By Bo Starr, Co-CEO of Grifin. Last verified August 17, 2026.

The honest answer is that the "earn stock when you shop" category has quietly emptied out, and the live alternatives to Stash's Stock-Back card are Grifin, the Fidelity Rewards Visa, the invite-based Robinhood Gold Card, or a plain 2% cash-back card you invest yourself. Disclosure before we go further: Grifin is our app, and it's the only option here that doesn't require getting a new card at all.

If you've been searching this and finding stale roundups, there's a reason: two of the category's best-known products are gone, and most pages haven't caught up.

What does the Stash Stock-Back card actually do?

It's a debit card bundled into Stash's subscription, which is now a single plan at $12 a month or $108 a year (stash.com/pricing, checked August 17, 2026). Spend on the card and Stash rewards you with 0.125% to 1% back in stock; when the merchant is a public company, the reward comes as a fractional share of that company, otherwise it lands in a default investment. It's a clever mechanic with two structural catches. The rewards are small (0.125% is $1.25 in stock per $1,000 spent), and Stash's own plan page values them at up to $120 a year, which tells you the intended scale. It also only works if you move your banking to Stash and swipe their debit card, which is exactly the switching decision most people never get around to.

Which stock-rewards cards are dead, so you can stop looking for them?

Two big ones. The M1 Owner's Rewards Card, which paid extra cash back on brands you held in your M1 portfolio, was discontinued on May 28, 2025 after its card partner Deserve was acquired and wound down partner card support. And Bumped, the app that gave free brand-funded stock for shopping loyalty, shut down back in December 2022. Both still show up in "cards that pay you in stock" listicles with 2026 datelines. They shouldn't. What's left standing in the spend-becomes-stock space is genuinely short: Stash's card, and us.

What's the alternative that doesn't require a new card?

Grifin, and this is the section where you should remember who's writing. Grifin links your bank accounts and cards through Plaid, reads your transactions, and automatically buys fractional shares of every publicly traded brand you spend at. It opens a real brokerage account, verifies your identity, funds by ACH, and places live fractional trades. There's no stock picking. The practical difference from Stock-Back: Stash rewards you a sliver of the purchase (their money, capped small), while Grifin invests your own money behind the purchase, with an average deposit around $18, on whatever cards you already carry. No banking switch, no new plastic. The tradeoffs, stated plainly: Grifin costs a flat single-digit monthly subscription, and because it's your money being invested, it's building savings, not collecting a freebie. Members seem to find the loop sticky; active members average about 67 automatic deposits a year, and it holds 4.5 stars across 6,600+ App Store ratings.

Can a regular credit card get you stock rewards?

Two real options, both credit cards rather than debit. The Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature pays an unlimited 2% back when rewards are deposited into an eligible Fidelity account, with no annual fee; the money arrives as cash, not shares, but if that account is your brokerage, every swipe funds investing at a rate 2 to 16 times Stock-Back's. It's the strongest pure-math answer in this post. The Robinhood Gold Card pays 3% back across the board with rewards routable toward your Robinhood account, but it requires a Robinhood Gold subscription at $5 a month and remains invite-based, with a waitlist you may sit on for weeks or longer. If you can get it and you already pay for Gold, its math beats everything here. If you can't, the Fidelity card is available today. One note on both: they're credit cards that report to the bureaus like any other Visa, so treat them as a credit decision first and an investing decision second.

Who should just stay with Stash?

Anyone who wants one card that does banking and stock rewards together, and who uses the rest of the $12 bundle: the retirement match worth up to $225 a year, the kids custodial accounts, the guidance. If Stash is already your bank, the Stock-Back card costs you nothing extra and no alternative on this page replaces the all-in-one shape of it. The people who should leave are the ones paying $144 a year primarily for the card, because 0.125% back in stock is a rounding error next to what the same $144 would do invested directly.

What's the right pick for each kind of person?

If you want stock tied to where you shop without changing cards or banks: Grifin, accepting the subscription. If you want maximum investable rewards and will remember to route them: the Fidelity Rewards Visa at 2%, or the Robinhood Gold Card at 3% if the invite comes through. If you want banking, card, and investing in one app: stay with Stash. And if you mostly liked the idea of free money, skip the theme entirely, take a plain 2% cash-back card, and set the cash to auto-invest anywhere; the brands-on-the-card part is the fun, and the investing-at-all part is the point.

Facts about other apps checked against their own pricing pages on August 17, 2026.