Crypto.com announced updates to its CRO Card rewards programe on Sunday. The changes come as part of the company’s long-term sustainability strategy, and will come into effect on the first day of June 2022.
https://t.co/vCNztABJoG Visa Cards Update: changes to the CRO Card rewards programme
Effective 1 June 2022
No change to card terms until your active 180-day stake expires
— Crypto.com (@cryptocom) May 1, 2022
According to Crypto.com, the company will be implementing three major changes to its crypto Visa cards. These alterations include reducing CRO Card rewards, the introduction of a monthly CRO Card rewards cap, and phasing out CRO Card staking rewards.
Taking effect from the first day of the summer, Crypto.com will reduce CRO rewards for all 5 existing card tiers. The new reward rates are around 3% to 1.5% lower compared to the existing ones. The highest percentage reduction is being applied to top-tier ‘Obsidian’ cards, for which the reward percentage is being lowered from its current 8%, down to 5% starting June 1st.
For ‘Frosted Rose Gold’ and ‘Icy White’ tier cardholders, CRO rewards will be reduced to 3%, from 5%, while ‘Royal Indigo’ and ‘Jade Green’ users will get 1.5% instead of the previous 3%, and finally ‘Ruby Steel’ cardholders will only be able to earn 0.5% instead of the previous 2% from CRO rewards.
Perhaps the biggest change is that owners of the lowest card tier, ‘Midnight Blue’, will be no longer able to earn CRO rewards at all, having previously been eligible for 1% CRO reward options.
None of the upcoming changes will apply for Crypto.com cardholders who had active 180-day stakes before 1st May. Such cardholders will continue to earn CRO rewards on their spending at the current rates until their stakes expire, upon which time the newly set rates will apply.
As a second branch of the changes, Crypto.com will be introducing monthly caps on how much CRO reward users can earn when through spending done with their Crypto.com Visa cards. As stated, the maximum monthly rewards on lower tier cards will be set at $25 to $50, while the rewards earned for upper tier cardholders will not be capped.
For the third and final change, the crypto exchange app will no longer support CRO staking rewards for Jade Green, Royal Indigo, Frosted Rose Gold, Icy White, or Obsidian cardholders starting from June 1st. Cardholders who still have an active 6-month stake, and who staked before May 1st, will continue to receive CRO staking rewards until the end of their 180-day staking period, the company said.
Crypto.com assured users that it will apply no further changes to the other benefits offered by the card, including the 100% reimbursements for monthly Amazon Prime, Spotify, and Netflix subscription services.
CRO Token Plunges
The cryptocurrency market reacted to the Crypto.com changes with skepticism. CRO, the native token of Crypto.com, lost more than 17% of its value on Sunday, declining from $0.355 to $0.292 in less than 12 hours.
Despite its brief 9% recovery on Monday, CRO struggled to maintain any upwards momentum and is trading below $0.30 at the time of writing. This represents the lowest price level CRO has experienced since November 2021, before CRO rallied to its $0.96 all-time high on November 24th.
Why You Should Care
Crypto.com’s crypto card program, available in 40 countries, is one of the world’s most popular crypto-linked card programs. The app has over 10 million users in 90 different countries around the world.