ether.fi's own token, at the price when the purchase clears, locked for 7 days, and then claimed from the app. That makes it worth whatever ETHFI is worth when you sell, which can be more or less than the 3% you were shown. Points reset every month, so a points-based level has to be earned again each month. Some spending earns nothing: ATM withdrawals, peer-to-peer payments, gift cards, rent paid through property managers, gambling, tax payments and anything that works like cash.

What it costs

Where ether.fi's own pages disagree, as on the physical card, we print both and use the higher figure.

A worked example

Take €1,500 a month on the free Core level, with the calculator's usual assumptions. In Germany, where 90% of that is in euros, about €351 a year comes back in cashback and €9 goes on the 0.5% fee for the other 10%: €342 a year. That is the same as OKX, which pays a flat 2% capped at €50 a month. Below €1,500, ether.fi wins; above it, OKX does, and at €3,000 a month OKX keeps €564 against ether.fi's €372.

In Romania, where most spending is in lei, the picture flips. Lei purchases follow the higher dollar ladder, so the same €1,500 earns about €509 in cashback, and the 0.5% fee on lei takes €77 of it: €432 a year, the best of any card we track there. The same holds in Hungary, Poland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

Should you buy Luxe? At €1,500 a month in Germany it barely pays: the higher euro cap lifts cashback to about €540, but the $199 fee (about €176) leaves €360, only €18 more than Core. At €3,000 a month it is a different card: about €819 a year after the fee, against €372 on Core and €564 on OKX. And if you genuinely spend around $5,000 a month, the points earn you Luxe for free.

Spending or borrowing

The card has two modes. Direct Pay spends your USDC first, then ether.fi's liquidUSD vault token, with no interest. Borrow Mode lets you spend against everything in the vault, such as weETH (ether.fi's staked ETH), while it keeps earning. The loan runs through Aave markets at a variable rate, with no grace period, no statement and no minimum payment: interest accrues by the second until you repay. You can borrow up to 55% of the value of ETH or weETH and 81% of stablecoins, and only 20% of ETHFI. If ETH falls far enough, part or all of your collateral is sold to repay the loan, so keep well below the limit.

Licensing: ether.fi is not a licensed financial firm and says so in its cardholder agreement: it is “not licensed to provide any financial services”, including payment services, e-money, digital assets or lending. The Visa card is issued by a third-party issuer under its own licence (the agreement refers to Rain), and the vault that holds your collateral is a smart contract, not a regulated custodian. No MiCA authorisation is named, so EU consumer protections cover the card payment itself, not the crypto behind it. ether.fi does run an account protection programme, up to $10,000 on Core, against losses from exploits of its smart contracts. It is insured through an underwriter but, as ether.fi says itself, it is not deposit insurance and does not cover market losses.

Who it's for: ETH holders who want to spend without selling, people paying in currencies other than the euro, and heavy spenders willing to earn or buy Luxe. If you spend a moderate amount, mostly in euros, and want your cashback in something stable, OKX or Bleap is the simpler choice.