Skip to main content

Head-to-head · Crypto Cards

Nexo Card vs ether.fi Cash ether.fi Cash leads by 10 points.

ether.fi Cash scores 10 points above Nexo Card, on availability rather than any published criterion. Nexo Card ranks #3 and ether.fi Cash #1 of 9 published crypto cards. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.

Nexo Card69
ether.fi Cash79
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #3 and #1 of 9
Methodology v2026.10.18Ranking snapshot Evidence verified through 4 published criteria5 score dimensions Receipt #cc-VS-NEXO-CARD-VS-ETHER-FI-CASH-a1f22777
Published verdictRanking snapshot 3 November 2026

ether.fi Cash leads by 10 points

ether.fi Cash scores 10 points above Nexo Card, on availability rather than any published criterion.

Nexo Card #3 of 969
ether.fi Cash #1 of 979
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termether.fi Cash leads on 0 of 4 published criteria; Nexo Card on 2. The terms sum to the gap.
Termether.fi CashNexo CardWeightPoints
Card reliability7/109/106.2−3.2for Nexo Card−1.7 of 32
Named issuer4/106/105−2.6for Nexo Card−1.3 of 32
AvailabilityScore dimension12620+15.6for ether.fi Cash
Net of the terms+9.7
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread+0.1
Reproduced gap+9.9
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below7969+10.0

Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.

  • ether.fi Cash leads on no published criterion; Nexo Card is ahead on card reliability. The gap comes from availability.
Quick facts

At a glance

1 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactNexo Cardether.fi Cash
PricingSnapshotFrom https://nexo.com/crypto-card (HTTP 200, fetched 28 September 2026), verbatim: "Are there any foreign transaction fees? Yes, the respective foreign transaction (FX) fees depend on the day of the week of the transaction:" / "FX Fees on Weekdays" — "EEA/UK/CH: 0.2%" "ROW: 2%" / "FX Fees on Weekends" — "EEA/UK/CH: 0.7%" "ROW: 2.5%". ATM: "Depending on your Loyalty Tier, you can enjoy free ATM withdrawals up to a specific amount:" — "Base: Up to €200 / £180", "Silver: Up to €400 / £360", "Gold: Up to €1,000 / £900", "Platinum: Up to €2,000 / £1,800" — and "Once you reach your free withdrawal limit, you’ll be charged a 2% fee (minimum of 1.99 EUR/GBP) per additional withdrawal until your monthly limit resets again." Subscription: "Enjoy daily spending with no monthly, annual, or inactivity card fees." Card issue: "There’s also free shipping for the physical Nexo Card." / "The virtual Nexo Card can be activated once you have at least $50 to your Nexo account." / "To order a physical card, you need an account balance above $5,000 worth of digital assets and at least a Gold Loyalty Tier." Credit Mode: "Grow your buying power with crypto-backed Credit Lines starting from 1.9% interest." NOT PUBLISHED on that page, and cited as silent: the crypto-to-fiat conversion charge applied at authorisation in Debit Mode (the page says only "Tap into your crypto balance while we handle the conversion for you."), the base rate the FX percentage marks up, and the NEXO-token ratio needed to reach each Loyalty Tier (https://nexo.com/loyalty, fetched 28 September 2026, says only "The amount of NEXO Tokens you hold against the rest of your portfolio places you into one of our Loyalty Tiers."). Every figure above is unchanged from the 17 August 2026 read.From the Fee Schedule the cardholder agreement incorporates by reference, https://help.ether.fi/en/articles/303623-what-are-the-transaction-limits-and-fees-for-personal-cash-credit-cards (HTTP 200, fetched 28 September 2026, dateModified 17 September 2026): "Where a transaction requires a currency conversion, ether.fi applies the prevailing FX base rate (~1%) and may add a foreign exchange margin on top of that base rate." | "The added FX fee is charged in addition to the underlying FX base rate and is reflected in the converted amount applied to the transaction." | "Membership Level" / "Added FX fee": "Core" "0-0.5%", "Luxe" "0-0.25%", "Pinnacle" "None", "VIP" "None" | ATM withdrawals, the same row for Core, Luxe and Pinnacle: "$1000 per transaction. Maximum of five(5) ATM withdrawals in any rolling 24 hour period ($5,000 total)." (the August row allowed half as much per transaction and three withdrawals a day) | "The Visa FX calculator provides indicative rates, but the final settlement rate can differ due to intermediary bank fees, network adjustments, or timing differences in how Visa processes the refund." The binding International agreement (https://etherfi.gitbook.io/etherfi/legal/ether.fi-legal/ether.fi-cash-cardholder-agreement-inc.-international.md, "Last Modified: September 8, 2026"): "This includes a base 1% foreign transaction fee ("FX Base Rate"). For Core tier members, the fee is up to an additional 50bps on top of the FX Base Rate. For Luxe tier members, the fee is up to an additional 25bps on top of the FX Base Rate." Cost of reaching the lower-markup tiers (https://help.ether.fi/en/articles/303625-how-do-membership-levels-work, dateModified 21 September 2026): Luxe by "5K pts" a month, "$15K" deposited into Liquid, "30K ETHFI" staked, or "$199/yr"; Pinnacle by "25K pts", "$100K", "150K ETHFI" or "$999/yr". Physical card (https://help.ether.fi/en/articles/776152-membership-level-benefits, dateModified 27 September 2026): Core "Free; shipping fee applies". Borrow Mode credit (https://help.ether.fi/en/articles/326983-understanding-your-cash-card-borrow-mode-vs-direct-pay-mode, "August 20, 2026"): "variable APY, set by the underlying lending market for each asset (borrowing runs through Aave v4 markets) — not a fixed rate"; the fixed APY quoted in August is gone. NOT PUBLISHED, cited to the page that should carry it: the per-withdrawal ATM fee at Core and Luxe (the membership-benefits page lists ATM withdrawals as "Available" at Core and Luxe and "Free, up to 10 withdrawals per month" at Pinnacle and VIP, naming no charge) and the Core shipping fee.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshoteuropeus, europe, asia
From the published criteria

Which should you pick?

Nexo Card

69#3 of 9
Pick it when
Pick Nexo Card if card reliability matters most — it scores 9/10 to ether.fi Cash's 7/10 there (weight 26).
Strength
Programme survival — 9/10
Tradeoff
The fee you can look up is not the fee that will hurt you. Nexo publishes its FX margin to four decimal-sharp cases and its ATM terms to four tiers, but it never says what BASE RATE that margin sits on, and it prices the Debit Mode crypto-to-fiat conversion at authorisation nowhere at all — the page says only "Tap into your crypto balance while we handle the conversion for you." Worse, the one lever that moves the ATM allowance from €200 to €2,000 a month is a Loyalty Tier set by "the ratio of NEXO Tokens held against the rest of your portfolio", and neither https://nexo.com/crypto-card nor https://nexo.com/loyalty publishes what that ratio has to be. So a buyer who wants the Platinum ATM allowance and the 2% cashback cannot work out, before signing up, how much of their portfolio they must convert into a single illiquid exchange token to get it — and if NEXO falls relative to the rest of the portfolio, the tier, the allowance and the cashback rate all fall with it, without a fee ever changing.

ether.fi Cash

79#1 of 9
Leads
Pick it when
ether.fi Cash leads on no published criterion; its edge is availability (12 vs 6 points). Pick it if that term is what you are buying.
Strength
Swipe cost abroad — 8/10
Tradeoff
The added FX margin falls to 0-0.25% at Luxe and to 'None' only at Pinnacle and VIP; on 2026-09-28 the levels page sold Luxe for '$199/yr' and Pinnacle for '$999/yr', beside points, Liquid-deposit and staking routes, the stake now '30K ETHFI' / '150K ETHFI' — a price-volatile position that itself carries only a 20% LTV and a 50% liquidation threshold as collateral. So the buyer who stakes rather than pays takes on a token position that can fall while they hold it, and the ETHFI they stake to make the card cheaper is tied for the worst collateral in ether.fi's own table. Underneath that: at Core and Luxe — the two tiers essentially everyone starts in — ether.fi publishes ATM limits but never publishes the ATM fee, while explicitly marking ATM withdrawals as 'Free' only at Pinnacle and VIP. The one cost the fee page will not name is the one it prices for someone else.
Self-identify in 10 seconds

Which one is actually for you?

Nexo Card

Choose Nexo Card if card reliability matters most

  • Card reliability: 9/10 against 7/10 for ether.fi Cash (weight 26)
  • Named issuer: 6/10 against 4/10 for ether.fi Cash (weight 21)
ether.fi CashLeads

ether.fi Cash leads Nexo Card on no published criterion

  • Choose it only if something outside the published criteria decides for you — your country, a funding rail, or custody.
Criterion by criterion

Scorecard

Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology

Cost abroad

weight 7.9 of 86Tie
Nexo Card8 out of 10
ether.fi Cash8 out of 10

Card reliability

by 2 of 10weight 6.2 of 86Nexo Card leads
Nexo Card9 out of 10
ether.fi Cash7 out of 10

Named issuer

by 2 of 10weight 5 of 86Nexo Card leads
Nexo Card6 out of 10
ether.fi Cash4 out of 10

Tax on spending

weight 4.8 of 86Tie
Nexo Card8 out of 10
ether.fi Cash8 out of 10

Score dimensions

weights sum to 86

The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.

Availabilityweight 20 of 86
Nexo Card6/20ether.fi Cash12/20
ether.fi Cash leads
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Nexo Card18.8/30ether.fi Cash16.6/30
Nexo Card leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Nexo Card2.7/10ether.fi Cash2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
Nexo Card3.2/8ether.fi Cash3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
Nexo Card8.3/18ether.fi Cash8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order

Choose ether.fi Cash unless the term Nexo Card leads on is the one you are buying.

Pick Nexo Card if card reliability matters most — it scores 9/10 to ether.fi Cash's 7/10 there (weight 26).

The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .

From the published order

Next best action

If this isn't your case

Other matchups worth comparing

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
  • Regulatory failure: no licence where you are, or a forced market exit.
    Scored by Whose licence is actually behind this card, and will they even tell me their name? · 21% (Nexo Card 6/10, ether.fi Cash 4/10)
    Scored by Does buying a coffee create a taxable disposal, and will they hand me the record? · 20% (Nexo Card 8/10, ether.fi Cash 8/10)
  • Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
    Scored by Will this card still work next month, and who has to fail for it to stop? · 26% (Nexo Card 9/10, ether.fi Cash 7/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Control failure, Liveness failure, Custody failure, Insolvency failure, Execution failure, Information failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: What does one swipe abroad actually cost me, and can I work that out before I sign up? (33%).
Questions

Frequently asked questions

ether.fi Cash scores 10 points above Nexo Card, on availability rather than any published criterion. Published scores, out of 100: Nexo Card 69 (rank 3 of 9 crypto cards), ether.fi Cash 79 (rank 1 of 9).

Related pages

Go deeper

Trust & process
Individual reviews
Other comparisons
Written and reviewed by Founder
Reviewed Next review by Methodology v2026.10.18
How this page is reviewed

Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.

Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.

How we review · Review calendar · Corrections log · How we make money

Free advisorNo signup needed

Skip the comparison — get your best match

Answer a few quick questions and get one clear recommendation based on how you actually plan to use crypto — with rationale, tradeoffs, and a path to monitor the decision.

No signupFree first pass · PrivateNo spam · No account

Not financial advice · Independent · Always do your own research

Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research