DeFi

DeFi — decentralized finance — is financial plumbing like lending, swapping, and earning yield that runs on smart contracts you deal with directly, no company in the middle. Its opposite is CeFi, centralized finance, where a firm holds your money and runs the service for you, the way a bank or exchange does.

Why it matters: the split tells you who is actually in control. DeFi-leaning cards lean on the self-custodial model — your funds stay in your own wallet and the card talks to smart contracts to spend or borrow against them — so no one can freeze your balance, but you carry the keys and the complexity. CeFi cards are custodial: smoother to set up, but the company holds your money and you’re trusting it to stay solvent and hand it back.

For example: ether.fi Cash and Gnosis Pay sit on the DeFi side — you spend straight from your own on-chain wallet. Crypto.com, Coinbase and Nexo are the CeFi counterpart: the exchange holds your crypto and the card spends from your account there.