40 cards reviewed · 1 recommended
There is one card left on our list.
ether.fi Cash pays 3% back on everything, charges nothing a year, and settles from a vault that belongs to you rather than to a company's balance sheet. Your ETH stays staked while you spend against it. The rest of the shortlist is a rounding error on rewards and a worse arrangement on everything else.
back, paid in wETH
annual fee, all tiers
FX on USD & EUR
self-custody
Verdict
Why this one, and not the other thirty-nine
Four differences. Three of them are structural – the kind a competitor can't fix with a promo rate.
Cashback that keeps working
3% back on every purchase, credited to your vault in wETH with nothing to claim. It carries on earning staking yield after it lands – rewards that aren't finished the moment they arrive.
Your keys stay yours
Funds sit in a Gnosis Safe vault on Scroll that only you control. No deposit into a company account, no withdrawal request, nothing anyone else can freeze or lend out while you sleep.
Spend without selling
Borrow Mode draws against your staked ETH at roughly 4% APY. No billing cycle, no minimum payment, no disposal event – the position you spent years building stays intact.
Boring where it counts
A Visa issued through Rain, in Apple Pay and Google Pay from day one, 0% FX on dollars and euros. Novel custody, ordinary checkout – the coffee shop never learns the difference.
A card, a phone, a vault on Scroll – the last one is the part nobody else offers
Terms
The whole fee schedule
Including the parts a recommendation page is normally quiet about.
- Annual fee
- $0 – on every tier
- Cashback
- 3% on the first $2,000/mo (Core) · 1% to $3,000 · 0.5% above
- Paid in
- wETH, straight to your vault – nothing to claim, bands reset monthly
- FX fee
- 0% on USD and EUR · 1% on everything else
- ATM
- 2% per withdrawal · $250 cap · 3 in any 24 hours
- Borrow rate
- ~4% APY against collateral · no minimum payment
- Physical card
- Free on Core after a $40 refundable deposit · 15+ business days
- Network
- Visa, issued via Rain · settles on Scroll L2
- Availability
- ~171 countries · ~30 US states · UK pending FCA licensing
- Credit check
- None
Two things the marketing says quietly: the legal reward terms cap cashback at $1,000 per month, and cashback excludes ATM withdrawals, transfers, currency exchange, gift cards and gambling merchants.
Core – recommended
$2,000/mo at 3%No staking requirement. Free physical card behind a refundable deposit. Where almost everyone starts.
Luxe
$10,000/mo bandFor steady spenders and small businesses. Requires ETHFI staked; no deposit on the physical card.
Pinnacle
The top bandA large ETHFI stake – 15,000 at the time of writing – and the card in hand in one to three days.
Staking requirements are denominated in ETHFI, so their dollar cost moves with the token price.
The field
The shortlist problem
Every other card on every comparison site asks the same thing on the first screen: send us your crypto. Then a dashboard, then a support ticket, then a withdrawal that clears when it clears. The rewards rates differ by half a point; the arrangement doesn't differ at all.
One card breaks the pattern by never taking the assets in the first place. Once that row is in the table, the rest of the comparison is decoration – which is why this site recommends one card instead of ranking forty.
Sign up with a wallet
Connect at ether.fi and clear standard identity checks. No bank, no credit file, no application score.
Fund your own vault
Deposit USDC, EURC or weETH into the Safe deployed for you on Scroll. It is yours from the first block.
Choose how you spend
Direct Pay spends your stablecoin balance. Borrow Mode spends against collateral and leaves your ETH staked and earning.
Tap today
The virtual card lands in Apple Pay or Google Pay immediately. The metal one arrives in a fortnight or so.
We keep a list of forty cards. This is the only one where the honest advice is to stop comparing and go get it.
FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Is it a credit card or a debit card?
Both, depending on the mode. Direct Pay spends a balance you funded, like a debit card. Borrow Mode draws credit against collateral you keep – closer to a line of credit than to a card bill.
Do I have to sell my crypto to spend it?
No – that is the whole point of Borrow Mode. Your staked ETH stays where it is, earning, while you borrow dollars against it at about 4% APY and spend those instead.
Can I get it where I live?
Roughly 171 countries and about 30 US states are covered today, with UK availability tied to FCA licensing. The eligibility check on the sign-up page is the only authoritative answer.
What is the cashback actually paid in?
wETH, deposited into your vault automatically. Because it is a crypto asset rather than a statement credit, its dollar value moves after it lands – up as well as down. Convert on arrival if you would rather it didn't.
Are you paid to recommend it?
Yes – the apply links are referral links and we earn a commission. It doesn't buy the recommendation: the fee schedule above is reproduced in full, caps and exclusions included, so you can disagree with us on the evidence.
The end of the shortlist
One card. Get it and get on with your day.
Free to open, nothing to sell, and the keys never leave your hands.
Referral link · $0/year · no credit check