ether.fi Cash vs Gnosis Pay: which self-custody card wins?

ether.fi Cash and Gnosis Pay are the only two crypto cards I’ve found that spend straight from a Safe smart account you actually control. That’s about where the resemblance ends. ether.fi Cash is a US-friendly Visa credit card that lets you spend against staked ETH; Gnosis Pay is a European Visa debit card that spends stablecoins you already hold. The right one is usually decided before you weigh a single fee: where you live, and whether you want to borrow or just spend.

Quick version: if you’re in the US, ether.fi Cash is the only one of the two you can get. If you’re in Europe or the UK and you want a simple self-custodial card to spend money you already have, Gnosis Pay is the easier fit — and it covers four EU countries ether.fi locks out. If you specifically want to spend against your staked ETH without selling it, that’s ether.fi’s whole reason to exist.

One disclosure before the table: ether.fi is this site’s only referral partner — the deal is on the disclosure page, and it gets no say in this verdict. Gnosis Pay has no deal here; both were measured the same way.

ether.fi Cash

Visa

Gnosis Card

Visa

Card type ether.fi Cash: Credit card (Visa) Gnosis Card: Debit card (Visa)

Custody ether.fi Cash: Self-custodial — you hold the keys Gnosis Card: Self-custodial — you hold the keys

Rewards ether.fi Cash: Up to 3% in wETH, stepping down to 1% then 0.5% as monthly USD spend rises (EUR's lowest band pays 0.1%; band sizes vary by tier) Gnosis Card: 1%-4% paid in GNO tokens, tiered by GNO held in the Safe (+1% Gnosis Pay OG NFT bonus, to a 5% max)

Rewards cap ether.fi Cash: $1,000/month per the legal cashback terms (last updated 2026-02-05) - absent from marketing, and it truncates Pinnacle's advertised 3%-to-$50,000 band at roughly $33.3k of spend Gnosis Card: Tiered weekly eligible-spend cap by GNO held: $250 (>=0.1 GNO) / $375 (>=1) / $500 (>=10) / $1,250 (>=100); no rollover, resets 00:00 UTC Sunday

Program status ether.fi Cash: Live Gnosis Card: Live

Where you can use each one

For most people, this decides it.

ether.fi Cash covers the US (every state except 20, including Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Washington) plus most of the EU, and it ships a physical card to 75+ countries. But it runs a prohibited list rather than a supported one, and four EU members are locked out: Estonia, Finland, Hungary, and the Netherlands. The UK is an open question: the physical card ships there, but ether.fi’s own list doesn’t confirm UK availability either way, so don’t KYC on faith.

Gnosis Pay is close to the mirror image: 37 countries across Europe and Latin America, the UK included. Notably, it does serve all four EU countries ether.fi excludes. What it doesn’t serve yet is the US.

The map usually settles it before anything else: US → ether.fi. UK → Gnosis (ether.fi is unconfirmed). Estonia, Finland, Hungary or the Netherlands → Gnosis.

Credit vs debit: borrow against ETH, or spend what you hold

ether.fi Cash is a credit card built around Borrow Mode: your staked ETH (weETH) stays in your vault earning staking yield while you borrow against it at a quoted 4% APY to spend — no billing cycle, no grace period, repay whenever. The trade is liquidation risk: weETH is capped at a 55% loan-to-value ratio, and if a price drop pushes you past the 75% threshold, half your collateral is sold first. There’s also a simpler Direct Pay mode that just spends vault stablecoins with no interest.

Gnosis Pay is a debit card, full stop. You spend EURe, GBPe or USDCe — stablecoins held 1:1 in your Safe — so there’s no borrowing, no interest, and no liquidation threshold to babysit. The flip side: no spending power beyond your balance, and you have to get those stablecoins in there first (a SEPA transfer, a bridge, or a swap).

If “spend against my crypto without selling” is the point, ether.fi is the only one of the two that does it. If you’d rather never think about a liquidation threshold again, that’s Gnosis by design.

Rewards: 3% in wETH vs up to 5% in GNO

ether.fi pays up to 3% in wETH with nothing to hold (capped at $1,000/month in the legal terms); Gnosis pays 1%–4% in GNO set by how much GNO you hold, up to 5% with an OG NFT. Both pay a volatile reward token, and both have a catch.

ether.fi pays up to 3% in wETH, dropped into your vault automatically, with no token you need to hold to qualify. The catches: the rate steps down as you spend (3% → 1% → 0.5%), EUR bands are smaller with a 0.1% floor, and the legal terms cap rewards at $1,000 a month, a limit that appears on no marketing page (the full story is in the ether.fi review).

Gnosis pays 1% to 4% in GNO, and the rate is set by how much GNO you hold in your Safe: 0.1 GNO earns 1%, and you need 100 GNO for the top 4% (a Gnosis Pay OG NFT adds another 1%, to a 5% max). So the headline 5% costs you a meaningful (and volatile) capital lockup; eligible spend is capped weekly ($250 to $1,250 by tier), and the current program is funded only through June 30, 2026 (the full breakdown is in the Gnosis Pay review).

ether.fi pays a solid rate with nothing to hold but a monthly ceiling; Gnosis can pay more, but only if you’re willing to hold (and ride the price of) a stack of GNO.

Custody and safety: how each one can actually go wrong

Both cards are genuinely self-custodial — your funds sit in a Safe only you can authorize — so neither is somewhere an issuer can freeze your balance. But self-custodial isn’t risk-free, and the two cards’ risks look nothing alike.

Gnosis Pay had a real one. In June 2026, an exploit of its Zodiac Delay Module drained roughly $265,000 (press-reported) from card-linked Safes. Gnosis restored service for over 99% of users within days, issued brand-new Safe accounts, and pledged to cover losses in full. The lasting trap: because users got new Safe addresses, anything sent to an old address (on-chain or via IBAN) is lost permanently, so a returning user has to be careful.

ether.fi’s risks are quieter but real. Its issuer, Third National, is a Puerto Rico-licensed money transmitter, not a bank, with no FDIC insurance. Several of its numbers (the FX fee, the cashback cap, whether it charges interest at all) conflict between marketing and the legal docs, and exiting your staked collateral has no published timeline. Neither card is “safe” in the deposit-insurance sense; both ask you to own that.

Fees: both cheap, with different gotchas

Sticker prices are low on both — the differences are in the gotchas.

• ether.fi: no listed annual or top-up fee; FX advertised at 0% on USD/EUR (the legal schedule says 1% across all tiers, so budget 1%); ATM 2%, capped at $250 per rolling 24 hours; Core’s physical card is a $40 refundable deposit. Borrow Mode costs 4% APY.
• Gnosis: free card order; 0% Gnosis FX markup (Visa’s wholesale spread, ~0.3–0.9%, still applies on cross-currency spend); ATM free up to €200 or 5 withdrawals a month, then 2%; a €4.99 replacement-card fee. No borrowing means no interest.

There’s also a banking-feel difference: Gnosis offers a Monerium IBAN so euros can land in your account as EURe; ether.fi has no equivalent.

Who should pick ether.fi Cash

• You’re in the US — Gnosis isn’t an option yet.
• You hold staked ETH and want to spend against it at 4% without selling.
• You want rewards without holding a project’s token — 3% in wETH, paid automatically.
• You’re comfortable managing a loan-to-value ratio and an issuer that isn’t a bank.

Who should pick Gnosis Pay

• You’re in Europe, the UK, or Latin America — especially Estonia, Finland, Hungary or the Netherlands, which ether.fi locks out.
• You want a simple self-custodial debit card to spend balances you already hold, with no borrowing or liquidation to think about.
• You want an IBAN and euro rails.
• You already hold GNO (or want to) and will use the higher reward tiers.
• You can live with a recent exploit on the record and the new-Safe-address trap.

One safety note before any link: phishing sites impersonate both brands constantly. Get to either card from a link you trust, or type the address yourself.