Fold App and Card Review – Yet Another Huge Nerf Coming!

9/1/2023 Update: The last time Fold card had a huge nerf was in April of 2023, which I had covered in a separate blogpost. Fast forward about 6 months later and it is time for another massive Fold nerf. Starting September 12, 2023, PIN transactions will no longer earn rewards, and cashback on PPBP is scheduled to be reduced from 1% to 0.5%. There are a few positive changes too but the abovementioned negative changes will overshadow them. Read more on Fold’s official blog.

1/14/2023 Update: On 1/2/23, Fold Metaverse (which was still in beta) was killed. The signup bonus is now 50,000 sats. There are now additional ways to get spins (buying gift cards, recurring deposits, and buying Bitcoin) and I have added details of that below in the “extra spins” section.

12/3/2022 Update: A lot of things have changed. Debit card funding info has been updated. Buying a gift card does not trigger a wheel. Added a section on buying Bitcoin through the app. The signup bonus has been updated to 20,000 sats.

6/1/2022 Update: Debit card funding is available for a limited amount of users. It is very good (see details in the “debit card funding” section).

3/7/2022 Update: Added information on “Spin Squad” as well as clarified limits on the Metaverse game.

3/2/2022 Update: Added information on getting 1 spin/day for having a $1k+ balance. Also made some quality-of-life changes to the article.

12/19/2021 Update: added information on their metaverse game as well as flash stack and various limited-time promotions.

Recently I wrote about crypto-earning debit cards that require staking and since then some of you have been asking me when I the review for Fold would be posted. I have been using Fold for about a month but I haven’t used it rigorously enough to write a very detailed review on it. Nevertheless, I think what I will share will be useful enough for those of you looking into this product.

First things first, cashback is paid in satoshi. Satoshi is the smallest portion of a bitcoin with 1 satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC. This means for you to really like Fold, you need to be on the bitcoin hype train. Otherwise, you may not enjoy the fact that the $100 cashback you earned when BTC was 64k is worth $50 when BTC is trading for 32k. Obviously, the opposite is also true, meaning if BTC increases 2x in value then so will the cashback you earned.

Anyway, so how does Fold work? In short, you spin a wheel daily that gives you a daily reward, whenever you make a purchase you can spin to win some things, and you can earn satoshi for purchasing gift cards through their app as well. It sounds a little complicated so let me break it down one step at a time.

join Fold App through the link below and get 20,000 satoshi
https://use.foldapp.com/r/TRAVELINPOINTS

Daily Spin

You can spin a wheel every 20 hours and the prizes range from 5 sats to 1 million sats (short for satoshi). In addition, anyone who participates in seven consecutive daily spins gets 250 sats. Here is a quick look at the current daily spin. It is important that you treat this as an example as daily wheels change here and there.

Prize	Odds (in %)
5 sats	34.41
10 sats	21.505
25 sats	8.51
50 sats	4.26
100 sats	2.13
1 sats per USD you spend in your last seven days	5.32
5 times the number of current referral	10.64
extra 1% on order	1.06
no reward	12.77
1 million sats = 0.01 BTC	0.00043

The prizes on the daily spins aren’t too high to run the business bankrupt but they aren’t too terrible to a point that users will never bother with it. I think Fold has created an excellent incentive for users, particularly hardcore crypto fans, to daily check into their app. You can read the T&C of the daily spin here.

Fold Card

Fold currently offers two debit cards namely Spin and Spin Plus. Spin has no yearly fee but comes with a one-time activation fee of $21. On the other hand, Spin+ has a $150 annual fee but no activation fee. A few other key differences are highlighted below

	Spin	Spin+
Spending rewards on purchase	Up to 25%	Up to 100%
cashback on Amazon gift card	5% (up to $250/month)	5% (up to $500/month)
Weekly extra spins	1	3
Spin Timer (after purchase)	1 hr	24 hr
Annual fee	$0	$150

You can read more about the differences on this page of their website.

Side note: you can pay your annual fee with a credit card.

Purchasing Gift Cards

By now you know that Amazon is a merchant but what I haven’t told you is that paying with the Fold card gives you back 5% of your spend. They have a decent selection of brands including banana republic (7%), Domino’s Pizza (7%), Hotels.com (2.5%), Southwest Airlines (2.5%), Staples (2%), and Under Armor (5%).

In the screenshot above (left) you can see some of the merchants on Fold as well as the Amazon gift card purchase page (right) in which I am getting 5% from the card as well as 1% from the daily wheel bonus. Now, after the purchase, I will have 24 hours (because I have Spin+ card) to spin the purchase wheel and get a bonus.

Note: Spin+ users earn 5% bitcoin back on up to $500/month on Amazon. On occasions, this limit is reset.

Buying Bitcoin (BTC) Through the App

You can now buy Bitcoin (BTC) directly on the Fold app. You can do this by clicking on the Bitcoin icon on the “Fold card” page. Here are some key points:

1. No purchase fee for Spin+ users. But the price of BTC seems slightly more than exchanges like Coinbase.
2. No withdrawal fee for anyone.
3. Withdrawal seems to take 3 days.
4. You can purchase as little as $1 worth of BTC.
5. Earn 1 Extra Spin for every $50 of Bitcoin bought (on a single transaction)

It kinda sucks that there is a withdrawal hold up otherwise this would be a decent way to get funds out of the Fold card.

Purchase Wheel

The purchase wheel is different than the above daily wheel in the sense that you can only use it after you’ve made a purchase. If you have the Spin card you’ll only have 1 hour from purchase to use the purchase wheel while those with Spin+ will get 24 hours.

I think the magic of Fold happens in the purchase wheel. The team at Fold seems to create a new purchase wheel here and there and they have a character of their own. However, one thing seems to remain constant – you will always have the opportunity to win a whole BTC every time you spin the purchase wheel. Obviously, the odds of getting a BTC is rather low, usually 0.00001%, but don’t hate a fella for loving the idea that of winning an entire BTC on a purchase of a single banana. [5/30 Update: turns out Fold has implemented a $3 minimum (or $5 on Amazon) spend requirement for a purchase to qualify for a purchase wheel]. The regular readers of this blog will know that I am quite fond of PrizePool, a linked prize-saving account because one has the potential to win the monthly $25k prize. So, yes, I love this concept brought to life.

Ok, so I don’t like the prize I got. Now what? Well, you can spin the wheel again, granted you have extra spins (more on that in the next section).

Anyway, these wheels are worth looking out for as I have had a 5% additional boost in the past. In other words, I have earned 10% on an Amazon gift card purchase (see second screenshot below). Now it is a different story that BTC was at around its all-time high at that time. Oh, and you can also win up to 100% of your purchase.

Here are a few examples of the prizes in past wheels and their odds of winning.

It is worthwhile to check out their blog and read about various purchase wheels in their blog. When new wheel drops, it is in Fold users’ best interest to at least briefly glance through their blog post explaining the new wheel rewards. Because they change wheels so often I can’t cover every single wheel in a blog post.

Update: You can find all the wheel prizes and their winning rate on their terms and condition page (it seems to be updated with each new wheel).

Extra Spins

Okay, so let’s get back to the extra spins I was talking about. Essentially if you don’t like your winning on the purchase wheel, you can spin the wheel again, granted you have extra spins. Here is how you get extra spins:

1. Recurring Deposit
   • If you set up a Recurring Deposit of at least $100, then you’ll earn 1 Extra Spin for every day that the scheduled deposit routine is active.
2. Spending $250+ earns 1 extra spin
3. Balance earns spins
   • $0-999: no extra spin
   • $1,000-$9,999: 1 extra spin/day
   • $10,000 and over: 2 extra spins/day
4. Membership levels
   • Spin users: 1 extra spin/day
   • Spin+ users: 3 extra spins/day
5. Gift card purchase
   • 1 extra spin for every $50 gift card purchase. For example, $50 earns 1 extra spin, $100 earns 2 extra spins, all the way to $500 (or above) earning 10 extra spins.
6. Buying Bitcoin
   • 1 extra spin for every $50 in Bitcoin purchases. For example, $50 earns 1 extra spin, $100 earns 2 extra spins, $10,000 in BTC earns 200 extra spins, and so on.

Some other ways of getting extra spins:

• random weekly drops – earn extra spins every Friday starting at 12 pm ET just for having added funds to your Fold Card at least once.
• Wheels – through daily and purchase spin wheel.
• Fold metaverse game – limit of 3 spins per day

I suggest maximizing daily spins by (a) having a qualifying monthly deposit (+1 spin), (b) having at least 1k in balance (+1 spin), and (c) possibly having Spin+ membership (+3 spins). Altogether, this will net you 5 spins/day which is pretty good.

In the screenshots above (left and right) you can see that I spun the wheel to get 10x and 20x in sats.

Fold Metaverse Game

Fold’s Metaverse game is currently in beta and is available within the Fold app. It is like a very basic version of Pokemon game where you win Satoshi and wheel spins.

The daily loot limits on this game are as follows:

1. maximum of 250 sats per day
2. maximum of 3 spins per day

Unless you need extra spins, I don’t think this game is worth playing.

Spin Squad + Referral Program

On 3/7/2022 Fold launched a “Spin Squad” program which is basically an extra gimmick on the existing referral program. The people you refer are automatically part of your “Spin Squad” and every time they make a qualifying purchase ($5+ on amazon, $3+ elsewhere) you, the referrer, randomly gets 1-50 stats.

join Fold App through the link below and get 50000 satoshi
https://use.foldapp.com/r/TRAVELINPOINTS

Is it really going to do anything for 99% of the people, including myself? Nope.

Let’s create a very generous scenario to try to see the value of this program. Let us assume that your referred users net 1000 transactions and by some miracle each swipe earns you 50 sats, thus netting you 5,000 sats total through the Spin Squad program. Now, how much is 5,000 sats worth? Suppose 1 BTC = $100k then 500k sats would be worth a mere $5. If 1 BTC = $50k then 5k sats is only worth $2.5. But of course, you and I aren’t going to get 50 sats 1000 times in a row nor are you likely to net 1000 transactions through a referral.

Debit Card Funding

You can now fund your Fold debit card with debit cards. The details are as follows:

1. Maximum of $500 funding in one transaction.
2. Debit card funding is subject to a 1.5% fee.
3. Spin+ users get 3 free debit card funding per month. Each funding is limited to a maximum of $500 so you can do up to $1500 feeless funding per month. Additional funding is subject to a 1.5% fee.

The app also says there is a limit of $10k per day. Oh, and the Fold card itself has a maximum balance limit of $20k.

Flash Stack and Various Promotions

Recently Fold started doing limited-time promotions. One of these promotions is called “flash stack” where you earn a certain amount of Satoshi for spending a certain amount of money within a predetermined time window. Here are two examples of the promotions under the recent flash stack events:

1. Spend $50+ between 7-9 PM EST on 12/15/21 and Earn 2k sats.
2. Spend $150+ between 6:30-9 Pm EST on 12/17/2021 and earn 10k sats.

For the 2021 holidays, they launched a “Fold Holiday Giveaway” where each dollar of spend made on the card would get you 1 entry on a giveaway. You can read the terms and conditions of this giveaway on this page of theirs.

Closing Thoughts

This is one of the few debit cards I consistently use. There are still a few sweet spots.