Coinbase Crypto Debit Card
If you’ve recently just dipped your toes into cryptocurrency and started your first exchange account, like me, you probably are curious about what other ways there are to get more from crypto. One of the most obvious first stops, in my mind, is crypto debit and credit cards. I live in the U.S., and there aren’t a ton of great options out there that provide rewards at a higher clip than what you can get from a traditional rewards credit card without requiring a large amount to be staked in order to receive the rewards. Except one.
The Card
Coinbase offers their card with no credit checks, no staking required, and up to 4% cash back in select tokens. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. My wife and I have been using ours for a couple months and I’ve already accumulated about $400 USD worth of rewards. The card is available (as the time of me writing this) to U.S. residents except in Hawaii, and to U.K. residents. The card works like any other debit card, and can be linked to Apple Pay, Google Pay, or any other mobile payment provider.
One thing to know about the card is that there is a 2.49% fee for using any currency to spend other than USD or USDC. Choosing the spending currency is as easy as going to their website or app, signing in, navigating to “Pay”, then “Manage Card”. From there you can also select how you would like to receive your rewards. If you choose AMP, GRT, RLY, or XLM, you will receive 4% cash back. If you hate getting that much back, you can get 1% back in BTC, ETH, DOGE, or DAI. Another thing to note is that if you make any returns on products that were purchased with the card, you will receive the funds back in USD.
The interface is very user-friendly. You are able to change your payment method and rewards receipt method in an easy to find section. All your expected debit card management functions like locking the card, setting the PIN, and support are only one click away.
Funding the card is fairly straightforward. Click on “Add Funds”, select which coin you’d like to add (remember the caveat about using anything other than USDC), and determine whether it’s one time, or recurring. If it’s recurring, you have the option of daily (!!), weekly, 1st and 15th, or monthly on the date you are setting up the purchase. It should be mentioned that funds won’t be IMMEDIATELY available, and you may need to wait a week to ten days for funds to be ready for spending. This is due to Automated Clearing House rules for bank transfers.
There are no real caveats to using the card. It has worked fine for me anywhere I’ve wanted to use it. The only thing that should be pointed out is that you can only get ONE card per account. In a sharing situation, this could be easily overcome by using Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc., which is how I do it.
Pros and Cons
The pros here are easy: 4% cash back, no staking requirements, and no credit checks.
I’ve already talked about the fact that you have to wait for your funds to be available, and that returns come back in USD. Additionally, there is the obvious fact that this is a debit card, so all your typical personal finance warnings about using debit cards apply. The last one to point out is that there is some volatility in your rewards. If you get rewards when the price is higher, the value could be slightly less in the future. On the flip side, if you are getting rewards when the price is lower, your rewards value will be worth more. You are effectively dollar cost averaging with your rewards.
If you are interested in obtaining a Coinbase debit card, and you don’t yet have an account, please use my sign up link! We both get free rewards from it, and it costs nothing.