Aspire

• Genuinely free Basic tier — multi-currency accounts and 200 virtual cards at $0/month.
• 1% cashback on ads (Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn) and SaaS — it compounds fast for any real spender.
• Real expense management built in — no separate Spendesk or Pleo subscription.
• Yield up to 3.45% on idle USD balances via the treasury product.
• Regulated and bank-backed: PSA 2019 licence, DBS custody, Visa/Citi/JPMorgan partnerships.

Start with the money: what 1% cashback actually returns

The headline that makes Aspire one of the highest-ROI sign-ups in the entire startup stack is the cashback. It applies to ad and SaaS spend run through Aspire Visa cards — exactly the spend a growing startup can't avoid. The math is the pitch:

A startup burning $20,000/month across Google, Meta and AWS gets roughly $200/month back — which pays for Premium more than thirteen times over, and on Basic it's pure upside at $0/month. That's before you count the yield on runway sitting idle between bills. Scale that across a year and the cashback alone is $2,400 of recovered spend on a category — ads and SaaS — you were always going to pay for anyway. There's no spend you're inventing to chase a reward; you're just routing existing, unavoidable bills through a card that happens to pay you 1% back. For a bootstrapped or seed-stage company watching every dollar of runway, that's one of the rare "free money" line items in the whole startup toolchain.

Aspire pricing in 2026 — Basic vs Premium

Most startups can run on Basic indefinitely. Premium earns its keep the moment you make more than ~5 international transfers a month or want 24/7 support and a bigger free-user allowance — and as the cashback math above shows, real ad spenders cover the $15 many times over.

Built for the APAC startup reality

Aspire's regional focus isn't a limitation to apologise for — it's the reason it fits so well for the companies it targets. A Singapore or Hong Kong startup that bills US clients, pays an Indonesian dev team, and runs ads in SGD and USD has a genuinely messy money setup. The default US neobanks (Mercury, Brex) and EU players (Qonto) don't really serve that geography, and a traditional regional bank makes you wait weeks for a corporate card and charges for every FX leg.

Aspire is built around that exact workflow: multi-currency as a first-class feature rather than a bolted-on FX gimmick, payroll that understands APAC quirks, global payouts across 130+ countries, and a card-plus-expense layer that means you're not also paying for a separate Spendesk or Pleo. For a lean team, collapsing the bank, the cards, and the spend-management tool into one app is worth as much as the cashback — it's one login, one reconciliation flow, one vendor relationship instead of three.

What's inside the Aspire stack

Is Aspire safe? Regulation and custody

For anything holding your company's money, the licensing matters more than the features. Aspire's posture:

How to actually capture the cashback

The one gotcha: cashback only triggers on spend run through the Aspire Visa cards. Bank-transfer payments don't qualify. So the play is to route the right spend onto the card.

1. Open the free Basic account

   Sign up through the partner link for the $0 Basic plan and white-glove onboarding.

2. Issue a card per ad platform

   Create virtual cards for Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn so every ad dollar earns 1% and stays easy to reconcile.

3. Move SaaS subscriptions onto Aspire cards

   Point your SaaS and cloud bills (AWS, tools, subscriptions) at Aspire cards to capture the 1% on recurring spend.

4. Park idle USD in the treasury product

   Let runway between bills earn up to 3.45% rather than sitting at 0%.

5. Sync to Xero

   Connect the native Xero integration so transactions, bills and FX reconcile without manual entry.

When to stay on Basic, when to go Premium

One genuinely good thing about Aspire is that the free tier is not a crippled teaser — multi-currency accounts, 200 virtual cards, the full 1% cashback, and expense management are all on Basic at $0. Most early-stage teams can run on it indefinitely and never feel pushed. The honest upgrade triggers are narrow and specific: you make more than five international transfers a month (Premium includes five free, then per-transfer fees apply on Basic), you want 24/7 live chat rather than standard support, or you've outgrown the five free spend users and don't want to pay $4 each for more.

That's a refreshingly clean upgrade path — you pay the $15 when a concrete need appears, not because the free tier was quietly nerfed to force you. And for any team spending real money on ads, the cashback covers the $15 many times over regardless, so the decision is really just "do I need the extra transfers and support?" In short: start free, upgrade only when a specific limit bites.

Aspire vs Wise Business vs Airwallex

Wise Business has great FX but no spend management; Airwallex is a closer fit but pricier and enterprise-leaning. Aspire bundles account, cards, expense management and yield in one app at a free or near-free price — the most complete APAC stack for the money.

Watch Aspire in action

Aspire FAQs