Binance and Crypto.com go to war but which is better?
Binance made a stunning announcement back in late September that they were releasing crypto VISA cards, on which you would be able to garner up to 8% cashback, depending on the average 30 day amount of BNB you held spread across all of your Binance wallets. The move was made more interesting, when the total investment requirement to reach various cashback percentages, were the same, if not cheaper and better than the Crypto.com visa card tiers. For example, roughly $10,000 invested in Crypto.com would garner you 4% cashback while on Binance it garners you 5% cashback. Not only that, the highest tier on Binance allowed a whopping 8% cashback, which is massive compared to Crypto.com's paltry 5% cashback for roughly the same investment. This lead to Crypto.com fighting back by changing their rates to compete with Binance, just one day after the announcement. There are however, still some differences between the cards.
Staking requirement for tiers
On Binance, tier requirements which determine your level of cashback, are based on the average amount of BNB held across all of your Binance wallets. This means that Binance card tiers don't have any staking requirement, which means you can sell your BNB at any time you want, while still having access to your tier's cashback for a while after as it takes time for the average BNB held to decrease. Crypto.com on the other hand, requires you to stake CRO in their ecosystem for 6 months. You cannot do anything during this period. Once the 6 months are up, you can unstake your CRO but at the cost of all of your card's perks. On Binance, your BNB can be used in various different parts of Binance, such as in savings which can generate a small yearly return or in Launchpool, which has given up to 350% APR on some products. Even while your BNB is participating in these, they still count towards your card's tier. This is a significant advantage for Binance Card in raw monetary benefits and lowering risk.
At the moment however, Binance Card does not have any other perks asides from cashback. It has been stated however, that Binance Card will be getting more perks in due time. Crypto.com cards currently offer many perks, such as 100% rebate on Spotify and Netflix, LoungePass which allows you to get into business lounges in almost any airport in the world with free food and drink and extras such as 10% cashback on Airbnb and Expedia up to $100 per month. Binance Card doesn't have any perks like this, yet. However, since the card is issued by Swipe, and Swipe was actually acquired by Binance, we can get some good ideas into what the perks will be, once the migration from Swipe to Binance Card is complete.
The perks we expect to see on Binance Card, once the migration from Swipe is complete are; 100% rebate on Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, Hulu, 10% cashback on Starbucks and Uber up to $50 per month and finally 10% cashback on Travala.com and Airbnb, up to $100 per month, depending on your chosen card tier.
Once these perks are implemented, Binance Card will become insanely stiff competition towards Crypto.com's offering.
Spending
How you spend money these cards is also something that separates them. On the Crypto.com card, you must actually "top up" your card first, before being able to spend on it. Topping up the card, means to add fiat currency onto the card's balance. This can be done by selling cryptocurrency into fiat or by topping up your card directly using another credit or debit card directly in fiat, with no fees. This means that the Crypto.com card is more like a straight fiat card than a crypto card, as all of the spending cannot be done without first manually converting into fiat before the point of sale takes place.
Update: As of recently, Binance now has many options to top up your account with fiat currency, with reasonably low fees. 0% can be achieved using SEPA transfers. Not only this, Binance Card can be topped up with fiat. Making it almost identical to the Crypto.com card offering. This renders this part of the comparison moot, as both cards can be topped up and exclusively spend using fiat currency.
Binance Card is a little different. On the Binance Card, you cannot top up the card with fiat currency, you can only top it up with cryptocurrencies, currently consisting of Bitcoin, BUSD, BNB and SXP (Swipe). This means that getting money onto the Binance Card is a bit more difficult and in fact, costly. The extra cost associated with this is of all importance, when we're trying to save every little bit on our spending by having 1-8% cashback on the card. When you make a purchase on the card, the crypto in your card wallet is then sold into fiat on the market and used to make the purchase. This means that you don't need to manually convert the crypto into fiat first, it is done automatically. However, with this system comes a cost.
Buying cryptocurrency, comes with fees. It is very difficult to get into cryptocurrency without losing at minimum 0.5% somewhere. This cuts down your cashback reward on Binance Card. Not only that, from using it myself, I have noticed that when the PoS transaction occurs, there is another fee of up to 0.9% on the sale of your cryptocurrency into fiat to make the transaction. This further eats up your cashback rewards.
Crypto.com doesn't have this problem, since you can top up the card directly from another credit/debit card with fiat without any fees and the transactions don't incur any fees either. In fact, Crypto.com's foreign exchange rates are some of the most accurate and clean I've ever seen, you would be hard pressed to find you've lost more than a fraction of a percent on a transaction on their card, from foreign exchange rates.
So, which is better?
Well, that depends on what you want at the end of the day. If you want a more pure crypto card, then you should go with Binance Card. It's far closer to a card that allows you to spend cryptocurrency than the Crypto.com card is, but the fees and difficulty of use are significantly higher. If you want ease of use and more bang for your buck, you need to go with the Crypto.com card.
At the end of the day, it all depends on what you want and what risks you're willing to take for each card's respective perks.