Plutus card review

UPDATE: Plutus has completely revamped its rewards structure and fees. It’s also been locking dormant accounts without first sending warning notifications. As things stand it’s difficult to recommend Plutus at all at the moment. The information below has been left for historical purposes. 

Cashback credit cards and debit card rewards took a hit in 2016 as the Government set about limiting the fees card processors could charge retailers for taking credit or debit card payments.

Some American Express cards got around this and hence could afford to pay higher rewards but even the best of these are limited to promotional offers.

Now there’s a new debit card that offers between 3-8% cashback and a free perk worth up to £10 a month. Sounds great huh? Well, it is but there’s a catch.

Rather than getting the cashback as pounds to spend right away, instead you get cryptocurrency (also known as ‘magic internet money‘ to some), which you can then convert into pounds, euros, or dollars as you choose. Confused? Don’t worry we explain it all in this Plutus card review.

What is Plutus?

Plutus is a UK fintech aiming to combine traditional money with cryptocurrency for everyday use. It offers a visa debit card that works like any other, but every time you spend using the card you are rewarded with Pluton (PLU) a cryptocurrency.

What is Pluton (PLU)?

Pluton or PLU for short, is Plutus’ own cryptocurrency token based on the Etherium network. Purchases made using the Plutus Visa card are rewarded with cashback paid in PLU. At the time of writing 1 PLU is worth £7.37. Like all ‘currencies‘ crypto or otherwise, its value can rise and fall.

Since its inception in 2016, it’s been priced as low as £1 and as high as £21, but over the past year has stabilised to around £7. Regardless of the value of PLU, Plutus will always reward you with the pound equivalent i.e. £10 worth of PLU for your chosen perk.

You can see the live PLU – GBP price here

How does Plutus card work – what are the benefits?

The Plutus card can be used everywhere Visa is accepted. To use the card you simply add funds (pounds or euros) to your Plutus account and start spending.

In that regard it’s no different from cards offered by likes Revolut, Wise, or even your regular bank. What sets Plutus apart is the 3% cashback on offer for everyday spending, the free perks (worth up to £10 each), and the way in which these are paid to you i.e. in PLU.

Note: Plutus is not a crypto-backed debit card, you spend money in pounds and euros not cryptocurrency.

What perks are available with Puluts?

With a free Plutus plan you also get to choose one perk each month (in addition to the 3% cashabck). There are 20 perks to choose from including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus subscriptions, Supermarket spending, travel, and transport.

You subscribe or pay for your selected perk in the normal way using your Plutus visa debit card. At the end of the month Plutus will then add £10 equivalent cashback to your Plutus account in the form of PLU cryptocurrency tokens.

Full Plutus perks list

Streaming services subscriptions

• Netflix
• Spotify
• Apple One
• Prime
• Disney Plus
• Youtube

Shopping

• Apple
• Asos
• ebay

Food and drink

• Deliveroo
• Just Eat
• Starbucks
• Uber Eats
• KFC
• Burger King
• McDonalds

Travel

• Airbnb
• Booking
• Uber
• TFL

Misc

• Curve
• Shell

Supermarkets

• Aldi
• Asda
• Lidl
• Sainsbury’s
• Tesco

It’s worth noting that Plutus is committing at adding new perks so this list may change in the future.

How Plutus perks work

Perks reset on 1st of each month but can be changed any date between 27th and 1st.

If your chosen perk is a subscription, for example a Netflix Standard subscription, you will actually be rewarded the full amount of the subscription. Which in this case is £10.99. This only applies to standard/base subscriptions. If you were take out the UHD plan at £15.99 a month. You would only get £10.99 of this back.

For perks such as supermarket shopping, fuel and other spending, the perk is paid on the total spending for that month. What that means is you can have multiple small transactions at your chosen perk e.g. Aldi, and you will still receive the reward up to a maximum of £10 equivalent.

It’s important to remember that you are paying for these perks in real money i.e. pounds or euros, and then receiving a cryptocurrency of equivalent value in return. As the price of cryptocurrency can and does vary, the amount of PLU you receive may vary, though it should always be up to the equivalent of £10 at the time of processing.

Update: To make things easier, all perks are now valued at £10/€10 

3% cashback but can rise to 8% through staking

Plutus pays 3% cashback on debit card spending but this can be increased to 8% through staking.

In a nutshell staking involves locking away your crypto asset (in this case PLU), and allowing it to be used to maintain the operation of the network or confirm new transactions. It’s actually much more complicated than this, and your stake can be at risk.

At 3% cashback, Plutus is already one of the highest paying rewards cards around beating American Express, Chase, and Barclaycards rewards. As such, we don’t recommend staking unless you know what you are doing.

The completely free way to earn £17.50 a month with Plutus plus a free $10 bonus

Sign up to Plutus using our link and you’ll get a bonus $10 worth of PLU. Be sure to select the free subscription plan.

Spend at least £10 at your chosen perk e.g. Standard Netflix subscription £10.99 or supermarket shopping at Aldi, fuel at Shell etc… And you will get £10 back in PLU each month.

Anything over £10 is rewarded with 3% cashback up to a £250 card spend per month. Effectively earning you £17.50 a month i.e. £7.50 cashback if you spend up to £250 on your card, plus the £10 perk.

Paid plans are available which increase the amount cashback is paid on and adds a second or third perk. Since you have to pay real money to subscribe to these plans, we wouldn’t recommend them unless you can really max out the rewards.

For example, if you are already paying for Netflix subscription, Prime, Spotify etc…, then signing up to Plutus Premium would cost you £14.99 a month, but you’d get your three subscriptions covered (up to £30), netting you £15 a month plus the 3% cashback paid on spending up to £22,500.

How much does Plutus cost?

There are three Plutus price plans to choose from.

The ‘Starter’ plan which is free, the ‘Everyday’ plan at £4.99, and a ‘Premium’ plan at £14.00

Given that even with the free plan you stand to earn up to £17.50 a month, most will opt for this.

The paid plans offer the same 3% cashback but set higher limits on the amount this cashback can earned. The free plan pays cashback on the first £250 of spending meaning the maximum you can earn is £7.50.

The Everyday plan increases this to £2,000 netting you a maximum cashback of £60 equivalent.

The Premium plans goes further still, paying cashback on spending up to £22,500 of spending. Few of us are ever going to be spending that much in a month, but if you were able to max it out, you’d earn £675 equivalent in cashback.

The cashback cannot be withdrawn for 45 days so do factor that in before spending large amounts in order to earn cashback.

Each plan upgrade adds an additional perk, so you get 1 perk on the free plan, 2 perks on the Everyday plan, and 3 perks on the Premium.

The paid plans also remove the 1% trading fee on Plutus’ DEX platform, but since that isn’t available to UK users yet, it’s not of any real significance.

Signing up to Plutus

If you sign up to Plutus using our link you’ll receive a $10 (in PLU) welcome bonus.

Before you can order your Plutus card you must first sign up via the website or app, and complete the ‘Know your Customer’ (KYC) checks, which cover ID verification etc.. There are no credit checks or anything like that, so the account is available to those with poor or no previous credit history.

Once you’ve filled in your personal information you’ll be prompted to upload your ID. This can be either a UK/EEA driving licence, passport, or ID card from a EEA country. You will then be asked to take a selfie which will be checked against the photo on the ID you uploaded earlier. This is the standard affair for all online accounts these days.

Confirming your details normally takes a few minutes. In our testing, verification failed, but a quick email to Plutus’ customer service sorted out the issue, after which it was possible to order a card (see below).

Two factor Authentication

Once you’ve registered and ordered your card, Plutus forces the you to use two factor authentication (2FA) to access the account. That isn’t a bad thing, but in the app it only provides information and a link to Authy.

How to use Google Authenticator with Plutus

Whilst there is nothing wrong with this per se, Authy isn’t necessarily the most convenient 2FA out there, and those with a Google Account are more likely to already be using Google Authenticator.

Fortunately, Google Authenticator can be used with Plutus, Plutus just doesn’t mention it. To use GA with Plutus, first log into Plutus via the website (not the mobile app). This will then give you a QR code to set up 2FA. Use GA on your phone to scan this QR code, and you’re good to go.

How to order and activate your Plutus card

To order your Plutus card you need to deposit £20 into your Plutus account. This needs to come from a bank account with the same name as that on your Plutus account. i.e. If you signed up to Plutus using the name John Smith, the account you use to make the transfer must be in the name John Smith, not John William Smith etc..

Once the £20 has been credited to your account you can go ahead and order your physical Visa card. You can choose the address to have the card sent to, so it doesn’t have to be the same as the one you registered with.

It’s worth noting, you are not paying £20 for the card, this money remains in your account and can be spent once you activate your card. When your card arrives activating it is a simple case of opening the app and entering the three-digit CVV.

Google and Apple Pay support

Currently the Plutus Visa isn’t supported by ApplePay. That may change in the future. In the meantime, you can get around this by adding your Plutus visa to your Curve card and using that with ApplePay.

Google Pay and Samsung Pay are both supported. Details of how to add your card to these are available on the Plutus website.

How do I withdraw from Plutus?

Want to convert your PLU to Pounds? This, is where things get a little more complicated. There’s no exchange in the Plutus app to sell or convert your PLU into pounds. Instead, you need to send them to a cryptowallet, then transfer them to an exchange such as Coinbase where you can then convert them to GBP and withdraw to your bank account.

You need to have accumulated at least £50 of PLU in order to withdraw it, and cashback cannot be withdrawn in the first 45 days it’s been earned. There is a fee of £3 when do withdraw so it’s worth making fewer larger transactions rather than multiple small ones.

Bear in mind though that the value or PLU can rise as a well as fall, so there is a balancing in act to be made in minimising the cost of withdrawal, while limiting your exposure to currency fluctuations.

Note: EU/EEA and US customers do have access to Plutus’ DEX exchange and can convert or sell their PLU directly their Plutus account. 

Using Plutus for travel

The Plutus card doesn’t have any specific travel benefits itself beyond choosing one of Airbnb, Booking, or Uber as a perk. Combine it with a Curve Card though and it becomes a powerful travel tool.

Curve Black costs £9.99, but by selecting Curve as your perk in your Plutus account, you will get this subscription fee refunded (in PLU) meaning you effectively get all the Curve Black benefits for free.

That means fee free foreign ATM withdrawals up to £400 a month, unlimited fee free foreign spending, and free worldwide travel insurance.

If you upgrade to Curve Metal for the additional £4.99 (of which you’ll get a further 3% back), you also get access to the network of airport lounges offered by Mastercard. Unfortunately, there’s still a £20 fee to access the lounge.

The Plutus card offers some of the highest cashback bonuses and rewards on the market. Even the free account is rewarding, and the benefits continue to increase as you enter the paid plans. Combined with Curve, it also makes an excellent travel card complete with a good level of travel insurance.

See our full review of the Curve card here.

The drawbacks

Despite being around since 2015, the Plutus app and account in its current form is still very new and a little rough around the edges. As such there are a few quirks and annoyances to be aware of.

Separate account and card balances – Due to the way the account works the balance in your account can’t be spent by using the card. You have to manually transfer money from your Plutus account to the Plutus card within the app. This isn’t a big problem in itself, the issue is that it can take up to a day (though usually a couple of hours) for the money to show-up on the card.

The good news is that Plutus is now working with a new banking provider, which should eventually eliminate the need to top up the card.

Changing PIN – You cannot choose or change your card PIN within the app. Again, a minor thing, but it serves to highlight the separation between the main account and the Visa debit card.

Long withdrawal time – You cannot withdraw your rewards for 45 days. Even for regular fiat currencies (pounds, euro etc..) that is a long time, but with general volatility cryptocurrency it can seem like an eternity. Fortunately PLU is a relatively stable, but there is always the risk of the token losing value in between you earning it, and being able to withdraw it.

Is the Plutus card worth it?

Overall, the features are very attractive, so why then isn’t it more popular? The bad press around cryptocurrency certainly doesn’t help, but the bigger reason is the user friendliness.

You get a Visa debit card with the account, so your money is perfectly safe, but Visa cards cannot be used to buy/sell cryptocurrencies directly. Converting your hard earned PLU rewards is a convoluted process, made worse by the fact that Plutus users in the UK cannot yet access Plutus’ DEX portal/exchange.

Plutus has submitted its application to the FCA, but the approval process can take anything up to a year, so we’ll be well into 2023 before there is an announcement.

If this was a regular account with no mention of crypto, it would hands-down be the best rewards credit or debit card out there. Topping the charts on sites like Money Saving Expert etc..

The 3% cashback is unrivalled, and the additional perks are actually useful given almost everyone these days either has a streaming subscription, or uses one of the participating supermarkets or other services.

The fact that the reward is paid in cryptocurrency (and an obscure one at that), is the largest downside, but also one of the largest draws.

It provides those who have an interest in crypto a way to earn and spend currency in everyday activities, whilst allowing those looking to get into crypto with a low barrier to entry.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the population don’t have a good understanding of cryptocurrencies beyond what they read in the news, may find it difficult to withdraw the cashback. The 45 day limit on withdrawing cashback can also leave you open to fluctuations in the value of the currency.

Our verdict

Overall Plutus looks a promising, if unfinished product, the entry level account is completely free and still offers good cashback and a decent perk. The more you understand the card the greater the value you can extract from it. But even those with zero knowledge or crypto can use Plutus as they would any other debit card and rack up the benefits for a later date.

What do you think? Are use using Plutus already? If so we’d love to hear your thoughts.