The Dolphin Card is gone. The refunds are in USDT on Liquid.

Updated October 2026

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Available in US

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You came here to find out whether the AQUA card is any good. The short answer is that the question no longer has a normal answer: the card this review is about, the Dolphin Card, was suspended worldwide on 4 December 2025 and no relaunch has been announced since. So I read everything that was published about it, worked out what it would have been worth, and then concentrated on the two things you actually need now — what happened to your money if you held one, and what else you can use instead. There is no fee schedule to compare and no application to fill in, because the programme is closed.

The conditions described here are current as of October 28, 2026.

This is written for anyone who has trouble getting an ordinary bank card, in any country, because that was the pitch: sign up with an email, top up with crypto, spend with a virtual Visa. If that was you, you will recognise the appeal. You will also recognise the risk once you read what happened.

Verdict: 2.4 out of 10, and the number is mostly about a card that stopped existing

The score for the card as a product you could pick up today is 2.4 / 10. Not because crypto prepaid cards are a bad idea — several are now solid, and I have compared three below — but because this particular programme was switched off at the top of its life and left a set of unresolved promises behind. Let me show you how the marks break down, criterion by criterion, so you can see exactly where the weight sits.

Who does it suit, then? Honestly, nobody as a card to use. The one group this page is written for is existing cardholders who need to recover their remaining balance — if you had a Dolphin Card, the section on what to do with your money is the part that matters, and you should read it before the alternatives.

Who it does not suit: anyone starting out. There is nothing to sign up for. And if you were tempted by the “email only, no documents” idea, understand that this was never a durable advantage so much as a thin one — thin enough that when the provider relationship broke, there was no banking relationship underneath to absorb the shock.

A word on the zeroes. The zero for availability is not a rounding error or a harsh mark; there is literally no product to apply for. The 1 out of 10 for reliability is where the real damage is. In this category, reliability is not a nice-to-have feature, it is the whole product. What is a card for, if not for being usable at the till when you need it?

What happened to the programme: from a beta announcement to a global stop in six months

The Dolphin Card was announced in beta on 21 May 2025. The announcement described a virtual Visa card in USD, reloadable and managed inside the AQUA wallet app’s Marketplace; the app was at release 0.3.0 beta on the day of that blog post. In the same post, cards for the US and Canada were hoped for “in the coming months”. The beta was open to users outside the US and Canada, with the note that some merchants would be unsupported in certain countries. Only one card was ever described: a virtual Visa in USD. No physical card, no delivery, no second tier.

The beta had an unusual, and for many people decisive, simplicity: you needed a JAN3 account with an emailed verification code. No identity documents were mentioned. An unofficial review from CriptoNoticias (24 October 2025) described sign-up as requiring only an email address with no identity verification, which is consistent with the official description. Everything about the card that was meant to be attractive was still in the future tense. Apple Pay and Google Pay were planned “in the coming months” and did not work at launch. Tap-to-pay was not available. Costs were not stated and fees were not stated. Rewards were not stated. Other currencies and a multi-currency balance were not stated. Blocked merchant categories were not stated.

That pattern — a working core, everything else promised — is common in card launches. It is not a reason to distrust a product on its own. What made it matter is what happened next.

On 4 December 2025, all Dolphin Cards were suspended globally, effective immediately, because of a problem with the card provider. The provider was not named. Other Aqua wallet services were reported as unaffected. Ahead of that, on 30 November 2025, the JAN3 CEO said partners had told him all cards were suspended and that alternative providers would be sought; the team also said it was negotiating refunds. No replacement provider and no relaunch has turned up in searches through 2026.

So the timeline, stripped to the bones: an open beta in May, a third-party review in October that found a card working but unglamorous, and then a stop six months later that the company has not lifted in the year since. When a provider fails, the question is not whether you liked the app. It is whether the money on the card has a way out.

If you already have the card: getting your balance out, and what will not come back

If you were one of the people holding a Dolphin Card when it stopped, this is the section to read carefully. The good news first: remaining balances are refunded in USDT on Liquid, requested through a secure request form on the website, and paid either to your AQUA wallet or to any wallet that can hold Liquid assets. Processing starts once Aqua receives the funds from its provider, and you get email confirmations as it moves.

Now the part that costs people money. Two things sit outside that refund.

The first is pending merchant refunds. If you had a purchase that was still being refunded by the shop when the card was suspended, that money will not return to the card. The announcement says so plainly. You will need to chase the merchant yourself, if it is even still worth chasing.

The second is the fee side. Refund fees were not stated. Nobody has published what a refund costs, or whether it costs anything. Do not assume it is free, and do not assume it is not — go and read the current terms on the site, because that figure is the one number in this whole page I cannot give you.

Two further gaps worth knowing. The chargeback process was not stated, so if a payment you already made goes wrong, there is no published route to resolve it described here. And support was not stated: the beta post names no support channel at all, pointing only to the terms of service for the country list. When a programme is winding down, the absence of a named support contact is not a small thing.

What the card did while it worked, for the record, in case it helps you judge similar products. The spending limit was a maximum of $4,000 USD per month. Funding was in BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt, loaded through the Card Management page in the AQUA app. The announcement recommended making a small test load first, because the balance can take a moment to update. The top-up fee and minimum were not stated. ATM withdrawals were not stated.

One unofficial detail that tells you something about the design: according to CriptoNoticias (24 Oct 2025), on-chain BTC top-ups need miner fees and three to four network confirmations before the balance credits, the BTC is converted automatically to USD, and the card is nameless. And in the same review, a Spotify payment from Argentina was rejected because the card’s country and the user’s country did not match. The card was described there as “issued in the United States” and USD-denominated — unofficial, not confirmed by the card.

That last detail is the category’s oldest trap, and it is worth a moment. A card number begins with a six- or eight-digit issuer identification number that merchants can look up; they see which institution and which country issued it, and some apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. That is why a card issued in one country looks “foreign” in another shop, and why nameless does not mean anonymous. Payment networks do not read anything about your situation — they read the BIN.

What can go wrong: the specific ways this left you exposed

Let me be blunt about the failure modes, because this is a card review and the failure is the story.

• Single provider, no named issuer. The card was issued and operated by JAN3 through AQUA, but the card issuer was never named. When the provider relationship broke, there was no second rail to fall back on. The refund could only happen because JAN3 pursued it.
• Balances converted into a chain-specific asset at the worst moment. You loaded BTC and the card held USD; after the stop you receive USDT on Liquid. That is two conversions at a moment when you have no choice of terms, on one network, with a wallet address to get right.
• Deferred merchant money was simply gone from the card’s side of the ledger.
• No disclosed fees at any stage — issuance, maintenance, top-up, refund. Every number that would have told you what a balance was actually worth is absent.
• The promised features never arrived. No wallets at launch, no tap-to-pay, no physical card. You were judging a beta against a roadmap.
• Security arrangements were never stated. The beta post does not describe security controls; the card simply lived inside the AQUA app Marketplace. The JAN3 CEO said user funds are safe. That is a statement, not a specification. No complaint detail and no user reports were found on Reddit or Trustpilot — which is worth exactly what it looks like: a short-lived product with few users generates few complaints.

Wider context, since it bears on how much weight to put on “provider problem”. Licence and issuer relationships in this category do break, and they break for everyone at once. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing every programme it had issued. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card was wound down. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers, and they can switch a programme off. MiCA, the EU’s crypto regulation, took legal effect in June 2023, with the stablecoin and asset-referenced token rules applying from 30 June 2024 and the remaining provisions, including crypto-asset service provider rules, from 30 December 2024; providers operating under national law have until 1 July 2026 or a MiCA authorisation, whichever comes first. A card is a payment service regulated separately from the crypto side, so a programme like this rests on two licences and one private provider — and the private provider is the part that can vanish on a Friday.

What to take instead

Three live options, all scored by the same criteria I used above. Read them with the AUDN Card facts in mind: none of them is a prepaid promise in a beta, and all of them publish more than this one ever did.

MetaMask is the strongest of the three and the one I would look at first. Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories — Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay among them — with other regions on a waitlist. Proof of residency is required; the rule “ineligible regions limit sign-ups, not spending” is stated plainly. The citizenship rule is not stated, and US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per its FAQ. It is a Monovate-issued card with Crypto Life as card provider, one card per user, spending directly from the connected wallet across Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT named (the page says nine). Fees are described as a “minimal fee for each transaction” with the amount not stated on the pages read, no additional MetaMask fees, and no foreign transaction fee — the Mastercard rate is used. Cashback is 1% on Virtual; on Metal the headline is 3% but the footnote caps 3% at the first $10,000 spent, then 1%. One thing to plan around: Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit.

KAST is the one with the most explicit terms, and the only one that tells you its price up front. Availability is residence-based, shown at KYC, and the country list is not published — if your country is missing, it is not available there. Citizenship and ID are treated separately: living in a supported country but holding an ID from a restricted region may still fail KYC, dual citizens with an ID from a supported country may pass, only the account holder’s own ID is accepted, and a VPN does not get around it. You can create an account in an unsupported country, but KYC stays locked. Cards are Visa Platinum Standard, Visa Infinite metal Premium and Visa Infinite gold plated Private, plus Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin designs, up to 10 cards, balance in USD. Fees are unusually clear: stablecoin top-up 0%, USD card spend 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple and Google Pay 0%; non-USD FX 0.5%–1.75% depending on residence, transaction country and programme; non-USD transactions under 25 USD cost 0.10 USD; a declined transaction for insufficient balance costs 0.50 USD; non-stablecoin tokens may be auto-converted at a fee shown in the app. Rewards are tiered: 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD/month at Standard, 2% on the first 10,000 at Premium, 3% on the first 40,000 at Private, plus KAST Points at Premium and Private. One inconsistency to watch: KAST lists PYUSD and RLUSD among accepted stablecoins while its Terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”.

Zeal is the quiet one. Spending is said to work in 150+ countries, though issuance “depends on eligibility and regional availability”; the card programme is documented as live in the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, with Zeal update notes also mentioning Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia. It is a Visa, virtual, addable to Apple Pay, with EUR, USD and GBP accounts through Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Chain or Celo balances in the card Safe. It charges no additional FX fee and converts at the Visa wholesale rate, though Gnosis Pay fees can still apply. Rewards are up to 4% cashback paid in GNO on Gnosis Chain, which requires holding GNO in the card Safe to qualify, and the app store also advertises up to 5% variable APY on EUR and USD balances. Card currency for Zeal itself, and the exact coins, are not stated.

Who I would recommend it to

AQUA Card review, final word: I would not recommend this card to anyone, because it does not exist as an option any more. But there are two clear audiences for this page.

If you held a Dolphin Card, you need to do one thing only: submit the refund request form for your USDT on Liquid, to a wallet address you control and have checked twice, and expect the wait — processing starts only once Aqua receives the funds from its provider. Do not treat any message asking you to send funds to release a refund as real. Do not count pending merchant refunds as recoverable through the card. And read the terms page yourself for the fee, because the figure is not published anywhere I could check.

If you are new to crypto cards and came here because a normal bank card is awkward for you, start with MetaMask if your country is on its 45-country list and the virtual card is free, and be honest with yourself about the flip side: signing up is only half the problem. A card can decline you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Address verification is mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and is generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which causes declines. Some merchants decline prepaid or foreign BINs on sight. Gambling merchant category 7995 is blocked by many issuers as policy rather than law, and the list varies by issuer. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on your funds for several days, typically up to seven. None of this is specific to AQUA; it is the shape of this category, and it will be true of whatever card you pick.

On keeping your own money, this episode is an argument for the self-custody side of the ledger. With a custodial card, the provider holds the credentials and your balance is an entry in their system — as 4 December 2025 demonstrated. A seed phrase is 12 to 24 words in plain form, and anyone who gets it can restore the wallet and spend the funds; blockchain transfers are typically irreversible, and no network will freeze or return them. The history is not reassuring: Mt. Gox reported about US$350 million stolen across 2011–2014, Coincheck about US$400 million in 2018, Ronin Network US$625 million in 2022. The other side of that coin is that a self-custody-linked card puts phishing and key loss squarely on you. If you are choosing where to hold, understand which of those two risks you are taking rather than assuming a card brand has solved it.

Frequently asked questions

What is AQUA card?

The AQUA card was a virtual Visa in USD, reloadable with crypto, managed inside the AQUA wallet app’s Marketplace. JAN3 issued it under the AQUA brand as a beta for users outside the US and Canada in May 2025. All cards were suspended globally on 4 December 2025 due to a provider issue.

Is AQUA a bank, and who owns it?

AQUA is not a bank. The card was issued and operated by JAN3, but the actual card issuer was never named. When the provider relationship ended in December 2025, there was no secondary institution to fall back on, which made the refund process complicated and forced direct negotiation with the provider.

Why were all Dolphin Cards suspended?

They were suspended on 4 December 2025 due to a problem with the card provider. The suspension was effective immediately and applied worldwide. Other Aqua wallet services remained unaffected, but searches through 2026 found no replacement provider and no restoration of the Dolphin Card programme for any users.

How do I get my money back if I still hold the card?

Remaining balances are refunded in USDT on Liquid through a secure request form on the website. You can have them paid to your AQUA wallet or any Liquid-capable wallet. Processing starts once Aqua receives funds from its provider. Ensure your receiving address is correct, as transfers on the wrong network are irreversible.

What will not be refunded?

Pending merchant refunds will not return to the card. If a shop was already processing a refund when the suspension occurred on 4 December 2025, you must chase that merchant directly. Refund fees were not publicly stated, so verify current terms on the site rather than assuming the process is free.

What did the card cost, and what were the fees?

Costs and fees were never disclosed on the card’s public pages. An unofficial review from CriptoNoticias mentioned no issuance or monthly fee, but this was an observer’s note, not an official fee statement. The programme was suspended before these details were ever formally clarified for users or listed in a schedule.

Does the AQUA card require KYC?

During the beta, it required only a JAN3 account with an emailed verification code; no identity documents were mentioned. This is far less strict than standard EU or US rules, which require name, date of birth, address, identification numbers, and often proof-of-residency documents to prevent money laundering and fraud.

Can I still get an AQUA card, or apply for one?

No. The programme is closed and suspended, so there is nothing to apply for. If you want a functional crypto card, MetaMask is accepting registrations in 45 countries with a free virtual card. Zeal’s programme is also live in many regions, including the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan and Singapore.

Is AQUA card safe, and were there complaints?

Security details were not stated beyond the card living inside the AQUA app Marketplace. The CEO claimed funds were safe, but this is a broad statement, not a specification. Few user complaints were found on Reddit or Trustpilot, but that is common for a short-lived, limited-access beta with very few active users.

Is AQUA card worth it?

As a functional card, it is not worth anything because it cannot be used. For those new to crypto cards, the value depends on your country, tolerance for declines at foreign-issued BINs, and whether you are comfortable with custodial risks. The AQUA pitch targeted users who struggle with standard identity verification requirements.

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