Robinhood’s new credit card is made of actual gold, but its real value is in the user perks

Robinhood on Tuesday unveiled the Robinhood Gold Card, its first credit card. For some Gold cardholders, the credit card will actually be made from real gold, weighing in at a whopping 36 grams (roughly 1.27 ounces).

“I think it’s the heaviest credit card on the market,” says Deepak Rao, general manager of Robinhood Money. “If you accidentally drop it on your table, everyone in the room will hear it.”

The Gold credit card is only available to members of Robinhood Gold, the company’s paid subscription plan, which also offers benefits including 5% interest on uninvested cash and a 3% match on IRA contributions. And the real Gold card—the one containing actual gold, which took eight months to design—is only available to Gold members who refer at least 10 other individuals to the subscription plan, though Rao says, in the future, it may be offered under other circumstances.

The credit card itself carries no annual fee, but membership in Robinhood Gold costs $5 per month or $50 per year. Cardholders will get 3% cash back on all purchases, along with other traditional credit card perks like Visa Signature’s concierge access, as well as travel and emergency assistance, no-fee foreign transactions, and trip-interruption reimbursement. Interested Gold members can join a waitlist for the card, and those who are preapproved to apply won’t see any impact to their credit ratings (called a “soft” credit pull). A “hard” pull, which does affect credit ratings, will follow for those who have to fill out an application.

Rao, who was cofounder and CEO of X1, a credit card company acquired by Robinhood last year, says the offer of 3% on all purchases is a first in the industry, though other credit card issuers do offer equal or higher rewards limited to particular transaction categories or certain merchants. (Rival SoFi, for instance, offers 2% cash back across all purchases with its credit card and 3% cash back on travel booked through its portal). The card will come with its own app, which will make it easy to track transactions and generate virtual cards with their own credit limits, useful for situations where customers are concerned about issues like merchants making it difficult to cancel purchases or subscriptions. 

Adding more users with their own credit limits can also be easily done through the app, and customers can quickly replace a lost or stolen card with a few taps. Rao says cardholders whose physical cards go missing won’t have to update online subscriptions when their cards are replaced, since the card number used for online purchases is only available through the app and not displayed on the physical card. 

As customers rack up those 3% cash back rewards, they can redeem them for purchases of travel, gift cards, or products at certain online merchants or transfer them to their Robinhood brokerage account. Like other credit card rewards programs, Rao acknowledges the terms may change if the fees merchants pay to accept cards, which ultimately fund the programs, are ever capped by Congress. But in the meantime, he anticipates the offer may spur other card issuers to offer more generous rewards, pointing to Robinhood’s commission-free stock trading having led to the elimination of transaction fees across the industry.

“I’ve already seen when we do things, people copy it really fast,” he adds.

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