A suspended programme, an unnamed issuer, and balances paid out in USDT on Liquid

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

The AQUA card, sold as the Dolphin Card, was announced on 21 May 2025 as a beta for users outside the US and Canada. It was a virtual Visa card in US dollars, reloadable with BTC or Liquid USDt, sitting inside the AQUA wallet app. On 4 December 2025 every Dolphin Card was suspended globally, effective immediately, because of a problem with the card provider — and as of the latest information I could find, it never restarted. There is no way to get one. That makes this review a bit unusual: I am not weighing up features you can compare between providers, I am telling you what happened to a programme that no longer issues cards, and what it means if you are one of the people who was holding one.

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

Verdict: 2.4 out of 10

The score is low, and it is low for a structural reason rather than a quality one. A card you cannot get cannot be a good recommendation, and a card that was withdrawn without a named replacement leaves you holding a claim rather than a payment card. The single biggest thing the score reflects is access: zero out of ten for who can get it, because the programme is suspended worldwide with no relaunch found.

Who this suits now: almost nobody as a card. There is one group it does serve, and it is not a recommendation — it is the group I would write this page for. If you already had a Dolphin Card, you need to recover your remaining balance, and the mechanism for that is the subject of the next sections. Who it does not suit: anyone looking for a way to spend crypto in a country where an ordinary bank card is hard to get, because there is nothing here to apply for.

There is also a detail worth flagging early, because it tells you how much weight to give the rest of this page. The card was issued and run through JAN3 and the AQUA brand, but the card issuer itself was never named. When you cannot tell which institution issued your card, you cannot tell which regulator’s rules govern it, whose complaint system applies, or which deposit protection arrangement — if any — stands behind the balance. For a product holding your money, that is a large gap.

What happened to the programme

The timeline is short and it is the whole story. On 21 May 2025 the Dolphin Card beta was announced: cards for the US and Canada were hoped for “in the coming months”, while the beta itself was for users elsewhere. The sign-up was light — a JAN3 account with an emailed verification code, and no identity documents mentioned — and the card was virtual, in US dollars, reloadable, and managed inside the AQUA app’s Marketplace. An unofficial account of the beta, from CriptoNoticias on 24 October 2025, described the card as issued in the United States and USD-denominated, and reported that a Spotify payment attempted from Argentina was rejected because the card’s country and the user’s country did not match. Treat those specifics as third-party reporting rather than the card’s own confirmation.

Then, on 4 December 2025, all Dolphin Cards were suspended globally, effective immediately, after a problem with the card provider. The provider was not named. Other Aqua wallet services were said to be unaffected. A month earlier, on 30 November 2025, the JAN3 chief executive said partners had told him all cards were being suspended and that alternative providers would be sought; JAN3 also said it was negotiating refunds. No replacement provider and no relaunch has turned up since.

Two further things about the beta explain why the product looked thinner than the announcement implied. Apple Pay and Google Pay were described as coming “in the coming months” and were not live at launch, and tap-to-pay was not available. The card was virtual only — no physical card and no delivery was ever described. Rewards were not stated, and there were no tiers: only one card was described, the virtual Visa in US dollars.

One thing this page cannot tell you: the card’s own public pages did not state its cost or its fees. That is genuinely not stated anywhere I could check, and I am not going to fill the gap with a guess. The unofficial review simply noted that no issuance or monthly fee was mentioned — an absence in a review is not the same as a published statement that a fee is zero.

If you already have the card

If your card is suspended, the practical question is not how to spend but how to get the balance back. Here is what was arranged.

• Remaining balances were refunded in USDT on Liquid, through a secure request form on the website.
• Refunds go to AQUA wallets or to any wallet able to receive Liquid.
• Processing starts once Aqua receives funds from its provider; confirmations come by email.
• Pending merchant refunds — money a shop still owes you from a payment already made — will not return to the card.
• Refund fees were not stated.

That last bullet is the one that will hurt people who are still waiting on a merchant. If you paid for something and the shop has not refunded it, that sum is not part of what the card programme returns to you. The chargeback process was also not stated, so I cannot tell you there is a route to chase it through the card; the merchant is the party you would be dealing with, not the card.

On the funding side, the card had been reloadable through the Card Management page in the AQUA app, with BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt — all on the Liquid network. The original post recommended a small test load first and warned that the balance might take a moment to update. Top-up fees and minimums were not stated. Unofficial reporting adds that on-chain BTC top-ups needed miner fees and three to four network confirmations before crediting, that the BTC balance was converted automatically to US dollars, and that the card was nameless.

Before you file anything, check what network your receiving wallet can actually accept. A Liquid payout to a wallet that cannot receive Liquid is the kind of mistake that is awkward to undo, and blockchain transfers are generally irreversible. Support is a further gap: the beta post named no support channel, only pointing at the terms of service for the country list, and ATM withdrawals were not stated either.

What can go wrong

Read this section as a description of the specific failure modes this programme produced, plus the ones anyone holding a crypto card balance should understand.

• The provider was unnamed. Nobody could tell you who the issuing institution was, which regulator applied, or what protections existed for the balance.
• Pending merchant refunds are gone. Refunds that were owed to you after a payment were not returned to the card.
• One network for top-ups. BTC, L-BTC and Liquid USDt all sat on Liquid. A deposit sent on a network the provider did not support, or to an address belonging to another network, can be lost or need manual recovery with no guarantee.
• Spending was narrow at the start. Virtual only, no Apple Pay or Google Pay at launch, no tap-to-pay, so the card was online transactions only.
• Cross-border declines are normal, not a bug. A card number starts with a 6- or 8-digit issuer identification number that merchants can look up to see which institution and country issued it; if that issuer country differs from the billing address, a shop may apply extra scrutiny or decline. This is why a Spotify payment from Argentina was reportedly refused.
• Decimals can leave a hold. A declined authorisation may leave a hold on funds that stays for several days, typically up to seven.
• Stablecoins are not risk-free. USDT and USDC are dollar-pegged — the BIS put about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation in the two as of July 2025 — but stablecoins can and have lost their peg: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022 and USDC wobbled in March 2023. A refund in USDT is a refund in a token, not in dollars.
• Refunds go to a wallet, so you need a working one. If you never held the crypto yourself, you will need somewhere able to receive USDT on Liquid, and someone who can explain what they are holding.

One thing I checked and did not find: no user complaints on Reddit or Trustpilot about this programme. That is not reassurance. It most likely reflects how few people got in during a beta, and silence is not evidence of good service.

The security question I cannot answer either. The beta post described the card as managed inside the AQUA app Marketplace but stated nothing about security measures, and the JAN3 chief executive said user funds were safe. Complaint details were not stated. So there is no published security design for this card to evaluate — you were trusting an unnamed issuer and an unnamed provider with your balance.

What to take instead

Three alternatives from the same category, all of which are live and publish their pricing, unlike this one. I am giving you their real numbers rather than a vague “look elsewhere”, so you can compare.

TokenPocket

MetaMask

KAST

A few comparisons worth making yourself:

• If your problem is a card in a specific country, go by the country list, not the brand. MetaMask publishes 45; TokenPocket splits Visa and Mastercard by region; KAST shows its list only at the KYC screen, and its citizenship rule is stricter than its residence rule.
• If your problem is the fee, not the country, KAST publishes the most complete fee table of the three — 0% top-up, 0% USD spend, 0% Apple and Google Pay — with its costs sitting in membership tiers and non-USD FX. MetaMask’s Virtual is free to hold with a per-transaction fee that is not quantified on the pages I read. TokenPocket’s headline is a 1% deposit fee it promises to give back later.
• If you want physical metal, only KAST of the three offers it, and MetaMask sells it at $199/year.
• If you want your crypto to move directly to the merchant, MetaMask spends from the connected wallet; TokenPocket and KAST work on a loaded balance.

Two cautions that apply to all three, and to any card in this category. First, network fees on your deposit are charged by the blockchain, not the card provider, and a deposit on the wrong network can be lost. Second, these cards run on somebody else’s licence: the card network routes the payments, a licensed issuer holds the programme, and the crypto brand is often only a front-end. Ask who the issuer is before you load money — that is the exact question this programme could not answer.

Who I would recommend it to

I would not recommend this card to anyone seeking a payment card. It does not exist as a product any more.

The one person I would point here is someone who already held a Dolphin Card and has not yet claimed their balance: file the refund request, get the USDT on Liquid into a wallet that can actually hold it, and treat the pending merchant refunds as a separate conversation with the shop. That is not advice about money — it is just the sequence of steps the programme itself described.

For everyone else, the honest position is that this page is a warning about a specific category of risk. A card can stop existing on a single afternoon because of a commercial relationship you will never be told the details of. That happened here on 4 December 2025, and the users left with balances denominated in a stablecoin on one network, refunds owed by a provider that was never named. If you are choosing a crypto card, the questions I would ask a provider are not about cashback: who is the issuer, what happens to my balance if the programme ends, on which networks can I receive money back, and what does the fee schedule actually say in writing. Providers that publish those answers — like the three above — have already done half the work.

Frequently asked questions

What was the AQUA card?

It was a virtual Visa card in US dollars, announced on 21 May 2025 as a beta for users outside the US and Canada and managed inside the AQUA wallet app. It was reloadable with BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt and had a monthly maximum of $4,000 USD. It was suspended worldwide on 4 December 2025.

Is AQUA a bank?

No. The card was issued and operated by JAN3 through the AQUA brand, but the card issuer itself was never named. That is precisely why the closure was so hard for holders: there was no clearly identified institution behind the balance.

Can I still get an AQUA card?

No. All Dolphin Cards were suspended globally on 4 December 2025, effective immediately, after a problem with the card provider. JAN3 said it was negotiating refunds and looking for alternative providers, but no replacement provider and no relaunch has been found since. Treat any site offering you a new “AQUA card” with real suspicion.

Do I need to pass KYC to get one?

During the beta, no identity documents were mentioned: sign-up needed only a JAN3 account with an emailed verification code. An unofficial review from 24 October 2025 said the same thing. Note that this light-touch approach is also exactly why the card is no longer around — very few providers operate with so little verification for long.

How do I get my money back?

Remaining balances were refunded in USDT on Liquid through a secure request form on the website, paid to AQUA wallets or any wallet able to receive Liquid. Processing starts once Aqua receives funds from its provider, with email confirmations. Make sure the receiving wallet supports Liquid before you file, because blockchain transfers are generally irreversible.

What happened to money I was owed by a shop?

Pending merchant refunds will not return to the card. That means any refund a shop still owes you for a payment you already made is not part of what the programme returns, and the chargeback process was not stated. Your counterparty there is the merchant, not the card.

Was the AQUA card free?

The card’s own public pages did not state its cost or its fees, and I have no figure to give you. An unofficial review from 24 October 2025 noted that no issuance or monthly fee was mentioned — but an absence in a review is not a published statement that the fee is zero.

Which cryptocurrencies could I load, and on what network?

BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt, all on the Liquid network, through the Card Management page in the AQUA app. The original post recommended a small test load first because the balance might take a moment to update. Top-up fees and minimums were not stated.

Is AQUA card safe?

I cannot give you a reassuring answer, because the security design was never published. The beta post said the card was managed inside the AQUA app Marketplace but stated no security measures, and the unnamed issuer and unnamed provider were the parties holding your balance. I also found no user complaints on Reddit or Trustpilot — which with a short beta likely means few users, not good service.

What should I use instead?

MetaMask, TokenPocket and KAST are all live and publish their fees. MetaMask’s Virtual card is free to hold with cashback in mUSD; TokenPocket charges 1% on crypto deposits and says it refunds that later; KAST charges 0% on stablecoin top-ups and USD spend but has membership tiers from 1,000 USD/year and a 0.5%–1.75% non-USD FX fee. Check each one’s country list before you commit.

Content created by the «cryptocardtested» team