Crypto.com (Up to 8% cashback) Debit Card Detailed Review [Nerfed and USELESS]

5/22/2023 Update: Unlimited lounge visits for eligible cardholders has been changed to 4 annual visits. Read more in this separate blog post. At a quick glance, it appears they have also nerfed Spotify and Netflix benefits by limiting reimbursement benefits for some tier of memberships to the first 6 months.

7/23/2022 Update: After the massive nerf in May, this card has not been worth it (see a detailed breakdown in this “game over” blog post). There have been various nerfs to the program since that blog post, most notably the rates on the Earn program have been cut over and over again. However, today it was announced that Spotify and Netflix perks will be no more for all but top two-tier card holders. See details in their Reddit post here. Oh and, based on this Reddit post, there seems to be a hidden cashback cap even for the top two tiers. Unless there is comedy GODL, I will likely not bother updating this post anymore.

3/30/2022 Update: CDC now offers “bonus card rewards”. In the US this is powered by Dosh and offers are identical to that of Dosh. See the “bonus card rewards” section for further detail.

12/19/2021 Update: Added a section on mission/vault as well as sending/receiving crypto within CDC as well as.

Crypto.com (CDC) is one of the popular crypto exchanges. As of writing this article, their 24-hour volume is over 2.7 billion dollars (coinmarketcap | coingeko). At this point, you have probably seen their massive ads on Formula 1 or UFC. The prior is known to be a $100 million deal (CNBC article) while the latter is speculated to be 175 million deal (CNBC article). In my previous crypto card compilation article, I wrote about their cards, but this time around let’s dig deeper and review it.

The Cards

CDC has 5 different tiers of cards with crypto rewards ranging from 1-8 percent. The lowest tier card, Midnight Blue, does not require any staking of their native token, named CRO, and gives a 1% reward in the form of CRO. The remaining four tiers require users to initially stake the CRO equivalent of X amount of USD. Now, for the purpose of this post, whenever you hear me say “stake” it means holding CRO token for a period of 6 months in which you are not allowed to sell or withdraw it.

Their second lowest-tiered card, Ruby Steel, requires you to initially stake $400 worth of CRO and gives (a) 2% cashback in the form of crypto (let’s just call it crypto back, shall we?) and (b) reimburses monthly Spotify fee (more on that later). Yes, your $400 worth of CRO might be worth less or more later but you won’t lose the benefits of the card as long as you don’t unstake.

The next tier allows you to select two card designs (Jade green or Royal Indigo) but requires $4000 worth of CRO to be initially staked. In return, you get 3% crypto back as well as reimbursement for your Netflix subscription (this is in addition to Spotify reimbursement) charged to the card. This is the card I personally have.

The top two tiers require you to stake a crazy amount of CRO ($40k and $400k respectively) so I won’t bother talking about them. You can see their details and much more in the screenshot below.

Signup Bonus

You get $25 worth of CRO at the time of signup. To my understanding, you don’t have to claim it right away but you can claim it later by getting at least the 2% card which requires $400 worth of CRO to be staked.

If you’re interested in CDC please consider signing up through the referral link provided below. You will “get” $25 worth of CRO upon signup. You can unlock this value by getting a Ruby ($400 staking required) card or above. https://crypto.com/app/weaap29q5n

Airport Lounge Access

The top three cards (3%, 5%, and 8%) provide you with “airport lounge access” through Lounge Key. Some of you might be curious if Lounge Key is any different than Priority Pass. Well, Lounge Key is also owned by the same company that owns Priority Pass. The key (eh?) difference is that with Priority Pass you have access to more lounges. Also, carrying an eligible card is sufficient for Lounge Key but as you might know, you need a separate Priority Pass card to get into the lounges that serve Priority Pass members.

Anyway, I would 100% recommend against getting one of the three top-tier cards just for Lounge Pass as you can get similar benefits for cheaper via credit cards.

Spotify, Netflix, and Prime Reimbursement

All three reimbursement are once per merchant per month. All reimbursement happen in the form of CRO.

The Spotify, Netflix, and Prime reimbursements are for up to USD 12.99, $13.99, and $12.99 respectively.

For example, my Netflix subscription of $15.12 (after tax) is billed to my 3% card, and in turn I get $13.99 worth of CRO reimbursed. Obviously, you sell CRO on the day you get reimbursed but if you think the market price is cheap-fair, then it might be worthwhile holding on to whatever you get reimbursed. In the screenshot below you can see that I got about 153.89 CRO as reimbursement which at the time of writing this article is worth around $29.

$50/month Experia and $100/Month Airbnb

The top two cards (5% and 8%) provide 1 reimbursement per month of $50 on Experia while the top card (8%) also provides a $100 reimbursement per month on Airbnb.

Earn Interest on Staked CRO

At this point, you know that you need to stake CRO to be eligible for anything but the lowest tier card. Since this is crypto we are talking about, the value of the coin you stake could be higher or lower later in the future. However, regardless of the value, you continue to earn interest on the amount of CRO you initially staked. For example, I have the 3% card and I earn 10% p.a. on the $4000 worth of CRO I had initially staked. This interest is paid weekly.

Boosting Crypto Earn Interest with The Card

The earning rate on CDC’s Earn program is boosted by holding higher tier cards. The acquired interest is paid on a weekly basis. I will tabulate and talk about the rates you get for staking select cryptocurrencies for 3 months:

Coin	Midnight Blue and Ruby Steel	Royal Indigo and Jade Green	Rose Gold, Icy, and Obsidian
Stablecoins	10% p.a.	12% p.a.	14% p.a.
Bitcoin (BTC)	4.5% p.a.	6.5% p.a.	8.5% p.a.
Ethereum (ETH)	5.5% p.a.	6.5% p.a.	8.5% p.a.
CRO	6% p.a.	6% p.a.	6% p.a.

The above rate for lending stablecoins, BTC, and ETH are rather competitive and you will have difficulty finding similar offers from another major platform. The 6% p.a. on CRO is likely the best in the market but let’s talk more about CRO rate in the DeFi section below.

They also provide a rate for a 1-month lock as well as flexibility (no lock and you can pull money out any time) but you will earn much smaller interest rates. If you want a good flexible rate, then I suggest looking at Celsius. Celsius currently has rather impressive bonuses, including a $50 signup offer, all of which you can read here.

You can check out the lending interest rates on CDC for about 40 cryptocurrencies in their official earn page.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

As I mentioned before, you earn interest on CRO you have initially staked to get the card. This means, every week you will get some CRO deposited to your account. Now the question is – what do you do with this CRO? Sure, you could sell it and turn it into cash but what if you want to lend it out to earn even more CRO?

One option is to use the Earn feature within the CDC app. However, the highest rate is 6% which will lock your CRO for 3 months while the flexible (no lock period at all) plan only pays 2% p.a. Moreover, you need to deposit a minimum of 5,000 CRO.

The alternative is to send CRO into CDC’s DeFi app and earn around 12% p.a. I genuinely have no clue how some of the high rates are justified (see 28.4% APY on USDT on the first screenshot below), however, DeFi is nevertheless an option for those who are okay with taking even more risk.

I could not tell you how risky it is, where the money goes, or how DeFi even works. All I can show and tell you is that I tend to send the interest I earn on CRO to the DeFi app and as you can see I only have a few hundred dollar worth of CRO in the DeFi app. Furthermore, claiming rewards, sending CRO to DeFi app, etc seems to cost very little to no fee.

Using the Card

You can spend crypto as well as USD through this card. For the sake of simplicity, I always spend USD only and I also recommend doing the same.

You can view your card number through the app. You can also freeze and unfreeze the card through the app.

If you are comfortable with the risk of the Earn feature, you may want to convert the surplus amount of USD into USDC, get 8% or more interest on it, convert it back into USD when you need it, and then spend it with the card. If you want to minimize or even eliminate the spread of USDC on CDC then I recommend buying/selling in small chunks.

The Long List in Ineligible Transactions

The unfortunate list of MCC codes that do not earn rewards is as follows:

1. MCC 4829: Wire transfer, p2p payments, etc.
2. MCC 4900: various utilities including electric, gas, waste, and water.
3. MCC 5734: computer software programs
4. MCC 5947: novelty shops, souvenir shops, gift shops, etc.
5. MCC 6012: mortgage, purchase of currency, etc.
6. MCC 6051: lease payment, loan payment, etc.
7. MCC 6211: bond dealers, stock dealers, etc.
8. MCC 6300: insurance, product warranties, etc.
9. 6532: payment transactions.
10. MCC 6540: stored value card, account funding, etc.
11. MCC 7372: computer software design, systems design, etc.
12. MCC 8999: real state, research firms, public speakers, etc
13. MCC 9311: custom bureaus
14. MCC 9399: DMV, fire department, libraries, park & recreation, police department.

You can find much more detail on their official page.

A good chunk of this is an obvious attempt to stop manufactured spend but it sucks that you earn no reward on things things like utility and insurance as well.

History of Clawback

I would strongly recommend against doing manufactured spend as (a) those transactions will likely not generate any reward and perhaps more importantly because (b) CDC has a well-documented history of doing clawbacks.

It is rather easy for them to do clawback since you will likely have CRO staked with them. Here are a few clawback data points from Reddit [1] [2] [3]. They have been recorded to change T&C and then do a clawback based on the new T&C. You can also see from the linked third DP that the clawback happened a year later.

0% Debit and Credit Card Fee for 30 days

For 30 days CDC will not charge you any fee on a debit or credit card at all. However, at this most most major credit cards will count as cash advances, but maybe you can find a gem of your own.

Sending/Receiving Crypto Within CDC for Free

You can send/receive any crypto to/from CDC users for free. Additionally, if you meet the following criteria then you can earn up to 10% cashback on what was sent with a cap of up to $5/month:

• hold an active deposit term of 10,000 CRO or more in Crypto Earn (with tenure of 3 months)
• stake 10,000 CROs or more in Crypto.com App

You can read more about this feature on their official help page.

Mission and Vault

CDC also allows you to earn “diamond” for completing various talks every day. For example, checking the mission check every day earns you a diamond. With enough diamonds, you can open a mystery box which contains CRO as a reward.

You can read more about the mystery box on their official help page.

Bonus Card Rewards (Powered by Dosh in the US)

CDC now offers elevated cashback (paid in CRO in 30 days) at certain in-person as well as online stores. In the US this feature is powered by Dosh and from a quick glance the offers appear to be identical to that of Dosh. The left screen below is that of the Dosh app while the right is of “bonus card rewards” within the CDC app.

Although the offers are identical, it seems some offers from Dosh apps are missing in their CDC counterpart.

To see the offers click on your “card” tab and then on “bonus card rewards”.

You can’t double-dip the reward since Dosh does not allow prepaid debits but what if it wasn’t prepaid?

Closing Thoughts

CDC’s card lineup is easily the most popular crypto card out there. The 1% (no staking required card) IMO is a no-brainer card while 2% ($400 worth of CRO staking required) and maybe even 3% ($4000 worth of CRO staking required) are something I might recommend. If you’re someone who’s paying for a monthly Spotify subscription then even the 2% card might be a no-brainer.

Ideally, you want to get these cards when a massive correction/crash occurs and the price of CRO is much cheaper. This was my first crypto card so I unfortunately got into it when CRO was at $0.20 but I know people who got into it during the flash crash of $0.12 or even $0.08. Anyone who got the card when CRO was 0.08 not only more than doubled the dollar value of what they had put in but the value of CRO they accumulated from using this card probably also doubled.

Now, If you are new to crypto, then I strongly discourage you to buy CRO at around $0.20 as I did. Instead, I recommend you get the 4% no-staking required debit card from Coinbase. I have already dubbed the Coinbase card as the must-have card and you can read all about it in the linked post.

11/23/2021 Update: CRO is at 0.90 now. It went from 0.20 to 0.90 in 23 days. So much for 0.20 being expensive LOL