A crypto-funded Visa that works best when you already hold stablecoins

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The Cashi card is a USD-denominated Visa debit card that spends from a balance funded by USDC, USDT or other supported digital assets. The interesting thing about it is not the card itself, which is a simple virtual Visa, but the breadth of the funding rails: nine networks, two big stablecoins, plus native BTC, ETH and SOL, and a cash on- and off-ramp in more than twenty local currencies. For someone who already holds crypto and wants a Visa to spend it, that combination is unusual.

The less interesting thing is everything that the public pages do not say. Cashi describes itself as a technology provider, not a card issuer, and the issuer, the licence, the country list and the home regulator are not named on the site. The card is in public beta as of August 2026, no physical card exists yet, Apple Pay is on the roadmap, and the virtual card does not work at ATMs. You weigh those facts against the 0% USD spending fee, the 3/2/1 cashback, the daily limit you can dial up to $50,000, and you get the picture.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

Cashi scores 6.6 out of 10 in our rating. That is a middling number that hides a sharper split between strengths and weaknesses: the card is cheap to run and unusually flexible on the funding side, but it is young, lightly regulated on paper, and missing a few everyday features most readers will expect.

To break that down, this is how the card scored on each of the five criteria we look at:

The audience that fits Cashi best is a stablecoin holder who already moves USDC or USDT across networks and wants a Visa number to spend from without an extra on-ramp step. If you are in that situation, the funding side and the cost structure are the strongest parts of the offer. If you are looking for a physical card, an ATM, a published regulator and licence, or Apple Pay, this is the wrong card today.

Who can get the Cashi card

This is where the review has to slow down, because the answer is partly a list and partly a “not stated”.

Cashi does not publish a list of countries where the card is available. The site says the card works “anywhere Visa is accepted”, which is about merchant acceptance, not about who can sign up. The sign-up flow shows a set of country flags — Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia — and these are suggestions rather than an eligibility list, so treat them as a hint of where sign-up has been seen working, not as a promise.

A few practical points follow from that. First, the country you live in matters, because the card is a USD Visa and your merchant experience is filtered through US dollar conversion, plus the 1% non-USD conversion fee described below. Second, the card is restricted by Visa and by Cashi itself in ways you do not see at sign-up: the help center says “certain merchant types may be restricted for regulatory reasons”, without naming them, and the issuer can decline transactions or close accounts when it cannot complete its checks. Third, the country you hold citizenship in is screened separately from where you live, which matters if you have moved countries or hold a passport from somewhere the issuer treats as higher risk.

You also need to be old enough to pass KYC — the help center does not state a minimum age, but the industry standard for a regulated card is 18, with some issuers setting the bar higher. The help center does not state a minimum age, but 18 is the standard for regulated cards. Proof of address is not mentioned. The card is a USD Visa, so it is denominated in US dollars regardless of where you sign up.

If you are in a country where ordinary bank cards are hard to get — an unbanked reader, a freelancer with a thin credit file, an expat whose local bank has declined them — the Cashi sign-up page may still let you try. Whether the issuer then lets you through depends on documents the card’s help center does not spell out. The honest reading is: sign-up is frictionless until it is not, and the second stage is opaque.

How to get the Cashi card

The sign-up is a four-step path that most people get through in one sitting. First, you sign up in the Cashi app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, with an email and a phone number. Second, you verify your identity with “a quick check with your ID and a selfie” — the help center says most checks finish in minutes, and that some take up to 24 hours. Third, you add at least $5 to your balance. Fourth, you tap “Activate card for $5”, which charges the $5 activation fee and then returns it as $5 Spending Credit, so the activation is net zero if you use the credit.

You get a USD-denominated virtual Visa debit card. There is no physical card today, and the help center says physical cards “will be available in the future” without giving a date. There is also no card delivery, no replacement card by courier, and no instruction for a lost or stolen physical card, because none exists. If your card details are exposed, the help center says to email support.

A few things are notably missing from the sign-up description. The help center does not state a minimum age or mention address verification. There is no public list of rejection reasons. The help center talks about “verification” as a single step rather than as a tiered KYC process, so most readers will not know in advance how much documentation they will eventually be asked for.

For most readers, the practical experience is: download the app, complete the selfie check, fund the card with at least $5 in supported crypto, tap activate, and the virtual card is in your wallet within minutes. If verification takes longer, you wait up to 24 hours. If verification fails, the help center does not tell you why.

What the Cashi card really costs

This is the strongest part of the card. Cashi is unusually transparent about the headline fees and unusually light on the rest.

Here is the costs table, with values taken from Cashi’s help center and articles only:

A few everyday payments make those numbers more concrete.

A $40 lunch in a New York restaurant charged in US dollars: 0% Cashi fee, no conversion, no foreign exchange mark-up. If the merchant is set up to charge in dollars, you pay $40 from your Cashi balance and that is the end of the calculation.

A $40 lunch in a café in Madrid that charges in euros: 1% conversion fee on the euro amount. The Visa exchange rate applies, the euro is converted to dollars at the network rate, and Cashi takes 1% on the euro value. On $40, that is about $0.40. The bigger swing on euro payments is the network rate, which Cashi does not mark up further.

A $100 online subscription billed in US dollars: 0% Cashi fee, plus 3% cashback as Spending Credit if the subscription is in the eligible list. So you pay $100 and get $3 back to spend on the card, which is the kind of small, automatic saving that adds up over a year of streaming and SaaS.

Two things sit alongside that table and are easy to miss. First, Cashi does not publish a crypto-to-fiat conversion spread, which is the kind of fee many crypto cards hide in the rate. If the spread is non-zero, you are paying it; if it is zero, the card is one of the more honest ones in this category. Second, the help center says Cashi does not charge for crypto deposits, and the only fee is the blockchain network fee paid to the chain itself — and the help center notes that the network fee is paid from the sending wallet, so it does not eat into the value that lands in your Cashi balance.

The $50 dispute fee is worth dwelling on. Disputing a transaction through the issuer costs $50; asking the merchant directly for a refund is free. That is a real deterrent against spurious disputes and a real cost when a dispute is justified. The help center does not say whether the fee is refunded if the dispute is resolved in your favour.

Funding

The funding side is the card’s strongest feature by a wide margin. The help center says you can deposit USDC or USDT on nine networks: Tron, Solana, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Base. The activation article adds that you can also deposit BTC, ETH and SOL directly. On top of that, you can add funds in cash and cash out in more than twenty local currencies.

For digital assets, the rules are simple. There is no minimum deposit, no Cashi fee, and only the blockchain network fee to pay — and that fee is paid by the sending wallet, not from the value you are transferring. Cashi-to-Cashi transfers are free. The $5 you need to activate the card is the only minimum on the funding side.

For cash, the rules are different. Every cash deposit or send has a Cashi fee that depends on the currency, the method and the amount, and the fee is shown in the app before you confirm. Minimums vary by currency. The USD account receives funds for free, but sends and receives on the USD account are capped at 3,000 USD in any seven-day period.

Two practical warnings sit on top of those mechanics. First, the card uses a stablecoin balance to fund spending, and stablecoins can lose their peg — USDC briefly lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis, and the TerraUSD collapse in May 2022 wiped out a major stablecoin. Most days USDC and USDT hold their value, but a depeg during a weekend is a real risk. Second, blockchain transfers are irreversible. A deposit sent on a network the card does not support, or to an address of a different network, can be lost, and recovery by support is at the issuer’s discretion. One thing worth knowing in this context: Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option for sending to or from Cashi; that is a network point, not a Cashi one, and it is the kind of detail a reader can easily miss.

You cannot fund the card from a bank account in the way you would a normal debit card, because the card is funded from your Cashi balance, and your Cashi balance is funded by crypto or cash. The on-ramp is the app, and the off-ramp is a withdrawal in one of the supported currencies.

Paying with the Cashi card every day

Once the card is funded, day-to-day use is straightforward and a bit limited.

The virtual card works online anywhere Visa is accepted, and works in stores with Google Pay on Android for tap-to-pay. Apple Pay is not available yet — the help center has an article titled “Does Cashi support Apple Pay?” which says it is “on our roadmap”. If you are an iPhone user, you pay online with the card details and you cannot tap the phone in a shop.

The virtual card does not work at ATMs. The help center says so explicitly. There is no physical card to insert or tap at an ATM, and there is no cashback on ATM-style transactions because there are no ATM transactions on the virtual card.

There is no published list of blocked merchant categories, which is unusual for a regulated card. The help center mentions that “certain merchant types may be restricted for regulatory reasons” without naming them, so the practical approach is to treat any blocked category as a surprise. In the broader category, gambling (MCC 7995) is the most commonly blocked category across the industry, but that is a category-level point, not a Cashi-specific one.

Cashback is the everyday feature Cashi leans on. The card pays 3% on eligible subscriptions, 2% on eligible online shopping and 1% on eligible travel, paid as Spending Credit that you can spend on the card. Cashback is automatic. The help articles set monthly caps that are worth knowing: the 2% online store rate is capped at $10 cashback per named store per calendar month, on the first $500 spent at that store; other eligible stores share a $500 pool and $10 cashback cap; the 1% travel rate is capped at $20 cashback per month, with each booking counting up to $2,000. The 3% subscription rate applies to monthly plans only and is limited to one charge per service per month, and the help center names Amazon Prime, Google One, Canva and Uber One. The 3% cap is not stated. Cashback categories have monthly caps (amounts not stated). Cashback is paid as Spending Credit per help center.

A few other everyday points round out the picture. The card is denominated in US dollars, and non-USD transactions are converted at the Visa rate with a 1% Cashi fee. The card supports merchant holds above the final amount (for example, a car rental pre-authorisation), with the hold deducted at the time of authorisation and then adjusted when the final charge clears. Address Verification Service is mostly a US, Canada and UK feature and is often unavailable on foreign-issued cards, which can mean a higher decline rate at small US merchants — a category-level point, but one that bites crypto cards more than domestic ones.

What can go wrong with the Cashi card

Most of the risks here are about who is behind the card, not about the card’s mechanics.

The biggest open question is the issuer. Cashi says it “provides technology services only”, and that financial products are issued and managed by licensed third parties. The site does not name the issuer, the country of registration or the licence. Visa and Mastercard themselves do not issue cards to consumers; they license issuers, and the issuer is the entity regulated to hold your funds. When WaveCrest, a Visa-licensed issuer, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, every programme running on its licence closed. When FTX’s global agreement with Visa was terminated in November 2022, the FTX US debit card was wound down. Both episodes ended with users being asked to withdraw balances within a short window. Cashi’s silence on the issuer makes it hard for a reader to assess the same risk for themselves.

A related risk is safeguarding. EMIs in the EU are required to safeguard customer funds, by segregating them in dedicated accounts or insuring them, but those funds are not bank deposits and may not be covered by deposit guarantee schemes. Cashi does not state whether customer balances are safeguarded, insured, or held in a trust. The help center says Cashi “provides technology only and assets are with licensed third parties”, which is a description, not a guarantee.

Public feedback is thin. Cashi has been in public beta since August 2026 — a press release reprinted as 11 August 2026 marks the public beta of the app and the Visa card — and a full launch is expected before the end of 2026. There is no Cashi-specific Trustpilot page or user reviews found. That is not a verdict on reliability; it is a data gap. With almost no public feedback, you are trusting the issuer on the basis of a beta-stage public launch and a help center that does not name the issuer.

Security features are the standard set: instant card freeze in the app, user-set daily limits, online payment controls, 2FA, PIN, biometrics, real-time activity alerts, “secure account controls and continuous monitoring”. The card is also part of the 3-D Secure flow on online checkouts, which is Visa Secure on the Visa side. Support is by email at [email protected], the help center at help.cashi.com, a Telegram channel at t.me/cashi, and X. The site is available in English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean, and the support staff speak these languages.

Two smaller risks round out the picture. The card cannot be permanently closed yet, only frozen — the help center says so explicitly — and account deletion is a separate step that asks you to “transfer any remaining balance out of your Cashi account” and notes that “after deletion you won’t be able to access your funds”. The order of operations is the risk: if you delete the account before withdrawing, you are relying on support to return balances. The second risk is sanctions exposure: stablecoins are not censorship-proof, and Tether has frozen funds tied to illicit activity, which is a useful reminder that stablecoin balances are visible to the issuer and to chain analytics.

What to take instead of the Cashi card

Cashi is not the only crypto-funded card with a young product and a small public footprint. Three alternatives illustrate the range.

If you are in Nigeria or West Africa and a Naira-denominated card is what you need, Cardex or CardFlow is closer to a fit than Cashi, which is USD-only. If you are in Europe and want a prepaid USD or EUR balance funded by crypto, HyperCard is worth a look. None of the three publishes a fee schedule as complete as Cashi’s, and the same issuer-disclosure problem applies to all of them. The honest comparison is that Cashi has the most complete public fee story, the widest funding set, and the least clarity on the issuer — which is a different trade-off from the alternatives rather than a clear win.

Who I would recommend the Cashi card to

Pull the threads together, and the picture is a card that does one thing unusually well and a few things not at all.

The right reader is someone who already holds USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH or SOL, moves them across networks as a matter of course, and wants a USD Visa to spend from without an extra on-ramp step. If that is you, the 0% USD spending fee, the 1% non-USD fee, the 3/2/1 cashback, the $50,000 daily limit you can dial up in the app, and the nine-network funding set are a strong package. The $5 activation that comes back as $5 Spending Credit is a fair deal, and the absence of monthly fees, where the help center does not state one, is genuinely unusual for this category.

The wrong reader is someone who needs a physical card today, who needs to withdraw cash at an ATM, who needs Apple Pay, or who needs to know who the issuer is and under which licence their money is held. The wrong reader is also someone who is not in a country where the issuer is comfortable running the KYC pipeline — and because the country list is not published, the only way to find out is to try.

In the middle sit readers who want a stablecoin-funded Visa and are willing to live with a beta-stage product, an unnamed issuer, and a virtual-only card. For them, the 6.6/10 score reads about right. The card is cheap, the funding is flexible, the everyday use is patchy, and the disclosure is thin. The reader who needs everything to be a “yes” before they sign up will not find that here. The reader who can live with a few “not stated”s in exchange for the funding set and the cost structure will.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Cashi card?

The Cashi card is a USD-denominated virtual Visa debit card that spends from a balance funded by USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH or SOL, with cash on- and off-ramps in more than twenty local currencies. It is run by Cashi, which describes itself as a technology provider; the card-issuing bank and the relevant licence are not named on the public site.

Is Cashi a bank or a card issuer?

Neither, on the public record. Cashi says it “provides technology services only” and that financial products are issued and managed by licensed third parties. The third party, the country of registration and the licence are not stated, which is a difference from a typical bank-issued debit card where the issuer is on the front of the card and the regulator is in the small print.

How does the Cashi card work in practice?

You download the Cashi app, complete an ID and selfie check, add at least $5 in supported crypto or cash, pay the $5 activation fee (which is returned as $5 Spending Credit), and a virtual Visa is provisioned to your account. You then spend that balance wherever Visa is accepted, with 0% on USD charges and a 1% conversion fee on non-USD charges, and earn 3/2/1 cashback on eligible categories.

Does the Cashi card require KYC?

Yes. The help center says verification is “a quick check with your ID and a selfie”, and that most checks finish in minutes with some taking up to 24 hours. Beyond that one step, the help center does not describe tiers, address verification, age minimums or rejection reasons, so the practical experience is opaque until you hit it.

How do I top up the Cashi card?

You can deposit USDC or USDT on Tron, Solana, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Ethereum, Bitcoin or Base, and BTC, ETH or SOL directly, with no Cashi fee and only the blockchain network fee. You can also deposit cash in more than twenty local currencies, with a Cashi fee quoted in the app before you confirm. The minimum for the card is the $5 needed to activate it.

How do I withdraw money from Cashi?

You send digital assets out on any of the eight supported networks, paying only the network fee, or you cash out in more than twenty local currencies with a Cashi fee quoted in the app. USD-account sends also carry a fixed bank fee plus a small transfer fee, and the USD account is capped at 3,000 USD in sends and receives over any seven-day period.

Is the Cashi card free?

There is no stated monthly or annual fee. The only upfront cost is the $5 activation fee, which is returned as $5 Spending Credit, so the net cost is zero if you use the credit. The dispute fee is $50; crypto deposits are free apart from the network fee; non-USD spending carries a 1% conversion fee. The crypto conversion spread is not stated, so the all-in cost is not fully transparent.

How do I add the Cashi card to Apple Wallet?

You cannot, today. The help center has an article titled “Does Cashi support Apple Pay?” that says Apple Pay is “not available yet, but it’s on our roadmap”. On Android, you can add the card to Google Pay for in-store tap-to-pay, and the help center is the place to check for the latest status.

Is the Cashi card safe?

The card offers the standard safeguards: instant freeze, user-set daily limits, online payment controls, 2FA, PIN, biometrics, real-time alerts and 3-D Secure on online checkouts. The wider questions — whether balances are safeguarded, who the issuer is, which regulator oversees the programme — are not answered on the public site, and that is a real consideration for any reader who treats their card balance as money they cannot afford to lose.

How do I delete my Cashi account?

The help center says to transfer any remaining balance out of your Cashi account first, then delete the account, and notes that “after deletion you won’t be able to access your funds”. The card itself cannot be permanently closed yet and can only be frozen, so the practical order is: withdraw your balance, then delete the account, then freeze the card.

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