Product Review: AMEX Coinbase Credit Card

The Coinbase One Card is a brand new venture from the Coinbase team in partnership with American Express to offer their premium customers the ability to spend their crypto just like it were dollars in their bank account. In order to apply for the card, you have to be a Coinbase One member which has a minimum price tag of $49.99 a year. The card has a base reward rate of 2% back, paid in Bitcoin of course, however it can go as high as 4% depending on how much you hold on Coinbase. Details on tiers are still undecided, so we don't know precisely how much you'll need to have on platform in order to hit the 4% mark. The waitlist is now live for Coinbase One members, and the card is expected to fully launch later this year for US-based users.

Overall, while the Coinbase One card is a nice offering for existing Coinbase One members, it's unlikely to move the needle on new memberships. The requirement to hold assets on the exchange in order to reach higher tiers of rewards is a major barrier especially given recent security breaches on exchanges. In comparison to the Gemini card (read the Beluga review here), the Coinbase card seems weaker in most ways. Despite this, with Coinbase's growing market share of the exchange world, it could end up being very popular. For these reasons, we give the Coinbase One card 4 stars out of 5.