After seeing the Crypto.com (previously Monaco, hence the MCO tokenname) Visa card passing by for a couple of years, I decided to sign up for one. So after signing up with a referral link (code: 6tw3azn2c7) to get $50 MCO for free, I deposited some euros to buy 50 MCO.
I will keep adding updates as my experience continues to develop with this card.
Why do I need 50 MCO?
You can apply for a plastic MCO Visa Card without having to stake 50 MCO. This will give you an MCO Visa Card (Midnight Blue) that will give you a 1% cashback on all purchases in MCO tokens. The higher tier cards give you extra benefits and what I really wanted to test are those benefits.
50 MCO is now $276.5 (May 18th 2020), which is about €254 euros. The monthly reimbursement on Spotify is $12.99. I’m currently paying €9.99 per month for Spotify, so that should cover it.
($276.5 – $50.00) / $12.99 = 18 months before I will break-even on my investment, just by getting my Spotify subscription reimbursed and the signup bonus.
So I’m currently staking the 50 MCO needed for the Ruby Steel card, which is currently being issued. As soon as it will get delivered I will update the post on setting up the Spotify reimbursement and my first purchase with the card to receive the 2% cashback!
June 29th update
The European card issuer, Wirecard, has filed for insolvency, which means all European issued cards have been called back. In short, this will mean I will have to wait a while longer to receive my card because Crypto.com will need to find a new issuer. Hopefully, we will get an update soon!
If you sign up using my referral code: 6tw3azn2c7 you will get $50 in MCO in your wallet, which will unlock once you stake at least 50 MCO.
July 23th update
The trouble with Wirecard has been solved for now and I received my Ruby Steel card this week. Yay! So after opening the package, I went to the Crypto.com app and activated my card.
The first thing I did was change the payment method on my Spotify subscription, unfortunately, the monthly payment of July had just been made, so I will have to wait a little longer before I can show the results of the cashback on the Spotify subscription.
First purchase with the card
After that, I wanted to buy something with the card, so I added some funds to the card via the ‘Top Up’-option in the app. It took one workday to deposit some cash on the Fiat Wallet. Topping up the card is instantly from funds in the app. I decided to go to the Aldi because that store offers 10% extra cashback from June to September 2020.
OK, this first purchase went really smooth, you can find more details on the cash rebate in the image below.
October 23th update
So quite a lot of stuff has changed in the past 3 months, the token MCO was changed to CRO (I will update calculations/images in a later stadium). The card will now be called CRO Visa Card because the token changed to Crypto.com. Unfortunately, I feel like the CRO price was artificially pumped in the months prior to the switch and it has been freefalling for the last 2 weeks. Hopefully, it will bottom out at this point (see chart below).
I noticed that using the card slowed down a little when the 10% cashback at Lidl and Aldi ended, I’m currently mostly used the card for big purchases and the Spotify rebate.
December 19th update
So from 18 January 2021, the staking requirements will go up again to 5000 CRO. This probably because of the huge drop in price over the past months. The price stays roughly the same as when I bought the card in the beginning, 5000 CRO is worth $330.55, which amounts to €269.67. I am still enjoying my free Spotify subscription and doing some recurring payments with the card, although there are no big discounts anymore like the groceries with 10% off. The recurring 2% savings are still OK.