A crypto Visa card that is still a public beta — good fees, thin safeguards

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Cashi is a virtual Visa debit card that spends a balance you fund with stablecoins. On the surface it is one of the cheapest ways I have seen to turn USDC or USDT into everyday card spending: no monthly fee stated, 0% on payments priced in dollars, 1% when the merchant charges you in another currency, and free crypto deposits. Underneath, the picture is much thinner than the fee table suggests. There is no published country list, no named card issuer, no named licences, no user reviews anywhere I could find, and a public beta that the company says started in August 2026. My score is 6.6 out of 10.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: 6.6 / 10

Here is my breakdown, criterion by criterion, with the reasons written out so you can argue with any of them.

Who this suits: you already hold USDC or USDT, you are comfortable moving funds on several blockchain networks yourself, you want a spending card rather than an exchange account, and you mostly pay online or in dollars. You should also be willing to treat the balance as money you could lose, because the protection story is thin.

Who it does not suit: you need cash from ATMs, you rely on Apple Pay, you want a physical card in your hand, you are in a country where you need a named, locally licensed issuer, or you cannot afford to lose the balance. If your problem is that a bank will not open an account for you, this card may help, but it is not a bank and it is not a substitute for one — see the section on whether Cashi is a bank further down.

The audience fit in one line: stablecoin holders funding a card on many networks.

Will they give you the card?

Short answer: probably, if your country and your documents pass, but you cannot tell from the outside whether yours is on the list, because the list is not published.

Cashi does not list supported countries on its site or in its help articles. Availability is stated as subject to local laws. The country flags in the sign-up flow point at Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia — but that is a set of flags in a registration form, not a stated eligibility list, and I would not treat it as one. Cashi itself does not make a claim either way.

The positive side of this is genuine: the card works “anywhere Visa is accepted”, with no separate merchant network to learn. The negative side is on the same line — “certain merchant types may be restricted for regulatory reasons”. Which merchant types is not stated, so you will not be able to predict the categories that will fail. If a category matters to you, the only honest answer is to test it yourself with a small payment.

How to get it

Short answer: sign up, prove who you are, put at least $5 in the balance, tap the activation button, and you have a virtual card in the app — most people say the identity check finishes in minutes, some in up to 24 hours.

The steps, in the order Cashi describes them: sign up; verify your identity; add at least $5 to your balance; tap “Activate card for $5”; get $5 back as Spending Credit. So the activation fee does not stay with Cashi — it comes straight back as credit you can spend.

What you get is a USD-denominated virtual Visa debit card. A physical card “will be available in the future”, which means no delivery, no plastic in the post, and nothing in your wallet you can hand over at a restaurant. If your card details are ever exposed, the route is to email support.

On identity checks: Cashi describes “a quick check with your ID and a selfie”. No tiers or verification levels are described, and neither are the reasons a check might be refused — or what happens if it is. Proof of address and the minimum age are not stated on the pages. So I cannot tell you what to have ready beyond a photo ID and a selfie, and I would not promise you a smooth path through it.

The app is on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Store ratings are not shown, so you will not get a sense of other users’ experience from there either.

What it really costs: fees, limits and everyday payments

Short answer: this is where Cashi scores well. There is no monthly fee stated, USD payments cost 0%, payments in other currencies cost 1%, and crypto deposits cost nothing beyond the blockchain network fee.

Two things here deserve your attention before you get excited about the 0%. The first is that the crypto conversion spread is not stated. The 1% currency fee is the fee you can see; the rate you get when stablecoins become dollars is a separate number, and Cashi does not publish it. For someone spending large amounts, that missing number matters more than the 1%. The second is the $50 dispute cost. If a charge goes wrong, asking the merchant is free; it is the formal dispute that costs fifty dollars. That is a deliberate design choice — it stops people filing disputes for everything — but it means you will want to try the merchant first.

Now three ordinary payments, with the fees that apply:

• A $40 subscription billed in USD. Cashi charges 0%, so you pay $40 from the balance. If the subscription is on Cashi’s cashback list it earns 3% as Spending Credit, which comes back as credit rather than cash.
• A €60 shop purchase. The merchant charges in euros, Cashi converts to dollars and charges 1%, so the conversion cost €0.60 on top of the price. Everything else — what rate you get for the stablecoin — is the unstated spread.
• A cash withdrawal at an ATM. This does not work. The virtual card cannot be used at ATMs at all, so this is not an expensive transaction, it is an unavailable one. Getting cash means the app’s cash-out instead, in 20+ currencies, at a fee quoted before you confirm.

Two everyday mechanics worth knowing: the card is denominated in dollars and non-dollar payments are converted to USD automatically, and holds can sit on your balance for a while — a car rental authorises the full amount and then adjusts it afterwards.

How to top it up

Short answer: this is Cashi’s strongest area, 10 out of 10. You can fund it with USDC or USDT on eight networks, with BTC, ETH and SOL as well, or with cash in more than 20 currencies.

The rules differ depending on what you are moving, and this is where the details reward reading:

• Digital-asset deposits and sends: no minimum, no Cashi fee, only the blockchain network fee. For a deposit that fee comes out of the sending wallet; for a send out of your Cashi balance it comes out of the balance.
• Cash deposits and sends in local currency: a Cashi fee on every one. It depends on currency, method and amount, and it is quoted in the app before you confirm. Minimums vary.
• Your USD account: receiving is free. Sending and receiving together are capped at 3,000 USD in any seven days.
• To switch the card on you need $5 in the balance.

Getting money back out: send digital assets out at the network fee only on those eight networks; send or withdraw cash in 20+ currencies at a fee quoted in the app; USD account sends carry a fixed bank fee plus a small transfer fee.

Two cautions. Blockchain transfers do not reverse — a deposit sent on a network Cashi does not support, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. And there are two separate USDC flavours on Tron: Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option, while USDT on Tron is a normal one. If you hold Tron-based USDC, that is exactly the kind of detail that turns a top-up into a support ticket.

One last thing about money leaving. The card cannot be permanently closed yet — only frozen. Account deletion is possible, but you must “transfer any remaining balance out of your Cashi account” first, and afterwards “you won’t be able to access your funds”. In practice, plan your exit before you need one: know how you will get the balance out while the account still exists.

Paying with it every day

Short answer: fine for online spending in dollars, thinner everywhere else. Google Pay works in store; Apple Pay does not exist yet; the rewards are simple 3-2-1 cashback with monthly caps.

The cashback is worth a look because the caps are specific where Cashi names them. Three percent on eligible subscriptions, two percent on eligible online shopping, one percent on eligible travel, paid automatically as Spending Credit. The published caps: for the named online stores at 2%, the first $500 per store per calendar month, up to $10 cashback per store; other eligible stores share $500 and $10 per month. Travel at 1% is capped at $20 cashback per month, with each booking counting up to $2,000. The 3% subscriptions list is monthly plans only — Amazon Prime, Google One, Canva, Uber One — one charge per service per month, and that cap is not stated.

The shape of this is worth naming: cashback is Spending Credit, not cash. You can spend it on the card, which is genuinely useful, but it is not money in your pocket and it disappears if you close the account.

There is also a single tier: no account or card tiers are listed. The rates differ by category, not by what you pay.

What can go wrong

Short answer: the money side is fine; the trust side is thin. Cashi itself says it “provides technology services only”, and the issuer, the registration country and the licences are not stated anywhere I could find.

Start with the finding I keep coming back to. There are no reviews of Cashi — no Trustpilot page, no Reddit threads, no news complaints, nothing. That is not evidence of a good service; on a product in public beta since August 2026 it is mostly evidence that nobody has written them down yet. Press coverage says the public beta of the app and Visa card launched in August 2026, with reprints dated 11 August 2026, and that a full launch was expected before the end of 2026. The same coverage plans Apple Pay, a physical card, and Mexico expansion late in 2026. One report calls Cashi Hong Kong-based, with a release dateline of Sharjah, UAE. I could not verify that myself.

Why the structure matters: a card payment involves several parties. Visa routes the messages and sets the rules; the issuer is the licensed bank or e-money institution that holds the card programme; the crypto brand is often only the programme manager and the front end. When something fails — funds held, a charge reversed, an account frozen — you need to know which of those three to write to. Cashi’s public pages do not name the issuer. That is the single largest gap in this review.

The company’s own security tooling is more reassuring: freeze the card instantly in the app, set daily limits, control online payments, and there are help-center articles on 2FA, PIN and biometrics, real-time activity alerts, and what Cashi calls “secure account controls and continuous monitoring”. That is the standard modern set. It protects the card, not your balance.

And the balance is where the category’s real risks live. With a custodial wallet the provider holds the credentials, so you trust them completely; a seed phrase is typically 12 to 24 words and anyone who gets it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Crypto transfers are typically irreversible, and a stolen key has no recovery because the network cannot freeze or return anything. The history is not theoretical: Mt. Gox reported about US$350 million stolen in 2011–2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, and the Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022. Card programmes have been switched off too — Visa terminated its agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down, and WaveCrest, an issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes.

On refunds: a formal dispute with Cashi costs $50. Cashback is removed if the merchant refunds. Time frames are not stated. A declined authorisation can also leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven.

I am deliberately not telling you how to get around KYC, sanctions screening or country rules — the identity check is a legal requirement, not an obstacle to route around. In the EU, customer due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documents, a sanctions check and a politically-exposed-person check; nationality is screened separately from residence because sanctions and issuer risk policy often apply to citizenship and country of birth as well as country of address. If due diligence cannot be completed, the institution is required to stop, and accounts get closed or frozen pending documents.

One more thing worth knowing if you are in Europe: MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation, took legal effect in June 2023. Its rules on stablecoins applied from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider rules, from 30 December 2024. The transitional period for providers already operating under national law ran only until 1 July 2026 or until a MiCA authorisation was received or refused. ESMA keeps a public interim register of authorised providers — a place to check a name before you trust it with a balance.

What to take instead

Short answer: none of the three alternatives I looked at scores better than Cashi. Cardex is 5.6, TakeCard 5.5, OkiCard 6.0, against Cashi’s 6.6. The choice is about which compromise you prefer, not about finding a better card.

A few observations from reading those pages. Cardex markets an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchange rates and picks the best one when you spend, but states no fee percentage, and its App Store listing is Naira-focused. TakeCard is the most transparent on card cost — 1% per purchase, USD payments 1:1, other currencies at the official Visa rate — but its physical card is Bolivia-only and its own help centre contradicts itself on physical pricing, $20 plus $20 shipping in one article and $10 in another. OkiCard has the clearest load-fee figure at 3% and claims “no hidden exchange spreads”, but its own pages disagree on whether issuance is free, and its USDC support is “soon” while BTC and altcoins are “coming soon”.

What none of them does is publish a named issuer and licence the way a bank does. That is the shared weakness of this category, and it is the reason none of these scores is high.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend Cashi to someone specific, not to everyone. You should be comfortable holding USDC or USDT across several networks, used to paying your own network fees, spending mainly online or in dollars, and treating the balance as money you could lose without recourse. If that is you, the fee structure is genuinely the best of the four cards I looked at, and the activation fee that comes back as Spending Credit is a fair way to start.

I would not recommend it to you if any of these apply: you need cash from an ATM; you live on Apple Pay; you need a physical card; you are in a country where a named local licence is the only thing that makes you comfortable; you need consumer protection you can point at in writing; or you are the kind of person who would rather have a monthly fee and a bank behind the card than a lower conversion charge. Cashi’s costs are low precisely because the safeguards are thin.

The realistic middle path: fund it with an amount you would happily see disappear, use it for the spending that suits you, and keep a separate card or account for anything you cannot afford to lose. And read the closure clause before you fund it, not after — because the way out is a manual balance transfer while the account still exists.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Cashi card?

It is a virtual Visa debit card in US dollars that spends a balance you fund yourself, mostly with USDC or USDT and sometimes with cash in more than 20 currencies. It behaves like a prepaid card: you load money first, then spend it. Cashi describes itself as a technology provider, so the card programme is held by licensed third parties whose names are not stated on the public pages.

How does the Cashi card work?

You sign up, verify your identity with an ID and a selfie, add at least $5, and tap “Activate card for $5” — the fee comes back as $5 of Spending Credit. The card then spends your balance directly. Payments in dollars cost 0% and payments in other currencies are converted automatically with a 1% fee, on top of a crypto conversion spread that is not stated.

Is Cashi a bank?

No, and Cashi does not present itself as one. It says it provides technology services only, with the financial products issued and managed by licensed third parties. It also does not name the issuer, its registration country or its licences, which is why I treat the missing protections as the central risk of this card rather than a footnote.

Who owns Cashi?

I could not confirm this. One report calls the company Hong Kong-based, and a release dateline points to Sharjah, UAE, but I could not verify either from a page I could read. The company’s own material describes only its role as a technology provider, so the ownership behind the licence-holding entity is not something the public pages answer.

Which countries is the Cashi card available in?

The card’s public pages do not list them. Availability is stated as subject to local laws, and the sign-up flags point at Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia — but flags are not an eligibility list, and Cashi does not claim they are one. Your best test is simply to try.

Does the Cashi card require KYC?

Yes — “a quick check with your ID and a selfie”, which most people finish in minutes and some in up to 24 hours. No verification tiers are described and no refusal reasons are given. Proof of address and the minimum age are not stated, so I cannot tell you what to have ready beyond photo ID.

How do I activate the Cashi card?

Fund the balance with at least $5, then tap “Activate card for $5” in the app. The $5 is returned to you as $5 of Spending Credit, so the activation costs you nothing in the end. You must pay it from your cash balance rather than from a crypto deposit.

How do I top up the Cashi card?

Send USDC or USDT on Tron, Solana, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Ethereum, Bitcoin or Base, or use BTC, ETH or SOL — BTC, ETH and SOL are named in the activation article. Digital-asset deposits have no minimum and no Cashi fee, only the blockchain network fee. You can also add and cash out cash in more than 20 currencies, where a Cashi fee applies and is quoted in the app.

Can I add the Cashi card to Apple Wallet?

Not yet. Cashi says Apple Pay is “not available yet, but it’s on our roadmap”, and Apple Pay is one of the things listed as planned after the August 2026 public beta. Google Pay does work for in-store tap-to-pay, though only on Android — on iPhone you pay online with the card details instead.

Is the Cashi card safe to use?

The card controls are modern: instant freeze in the app, your own daily limit up to $50,000, online payment controls, 2FA, PIN and biometrics articles, and real-time alerts. The balance is where the exposure sits — the issuer and licences are not named, safeguarding and insurance are not stated, blockchain transfers cannot be reversed, and a card programme can be wound down with a notice period, as FTX’s was in November 2022. Use it with an amount you could afford to lose.

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