Coinbase beefs up subscription plan by offering it with American Express credit card

Coinbase on Thursday introduced its first branded credit card in partnership with American Express.

The card will be available exclusively to U.S. members of Coinbase One, the cryptocurrency platform’s monthly subscription product that offers zero trading fees, increased staking rewards and other perks. Additionally,Coinbase is also creating a lower-cost “Basic” subscription tier.

Cardholders will be able to earn between 2% and 4% back in bitcoin, beginning this fall, and take advantage of experiences, protections and other benefits that are offered alongside the American Express network. Coinbase One costs $29.99 a month while a Basic tier with fewer rewards will cost $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year.

“We see real potential in the combination of Coinbase and crypto with the powerful backing of American Express, and what the card offers is an excellent mix of what customers are looking for right now,” Will Stredwick of American Express global network services said at the Coinbase State of Crypto Summit in New York City.

Coinbase’s crypto exchange for retail and institutional investors is its core business, but the company has been building its subscription and services offering, comprised of stablecoins, staking, subscriptions like Coinbase One and custody, which supports the majority of bitcoin and ether ETFs.

William Blair analyst Andrew Jeffrey said Wednesday that subscription revenue growth “will be the reason long-term investors own the stock.”

Trading revenue totaled $1.26 billion in the first quarter, while subscription and services revenue came in at $698.1 million for the quarter.

Coinbase One launched in 2023 and has grown to more than one million members since. The company also operates a developer platform called Base and a self-custody wallet.

The launch of the Coinbase One card comes as the crypto industry prepares for a boom in product launches and rollouts thanks to the pro-crypto policies of the Trump administration and more clearly defined crypto regulations expected from Congress in coming months.

This is the first credit card launch for Coinbase, although it introduced a prepaid debit card in partnership with Visa in 2020. American Express has previously partnered with trading platform Abra on a crypto-back card that was due to hit the market in 2022 but never materialized. Other crypto-back cards have been discontinued or removed crypto as a redemption option.

Of the remaining offerings, Gemini, the Winklevoss brothers’ 11-year-old crypto trading platform that confidentually filed to go public last week, offers a crypto-back credit card, while PayPal-owned Venmo allows users to “earn” crypto from its credit card through an automated “Cash Back to Crypto” function.