A small USDC balance, a Visa card, and a Colombian contract behind it

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

VIIO is a Visa card that spends from a “Digital USD balance” backed by USDC and USDT, run by Persimon S.A.S. out of Colombia, and aimed at people who find it hard to open a normal bank account. That last point is the heart of the review: a card like this only makes sense if you cannot get a regular one, and only if the things VIIO leaves unclear do not matter to you. In this review I walk through who can get it, what it costs to run day to day, how money actually moves in and out, and where I would send you instead if VIIO is not the right fit.

The information below reflects the card’s public pages and terms as of October 28, 2026.

Verdict

VIIO scores 6.6 out of 10. It is a clean, low-fee dollar card for someone who already lives in Colombia or has a reason to bank in pesos, but it is too opaque about a few basics — who exactly can apply, which crypto networks it accepts, what the FX margin is — to recommend without thinking.

The score is the sum of six criteria:

I would steer this card at Colombian residents who want a dollar card tied to a USDC balance and are happy with the lack of detail on networks and FX. I would not steer it at someone outside Colombia who needs a card they can rely on without ever talking to a Colombian help desk, and I would not steer it at anyone who needs a clear, itemised FX margin before they start spending.

Who will they give you the card

The short answer is that VIIO does not say, and the long answer is that the contract is Colombian.

The card’s own pages talk about merchants in “200+ countries” and a Colombian peso top-up, but the eligibility list — which passport holders, residents or citizens of which countries can actually open an account — is not stated in the public terms. The contract is governed by Colombian law, the company is Persimon S.A.S. (“VIIO Colombia”), the help centre signposts a Colombian bank account and PSE as the way to top up, and the FAQ pointed to a question about using a passport without a Colombian ID, which is the strongest signal that the product is built for people physically in Colombia. Press coverage from January 2025 (La Republica) describes the launch as a USDC dollar card in Colombia, with Visa and Dock.

The card’s terms do tell you a few things you have to agree to before you can use it: you confirm you are of legal age, you provide the information VIIO asks for, you update that information at least once a year, and you consent to credit bureau checks. The exact document list — passport, national ID, proof of address — is not stated, and the KYC levels (what unlocks at which threshold) are not stated either. So in practice, you have to start the application to find out whether VIIO will accept you, and the answer depends as much on the issuing bank’s risk policy as on VIIO’s own pages.

For a reader outside Colombia, this is the section to be careful with. A US-issued card built around a stablecoin balance is a different product from a Colombian one: the issuing bank, the BIN, the dispute framework and the support hours are not the same. If you are not in Colombia, you are unlikely to be the audience this card was tuned for, and the alternatives in the last section of this review will be a better starting point.

How to get it

Once VIIO decides you can have an account, the steps themselves are simple. You open an account, complete the identity checks VIIO asks for, and you can get a virtual card for free as soon as you have topped up the account with at least 3 USD. The virtual card comes with a dynamic CVV that rotates in the app, and it is the card you would bind to Apple Pay if you want to pay from a phone. The physical card is a contactless Visa and needs the account to hold at least 50 USD before VIIO will issue it.

Either card is issued deactivated; you switch it on in the app, and from that point it behaves like any other Visa. The KYC steps themselves are not detailed in the public terms, and the physical card’s delivery country, time and cost are not stated on the pages I read. If you need the plastic to arrive somewhere specific, that is a question to put to [email protected] before you top up.

Replacement rules are clear: a physical card costs $5 to replace, a virtual card costs $0 to reissue, and both are free if the card is defective or if a disputed transaction is resolved in your favour. The dispute process itself — fraud, unauthorised purchase, non-delivery, defective goods — has to be raised within five business days of becoming aware, and it is handled under Article 51 of the Colombian Consumer Protection Statute. That is a real framework with deadlines, but it is Colombian, so it is worth understanding before you rely on it from outside the country.

Fees: what it really costs

The everyday cost picture is mostly empty lines, and that is both the upside and the risk of VIIO.

The card’s terms say, in plain words, “The Card currently does not charge any fee.” Concretely:

• Virtual card: issuance free, reissuance free, no monthly fee.
• Physical card: issuance is currently exempt; the page also flags $5 USD if the account balance is under $50; no monthly fee; VIIO warns the fees may be reinstated.
• Conversion and foreign exchange: not itemised. The card says purchases “depend on the VISA type and exchange rate” and that you “pay in any currency, VIIO handles the conversion”. The percentage taken on that conversion is not stated.
• ATM withdrawals: “Withdraw local cash at any VISA ATM worldwide.” The fee depends on the ATM operator, and VIIO’s own fee is not listed. There is no stated free allowance.

Three everyday payments to think about:

1. A 50 USD coffee subscription in EUR, paid with a USDC-funded card. The card converts USDC-backed USD to EUR at the Visa rate. You do not know the spread VIIO keeps on top of that. If the spread is small, this is a fine card. If the spread is large, you are paying for the privilege of not having a real bank account.

1. A 200 USD grocery shop in COP at a corner store. No conversion needed if the card settles in USD; the merchant pays a small fee, not you. This is the payment VIIO was built for, and it is the cheapest case.

1. A 100 USD cash withdrawal at a local ATM. Whatever the operator charges is what you pay, plus whatever VIIO charges (not listed), and the daily and monthly caps from your KYC level (also not stated) decide whether the withdrawal goes through at all.

The honest summary is that VIIO’s cost story is good where VIIO has published the number, and opaque where it has not. If you are the kind of person who needs to know the spread before you top up, the right move is to ask [email protected] for the current conversion margin in writing, and to keep the first 100 USD of spending on a payment you can reverse if the answer turns out to be unpleasant.

Top up: how to fund the card

VIIO holds your balance as USDC and USDT, and the card spends that. There are three ways to put money in, and the cheapest and slowest is the Colombian-friendly one.

• PSE (Colombian debit-on-bank-account). No VIIO fee, currently exempt. This is the path the help centre pushes for Colombian residents; it ties the card to a Colombian bank account.
• Bank transfer. No VIIO fee, but your bank may charge its own fee. Useful when PSE is unavailable.
• Crypto top-up. You send USDC or USDT to a wallet address VIIO gives you, or scan a QR. The crypto top-up fee is not stated, and the supported networks are not disclosed on the pages I read. The on-chain network fee is paid to the blockchain, not to VIIO.

Two practical points. First, the virtual card needs a top-up of at least 3 USD before VIIO will issue it, and the physical card needs the account to hold at least 50 USD. Second, the networks VIIO accepts for USDC and USDT matter a great deal: if you keep your stablecoins on Tron and VIIO only accepts Ethereum, your top-up will not arrive. Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, and Tether has issued USDT on Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and others, so this is not a question you can answer by guessing.

Withdrawals work the other way. You can pull out in COP, USD, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP or MXN at “no cost (currently exempt)”, and you can move funds back to a crypto wallet for the network fee only — VIIO does not charge for the transfer itself. The terms do not address what happens to a balance when you close the account, which is one of those details that does not matter until it does.

Paying with it every day

Day to day, VIIO is a Visa, so it works wherever Visa is taken — online checkouts, contactless terminals, ATMs, in-app purchases. The virtual card binds to Apple Pay, and a tokenised device account number is what Apple Pay actually presents to the terminal, not your card number; the cardholder can have VIIO restrict that token. Google Pay support is not stated on the public pages, so if you live in Android, that is another question for [email protected] before you commit.

The app is the centre of the experience. On the Colombian iOS App Store it reads 4.0 out of 5 across 12 ratings — a small sample, so I would not treat it as a verdict, just as a number. The Google Play rating was not readable on the page I checked. Inside the app you can freeze or cancel either card instantly, set spending limits, and switch the dynamic CVV on the virtual card. PIN entry is blocked after three wrong tries, instant alerts are on, and the card terms describe the system as a “Digital USD balance” — meaning the credit available to you is capped at the value of the digital assets in the account, so you cannot overdraw.

Blocked merchant categories, cashback, sign-up bonuses and reward rates are not stated. If you are picking a card because of a specific perk — 3% on travel, free Spotify, a lounge pass — VIIO does not currently publish anything along those lines.

A few things to keep in mind when you actually swipe or tap:

• AVS mismatches. Address Verification Service is offered mainly in the US, Canada and the UK, and is generally unavailable on foreign-issued cards. A Colombian Visa can look “foreign” to a US shop, which can produce a decline. The fix is usually to fall back to 3-D Secure, but it is worth knowing.
• Authorisation holds. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on the balance for several days (typically up to 7), so the card can look short of money until the hold clears.
• 3-D Secure. Visa’s 3-D Secure brand is Visa Secure; the issuer steps in for an extra check on risky online payments, which is good for fraud but adds friction on the merchant side.

What can go wrong

The card has not had a public incident on the scale of an FTX or a WaveCrest — and I went looking. The company behind it is Persimon S.A.S. (“VIIO Colombia”), the brand is “Persimon (VIIO)”, and the footer of the website says that VIIO “does not provide or offer regulated financial services”. The card terms go further: VIIO “does not collect public funds”. The issuing bank is not named on the pages I read, which is unusual for a card product and is the single most important fact for a reader outside Colombia: you do not know who actually stands behind the card.

The terms also do not say whether your crypto is held in custody by VIIO or in your own wallet. That distinction matters a great deal: in a custodial model, the company holds the keys and you trust it to keep your funds safe and to honour withdrawals; in a self-custody-linked model, your USDC stays in your wallet until the moment of payment. The pages I read do not commit one way or the other, and the help-centre language (“does not manage user money”) points at a non-custodial design, but it is not stated outright. For a reader, the practical effect is the same: if VIIO disappears, you want to know whether your USDC is already in your wallet or whether it is on a balance sheet you cannot reach.

Other failure modes worth pricing in:

• A programme suspension. Visa can suspend an issuer’s licence. In November 2022 Visa said it had “terminated our global agreements with FTX” and the FTX US debit card was wound down. In 2018, WaveCrest, a Visa card issuer that supplied several crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe and every WaveCrest-issued Visa programme closed. Programme closures typically give a notice period, then stop spending and loading, then ask users to withdraw the remaining balance.
• A stablecoin depeg. Stablecoins aim to hold a stable value against a fiat currency, but “despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable”. USDC and USDT have both held their peg through the worst recent tests, but TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC briefly lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. If the stablecoin you hold loses its peg, the “Digital USD balance” on the card is no longer a dollar balance.
• Wrong network, lost funds. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, and a deposit sent on a network VIIO does not support, or to an address of another network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. The supported networks are not on the public pages; ask before you send.
• Sanctions and PEP screening. The card’s terms require the user to consent to credit-bureau checks, and KYC rules require regulated businesses to verify customers and assess risk. In the EU, customer due diligence covers name, address, date of birth, nationality, identity documentation, a sanctions check, the purpose of the relationship and whether the customer is a politically exposed person. Nationality is screened separately from residence. If due diligence cannot be completed, the institution is required to end the relationship.
• Customer support. The email is [email protected] and the help centre is at intercom.help/viio_help/en. The help centre says Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, with the time zone not stated; the site is in Spanish and English. For a Colombian reader that is fine. For a reader in another time zone, it is a tighter window than most bank-backed cards.

What to take instead

VIIO is not the only small USDC-or-stablecoin card on the market, and the right alternative depends on where you actually live. Three cards that come up in the same searches:

• International Visa Card — score 6.7 / 10. A US-issued Platinum Visa that pays in USD from a USDC or USDT balance. It is not available to residents or legal registrants of Belarus, mainland China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela or Vietnam; FATF grey-list countries are reviewed case by case. Purchases are blocked in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. Virtual card issuance is $5 one-time, no maintenance fee, and there are three plans (Classic free, Pro $9.00/month, Max $19.00/month). Card use in USD is free on every plan; foreign currency costs “Visa exchange rate + 2% FX fee”. Deposits of any kind are free. The catch is the country list — it is more restrictive than VIIO on residency, and the 2% FX fee is the kind of number VIIO does not publish.
• UNi Card — score 6.1 / 10. A multicurrency Mastercard that spends from the UNi.Global account balance. “No annual fee or foreign transaction fee”, assets converted at “live OTC (Over-the-Counter) rates”, “no hidden exchange fees”. A “Spend-to-Earn rewards” programme offers up to 3% with UNi Card. The catch is that the eligibility list, the card form factor and the funding options are not stated on the public pages I read.
• Whop Cards — score 5.2 / 10. Visa, available to consumers in 31 US states (including California, New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois) and to businesses in 41 states, with a long list of unsupported consumer countries (Belarus, China, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam). Spends from a Whop balance backed by stablecoin collateral from a linked wallet. The page says “no extra fees” but does not list amounts; 5% cashback is offered at select merchants, currently Uber. The unsupported-country list is again the long pole.

A simple way to think about it: if you live in Colombia, VIIO is worth a serious look and the alternatives above will not be issued to you. If you live in the US, the International Visa Card is the closest equivalent with a published FX number. If you live in the EU or the UK, the question shifts to MiCA-authorised CASPs and UK FCA-registered e-money institutions, which is a different review.

Who I would recommend it to

The honest version is: a narrow audience, by design.

I would recommend VIIO to a Colombian resident who has a USDC balance, finds it hard to get a normal bank card, is comfortable with a card governed by Colombian law, and does not need an itemised FX margin before they start spending. I would not recommend it to anyone outside Colombia, to anyone who needs to know the supported networks in writing before they top up, to anyone who needs Google Pay, to anyone who plans to lean on the dispute framework from another country, and to anyone who is unwilling to email [email protected] to ask three or four pointed questions before they commit real money.

The single most useful thing you can do before you top up is to ask VIIO, in writing, four questions:

1. Which networks do you accept for USDC and USDT top-ups?
2. What is the current spread on the Visa conversion, in basis points?
3. Is the underlying USDC held by VIIO in custody, in my own connected wallet, or somewhere else?
4. What is the daily and monthly limit at my current KYC level?

If VIIO answers those four questions in a way you can rely on, the 6.6 in the verdict table starts to look generous. If it does not, the 6.6 starts to look generous for the wrong reason.

Frequently asked questions

What is the VIIO card?

VIIO is a Visa payment card issued through Persimon S.A.S. in Colombia, with a virtual and a physical version. It spends from a “Digital USD balance” backed by USDC and USDT, so the card works like a prepaid dollar card funded by stablecoins you already hold.

How does VIIO work?

You open an account, complete VIIO’s identity checks, top up the balance with at least 3 USD via PSE, bank transfer or a USDC/USDT transfer, and the card converts that balance to the currency of the merchant at the Visa exchange rate when you pay. The terms cap available credit at the value of the digital assets in the account, so the card cannot overdraw.

Is VIIO a bank?

No. The site footer says VIIO “does not provide or offer regulated financial services”, and the card terms say VIIO “does not collect public funds”. The issuing bank is not named on the pages I read, so VIIO acts as a programme manager in front of a licensed issuer.

Who owns VIIO?

VIIO is a brand of Persimon S.A.S., a Colombian company. The press launch in January 2025 (La Republica) described the card as a partnership between Persimon, Visa and Dock, which supplies the card-issuing technology.

Is VIIO available in my country?

The eligibility list is not stated in the public terms. The contract is governed by Colombian law, the company is a Colombian SAS, the help centre signposts a Colombian bank account and PSE, and the merchant page talks about “200+ countries”. The practical answer is that the card is built for residents of Colombia, and the only reliable way to know whether you qualify is to start an application and see what VIIO asks for.

How do I get a VIIO card?

You open an account in the app or on the website, complete the identity checks, top up the balance with at least 3 USD to unlock the free virtual card, and top up to at least 50 USD to unlock the contactless physical card. Both cards arrive deactivated and are switched on in the app.

Does VIIO require KYC?

Yes. The card terms require you to confirm you are of legal age, supply the information VIIO asks for, update that information at least once a year, and consent to credit bureau checks. The exact document list (passport, national ID, proof of address) and the KYC levels are not stated in the public terms.

How do I add VIIO to Apple Wallet?

The virtual card binds to Apple Pay through the VIIO app, and Apple Pay replaces the card number with a device-specific Device Account Number stored in the Secure Element rather than on Apple’s servers. Google Pay support is not stated on the public pages, so if you are on Android, email [email protected] to confirm before you commit to a top-up.

How do I top up VIIO?

You top up by PSE (Colombian bank account), by bank transfer, or by sending USDC or USDT to a wallet address or QR VIIO gives you. PSE and bank transfer are currently no cost to VIIO, and the crypto top-up fee is not stated. The supported networks are not disclosed, so ask [email protected] for the list before you send.

Is VIIO safe?

The card has standard app-level safeguards: a dynamic CVV on the virtual card, instant freeze in the app, instant alerts, and a PIN that locks after three wrong entries. The open questions are who the issuing bank is, whether your USDC is held in custody by VIIO or in your own wallet, and what the supported networks are. The card has not had a public incident on the scale of FTX or WaveCrest, but the company does not name its issuer and the help-centre hours are Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, with the time zone not stated.

Content created by the «cryptocardtested» team