ether.fi Cash review: cashback caps, FX fees and borrow mode

ether.fi Cash is a Visa card that spends from a self-custodial crypto vault. You can pay 1:1 with stablecoins, or borrow against ETH and other assets instead of selling them. As of September 2026 the free Core tier pays 3% cashback on the first $2,000 of eligible spend each month, paid in the ETHFI token. That’s twice the headline rate of most free crypto cards. The catch is that your rewards are volatile and borrowing carries liquidation risk.

This review covers membership levels, the full cashback ladder, FX and ATM costs, and how the two spending modes work. For a side-by-side with a custodial alternative, see KAST vs ether.fi Cash.

What is ether.fi Cash?

ether.fi started as an ETH liquid-staking protocol (eETH and weETH). Cash is its spending product: a membership account with a smart-contract “Vault”, a Visa card, bank transfers in several currencies, and a built-in lending market.

The card is issued as a credit card and works anywhere Visa does, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. The vault is the important difference from most crypto cards. ether.fi says it never takes custody of your assets: the vault is a smart contract owned by a signer key held in Turnkey’s secure enclaves, which only you can authorize (About your Vault).

Membership levels: Core, Luxe, Pinnacle, VIP

Everyone starts on Core. Higher levels can be earned monthly with points, unlocked by holding assets with ether.fi, or bought for a year (How membership levels work):

Way to unlock	Core	Luxe	Pinnacle	VIP
Buy for a year	Free	$199/yr	$999/yr	Not for sale
Membership points (per month)	0	5,000	25,000	Invitation
Deposit in Liquid vaults	–	$15,000	$100,000	$500,000
Stake ETHFI	–	30,000	150,000	500,000

Since 15 September 2026, card spend earns 1,000 Membership points per $1,000 spent. Points reset every calendar month, so a $5,000-a-month spender generates the 5,000 points Luxe needs, but has to keep doing it every month. Buying the level locks it in for 12 months.

What each level gets you (September 2026):

	Core	Luxe	Pinnacle	VIP
3% cashback cap (monthly)	$2,000	$10,000	$50,000	4% up to $50,000
Category cashback	–	10%, max $10/mo	20%, max $20/mo	30%, max $30/mo
Extra FX markup	0–0.5%	0–0.25%	None	None
ATM withdrawals	Available	Available	10 free per month	10 free per month
Physical card	$50 fee (plastic)	Free metal card	Free metal card	Free gold metal card
Protection program cap	$10,000	$50,000	$100,000	$500,000

Category cashback covers named subscriptions, not whole spending categories. “Food” means memberships like Uber One or DashPass, not restaurant bills. You pick one category and can change it every 30 days.

ether.fi Cash cashback: rates, caps and the ETHFI catch

Cashback steps down as your monthly spend grows, rather than stopping at a hard cap (cashback rules):

Monthly spend (USD equivalent)	Core	Luxe	Pinnacle
3% on	First $2,000	First $10,000	First $50,000
1% on	$2,001–$3,000	$10,001–$20,000	$50,001–$80,000
0.5% on	Above $3,000	Above $20,000	Above $80,000

Euro purchases use a separate, tighter ladder because they get 0% FX. On Core, euro spend earns 3% on the first $800 (USD equivalent), 1% up to $1,500, and 0.1% above that. On Luxe, 3% applies to the first $3,000 and 1% up to $6,000. Euro and dollar spend share one monthly counter.

How you actually receive it:

1. While a purchase is pending, cashback is tracked in dollars.
2. When the purchase clears, it converts to ETHFI at the current price and is locked for 7 days.
3. After that, you claim it from the Cashback page, once you have at least $5 claimable.

That second step matters. A 3% reward is only worth 3% if ETHFI holds its price after conversion. You can sell ETHFI for stablecoins after claiming, or stake it for Membership points, but either way you carry a week or more of token price risk.

Excluded purchases include ATM withdrawals, P2P transfers, gift cards, crypto and brokerage funding, gambling, app-store digital goods (MCC 5816) and several professional-services categories. Hotel bookings through ether.fi Travel earn an extra 2% on top of your normal rate.

FX and ATM fees

Foreign exchange. For non-euro foreign currencies, ether.fi applies a base FX rate it describes as about 1%, then an added markup of 0–0.5% on Core, 0–0.25% on Luxe and none on Pinnacle or VIP (FX markup). Purchases charged in euros get 0% FX markup, whether you spend USDC or EURC. The euro feature is labelled beta.

ATMs. The help center lists a limit of $1,000 per withdrawal and five withdrawals in a rolling 24 hours, and says Pinnacle and VIP members get 10 free withdrawals per month. It doesn’t state the per-withdrawal fee for Core and Luxe. Several third-party reviews report 2%, so check the app before relying on ATMs.

Other costs. No deposit fee for crypto (gas only). Bank funding ranges from $0.50 + 0.10% by ACH to €0.90 + 0.15% by SEPA into USDC. Some accounts must make a $10 crypto deposit before KYC can be completed.

Direct Pay vs Borrow Mode

This is the feature that sets ether.fi Cash apart (Borrow Mode vs Direct Pay).

Direct Pay works like a debit card. Purchases are deducted 1:1 from stablecoin-type balances in your vault: USDC, USDT, EURC, frxUSD, liquidUSD, liquidReserve or liquidEUR. You choose which is spent first under Set Spend Priority. No interest, no liquidation risk.

Borrow Mode leaves your assets in place. Each purchase becomes a loan against your vault’s collateral, so you can pay for dinner “with” ETH without selling it. Key rules:

• Interest is variable, starts immediately, and compounds continuously. There’s no grace period or billing cycle.
• There’s no repayment schedule. You repay in the same asset you borrowed, whenever you like.
• Refunds go to your vault balance and don’t reduce the loan automatically.
• Each asset has its own loan-to-value limit. Published examples: USDC 90% (liquidated at 95%), weETH and wETH 55% (liquidated at 75%), eBTC 52% (72%), ETHFI 20% (50%).
• If you cross the threshold, liquidators repay part of the debt and take collateral plus a bonus of 1–5%. Around half the collateral can be liquidated in one go.

Worked example. You hold $10,000 of weETH and spend $1,000 in Borrow Mode. Your LTV is 10%. Liquidation starts at 75%, which means weETH would have to fall by about 87% before you’re liquidated. Push it to $5,000 of spending and a drop of roughly a third puts you at risk. The borrow rate isn’t fixed, so check the live rate in the app. At a hypothetical 5% APY, carrying $1,000 for a month costs about $4.

Also note that lending is on by default. Borrow-eligible assets in your vault are supplied to an onchain lending market to earn yield. You can opt out in settings, but then Borrow Mode isn’t available.

Worked examples: $1,000 and $5,000 a month

These assume all spend is eligible, cashback is valued at the ETHFI price on the day it converts, and Luxe is bought for $199 a year ($16.58 a month).

Monthly spend	Spent in	Core net	Luxe net
$1,000	USD	$30.00	$30.00 − $16.58 = $13.42
$5,000	USD	$60 + $10 + $10 = $80.00	$150 − $16.58 = $133.42
$1,000	EUR (0% FX)	$24 + $2 = $26.00	$30 − $16.58 = $13.42
$5,000	EUR (0% FX)	$24 + $7 + $3.50 = $34.50	$90 + $20 − $16.58 = $93.42
$1,000	GBP or other	$30 − $10 to $15 FX = $15.00 to $20.00	$30 − $10 to $12.50 − $16.58 = about $1 to $3
$5,000	GBP or other	$80 − $50 to $75 FX = $5.00 to $30.00	$150 − $50 to $62.50 − $16.58 = $70.92 to $83.42

The pattern is clear. At $1,000 a month, Core is all you need. At $5,000 a month, Luxe is worth $199 a year, and at that spend level card points alone would earn it. For “other currencies” we’ve assumed the standard ladder applies and the FX base rate is 1%, so treat those rows as estimates.

How to set up ether.fi Cash

1. Sign up for ether.fi Cash with your email and a passkey, and choose a Personal account.
2. Fund your vault. Go to Add Funds, then Crypto, then pick the exact token and network. USDC and USDT are accepted on many chains, but some use a separate provider address. Always copy the address shown for your chosen network.
3. Complete KYC: phone number, government ID, a liveness selfie, your address, and sometimes proof of address. ether.fi says most reviews finish within 48 hours.
4. Add a card under Cash, then Add Card. The virtual card works immediately. A physical card needs a shipping address that can’t be changed after ordering.
5. Keep the card in Direct Pay mode at first. Only switch to Borrow Mode once you understand the LTV numbers above.
6. Set a daily card limit. Defaults are $5,000 per card per day and $10,000 per vault per day and per month, all editable.

Withdrawals back to your own wallet go out on Ethereum, Optimism, or Base (Base only for USDC and weETH). Sending to the wrong network risks losing the funds. If you move stablecoins between chains, our Jumper bridging guide covers it.

Where is ether.fi Cash available?

ether.fi publishes a country list. Physical cards ship to much of the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the UAE, and many Latin American countries, among others. In the US, physical cards are available in a named list of states that includes California, New York, Texas and Florida. Belgium and Ireland are eligible but can’t get a physical card yet (country list).

Referral and affiliate program

The old 1%-of-referral-spend program closed to new members on 1 May 2026, and legacy terms end on 31 October 2026. Everyone now uses the Affiliate Program:

• A referral qualifies after signing up with your link, activating a card, and spending $100.
• Affiliates start at Tier 1: a $10 new-member bonus, a $15 high-spender bonus, and 0.1% of referrals’ eligible card spend.
• Higher tiers (50+, 100+ and 500+ all-time referrals, with a 90-day minimum as well) raise the spend share to 0.3% and add 20% of second-degree revenue.
• Rewards are paid in USDC to your vault on the 15th of the following month.

ether.fi doesn’t advertise a sign-up discount for the person being referred.

Is ether.fi Cash safe?

• Self-custody, with caveats. You aren’t exposed to ether.fi holding your balance, but you are exposed to its smart contracts, the Optimism chain they run on, and the Turnkey signer setup. You can’t export your key yet. If you lose your email, recovery costs $50 and can take up to 60 days.
• The protection program is not insurance. It covers certain unauthorized exploits of the EtherFiSafe and CashModule contracts, up to your level’s cap, with a $5 million total pool. It excludes compromised passkeys or devices, oracle failures and stablecoin de-pegs.
• Liquidation. Borrow Mode against volatile collateral can be partly liquidated quickly in a falling market, and liquidations can’t be reversed.
• Programs change often. In 2026, ether.fi switched cashback to ETHFI, replaced its referral program, and recalculated September’s Membership points. Assume the caps and rates can move again.
• Token rewards. Your 3% is paid in a token whose price can fall.

For balances you don’t plan to spend, a hardware wallet is still the safer home. Our hardware wallet setup guide walks through it.

Verdict: who is ether.fi Cash for?

ether.fi Cash is the stronger choice if you already hold ETH, BTC or stablecoins onchain, want to keep custody, and spend in dollars or euros. The free Core tier’s 3% on $2,000 beats most free cards. At about $5,000 a month, Luxe for $199 a year is one of the better-value upgrades on any crypto card.

It’s less suited to beginners who don’t want to handle networks, a smart-contract vault and token rewards, or to anyone who might treat Borrow Mode as free money. If you’d rather have plain USD cashback in a custodial app, read our KAST card review. Otherwise, open ether.fi Cash on Core, fund it with USDC, and upgrade only once your monthly spend justifies it.