After accidentally becoming a large XPL community member it prompted me to dig deeper into "Neo Banks" (+ crypto financial products).
I was today years old when I realized that Ripple is being referred to as a Neo Bank... it's trading at $183bn. That's 117x the current XPL market cap ($1.6bn)!
There's also a surprising number of other interesting opportunities and rewards:
1) @Plasma One (VISA): Waitlist sign ups available now. Earn yields of up to 10%, spend stablecoins + cash back of up to 4%. Fee free xfers plugging into 150m merchants worldwide should do the trick for distribution and UX upgrade.
2) @useTria (VISA): 6% kickback on purchases + lounge pass access. Get a physical VISA card that auto swaps the crypto deposited on the back end when making real world txs.
Currently additional rewards through @cookiedotfun points cSNAPS campaign. Costs $20 for the basic virtual card or physical metal card with 6% rewards is $220.
3) @EtherFi (VISA): Get 3-5% back on all purchases + ETHFI rewards ($4.5m distributed last quarter). Total of about $60m in cumulative spend volume now. Requires vault setup.
4) @Revolutapp (Mastercard): This one was surprising; I maxed out on Ultra membership ($60/month) for top interest rates to offset the monthly subscription cost by depositing enough in savings. Up to 1% casback rewards + points program
Optimal offramp and no trading fees for higher tier.
This also netted me several benefits; NordVPN, Uber One, WeWork, travel insurance (inc excess), Airport lounge passes + eSIM global data
5) @gnosispay (VISA): This has recently churned more than $100m in payment volume - essentially a 'Checking' account for crypto. 4% cashback (5% if validator)
6) @coinbase (VISA): Up to 4% in crypto cashback rewards, setup via Coinbase account and only eligible in US (currently)
7) @MetaMask Virtual Card (Mastercard): 1% cashback + LINEA rewards. Possible tie into the latest points program announced?
8) @cryptocom (VISA): Up to 5% cash back, tiered rewards based on CRO staking. Spotify, Netflix, F1, UFC events (Obsidian).
9) Bonus: @bitrefill: offers a plethora of vouchers by simply sending crypto to an address and you have a voucher code in seconds. Caps at $1k per month before having to register an email to do more.
TLDR: The future of finance is crypto; it's no wonder VISA and Mastercard have been doubling down on crypto payments. They're more integrated into crypto than many realize.
More recently they've been pushing AI integration through agents. Giving these cards to agents is a huge unlock, especially when you have physical AI / robots paying for their own needs, in the real world.
This is an insane industry to be in; it offers a glimpse into the future while regular people think this remains in the realms of science fiction.
Trillions.
Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor, this is for informational purposes only. Collating publicly available data points into a single place for you to peruse.
I'll publish the full spreadsheet to my subscribers.