Venmo Adds Bitcoin and Ethereum Credit Card Rewards

PayPal's popular Venmo app, which is best known as a way to pay friends or merchants, has added a credit card offering and a crypto-buying service in the last year. Now, it's combining the two.

On Tuesday, Venmo announced a "cash back to crypto" feature that will let its credit card users ask for spending rewards to be paid out in one of the four cryptocurrencies that the platform supports: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, or Litecoin.

"Purchases made from their Venmo account using the auto-purchase feature with Cash Back to Crypto will not have any transaction fee associated with the purchase, with a cryptocurrency conversion spread built into each monthly transaction," the company said.

Launched early this year, Venmo's credit card is tied to the Visa network and is accepted anywhere Visa is accepted.

Venmo credit card users receive 3% back on their top spending category (such as groceries or restaurants), 2% on the second most-used category, and 1% on all other purchases.

This stacks up well compared to many other credit cards, especially as the Venmo card doesn't come with an annual fee.

But as with other credit cards, consumers should take care to pay off their monthly balance lest they incur a high interest charge that will well exceed whatever they earn in rewards (crypto or otherwise).

Venmo users can apply for the credit card through the app.

The new "Cash Back for Crypto" program reflects how parent company PayPal is rapidly expanding its cryptocurrency ambitions. In recent months, CEO Dan Schulman has laid out a broad vision for crypto that entails building out wallet services, and even suggested that crypto could be integral to future stimulus plans.