Share
A simple coffee purchase in Buenos Aires could reveal more about the state of stablecoin payments infrastructure than most product launches. That’s what happened when X user Ari Eiberman (@AriEiberman) tested Jupiter’s Visa Infinite card recently.
Jupiter's new stablecoin card has a few problems.
Here's what happened when I bought a coffee and a medialuna with USDC:
The @jup_mobile launched their Visa Infinite card a few weeks ago. I use the Jupiter Exchange wallet to track my Solana balances and @uselulo stablecoin… pic.twitter.com/hz4PFxz8jd
— Ari Eiberman 🇦🇷 Stablecards (@AriEiberman) February 24, 2026
Ari’s profile describes him as a “serial tester of Web3 payments.” According to his well detailed thread of events, the experience was both functional and revealing. The test began with a $10 USDC deposit from his Jupiter Exchange wallet while walking to the cafe.
Three things happened afterwards:
Eleven hours later, however, the blockchain still showed the original $10 USDC balance, even though the app showed $3.98. Nobody had yet touched the on-chain funds.
That gap between what the app displays and what the chain reflects is not a bug unique to Jupiter. It’s a window into how stablecoin cards actually work under the hood, and provides valuable insight into why the category is still early.
The Jupiter card doesn’t operate on-chain at the point of sale. When a user deposits USDC, the funds move from a self-custodial Solana wallet into a card program managed by a licensed issuer partner, at that point, the user’s on-chain balance stops updating in real time.
The card sits in what Jupiter calls “Secure Global mode,” designed to support fiat-adjacent features and card-based spending, distinct from the platform’s fully self-custodial DeFi mode where all transactions remain on-chain.
🚨 BREAKING: @JupiterExchange launches Jupiter Card — a premium Visa Infinite crypto card.
• 1:1 USDC → USD settlement
• 150M+ merchants worldwide
• QR Pay for SE Asia
• Virtual accounts in USD, GBP, EUR"Spend your stables anywhere." — @kashdhanda pic.twitter.com/0j1XkbwSCK
— Surgence News (@SurgenceNews) February 3, 2026
The issuer authorizes the Visa transaction in fiat, settles against the pre-funded USDC float, and the blockchain record only updates when the user withdraws, which is likely why @AriEiberman’s on-chain balance remained unchanged for hours while the app showed the deduction correctly.
Visa does not settle consumer transactions in stablecoins at the point of sale. The stablecoin lives in the settlement layer between institutions, not at checkout. It’s important to note that nearly all crypto cards operate this way.
The payments company confirmed in December 2025, participating US issuer and acquirer partners can now settle with Visa in USDC over the Solana blockchain, with wider availability expected through 2026, but that settlement modernization is invisible to the cardholder. The consumer still taps a Visa card. The merchant still receives fiat.
The 3-4 minute deposit time that caused the initial payment failure is a Solana finality plus routing issue, not a network congestion problem per se. Solana’s block time is 400ms, but moving USDC from a self-custodial wallet to a card program balance requires the issuer’s system to confirm on-chain finality, update internal ledger state, and provision available balance, a process that currently takes several minutes across most stablecoin card programs.
KAST, which also runs on Solana rails, reports that users find stablecoin deposits “instant” in practice, though the comparison indicates KAST’s pre-funded custodial model rather than a live chain-read before each transaction. It resolves this by holding funds custodially from the moment of deposit, removing the on-chain confirmation step from the payment flow entirely, at the cost of self-custody.
The FX rate behavior is worth examining precisely. Ari received an effective rate of 1,295.68 ARS/USD against Visa’s published rate of 1,296.13, a 0.04% deviation, well within normal. The card charges a 1% FX fee on non-USD transactions, which is competitive: KAST charges 2% FX on all non-USD spending, which effectively wipes out its Standard tier rewards on foreign currency transactions.
Jupiter’s 1% is closer to market, though still above the theoretical zero-markup floor that newer entrants like Bleap advertise on Mastercard rails.
The stablecoin card field is fragmented by architecture. KAST operates a fully custodial model, one in which Crypto is sold to KAST on deposit, eliminating on-chain exposure but introducing counterparty risk, with funds not covered by government deposit protection schemes. It offers 2 – 6% rewards on the K Card tier and PayFi functionality allowing users to borrow up to 60% of staked SOL interest-free for spending, a DeFi-native feature Jupiter doesn’t yet match.
Bleap prefers the opposite approach. It uses non-custodial MPC wallets, has 0% FX markup, and 2% flat cashback in USDC, with LATAM expansion planned for Q1 2026 covering Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina, the exact market Jupiter is already serving.
Jupiter’s card accepts deposits from Base, Arbitrum, and Sui in addition to Solana, which is a meaningful cross-chain advantage. Bank deposits and Apple Pay ramp are listed as upcoming features, still grayed out. That gap is important, as KAST and Bleap both support Apple Pay for instant top-up, removing the awkward deposit-then-wait window entirely.
Visa positioned its US USDC settlement launch as an institutional plumbing upgrade rather than a new consumer-facing crypto product. Cardholders won’t see any difference at checkout because the stablecoin rails are applied at the settlement stage between Visa and participating financial institutions.
As of November 30, 2025, Visa’s monthly stablecoin settlement volume had reached an annualized run rate exceeding $3.5 billion. It is a genuine infrastructure milestone, but one that doesn’t resolve the latency and custody transparency issues that Jupiter’s card users encountered in real time.
The regulatory floor has also firmed. Since the GENIUS Act was signed into law, creating a statutory framework for regulating payment stablecoins in the US, and USDC received MiCA compliance in the EU; it has given issuers cleaner legal footing in two of the largest regulated markets. That clarity matters for card programs seeking banking partnerships, but compliance infrastructure at the issuer level doesn’t automatically translate to a better deposit experience for the end user.
Three bottlenecks stand between the current product and genuine at-scale utility.
1. Deposit latency needs to fall below 60 seconds, which requires either pre-funded custodial models (custody trade-off) or real-time issuer balance provisioning triggered by on-chain finality events, technically achievable on Solana, but not yet implemented at the card layer.
2. Custody transparency needs to be legible to users. Currently, Jupiter’s app shows a deduction that the blockchain doesn’t reflect for hours, with no explanation of why or who controls the intermediate float. That needs to change.
3. FX routing needs tightening for non-USD markets, a 1% markup is adequate but stands no chance of competing against zero-markup alternatives. Even if it manages to do so now, the deficiencies will become obvious as the field matures.
Jupiter’s card scores what Ari gave it. The card passed the functional infrastructure in search of a coherent UX test. Payment cleared. The rate was fair. The coffee got bought. The infrastructure just hasn’t caught up to the promise yet, and in payments, the gap between “works most of the time” and “works every time” is the entire product. According to Visa’s estimate, the stablecoin market is poised to reach $4 trillion by 2030, while the company says it hopes to hit escape velocity by 2026. If the infrastructure improves significantly… Well, why not?
Share
