Solid Card.
Borrow Mode: instead of spending your balance down, the card can draw against your savings as collateral, so the USDC you deposited stays in the vault as yield-bearing soUSD and keeps compounding while you pay for coffee with it. Combined with a genuine 0% top-up and 0% transaction fee, the only thing standing between you and free spending is 1% FX outside the dollar.
Pros.
- +Card issuance is free, top-up is 0%, maintenance is none and standard transactions carry no fee — the only charge is 1% FX on non-USD purchases
- +Solid absorbs the cross-border and international transaction fees itself; FX and cross-border are mutually exclusive and capped at 1% combined
- +3% cashback in USDC on every purchase at the base Core tier, rising to 4% at Prime and 5% at Ultra
- +Your funds stay in a non-custodial Safe wallet until a transaction actually settles
- +Borrow Mode lets you spend against your savings so the balance keeps earning yield while you pay
- +Deposited USDC becomes soUSD, a yield-bearing token that compounds automatically with no staking or lock-up
- +The card is issued on the Visa Platinum tier: purchase protection to $10,000, extended warranty to $10,000, price protection to $2,000 and global auto rental insurance
- +Sign-up uses passkeys, and the whole flow to an activated card takes most people under three minutes
- +Apple Pay and Google Pay work with one tap from the card screen
- +Cashback lands directly in Savings as soUSD, so it starts earning the moment it arrives
- +Gas and bridging are abstracted away — transfers between users are gasless
- +Solid Savings is available worldwide even where the card is not, so you can use the yield side from anywhere
Cons.
- −The card cannot be issued to residents of Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, China, India, Israel, Vietnam, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria or Venezuela
- −Even a validly issued card stops working while you are physically located in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Ukraine or Venezuela
- −Virtual only — there is no physical card, so anything requiring a plastic card is out
- −No ATM access at all, and no ATM fee is published because cash withdrawal is not a feature
- −Spending limits are not fixed and published; Solid configures them per user and per card and can adjust them at any time
- −Cashback is capped by tier at $50, $100 or $200 per month, so the 3–5% headline stops mattering above roughly $1,700–$4,000 of monthly spend
- −Cashback is only credited 14 days after the transaction settles
- −Full KYC with an ID document and a live selfie is required before the card is issued
- −Yield comes from DeFi strategies in BoringVaults — real smart-contract and strategy risk, not a deposit guarantee
- −The terms are governed by the laws of Panama, which is a thin venue if you ever need to enforce anything
- −US availability is limited to 30-odd states rather than the whole country
- −Merchant categories including gambling, high-risk merchants and unregulated financial services are blocked outright
Detailed fee breakdown.
This is one of the genuinely cheap cards: issuance is free, top-up is 0%, there is no maintenance fee, and standard transactions carry no fee. The single charge is a 1% FX fee on any purchase settled in a currency other than USD — built into the exchange rate rather than shown as a line item — and Solid absorbs the cross-border and international transaction fees itself, with FX and cross-border mutually exclusive and capped at 1% combined. Spending limits are not a published number: they are set per user against your available balance or collateral and adjusted dynamically, with Visa verification kicking in above roughly $250,000 and a ceiling near $750,000 on a single transaction. Cashback pays 3% in USDC on the Core tier (up to $50/month), 4% on Prime (up to $100) and 5% on Ultra (up to $200), credited 14 days after settlement. There is no ATM access and therefore no ATM fee. Note for Turkey and Russia in particular: residents of both cannot be issued this card at all.