From Onchain Assets to Everyday Liquidity: How ether.fi Uses Stablecoin Cards to Drive Engagement, Revenue, and Retention

As decentralized finance continues to scale, leading protocols, exchanges, and asset platforms face a shared structural challenge: how to keep users and assets on-platform once the core yield or trading action is complete.

In most DeFi and crypto exchange experiences today, user behavior is episodic. They deposit, earn, trade, or stake, then withdraw assets to spend or use elsewhere. With each withdrawal comes liquidity loss, declined engagement, and reduced lifetime value.

Without a way to seamlessly transform onchain value into everyday, real-world purchasing power, platforms struggle with:

• Declining retention outside of market cycles
• Liquidity leakage through offramps
• Limited ability to become a user’s primary financial destination

That’s where a stablecoin-backed, integrated card program can help.

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ether.fi’s path to a full-service, self-custodial financial platform

ether.fi started off as a restaking protocol before expanding its offerings to include vaults, giving users access to a managed fund strategy similar to what they might access through a brokerage or savings account, but fully onchain and with superior yields. ether.fi rapidly scaled to approximately $1 billion in assets on-platform, becoming one of the most prominent players in vault-based DeFi strategies. ether.fi’s Earn product is the largest of its kind in the crypto space, with more than $500 million in total value locked across its Ethereum, Bitcoin, and USD vaults.

ether.fi’s original vision was broader, though. They wanted to create a comprehensive, self-custodial financial platform, one that could rival modern neobanks and traditional asset managers while remaining fully onchain.

While ether.fi users could earn, allocate, and manage their assets on-platform, there was no way to use those assets without moving value off-platform, undermining both retention and liquidity.

To close the gap, ether.fi needed a payments solution that:

• Preserved self-custody and user control
• Integrated seamlessly with existing onchain assets
• Enabled rewards and incentives that reinforced retention

That’s where Rain came in.

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The Rain Difference

By partnering with Rain, ether.fi launched a stablecoin-settled credit card program that lets cardholders spend anywhere Visa is accepted, without liquidating their holdings or relying on bank-based settlement.

Most crypto cards are actually fiat cards with rewards paid out in crypto. Others operate debit cards where crypto holdings are sold for fiat at the point of purchase, creating tax complications down the line. Rain is different.

Rain settles with Visa daily, including weekends and holidays, dramatically lowering the reserve capital ether.fi needs to keep on hand and simplifying treasury management. Card balances are held in stablecoins, and because Rain cards are a credit product, merchant acceptance is higher and ether.fi captures more revenue on interchange.

Plus, the reduced infrastructure costs meant ether.fi could pass savings directly back to users through rewards, promotions, and cashback programs.

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What ether.fi Built with Rain

In less than four weeks, ether.fi went from concept to live program. With both physical and virtual cards compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay, users can convert onchain value into real-world payments.

The results were fast and material:

• $1 million in transaction volume processed within the first 30 days
• More than 75,000 active cards as of March 2026
• Deposits into ether.fi’s USDC Earn product, LiquidUSD, more than doubled in the first year

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Payments Enable Scaling

For early-stage protocols, growth is often driven by incentives or market cycles. But as platforms scale, the challenge shifts to building durable engagement.

Card programs address this by extending the user lifecycle and creating habitual, real-world usage. When users can spend directly from their on-platform balances, the protocol becomes embedded in daily financial behavior, not just periodic onchain activity.

Payments are fundamentally different from most DeFi features. While staking, trading, and yield strategies are event-driven, payments are behavior-driven. For ether.fi, introducing payments helped the platform transition into a primary financial surface, while also attracting non-crypto-native users.

Rain’s card programs are designed to give end users the familiar experience they already trust, while keeping the stablecoin rails on the backend. As a Visa Principal Member, Rain helps partners deliver cards that work at over 150 million merchant locations in more than 150 countries.

For non-crypto-native users, the value proposition is simple: higher rewards, yields, and global access. Behind the scenes, stablecoin rails make this possible. Onchain infrastructure enables more efficient capital management, fewer fees, and faster settlement, all without cardholders noticing.

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A Full-Stack Solution

When ether.fi decided to move into payments, the team was looking for more than a card issuer, they wanted a partner that understood both the operational realities of payments and the unique considerations of DeFi-native platforms. As a Web3 company, working with a company built on stablecoin-powered rails was a must, and logistically, they needed an infrastructure provider that could integrate KYC and AML workflows while handling licensing and compliance.

Rain checked these boxes, and more. The infrastructure allowed ether.fi to launch a card program without taking custody of user funds, rehypothecating assets, or introducing opaque financial risk. Users retain ownership of their assets at all times, while still gaining access to familiar, everyday payment functionality.

Building a payments program from scratch would have required significant investment in compliance, risk management, and ongoing program oversight. Rain provides the infrastructure while users retain control of their assets, allowing ether.fi to move from concept to launch in weeks, not months.

With Rain handling operations, the ether.fi team was able to stay focused on product development and user experience instead of managing payments infrastructure.

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The End Result

By leveraging Rain’s stablecoin-native payment infrastructure, ether.fi transformed payments into a strategic growth lever, not just a feature.

Lower costs allowed ether.fi to offer better rewards. Better rewards drove engagement. Engagement reinforced liquidity. Built-in compliance ensured everything launched and scaled securely and efficiently.

As crypto platforms grow, the winners will be those that turn onchain value into real-world utility, without sacrificing efficiency, trust, or control. Want to learn what a stablecoin-powered card program could do for your business? Let’s talk.