Re-accelerated radioactive ions beams of 8He from the SPIRAL facility at GANIL have been used to perform the first experimental investigations at energies around the Coulomb barrier of fusion and direct reactions with the most neutron rich 8He. Two experiments (in the 8He+65Cu and 8He+197Au systems) have been performed, using the complementarity of in-beam and off-beam techniques, to measure integral and differential cross sections for elastic scattering, fusion and neutron(s) transfer. These results, compared with Coupled Reaction Channels calculations as well as phenomenological approaches allowed to probe and understand the different facets of the interplay between the intrinsic structure of 8He and reaction mechanisms.