Summary
Fold is a Bitcoin rewards company offering several different ways to earn Bitcoin on every day purchases. They partner with many different merchants on gift card rewards and offer different levels of rewards based on your membership type. You can also think of it as a prepaid (or debit) card that earns Bitcoin rewards for every purchase.
Free daily Bitcoin!!
Let’s start with the free daily rewards for doing nothing! Simply create a profile, and you will receive one free spin every day for free Bitcoin. You can receive anywhere from 5 to 100 sats just for opening the app and spinning the wheel.
If you are a premium member (called Spin+, we will get into that below), your free spin rewards expand from 5 to 100 sats to 5 sats to 1 whole Bitcoin. As a Spin+ member, here is my spin wheel:
Available platforms
Available on iOS and Android. This is a mobile app only with no rewards functionality on their website.
Membership tiers
You can find the 3 membership options on the Fold website here, but we will run through them in our words as well:
- Basic
- This is free base membership you receive when you first sign up for Fold.
- You have access to the free daily spin and access to rewards for purchasing gift cards.
- You also receive 1 extra spin for every $10 spent, just be sure to use the spin within 24 hours or you will lose it.
- “Spin”
- This tier is still free and it comes with a free debit card.
- You can treat this as a checking account that you can fund and spend on gift cards or other daily purchases to earn rewards.
- Includes Bitcoin trading for .95% of the trade (in locations that allow it).
- Receive 1 extra spin for every $10 spent, just be sure to use the spin within 24 hours or you will lose it.
- “Spin+”
- This is a paid membership costing $10 per month, or $100 for a year.
- Highest gift card rewards.
- Includes access to exclusive gift cards and exclusive Merchant Boosts for higher rewards
- Includes free Bitcoin trades (in locations that allow it).
- Win up to a full Bitcoin when you spin the wheel
- Earn unlimited 1.5% rewards on travel, dining, and entertainment categories, and .5% on everything else.
- You will receive 1 extra spin for every $10 spent, and you will have 7 days to use it.
- No international fees.
- No ATM fees.
- Access to the ultimate saving vehicle: earning Bitcoin for paying your bills! Details on this in the Pay Bills and Earn Bitcoin section.
How to use Fold
There are 3 different ways to earn using Fold:
- Purchase gift cards via the Fold App
- Depending on how you pay for the gift card, you will receive a reward for the purchase. For example, Amazon can be purchased with credit card for .5% back, but if you use your funded Fold debit card, you get 2.5% back.
- Other merchants, such as AMC, can be purchased using the Lightning network (on-chain Bitcoin transactions) for 5% back. For instructions on how to set up Lightning payments, Fold has a how-to on their website here.
- Every day spending using the Fold debit card
- (Free Spin users) For every purchase you make, you will receive .5% in rewards back in Bitcoin, and additionally, you will receive a free wheel spin (extra Bitcoin rewards) for every $10 you spend on the card.
- (Spin+ users) Earn unlimited 1.5% rewards on travel, dining, and entertainment categories, and .5% on everything else, plus an extra wheel spin for every $10 you spend on the card.
- Use Fold Card to pay bills–see Pay Bills and Earn Bitcoin section.
- Categories are always changing, so be sure to check for new Card Boosts often:
Funding your Fold card/account
There are 5 different ways to fund your card/account:
- Instant debit card funding – send money from another account’s debit card for instant availability. There is a 1.5% fee for this method
- One-time deposit from a linked bank account – you can manually link a bank account and transfer funds. This transfer can take 1-5 business days, but in my experience, after the account has been set up and used a couple times, most transfers only take 1 day.
- Direct deposit – set up your paycheck to automatically be deposited into your Fold account
- Recurring deposits – set up automatic or scheduled deposits from your linked bank account
- Venmo, Paypal, and Apple Cash funding – instantly fund your Fold account for a fee or manually link your Fold card for free 1-3 business day deposits. Instructions straight from Fold can be found at this link.
*Note- if you are traveling abroad and don’t have your phone data turned on, you won’t be able to manually add funds to your account because there is a pin that is sent via text message to complete the transfer.
Pay Bills and Earn Bitcoin (Spin+ exclusive)
For those who don’t mind the several extra steps that we will outline here and are on top of their monthly bills, this is where people are making some serious money just to pay their credit card, utility, mortgage bills and more. By simply following these steps, you can earn .5% back in Bitcoin rewards in bills that you have to pay anyways!
- Fund your Fold account using one of the above methods.
- If you don’t already have a PayPal account, create one now.
- Add your Fold Card details in the Wallet section of PayPal by Linking a card or bank. Once it is added, it will be helpful later on to edit the nickname of the card to Fold Card or something of the sort.
- PayPal has a Pay Bills function where you will add your individual bills to make payments from your Fold card.
- Add a new bill to your PayPal Bill Pay section. Once you do this, the bill stays in your list until you remove it. You will need account numbers and possibly another piece of information from your bills to connect these.
- Once your bill is set up, click Pay and enter your bill amount.
- Make sure your payment method reflects your Fold Card, not another payment option you have set up in PayPal. This payment method sticks for future payments, but always double check and make sure your Fold Card is selected if you want to receive rewards.
- Hit agree and continue, review, and finally Send Payment. The details in this step say how long it will take to post to your account.
- Within a minute or so after submitting your Bill Payment, you will get a notification of money spent on your Fold card and your rewards should be in your account.
Best practices for paying your bills:
- Before signing up for the premium membership, make sure your bills are available on PayPal’s Bill Pay service.
- Plan ahead. Start the process of paying your bill 10 days before your bill is due. It could take 5 business days for your account to be funded if you don’t keep money loaded in your Fold account. It could then take a few days for the payment to post the account and you don’t want to be late!
- Try to keep at least a small amount of money in your account just in case you forget about a payment until the last second and don’t want to face late fees. We speak from experience here.
Confirmed working with Bill Pay (updated for recent removals as of 4/2024):
- AMEX credit cards
- Citi credit cards
- Discover credit cards
- Bank of America credit cards
- National Grid utilities
- NYSEG utilities
- Bank of America Vehicle Loans
- Bank of America Home Loans
- Kay Jewelers credit card
- Best Buy credit card
- Dicks Sporting Goods credit card
- Jackson National Life Insurance
Feel free to contact us with more through your experience and we can add them to the list!
Withdrawing your Bitcoin rewards
Fold does not charge fees to withdraw your Bitcoin, but there may be a Bitcoin network fee. Step by step instructions for withdrawing your rewards:
- Open your Fold app, and click on your total sats in the top right corner
- Click the WITHDRAW button on the bottom right
- Enter your ‘Receive’ address from your crypto wallet (instructions to get your address are at the link)
- you can either copy and paste your Bitcoin wallet address or click the rounded box in the top right corner of this screen to scan a QR code for the address
- Click Withdraw All Funds
- You will see a summary of your withdrawal, including network fees. If all looks good, tap Confirm Withdrawal.
- An SMS text message will be sent to the phone number on your account containing a pin number. Enter this pin number to confirm the withdrawal, and you’re done!
- This could take up to 24 hours, but usually takes just a few hours.
- Withdrawals submitted on weekends may not process until Monday.
Fold App Limitations
Unfortunately, there are some limitations, and thus limited in how much you can earn. Here are my top 5 notable limitations, and the full list can be found here:
- Max Fold card account balance: $20,000
- Max spend per day: $7,000
- Max spend per month: $25,000
- Max amount you can deposit into Fold Card at once: $10,000
- Max cash/ATM withdrawal per transaction, day, and month: $1,000
Frequently Asked Questions
What countries is this available in?
Currently only available in USA. Sign up for their waitlist to know when it will be available in your country here.
How does Fold make money?
They receive a percentage of every transaction, and in turn give a piece of that percentage back to you.
Can I gift the gift card purchases?
There is currently no convenient way to gift a gift card that was purchased through Fold, and no print friendly option. The best way to do this is to buy the gift card on Fold, and take a screenshot of the gift card that shows the Claim Code, print it, and put it in a card. No reason not to get rewards for giving a gift!
Review
The only regret is not starting this sooner. Earning Bitcoin back on paying bills is the easiest way to get “free” Bitcoin there is. After about 1 year and with the appreciation of Bitcoin in 2023, there is a couple thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin rewards saved up that I would not otherwise have.
Additionally, I have gotten in the habit of purchasing gift cards before I purchase anything on Amazon example. This way, I receive the credit card rewards for buying the gift card, plus Bitcoin rewards for purchasing the gift card through Fold on items I was going to purchase anyways.
Is the premium membership worth it? If you have a mortgage that can be paid through PayPal Bill Pay, absolutely. You will easily recoup the $100/ year on that alone, and the rest of the bills paid are all a bonus after that. If you don’t have a mortgage where .5% back easily recoups the $100/year premium, it may be a little different of an answer depending on your monthly spending. If you are only spending $1k per month, a half a percent of that multiplied by 12 months is only $60 back. Your break even if you pay annually for the membership is about $1,700 worth of bills paid every month. If you pay the monthly $10/month, your break even is $2k of spending per month.
Lastly, while we wouldn’t typically recommend using a debit card for every day purchases because credit cards offer superior fraud protection without giving up direct access to your bank account, you can send funds to the Fold card on an as needed basis and keep as little as you want in there as you like or need.
*Disclaimer* we are not affiliated with Fold and do not receive any rewards for posting this. If you like the content and are considering joining Fold, feel free to use our referral code: https://use.foldapp.com/r/YYNKHRCT
