We see a lot of posts on here from an American perspective about the various crypto cards available on the market, but not so much from Europe. We don’t have Binance, coinbase, Gemini or BlockFi cards available yet but we have some like Nexo and Plutus which aren’t yet available over the pond. A caveat, I am British, will try my best to point out where the UK and EEA differ, but I’m sure I won’t be 100% on point.

Nexo Credit Card

This is the only true crypto credit card available, when you make a transaction Nexo generates a loan using the crypto stored on their platform. Loans can then be paid off once the transaction has cleared.

There are no staking requirements, but Nexo operates a loyalty scheme whereby you loyalty level is derived from the percentage of your balance which is made up of Nexo tokens (Ethereum blockchain token). At least 1% is silver, 5% is gold tier and over 10% is platinum, the top tier. Frankly I think it’s only worth using the card if you’re platinum.

Requirements for the physical card are minimum balance of $500 and platinum status, my physical card was delivered in under a week. You can also get a digital only card with a minimum balance of $50 regardless of loyalty level.

Pros

1. You borrow against crypto rather than selling it and preloading it on your card. This could be a tax efficient way of spending and it also gives you access to a line of credit without requiring any credit checks.

2. Cashback in Nexo tokens or Bitcoin. I don’t think Bitcoin is worth it, but I guess it’s nice to have the option.

Loyalty | Nexo | Bitcoin :—|:—|:— Platinum | 2% | 0.5% Gold | 1% | 0.3% Silver | 0.7% | 0.2% Base | 0.5% | 0.1%

You can keep your cashback on the platform where it will earn interest, or you can sell it on the Nexo exchange, withdraw it, use it to pay off your card, whatever you like.

1. Apply/Google pay available, no FX fees on first €20k per month, 10 free cash withdrawals up to €10k total each month.

2. It’s possible to borrow at 0% if you’re on platinum and 1.9% if you’re gold by using a Loan to Value (LTV) or 20%. This means for every $1 you spend on the card you’ll need $5 as collateral. Note you can pay off your debt and free up your collateral as soon as the transaction has cleared, usually 1-5 days.

3. Simple, free fiat on/off ramp using SEPA/FPS with minimums of €10/£10 (note their website says minimum of €1000, but it’s wrong).

Cons

1. The whole platform works in USD, even the loans that are generated when you make purchases in EUR/GBP are in USD (strange considering the card isn’t available in the US). This means you are exposed to FX risk. For example you make a purchase of £10, which generates a loan $12.00, then when it clears 5 days later due to an exchange rate change you have to pay £10.20 to clear the $12.50 loan. This can of course work to your advantage too, but recently the dollar has outperformed euros and sterling.

2. The collateral used for your borrowing doesn’t earn any yield, with the exception of Nexo tokens (one of their main utilities). This is further complicated by the mechanism Nexo uses to determine which asset to use as collateral, which is apparently at random an may select high interest baring coins like DOT before lower interest coins like Bitcoin. You can pre select assets by moving them into a credit wallet, but then they earn no interest even when they’re not used as collateral (again except Nexo tokens).

3. You can use any coins/tokens which are in fixed terms as collateral. This means if you’ve locked up Nexo tokens in a 12 month fixed term, then they’re useless for you card until that term ends.

4. You can’t use fiat as collateral and while stablecoins carry a very generous 70% LTV, you can only use them as 50% of your total collateral.

Plutus Debit Card

See in comments

Crypto.com Debit cards

Crypto.com cards are in a state of flux at the moment, for the purposes of this comparison I’ll use the information on how the cards will work from next month onwards.

Crypto.com has 5 different tiers of cards, I’ll just look at the Ruby and the Jade/Indigo cards which are the “mid tier” ones. Midnight blue, the bottom tier is completely useless now, it gives no cashback at all and has no perks. Icy/rose gold and obsidian tiers require massive lock ups of CRO (£30k and £300k respectively) and anyone thinking about those should definitely trial the lower tiers first. Note that there’s no difference functionally between Jade and indigo, it’s just a different coloured card.

Crypto.com has a native coin, Cronos (CRO), which used to be only a token on the Ethereum blockchain but now is a coin which powers the crypto.org blockchain. CRO has various utility such as paying gas fees on Cronos network, reducing trading fees on the Crypto.com exchange, staking in DeFi and staking for the Crypto.com cards.

The card stakes are locked up for 6 months and held by Crypto.com. The amount of stake required is in fiat demonisation, but must be that amount of CRO.

Card | CRO Stake (GBP) | CRO stake (EUR) Ruby | £300 of CRO | €350 of CRO Jade/Indigo | £3000 of CRO | €3500 of CRO

Pros

1. Cashback is linked to the tier of the card, Ruby gets 1% and Jade 2%

2. The Jade/indigo cards also pay out 4% interest on the CRO stake and come with loungekey which provides free access to most airport lounges.

3. No FX fees on €10k per month for Jade/indigo and €4K per month on Ruby. No ATM withdrawal fee on up to €800 per month for Jade/indigo and €400 per month on Ruby.

Cons

1. You need to lock up a pretty hefty sum of CRO for 6 months, a long time in the crypto world.

2. They have recently made many changes to the cards features with no warning at all, often sending the email detailing the change after the changes have come into effect.

3. There has been almost weekly changes to the card over the last couple of months, none of them are for the better and it’s not clear if there will be further changes due to the aforementioned lack of advanced information.

Conclusion

Each of these cards have different pros and cons and the best one for you may be different to the best card for me. This is only a top level overview so do your own deep dive before getting one of these for yourself. In general all of these cards are better than what Amex or high street banks are offering so they are well worth looking into.

EDIT: For some reason the post won’t go up with my plutus section included so it’s below as a comment instead.