Getting an ether.fi Cash card

The virtual card lands the moment KYC clears. The physical one costs $50. Add either to Apple or Google Wallet and you are paying with your phone in any shop that takes Visa.

We issued one ourselves

On 3 September 2026 we opened an account, and the virtual card was issued. The screens below are ours, not borrowed from someone else's write-up. RedotPay refused the same country on the same day.

The short version

Virtual card free · physical card $50 · no annual fee · up to 3% cashback. Your keys stay yours, which is the part that makes the first setup feel unfamiliar. This page walks through it. Check your country first — it is not available everywhere.

$0virtual card

$50physical card

3%cashback, first $2,000/mo

100M+merchants

On the same day, in the same country, one card was issued free in seconds and the other took $10 and refused to activate. 2-3 September 2026, verified first-hand

Nothing costs money until the physical card. Confirm it works first and a problem costs you nothing instead of $50.

What the card gives you

Item	Detail
Where it works	It is a Visa card. Anywhere Visa is accepted — supermarkets, department stores, cafés, online, at home or abroad. It settles into the local currency at the till
Apple & Google Wallet	Both work, with the virtual card and the physical one. Once added, you tap your phone and you are done
Virtual card	Issued instantly on KYC approval. Online payments work before anything ships
Physical card	$50 on Core · ships to 80+ countries
Annual fee	None. The membership the card comes with is free to join
Cashback	Up to 3% — on Core that is the first $2,000 a month, then 1%, then 0.5%
Your keys	The company never holds them. Your assets sit in your own vault
Spend without selling	Keep staked assets as collateral and the yield keeps running while you spend

Sources ether.fi help centre — physical cards (updated 10 Jul 2026) · wallet setup (updated 13 Apr 2026) · supported countries (updated 2 Aug 2026). Checked 3 Sep 2026.

Before you start

Government ID — passport or national ID, plus a liveness check
Proof of address — required in some regions. A utility bill or bank statement from the last 3 months
USDC or another supported token to fund the vault
A shipping address if you want the physical card. It cannot be changed once the order is placed

Step by step

Sign up

Go to ether.fi/sign-up and join The Club membership. It is free, and the card comes with it.

Connect or create a wallet and your Safe vault is deployed automatically. Nothing to configure — this is the step people expect to be hard, and it is not.
Screenshot slot — signup screen
Add the card

The Cards tab has a Get Your Card button. It says "Get your new card in seconds", and that turns out to be accurate.

The Cards tab, on our own account (3 September 2026).
KYC — usually 5 to 30 minutes

Photograph your ID and complete the liveness check. Most approvals are instant; a blurry photo or a busy hour can push it to 4 to 24 hours.

To pass first time: good light, no shadow, all four corners of the ID visible. Glare is what fails most attempts.
Screenshot slot — KYC screen, personal details covered
The virtual card appears

Once KYC is approved the virtual card is issued immediately, at no cost. The app describes it as "accepted by 100M+ merchants worldwide — use with Apple/Google Pay and online".

No price on this screen, because there is none.
Fund the vault

Send USDC or another supported token to your vault. Several chains can be used to top up.

ether.fi Cash runs on OP Mainnet. It used to sit on Scroll and moved in 2026 — 70,000 active cards and $220M of TVL in three days, with no downtime, the largest single deposit in Optimism's history.

Get the chain list from the app
ether.fi does not publish a supported-chain list, and the set changed repeatedly through 2026 — bridging was retired on eight chains including Scroll, zkSync and Blast in June, and Cash then moved to Optimism.

So the answer to "which chain" is whatever the deposit screen says. Do not send based on a list in someone's article. The wrong chain loses the money, and there is no undo.

Screenshot slot — top-up screen showing chain and fee
Add it to Apple or Google Wallet

Google Wallet is one tap. There is an "Add to Google Wallet" button under the card in the app. Nothing to copy across.

Straight after issuance. Freeze Card and Report a Decline sit on the same screen.

Apple Wallet is manual. Open Card Details for the number, expiry and CVV, then Wallet → + (top right) → Debit or Credit Card → enter them.

Each device may ask to verify separately, but the same card can live on several devices.
Screenshot slot — card added to wallet
Order the physical card once you know it works ($50)

Make one payment on the virtual card first. Do it in that order and a problem costs you nothing instead of $50.

It is listed as Core Plastic at $50.00 USD, described in the app as spending online and locally plus ATM access worldwide.

The order screen. The small print confirms the card is issued under licence from Visa.

Standard shipping runs 15 business days or more, and the address cannot be changed after ordering. Read it back before you submit.
Screenshot slot — physical card order screen
Activate it when it arrives

Confirm receipt in the app and set a PIN under Edit Card → Set PIN. Both cards stay active on the same balance — use whichever suits.
Screenshot slot — physical card received, PIN set

Start with ether.fi Cash Check your country first →

Where people get stuck

Apple Pay region error

"Apple Pay is not available in your region" means your iPhone region and your Apple ID country do not match. Set both to the same country and it clears. Nothing is wrong with the card.

Symptom	Cause and fix
KYC rejected	Nearly always glare, shadow or a cropped corner. Retake it in better light
Proof of address asked again	It must be within 3 months and carry a visible date
Declined at the fuel pump	Pay-at-pump declines are reported. Paying inside works
Cashback never arrived	ATM withdrawals, cash advances, P2P transfers and some merchant categories never earn cashback. A refund also reverses cashback already paid
Physical card has not come	Standard shipping is 15+ business days, plus customs

What the marketing leaves out

Most write-ups skip this. Worth knowing before you sign up.

The claim	The terms
0% FX	The 0% applies to USD and EUR only. Every other currency carries 1%. Spending in pounds, yen, won or anything else is a 1% charge. The 3% cashback runs alongside it, so on Core up to $2,000 a month you are still +2% net
Up to 3% cashback	Banded by tier. Core earns 3% on the first $2,000 a month, then 1%, then 0.5%. The terms also carry a $1,000 monthly ceiling that the marketing omits
ATM withdrawals	2% · $250 per rolling 24 hours · 3 attempts
Spend against your holdings	Borrow Mode charges interest from the first moment, with no grace period, and a position past the threshold gets liquidated

We read the $50 off the order screen ourselves. Some reviews describe a "$40 deposit" instead — that is wrong. We write from the screen.

Direct Pay or Borrow Mode

	How it works	Interest
Direct Pay	Takes USDC first, then LiquidUSD, straight from the vault	None
Borrow Mode	Borrows against your assets so you never sell them	Starts immediately, variable

Leave it on Direct Pay to begin with. "Spend without selling" sounds free. It is a loan, with interest and a liquidation threshold attached.

Tiers widen the 3% band

Tier	3% applies up to	How you get there
Core	$2,000 a month	Where everyone starts
Luxe	$10,000 a month	10,000 points a month, or 15,000 ETHFI held
Pinnacle	$50,000 a month	50,000 points, or 100,000 ETHFI held
VIP	4% cashback	Invite only

Core is enough for most people. $2,000 a month covers ordinary spending, and buying ETHFI to climb a tier exposes you to token price risk far larger than the cashback.

About the company

70,000 active cards across 300,000 accounts. Moving Cash to Optimism in 2026 shifted $220M of TVL in three days with no downtime — the largest single deposit Optimism has recorded.
Five audits, a CertiK A rating, a $300K Immunefi bounty and Nexus Mutual cover. It never takes custody of your keys.
That said, the card issuer is not a bank and there is no deposit insurance. What you hold is crypto in your own vault, not a bank balance.
Public audit reports · cardholder terms · checked 3 Sep 2026. Sources disagree on the issuer's name, so we do not state it.