I know a lot of us in the US have been completely stuck since Curve US folded, leaving us without a reliable domestic partner for Fidesmo Pay. I’m excited to share that I finally got my Apex Ring working for contactless payments here in the States!
If you’ve been sitting on a ring (or an Apex Flex/FlexSecure), the solution is to use Ether.fi or Kast. Both platforms issue US-friendly Visa cards that actually work with Fidesmo’s tokenization.
The Workarounds
Both options are crypto/stablecoin-funded platforms. This entirely bypasses the headache of waiting for traditional US banks to support Fidesmo.
Ether.fi (Cash Card):** They issue a Visa card funded by your crypto balance. Once your account is set up, you can feed the card details directly into the Fidesmo app to provision your ring.
Kast (K Card): This is a stablecoin-powered Visa debit card (spending USDC/USDT). After a quick KYC process, they issue an instant virtual card. Plug that virtual card into Fidesmo, and you are ready to tap.
Why this is huge
Fidesmo officially supports Visa tokenization, but the bottleneck has always been finding a US issuer that allows it. Because Ether.fi and Kast issue valid Visas and don’t block wearable tokenization, they act as the perfect bridge. You just load your account, link the card, and you finally have a working payment wearable in the US.
Has anyone else tried these platforms with their Apex yet? Let me know how it goes or if you run into any quirks during setup!
U.S. States
Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin.
That’s 20/50 (call it 51 since I assume Wash DC works?), not great.
They claim the reason is regulations in those states; but it seems like a few too many states, and they are mostly smaller population states. My guess is they need to file/setup things state by state, and are focused on the larger states first?
I also tried running the Kast app; but it blocks non-official google androids. I got APPCHECK-00401’d. Couldn’t find more on that, but many “banking” apps require those sorts of things so I am not surprised.
Yes, I do have it working. I know it sounds sketchy, but you can just use an address in a state that does work. It worked for me with a Virginia address. There are some states it will not work in.
My identifying information was confirmed using a passport as well in ~2 minutes.
Ether.fi seems to have greater flexibility with regards to the states it supports.
I got the virtual card, although a physical card is also possible. I funded it via wire transfer from my Robinhood account. You have to make a deposit first to enable the card.
Yes that’s the one! It’s odd in that is not really a credit card, at least in the traditional sense as there is no APR. It has to be funded to function.
@amal I used an old address from Virginia and it worked. Didn’t require verification.
Worth a try. They publicly share the states that don’t work. The card will still physically work in those states though, they just can’t issue you a card to residents of that state. They’ll even ship it to a state (if you want a physical card) that is on the list, you just can’t be a resident.
I did the research and it has to do with crypto laws in those states. They don’t have a crypto operating license in those restricted states.
Amazing. Also interesting, the token expires before the linked account does. Finally, the most interesting aspect.. the agreement indicates Google Pay ..
I did notice the Google Pay thing as well, so yeah it’s just a virtual Google Pay card. Makes me think why couldn’t we use the same philosophy to enroll a Google Pay virtual card in Fidesmo Pay?
I don’t think you can actually get the Google Pay token card ID
Typical Google Pay uses online token generation and verification, which means when you go to use Google Pay, the phone pulls a fresh token, the token is passed to the payment terminal, the processor de-tokenizes it, and the payment is made. Google Pay also caches 10-20 “offline” tokens in your phone just in case you want to make a payment when the phone has no signal / wifi / data. All of these tokens are short lived though.
So, if Google Pay is issuing these virtual ether.fi cards, they are going to be fundamentally different from the tokens used by the actual Google Pay service on the phone.
