Best crypto cards in the UK 2026: four picks, and a regulatory clock that is running

The FCA clock: 30 September 2026, 28 February 2027, 25 October 2027

Three dates decide which of these cards still exist for UK customers in two years' time. The FCA takes applications under the new cryptoasset firms regime from 30 September 2026. An issuer that files by 28 February 2027 keeps serving new UK customers while the FCA decides; one that files later gets run-off only. On 25 October 2027 the regime commences, and an unauthorised issuer must have wound down its UK crypto business (SI 2026/102 reg. 1). The ranking below was not filtered on FCA status, so treat the register as your own last check: an issuer that already registers through the FCA's standard channels is better placed to be on the other side of the 2027 date than one serving Britain from offshore.

Crypto businesses must register with the FCA under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLRs). The FCA maintains a public register of authorised firms, so check that your card issuer is listed. The UK is not part of the EU's MiCA regulation. Its own framework, the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026, was made on 4 February 2026 and applies from 25 October 2027. Until that date, FCA registration under the MLRs is the legal requirement.

Since October 2023, all crypto marketing to UK consumers must comply with the FCA's financial promotions rules: clear risk warnings, no misleading claims, and approval by an FCA-authorised person. If a card's UK marketing carries no risk warning at all, treat that as a signal about the issuer. And unlike bank deposits (protected up to £120,000 since 1 December 2025), crypto card balances are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. That applies to custodial and self-custodial cards alike.

Ether.fi Cash leads because it borrows instead of selling

Ether.fi Cash Card (Sweepbase rating 4.9/5) wins the UK ranking on two numbers that only matter here. The first is £3,000: the CGT Annual Exempt Amount for 2026/27, down from £12,300 in 2022/23. HMRC counts every crypto-funded purchase as a disposal, so on a custodial card a year of coffees can eat that allowance by itself; Ether.fi borrows against collateral in a smart-contract vault you control instead of selling it, and borrowing is generally not a disposal, which keeps day-to-day spending out of the Self Assessment maths. The second number is 0%: the FX rate on EUR purchases (documented 24 June 2026, still labelled beta, settled from a dollar balance), which is the cheapest way in this guide to spend in the Eurozone from Britain since Brexit. Pounds cost more. GBP is not a 0% currency on this card: sterling spend carries about 1%, plus up to half a point more on Core. Cashback runs up to 3% and has been paid in ETHFI since 12 September 2026 (converted at the price when the purchase clears, locked for 7 days, claimable from $5), and the Visa Signature tier adds purchase protection.

Two names you may have expected are missing. Tria pays its cashback in USDC or USDT, but a payout can lag up to 12 months and anything not yet paid is forfeited if you close the account, so we will not rank it as money in your pocket. Tuyo puts the United Kingdom on its platform-wide prohibited list. Tria gets a fuller entry among the cards that missed the top 4. And if you prefer a custodial card with no wallets to manage, skip straight to #4 Crypto.com Visa: the longest-running brand here, with Faster Payments top-ups and a free entry tier.

The four cards, plus the one that closed

#1. Ether.fi Cash Card, best overall and CGT-efficient (4.9/5)

Ether.fi Cash is a DeFi-native Visa Signature credit card. Instead of selling crypto to load a balance, you post collateral (ETH, weETH, USDC, USDT, eBTC and 15+ other assets) and the card draws a loan against it at the till. The collateral itself never leaves the ether.fi Vault, a smart contract you control, whether it sits on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Scroll, Solana or Tron, and Solana USDC or Tron USDT can be moved in at no fee (1:1). That borrow-not-sell mechanic is what HMRC's disposal rules reward, and the £3,000 CGT allowance makes it more valuable each year it shrinks. Where the keys live, and what happens if the issuer disappears, is the topic of our self-custody vs custodial guide.

Where the 3% stops is a tier question, priced in dollars: $2K of spend a month on Core, $10K on Luxe, $50K on Pinnacle. Past the line it drops to 1% (to $3K on Core, $20K on Luxe, $80K on Pinnacle) and then 0.5%. Euros run on a shorter ladder, the flip side of the 0% EUR FX: 3% only up to $800 a month in USD equivalent, then 1% to $1,500 and 0.1% beyond. The payout is ETHFI with a 7-day lock. Visa Signature brings $10,000 of purchase protection. Plastic costs $50 on Core (no free physical card); Luxe includes one metal card, Pinnacle two, and an extra physical card is $100 on either tier (help centre, read 11 September 2026).

Pros:

• Collateral stays in a smart-contract vault you control; the issuer never custodies it
• 0% foreign transaction fees on USD and EUR; about 1% elsewhere (up to 1.5% on Core)
• Up to 3% cashback, paid in ETHFI with a 7-day lock
• Borrow-to-spend avoids triggering a CGT disposal

Cons:

• Requires crypto collateral, so not for fiat-only users
• GBP spending carries the 1% FX fee (only USD and EUR are 0%)
• Variable interest on borrowed amounts, set by Aave v4 markets
• Cashback rates decrease after monthly spend caps
• ATM withdrawals capped at $1,000 each, five per rolling 24 hours

The UK holder this card suits has five-figure-plus crypto positions and would otherwise spend most of the £3,000 CGT allowance on small disposals over the year. Borrowing against the collateral pushes those disposals out of the tax year. The interest on the borrowed balance is the cost you weigh against that. The rate is variable and set by Aave v4 markets; at 4%, for illustration, keeping about £2,000 borrowed through the year costs roughly £80 of interest, less than the CGT bill on selling the equivalent gain at higher rates. Let the balance build month after month and the interest grows with it.

#2. COCA Card, a smart wallet with 0% FX on euros and dollars (4.2/5)

COCA pairs a smart wallet with a prepaid Visa. No public COCA document names the issuer of the Visa card and no cardholder agreement is published. The footnote on COCA's cards page still calls the card a prepaid Mastercard issued by Wirex; that describes the card COCA used until mid-2025 and is outdated, per COCA in writing on 15 September 2026, though some earlier users still hold one. The wallet design means there is no seed phrase to lose and no exchange holding your wallet balance: you sign in through Privy, and COCA's docs describe a smart wallet that you control. You fund it with stablecoins (USDT, USDC and EURC) across 16 networks. COCA's docs say only the authorised amount leaves the wallet for settlement, though its cards page FAQ still describes topping up a separate card account. The 76-country list in COCA's Loyalty T&C covers the UK and most of Europe but skips the US and Canada, so this is one of the few cards where a British applicant is in the core market rather than an afterthought.

The maths: 1% base cashback with no staking, and 0% FX only on direct pairs (USD from USDT or USDC, EUR from EURC). COCA accounts are USD and EUR only, so paying in pounds is an indirect pair, which COCA puts at 0.5-1.5% (confirmed in writing on 15 September 2026; not yet on a public page). The advertised 8% Elite rate requires staking 30,000 COCA, a small-cap token with thin liquidity, with a 30-day cooldown to unstake, and every tier caps what you can claim each month, from $15 on Starter to $350 at Elite (Loyalty T&C section 2.2). The monthly spend allowances still in the docs are outdated per COCA: rates now apply to unlimited spend, and the claim cap is what bites. Treat the token ladder as a curiosity and the card as a fee-light stablecoin spender for euros and dollars, and it earns its place.

Pros:

• 0% FX on euros spent from its EUR account makes Eurozone trips cheap, a sore point for UK cards since Brexit
• 1% base cashback without staking or subscriptions
• Smart wallet you control (no seed phrase) with personal IBAN and SEPA access
• Stablecoin top-ups across 16 networks
• Apple Pay and Google Pay both supported directly

Cons:

• Spending in pounds is not 0% FX: GBP is an indirect pair
• Claimable rewards are capped monthly ($15 on Starter) and pend for 14 days
• Higher cashback tiers demand a staked 30,000-token COCA position that can fall in value
• $250/month free ATM allowance is modest (the $200 still on its cards page is outdated per COCA)
• No sign-up bonus, and the referral programme has been paused since 26 August 2026 (COCA expects it back in early October with $10 for the referred user and $20 for the referrer)
• Stablecoins only; no direct BTC or ETH spending

#3. Oobit Card, tap-to-pay from your own wallet (4.0/5)

Oobit's pitch is tap-to-pay crypto with the wallet relationship inverted: rather than moving funds onto someone's platform, you connect MetaMask, Phantom or Trust Wallet and the card settles from there. That is the reason it ranks, and the rewards are the reason it does not rank higher. They come as points (1x to 5x per $1 depending on level) that redeem into USDT, with no staking, subscription or lock-up required to earn the base level.

The arithmetic is not kind. Points redeem at 1,000 per $1, so 1x to 5x per $1 spent works out to 0.1% to 0.5% back, while every card payment carries a 1% transaction fee (minimum $0.25), and a purchase in pounds adds up to 1.5% on top because it is not in dollars. At Oobit's own published rates the fees outweigh the reward. The flat "2% base" you will see in most reviews of this card, including older versions of this one, appears only in third-party write-ups, never on Oobit's official pages, so we no longer repeat it. The "up to 10%" cashback covers only the first $200 of payments a month unless you pay with OOB, a small-cap token, and we score it as a promotion, not cashback. Get this card for the wallet integration; do not get it for the rewards.

Pros:

• Spends from wallets you already run (MetaMask, Phantom, Trust)
• Rewards redeem into USDT, with no staking or token lock-up at base level
• £0 issuance and annual fees
• Apple Pay and Google Pay both live

Cons:

• 1% fee on every card payment outweighs the official points value (0.1–0.5%)
• Up to 1.5% more on non-USD purchases, which includes spending in pounds
• Virtual only, no physical card; no GBP account or Faster Payments route
• The 10% headline rate covers only $200 a month unless you pay with the small-cap OOB token

#4. Crypto.com Visa Card, the custodial option with Faster Payments (3.7/5)

Crypto.com has held its UK position through every regulatory turn since Brexit, including the October 2023 promotions regime that pushed Bybit out of the UK. For a British user the practical wins are mundane: Faster Payments top-ups that clear in minutes from any UK bank, GBP spending from a GBP balance, and a free entry card with no lockup required. Spending abroad is a different story: Basic already pays 2% outside the EU and UK, and from 1 October 2026 Plus and Pro pay 0.2% inside the EU and UK and 2% outside once a monthly allowance of £400 or £800 runs out. It is the pick for anyone who reads "smart-contract vault" or "smart wallet" in the other entries and decides life is too short.

The prepaid tier grid, as published on Crypto.com's own card pages (read 24 September 2026): the free Basic tier pays 0%, Plus (formerly Ruby) pays 2% on the first $1,250 a month (a $25 cap), Pro (formerly Jade and Indigo) pays 3% on the first $2,500 (a $75 cap), and the Icy-Rose and Obsidian tiers pay 4% and 5% uncapped. Each step above Basic is unlocked with either a paid plan (£3.99/month for Plus, £24.99/month for Pro) or a 12-month CRO lockup (£400 at Plus, £4,000 at Pro, £40,000 at Icy-Rose and £400,000 at Obsidian; the private tiers take a lockup only). Run your own spend through the maths before locking anything; the caps bite earlier than the percentages suggest.

Pros:

• Free entry card; no lockup needed to start
• Faster Payments top-ups and native GBP spending
• FCA-registered; longest UK track record of the four
• Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay

Cons:

• Entry tier earns 0% cashback
• Higher rates need CRO lockups or subscriptions, with monthly caps
• FX fees on foreign-currency spending below the Private tiers, on Plus and Pro from 1 October 2026
• Custodial: the exchange holds your funds
• No FSCS protection on crypto balances

Closed: Ready Card, our GBP rails pick until 29 July 2026

Ready held the third spot on one feature. It was the only self-custody card in this ranking that handed UK users a sort code and account number, so salary fragments, refunds and transfers from your Monzo landed over Faster Payments while the spending side ran on USDC held in Starknet smart contracts under your own keys. The closest thing left is Ether.fi's GBP sort code, which takes deposits only at £0.90 plus 0.20% (help centre, read 12 September 2026).

In July 2026 the Ready help centre told holders that "your current physical and virtual Ready Card will stop working soon", and named the cause: "We're accelerating this change because our current card provider can no longer deliver the level of reliability Ready Cards require". A separate article closes the other end: "At the moment, Ready Cards are not available to order." So both sides are shut. You cannot order one, and the cards already issued are being deactivated. Ready has never published a precise stop date, so we date the closure to 29 July 2026, the day its CEO said in public that the card issuer was winding down. Ready never names that provider; press reports place it in the Kulipa wind-down. On 6 August 2026 Ready said it will launch Community Cards on Base instead. When we last checked, on 25 September 2026, it had published no issuer, network, countries or fees for them.

One warning if you go checking. On 4 August 2026 ready.co/card still carried the full marketing pitch, while ready.co and argent.xyz both rendered a "We're cooking. Check back soon." placeholder. The help centre is the accurate surface, not the landing page. The table above stays for anyone reconciling an old statement, and the listing comes back if orders reopen.

The £3,000 allowance and the disposal rule

This is not tax advice. Consult a qualified tax adviser for your specific situation. See HMRC's cryptoassets guidance for official rules.

HMRC treats cryptocurrency as property. Spending crypto via a card is a disposal, and you must calculate and report the capital gain using HMRC's matching rules: tokens bought the same day first, then tokens bought in the next 30 days, then the Section 104 pool. The Annual Exempt Amount for 2026/27 is £3,000, the same as in 2024/25 and 2025/26, reduced from £6,000 in 2023/24 and £12,300 before that. Gains above this threshold are taxed at 18% (basic rate) or 24% (higher rate); the rates were lifted from 10%/20% on 30 October 2024.

The shrinking allowance is what makes borrow-to-spend relevant for UK holders. On a card like Ether.fi Cash you borrow against collateral rather than sell, and borrowing is generally not considered a disposal by HMRC, so the spend may avoid triggering CGT entirely.

Cashback is generally not taxable at receipt (treated as a discount). If you later sell the received tokens at a profit, that gain is subject to CGT. HMRC requires detailed records of all crypto transactions; Koinly, CoinTracker and CryptoTaxCalculator all produce reports for Self Assessment.

Virtual cards are free; plastic costs extra on three

All four side by side, in GBP where the issuer prices in GBP and in the card's native currency where it does not. Ready keeps its row for reference, marked as closed. How FX, ATM and issuance charges compound over a typical month is covered in our crypto card fees explained primer.

*Year 1 cost = issuance + annual fee only. Excludes usage-based fees.

What £2,500 a month returns after caps

Take a household putting £2,500/month (£30,000/year) through the card at Tesco, on the commute and online, all of it priced in pounds. Each pick's return, once caps, annual fees and the card's own charge for spending sterling are netted out:

On sterling spending the race is closer than the cashback column suggests. Ether.fi still earns the most, about £678 a year: the 3% band covers the first ~£1,600 each month, the next ~£800 earns 1% and the last £100 earns 0.5% (assuming sterling spending is rewarded like dollar spending; the shorter ladder is published for euros only). But pounds are not a 0% currency on this card, and 1-1.5% FX on £30,000 takes £300-450 of that back, leaving roughly £230-380. Crypto.com's 2% reads better than it is until the ~$25/month Plus cap cuts the year to roughly £240, and nothing comes off it for FX because the card spends a GBP balance. So at this spend the two land close, and Ether.fi's real edge is the CGT point, not the cashback. COCA's flat 1% earns £25 a month here, but Starter can claim only $15 of it (about £12), so the year comes to roughly £144 with the rest carried over (unclaimed rewards expire after 12 months), and the 0.5-1.5% charge on pounds eats all of that or more. COCA is a euro and dollar card. Oobit sits outside the money column: its official points rates are worth less than its own 1% transaction fee, before the up to 1.5% it adds on purchases in pounds. Ready is in the table only to close the old comparison out. It stopped paying STRK on 1 May 2026, its replacement points never carried a published cash value, and the card shut to new orders on 29 July. Run your own figures through the interactive fee calculator.

Three UK filters on top of the standard scoring

The raw material is the Sweepbase database: 177 crypto cards, 25 data points per card. For the UK edition we layered three filters on top of the standard scoring.

• UK availability, verified at source. A card qualifies only if the issuer's own country list covers the United Kingdom: three of the four picks name it, and Oobit publishes a worldwide list with exclusions that leave the UK in. A UK company registration is not enough: Bleap carries a UK company mark in its site footer, yet its cardholder terms limit the card to the EEA and Switzerland, so it fell out here.
• GBP rails. Faster Payments acceptance, a UK sort code, or at minimum free crypto funding without a GBP conversion penalty. Post-Brexit this separates the cards built for Britain from the ones that merely tolerate it.
• Cashback you can bank. We score the base-tier rate a new user gets without staking, and we exclude rewards paid out up to a year late. That rule kept Tria (3.9/5) out of the top 4.

The cards that pass are ordered by the standard Sweepbase rating, which adds points for cashback, self-custody, low FX and no fees and takes them away for high FX. FCA status is not part of that formula, so check it yourself on the public register, not on the issuer's marketing page.

How I cover the UK without being there: UK-specific claims come from FCA register entries and issuer terms pages, not from personal use, so the fee schedules and availability lists are verified at source and the customer-support experience is not. Two things are worth checking on any UK crypto card beyond what the ranking scores. Whether GBP top-up runs through Faster Payments (instant and free at most issuers) or through a debit card (faster to set up, but it charges a percentage). And whether the issuer publishes a chargeback process at all; UK consumer protection is stronger than in most of the corridors I cover, and an issuer that respects that puts the process in writing.

The Sweepbase rating next to each card comes from the same algorithm we run across the whole catalog, so a rating here means the same thing it means on any other page of this site. Full details in our editorial disclosure and methodology.

What Brexit took off the UK shelf

In practice, the EEA-first wave of stablecoin cards mostly stops at the Channel. Deblock launched into the Eurozone, Bleap is issued out of Cyprus to the EEA and Switzerland only, and even Nexo, which stopped taking new UK clients in October 2023 and resumed on 3 September 2024, had to bolt the FCA's categorisation and appropriateness checks onto its signup to do it. The flip side is that an issuer that did the FCA paperwork, Crypto.com being the clearest case, tends to ship proper GBP rails rather than a EUR account with a GBP sticker. Each card in our top 4 covers the United Kingdom in its own supported-country terms, which we verify against issuer documents rather than press releases.

GBP rails, contactless and Eurozone trips

• For getting GBP in, Crypto.com takes Faster Payments from any UK bank, free and credited within minutes. Ready's sort code did the same job until 29 July 2026. Ether.fi issues a sort code and account number for GBP deposits only, £0.90 plus 0.20%, arriving as stablecoin. COCA and Oobit skip GBP entirely; you fund them with crypto from your own wallet, so budget for the on-chain transfer rather than a bank delay.
• All four picks run Apple Pay and Google Pay natively, and for Oobit, which has no plastic, the phone is the only way to pay in a shop. The COCA help-centre line about a linked Curve card is a 2025 leftover, outdated per COCA on 15 September 2026.
• For Eurozone trips, COCA (0% FX on euros spent from its EUR account) and Ether.fi (0% on EUR documented from 24 June 2026 and still labelled beta, settled from a dollar balance) both cross the Channel cheaply. Ready Metal was the third of those, and it is closed. Oobit charges its 1% transaction fee plus up to 1.5% on non-USD purchases, which makes it the wrong card to take to Lisbon.
• On custody, two of the four picks (Ether.fi, Oobit) leave the keys with you; COCA leaves the wallet in your hands and runs the card as a prepaid Visa from an issuer it does not name. None of the four carries FSCS cover, so the real choice is between trusting yourself with key management and trusting Crypto.com's balance sheet.
• Acceptance is a non-issue. Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and M&S tills treat these like any Visa or Mastercard, and Amazon.co.uk, ASOS and Deliveroo accept the virtual card numbers online.
• One hands-on data point from outside the top 4. On RedotPay I funded with TRC20 USDT and watched the conversion. It sat within 20 basis points of their quoted spread, which is fair. UK works, but the stacked fees catch you out: 1% crypto conversion plus 1.2% FX on non-base currency, plus $100 for the physical card.

Picks by situation

To check a pick against your own spending, put two cards into the comparison tool or run your monthly figure through the fee calculator.

Keep the neobank, add the card

If you already have Monzo, Revolut, or Starling, this is what a crypto card adds to it, and what it lacks.

The comparison is less either/or than the table implies. A neobank handles your salary, Direct Debits and FSCS-protected savings; a crypto card handles the one job a neobank cannot do, which is spending crypto without first selling it into a bank account. If you only keep one, keep the neobank. The crypto card earns its slot the day you want to spend a position without liquidating it first.

Six cards that missed the top 4

Most of these missed the top 4 on the numbers. Tria missed it on how its rewards are paid.

Tria Card

Tria broke ground in December 2025 with the first self-custodied Bitcoin top-up from any BTC wallet you control. It sits down here because the cashback is not money yet. It pays in USDC or USDT, but a payout can lag up to 12 months behind the spending, and cashback not yet paid out is forfeited if you close the account. The headline 6% also requires a paid Premium subscription, and the card demands 100% collateral up front. Our real-fees ranking excludes it too. Treat the rewards line as a delayed rebate you may never collect, not as money you can spend.

Nexo Card

Nexo pioneered the crypto-backed credit line that Ether.fi now executes with self-custody, and its 0.2% weekday FX fee on UK, EEA and Swiss currencies is cheap (outside that group it charges 2%). The availability story has improved: Nexo reopened onboarding for new UK customers in September 2024 under the FCA promotions regime, so expect the mandated cooling-off period, Investor Categorisation and Appropriateness Assessment during signup. The remaining problem is the rewards line. Nexo's current cashback terms exclude UK users entirely, which leaves a British applicant with the rails but none of the rewards. If you want borrow-not-sell with cashback attached, Ether.fi does it with the keys left in your hands.

Wirex Card

Wirex is a London company: its UK card service runs through Wirex Limited, an FCA-authorised e-money institution (FRN 902025), and it issued the prepaid Mastercard our #2 pick COCA used until mid-2025, per COCA. Wirex rebuilt the rewards side in 2026 and cashback now pays in USD rather than in its own token, which removes the old objection. It still sits outside the top 4 for a different reason: the base tier pays 0.5% and caps redemption at $25 a month, while every rate above it requires holding a slice of your portfolio in WPAY, up to 10% for the 8% tier. The UK terms do not name the card scheme, and the rewards ladder is the toll.

Revolut Crypto Card

Revolut isn't a dedicated crypto card: the ordinary Revolut card can be linked to your crypto balance and converts it at the till. The advantage is a GBP account plus crypto exposure in one app. The costs: a fair-usage fee of 1% on Standard (0.5% on Plus) once your combined exchanges pass £1,000 in a month (the card conversion itself carries no percentage fee, per Revolut's Cryptocurrency Terms), no self-custody option, and crypto cashback only starts on the Metal and Ultra plans (0.1% in Europe, 1% outside; nothing on lower tiers). It suits someone who already banks with Revolut and wants the odd crypto spend without a second app.

Coinbase Card

Coinbase offers a Visa debit card in the UK, issued by Paysafe Financial Services Limited, an FCA-authorised e-money institution (FRN 900015). Until 5 August 2026 this guide said the UK card had been wound down in late 2023; that was wrong. The rotating crypto rewards, paid at a variable rate Coinbase does not publish, are a US feature and do not come with the British card, and Coinbase says the card cannot be added to Apple Pay or Google Pay in the UK, so treat it as a plain spending card. For rewards on UK spending, Crypto.com remains the custodial alternative with Faster Payments support.

Xapo Bank Card

Xapo Bank is one of the few licensed banks aimed at Bitcoin holders. The card comes with 0% FX, and USD Savings pays 4.10% variable, in bitcoin, from a separate account the card cannot spend. The general BTC cashback ended on 30 June 2026; what is left is a rideshare promotion of up to 3% in BTC for Metal-card members that runs to 31 October 2026. UK availability runs through the Gibraltar-licensed entity. The bar is the $1,000-a-year membership fee that every account carries, plus a selective onboarding process; you are buying the bank, and the card comes as a feature of it.

See all 36 cards open to UK applicants in our UK crypto card database.

Applying from the UK

1. Match the card to your holdings. ETH with unrealised gains points to Ether.fi Cash. Stablecoins and a hatred of staking ladders point to Oobit or COCA. If you want GBP arriving by Faster Payments, or hold no crypto yet, it is Crypto.com.
2. Check the issuer on the FCA register before the app download, not after the deposit. It takes two minutes.
3. Complete KYC with a passport or UK driving licence plus proof of address dated within three months, then a selfie.
4. Fund it the way the card expects. Crypto.com: Faster Payments from your bank, free and near-instant. Ether.fi: move collateral into your ether.fi Vault, or send GBP by Faster Payments to the sort code in the app (deposits only, £0.90 plus 0.20%). COCA and Oobit: send stablecoins from your own wallet, and check which chain is cheapest that day.
5. Go virtual first. The virtual card works in Google Pay or Apple Pay within minutes, and plastic can take weeks (Ether.fi quotes 15 or more business days on its lower tiers). There is no reason to wait for it before you start spending.