A virtual Visa debit card that spends straight from a stablecoin balance

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Cashi is a virtual Visa debit card that draws on a balance held as USDC or USDT. The app is still in public beta, launched in August 2026, and Cashi is unusually open about one thing: it says it provides only the technology, while the actual card-issuing and financial services come from licensed third parties it doesn’t name. For someone who already holds stablecoins and wants to spend them through a familiar card rail, that combination is interesting. For someone who wants a clear answer about who is behind the card, it is frustrating.

This review walks through who Cashi accepts, how the sign-up actually works, what it costs in practice, which networks you can top up from, what daily use looks like, and what can go wrong. I’ll compare it briefly with three alternatives and end with a checklist of questions readers most often search for. Everything below is based on the card’s own website and help centre as of 2026-10-20.

Conditions are current as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict: who the card suits, and who it doesn’t

Cashi scores 6.6 out of 10. The reason it doesn’t sit higher is not the fees — those are competitive — but the unknowns: no public list of supported countries, no named issuer, no licence numbers, and almost no track record because the product only entered public beta in August 2026.

The card is built for a fairly specific reader: someone who already holds USDC or USDT across several networks, who wants to convert them to spending power with minimal friction, and who is comfortable with a beta product backed by an unnamed issuer. If you are outside that description — if you want a physical card, an ATM, an Apple Pay tap on your iPhone, or a clearly regulated bank standing behind your balance — Cashi will disappoint.

Will they give you the card

Cashi does not publish a list of supported countries. The card help articles simply say the card works “anywhere Visa is accepted” and add that “certain merchant types may be restricted for regulatory reasons” without naming them. The sign-up flow itself quietly reveals something: the country picker shows flags for places like Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Those flags are what the reader sees in the interface, not a published eligibility list, so treat them as a hint, not a guarantee.

What this means for you in practice: there is no front-of-site table that says “available in X, not in Y.” You can download the app, attempt to sign up, and the system will tell you whether it can verify your identity. The verification step is a “quick check with your ID and a selfie” — most finishes take minutes, some can run up to 24 hours, and Cashi does not publish which documents it accepts, what counts as proof of address, or what the age threshold is. If you live in a country that isn’t in the picker, or if your ID doesn’t pass, the sign-up simply won’t go through and Cashi does not publish a list of rejection reasons.

The single country-related line you can rely on is the merchant-side one: the card works wherever Visa is accepted, with certain merchant categories restricted. That phrasing covers gambling, adult content, and similar high-risk categories that Visa itself often limits, but Cashi doesn’t list the blocked MCCs publicly.

How to get it

The sign-up is short. You install the app, create an account, verify your identity, add at least $5 to your balance, and tap “Activate card for $5.” The $5 activation fee is charged from your cash balance, then returned to you as $5 in Spending Credit — so the net cost of activation is zero, provided you have at least $5 to load first.

After activation the app generates a USD-denominated virtual Visa debit card. There is no physical card to wait for, no delivery to schedule, and no shipping address to enter. The card details appear in the app and can be used for online purchases immediately. If the details are ever exposed, Cashi’s help centre tells users to email support; there is no self-service “reveal” or “rotate card number” feature described.

A few things the sign-up does not tell you up front:

• There are no account tiers, no premium plan, no business card. Everyone gets the same single product.
• KYC has one level only, with no mention of enhanced due diligence for larger balances.
• Cashi has not published how long an activated card remains valid before expiry, or whether the card number changes.

You should also expect the verification window to vary. “Most finish in minutes” is the language the help centre uses, and “some up to 24 hours” is the worst case. If your ID upload is rejected on the first try, the turnaround is not stated.

What it really costs: fees, the table, and three everyday payments

Cashi’s fee structure is one of the more straightforward parts of the product. There is no monthly or annual fee that the public pages mention. The headline costs are the activation fee, which is refunded, and a 1% conversion fee that applies when you pay a merchant in any currency other than US dollars.

To make that less abstract, here are three everyday payments and what each one would cost on Cashi.

1. A $40 lunch in a US-dollar-priced restaurant, paid with the virtual card on a card reader. The merchant is billed in USD, Cashi charges 0% on the payment, no conversion fee applies, and the Spending Credit balance is untouched unless the merchant accepts a cashback category. If the lunch is a 1% travel-related purchase, you get $0.40 back as Spending Credit, subject to the travel cap of $20 cashback per month.

1. A €35 grocery shop at a European supermarket while you’re travelling. The merchant captures euros, the network converts to USD at the Visa rate of the day, and Cashi charges its 1% conversion fee on the USD equivalent. If the day’s rate is 1 EUR = 1.08 USD, the conversion is roughly $37.80 plus 1% (about $0.38), so the balance is drawn down by around $38.18. Crypto conversion spreads inside Cashi are not stated, so the 1% is the only number you can plan around.

1. A $120 online subscription that falls into the 3% cashback category (Amazon Prime, Google One, Canva, Uber One, monthly plans only). Cashi deducts $120 from your balance, applies 0% payment fee, and returns $3.60 as Spending Credit, subject to the per-service monthly cap of one qualifying charge per service per month. If you charge the same Amazon Prime again in the same month, the second charge earns no cashback.

A few other cost notes that don’t fit those three examples. The Spending Credit you receive from the $5 activation and from cashback is a balance on the card, not a cash refund. Cashi-to-Cashi transfers are free on the Cashi side (only the network fee applies when sending crypto out). Asking a merchant for a refund is free, but raising a formal dispute through the card network costs a flat $50, and that fee is retained whether you win or lose the dispute. The help centre also notes that cashback is removed when a purchase is refunded, which can make a refunded subscription feel like a net loss in Spending Credit if you didn’t notice.

How to top it up: networks, currencies, and limits

Top-up is where Cashi is most generous. You can fund the card with USDC or USDT on nine networks — Tron, Solana, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Base — plus BTC, ETH and SOL themselves in some activation flows. Cashi adds no fee on crypto deposits; the only cost is the underlying blockchain network fee, which is paid by the sending wallet. There is no minimum on crypto deposits.

Cash funding is broader in one sense and narrower in another. Cashi supports adding and cashing out funds in 20+ fiat currencies, with fees that depend on the currency, the method and the amount, all of which are quoted in the app before you confirm. Minimums vary by currency and method, and the fees are not on a public rate card. A USD-denominated account inside the app receives funds for free but limits sends and receives to 3,000 USD in any rolling 7-day window.

What to watch for when topping up:

• Network choice matters. Sending USDC on a chain Cashi does not support is one of the most common ways to lose funds in this category; the transfer is irreversible, and recovery depends on manual support.
• Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so any “USDC over TRC20” you see referenced by third parties is not a native Circle USDC; it is generally Tether’s wrapped version. Cashi lists Tron as a supported network for USDC and USDT, which means the asset you receive there is the Tron-native one, not the same as Circle’s ERC-20 USDC.
• The $5 minimum for card activation is a real threshold: until you have $5 in the cash balance and tap “Activate card for $5,” the card details are not generated.

Sending funds out follows the same shape. Digital-asset sends cost only the network fee on those eight networks. Cash sends and withdrawals in 20+ currencies are quoted in-app. USD account sends carry a fixed bank fee plus a small transfer fee. The card itself cannot be permanently closed yet — only frozen in the app — so to remove access you delete the Cashi account after transferring the balance out. The help centre warns that, after deletion, “you won’t be able to access your funds,” which makes the “transfer out first” instruction the single most important step if you decide to leave.

Paying with it every day

In day-to-day use, the virtual card behaves like a prepaid USD Visa. You pay online by entering the card number, expiry and CVV from the app. For in-store tap-to-pay, Google Pay is supported on Android; iPhone users pay online with card details, because Apple Pay is on the roadmap but “not available yet.”

Cashback is the main reward. The rates are 3% on eligible subscriptions (Amazon Prime, Google One, Canva and Uber One, monthly plans only, one charge per service per month), 2% on eligible online shopping (capped at $10 cashback per store per month, with the first $500 of spend per store per month counting), and 1% on eligible travel bookings (capped at $20 cashback per month, with each booking counting up to $2,000). The “eligible” qualifier does a lot of work in those numbers; the help centre articles describing the cashback in detail are referenced but not fully published, so the merchant lists behind those rates are not openly verifiable.

Other things you’ll bump into while using the card:

• Holds. Hotels, car rentals and similar pre-authorisations place a hold above the final amount and adjust it later, which can briefly reduce your available balance.
• 3-D Secure. Online card payments may trigger a 3-D Secure step depending on the merchant and the issuer’s risk assessment; you complete this in the Cashi app.
• Blocked merchant categories. Not publicly listed. Cashi mentions “certain merchant types may be restricted for regulatory reasons” without naming them.
• No ATM access. The virtual card cannot be used at ATMs, and there is no physical card yet, so cash withdrawal via the card is not possible.
• App distribution. The app is on the Apple App Store and Google Play, and store ratings are not shown on the cards’ own pages.

One practical note for travellers: because the card is USD-denominated, every non-USD payment goes through a USD conversion at the Visa rate plus 1%. If you spend in your home currency that isn’t USD, you’ll often find that a card denominated in that currency is cheaper overall. Cashi’s strength is the 0% USD rate, not its cross-currency rate.

What can go wrong

Five things deserve your attention before you put a meaningful balance on the card.

Issuer and licence. Cashi’s own copy says it “provides technology services only” and that “financial products are issued and managed by licensed third parties.” The issuer, the country of registration and the licence numbers are not stated on the public site. This is not unusual in the crypto-card category, but it is unusual for a card aimed at retail users, and it means the public details you can verify about who holds your money are limited.

Regulatory milestones. Cashi is in public beta as of August 2026. A full launch is expected before the end of 2026, with physical cards, Apple Pay and a Mexico expansion all described as on the roadmap. One report places the company in Hong Kong with a press-release dateline of Sharjah, UAE. None of this tells you which regulator oversees the card programme; the public pages do not.

Complaints and reviews. No Cashi-specific Trustpilot, Reddit thread or news complaint exists, and there is no public review base to compare against. The product is simply too new for that to be meaningful yet. The absence of complaints is not the same as a clean record; it is mostly the absence of a public customer base.

Security and controls. Cashi’s app offers instant card freeze, user-set daily spending limits, online payment controls, 2FA, PIN and biometric options, and real-time activity alerts. The help centre references 2FA, PIN and biometric setup articles. The card programme relies on “secure account controls and continuous monitoring.” Whether customer funds are safeguarded in segregated accounts, insured, or covered by any deposit-guarantee scheme is not stated. Cashi describes itself as a technology provider, and the safeguarding would sit with the unnamed third-party issuer.

Programme-wide risks. Cards in this category have failed before. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX in November 2022, and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer shortly afterwards. In 2018, Visa suspended WaveCrest in Europe, which closed every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme in one stroke. Cashi is structurally similar to those programmes — a tech company in front of an unnamed bank — so the same risk applies: a single decision by Visa or by the issuer can end loading and spending. Cashi’s own app cannot be permanently closed yet, only frozen, which is a second-order risk to keep in mind.

Support is reachable by email at [email protected], the Help Center at help.cashi.com, a Telegram channel at t.me/cashi, and X. The site is in English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean. None of this tells you what response time to expect.

What to take instead

Cashi’s profile — virtual, stablecoin-funded, low-fee — overlaps with a few other cards. The three below are not direct clones; they differ on networks, fees, region of focus and product maturity, and they are presented as starting points, not endorsements.

Cardex

• Score: 5.6 / 10.
• Availability: one card serving 200+ countries, with an App Store listing that leans Naira-focused.
• Card: debit crypto card across VERVE, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay; virtual and physical; card currency Naira per listing.
• Funding: USDT, USDC and BTC wallets, networks not stated.
• Cost: not stated on the public pages read.
• Fees: real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion at the moment of payment, with an “AI-Powered Conversion Rate” that scans global exchanges; no fee percentage stated.
• Rewards: not stated.

TakeCard

• Score: 5.5 / 10.
• Availability: the physical card is “available only to Bolivian users for now”; the underlying Takenos wallet says it can receive from any country. Unconfirmed data points to a wider virtual-card list.
• Card: virtual card available immediately, physical card in Bolivia; Visa network; issued in the US; prepaid; USD-denominated (1:1 on USD payments).
• Cost: virtual $5, physical (Bolivia) $20 issuance + $20 shipping (a second article in the same help centre says $10 — conflicting). No monthly fee stated.
• Fees: 1% commission per purchase; USD payments 1:1; other currencies at the official Visa rate of the transaction day; crypto conversion fee not stated.
• Funding: top up from the Takenos balance; unconfirmed data lists USDC/USDT via Polygon, BNB Chain, Tron or Ethereum.
• Rewards: not stated.

OkiCard

• Score: 6.0 / 10.
• Availability: 150+ countries (some pages say 200+); “no geo-blocking based on your passport”; users must confirm they are not in a sanctioned jurisdiction.
• Card: virtual, with a physical card mentioned but not detailed; network listed as “Visa/Mastercard” without specifying which; card currency USD/EUR pegged.
• Cost: pricing page lists $0 issuance, $0 monthly, with a $15 starting price for virtual card and a one-time issuance fee mentioned in the FAQ (the pages disagree); initial deposit 100 USDT.
• Fees: load fee 3%; transaction fee on USD 0%; “no hidden exchange spreads”; FX fee not stated.
• Funding: USDT on BSC, Ethereum, Tron, Solana; USDC “soon”; BTC and altcoins “coming soon”; deposits sent to a generated address and converted to fiat at spending time.
• Rewards: not stated; no cashback mentioned.

The honest summary is that Cashi beats the three on top-up breadth (nine networks plus BTC/ETH/SOL, no Cashi deposit fee, no stated minimum) but loses to all three on transparency (no named issuer, no licence numbers, no country list, no public reviews). OkiCard is the closest on price if you can find the matching pricing page; TakeCard is the most explicit about its physical card being regional; Cardex is the broadest on country coverage.

Who I would recommend it to

Cashi is a reasonable choice for one type of reader. If you already hold USDC or USDT across multiple networks, and your main use case is converting those balances into day-to-day spending at a low flat fee, and you are willing to accept a beta product with an unnamed issuer, Cashi is worth a small-scale trial. The 0% USD rate, the nine-network deposit support and the cashback structure are genuinely competitive.

It is a poor fit if any of the following is true: you need a physical card; you want to withdraw cash from ATMs; you rely on Apple Pay; you want a published list of supported countries before you download the app; or you need to see the issuer’s licence before you load a meaningful balance. In any of those cases, one of the alternatives above — or a more established crypto card with a named bank partner — is likely to suit you better.

A simple way to decide: load Cashi with what you would spend on subscriptions in a single month, activate the card, and observe one full cashback cycle. If the experience matches your needs, scale up. If the issuer silence, the missing country list, or the beta status gives you pause, freeze the card, transfer the balance out, and close the account before the next top-up.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Cashi card?

Cashi is a USD-denominated virtual Visa debit card that spends from a balance held inside the Cashi app. The balance is funded with USDC or USDT stablecoins across several networks, or with cash in 20+ fiat currencies, and the card itself is only available as a virtual card today.

How does the Cashi card work?

You sign up, pass an ID and selfie check, load at least $5 into your balance, pay the $5 activation fee (returned as Spending Credit), and the app generates a virtual Visa you can use online and via Google Pay on Android. The balance is held in stablecoins until a payment, when the card converts to USD and pays the merchant.

Is Cashi a bank?

No. Cashi’s own website says it “provides technology services only” and that financial products are issued and managed by licensed third parties. The actual issuer, its country of registration and the licence numbers are not stated on the public pages.

Who owns Cashi?

The ownership is not described in the public materials used for this review. One third-party report places the company in Hong Kong and a press release was datelined Sharjah, UAE. The site does not list founders, parent companies, or investor disclosures.

Is the Cashi card available in my country?

Cashi does not publish a country list. The card works “anywhere Visa is accepted,” with some merchant categories restricted for regulatory reasons. The sign-up screen shows country flags for several markets, but those flags are not a stated eligibility list. You only know for sure after you attempt to verify.

Does the Cashi card require KYC?

Yes. Cashi runs a “quick check with your ID and a selfie.” Most checks finish in minutes, and some run up to 24 hours. The specific documents accepted, the age threshold, and the proof-of-address rules are not published.

How do I activate the Cashi card?

Add at least $5 to your balance, tap “Activate card for $5” in the app, and the virtual card details appear. The $5 is paid from your cash balance and returned to you as $5 in Spending Credit, so the net cost is zero.

How do I top up the Cashi card?

Send USDC or USDT to a Cashi deposit address on Tron, Solana, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Ethereum, Bitcoin or Base; BTC, ETH and SOL are also accepted. Cashi does not charge a deposit fee, only the blockchain network fee. Cash deposits in 20+ fiat currencies are quoted in the app.

How do I add the Cashi card to Apple Wallet?

You can’t yet. Apple Pay is on Cashi’s roadmap and is not currently supported. Google Pay works for in-store tap-to-pay on Android; iPhone users pay online with the card details from the app.

Is the Cashi card safe?

The app offers instant card freeze, user-set daily limits, 2FA, PIN, biometrics and real-time alerts. Cashi describes itself as a technology provider with assets held by licensed third parties, but safeguarding, insurance and deposit-guarantee coverage are not stated. The product is in public beta as of August 2026, and there are no public user reviews to point to yet.

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