AQUA shut down every Dolphin Card overnight — here is what that means if you still had money on one

Updated October 2026

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AQUA’s Dolphin Card was not withdrawn gradually, with a notice period and a tidy wind-down. On 4 December 2025 the programme was suspended worldwide, effective immediately, after a problem with the card provider. Anyone who had loaded the card found out at the same moment as everyone else. So this page is not a verdict on a card you can sign up for today — there is nothing to sign up for. It is an explanation of what happened, what a holder should do with a remaining balance, and which of today’s alternatives actually work for someone who struggles to get an ordinary bank card.

My score for the programme as it stood is 2.4 / 10, and I will explain exactly where that number comes from before anything else, because a low score on a closed product tells you less than a low score on a live one. The useful question is not “is this card good” but “what does its shutdown teach someone choosing a replacement”.

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

Verdict: 2.4 out of 10, and the breakdown matters more than the total

Let me walk you through the scoring criteria one at a time, because two of them are low for very different reasons and you should not read the total as a single verdict.

The zero for availability is not a judgement about how selective the card was — it is simply that the programme no longer issues cards anywhere. The one for reliability is the number I would weight most heavily. A card that suspends overnight, does not name its issuer, and cannot return merchant refunds already in flight has failed at the one job a payment card has.

The mid-range marks deserve a word too, because they are the ones people misread. Cost scored 5 out of 10 not because the card was cheap but because the costs were never disclosed: the card’s public pages state neither an issuance fee nor a monthly fee, and an unofficial review likewise mentions none. An unpublished fee schedule is not a bargain; it is an absence of information. Top-up options scored 4 because BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt on a single Liquid network is a narrow choice — you are not selecting among rails, you are selecting among tokens on one rail.

Who this suited. The card was built for people who cannot get an ordinary bank card, or who want a crypto-native spending rail without a banking relationship. Its beta opened to users outside the US and Canada, with some merchants unsupported in certain countries, and sign-up needed only a JAN3 account with an email verification code — no identity documents were mentioned. That low-friction entry point was a genuine appeal.

Who it does not suit, now. Nobody, as a card to order. And if you still had a balance on it, the honest headline is that your money came back to you in USDT on Liquid, not on the card you signed up for.

What happened to the programme

The timeline is short and it matters, because the sequence explains most of the confusion people had afterwards.

• 21 May 2025 — the Dolphin Card beta was announced. Cards for the US and Canada were hoped for “in the coming months”.
• 30 November 2025 — the JAN3 CEO said partners had told him all cards were suspended and that alternative providers would be sought.
• 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 unaffected.

That is the whole public record I could find. In 2026 searches, no replacement provider and no relaunch emerged. The JAN3 team said it was negotiating refunds and looking for alternative providers, and nothing further followed.

Now the practical shape of what the card actually was, because “what happened” is easier to judge once you know what was shut down. It was a virtual Visa, USD-denominated and reloadable, managed in the AQUA app’s Marketplace section — no physical card, and no delivery process described at all. The app version was 0.3.0 beta, and the blog post announcing it was dated 21 May 2025.

A few things the card’s public pages simply do not say, which I will flag once here rather than repeat: the card currency is USD, but other currencies and any multi-currency balance are not stated. Apple Pay and Google Pay were planned “in the coming months” and were not live at launch; tap-to-pay was not available. Which merchants were blocked is not stated. There were no tiers or rewards to speak of — not stated, and in any case the programme is closed, so only the one card described in the beta post ever existed. Support channels are not stated either: the beta post names none, and points you to the terms of service for the country list.

One thing I want to be precise about, because it recurs online: AQUA is not a bank. The card was issued and operated by JAN3 through the AQUA brand, and the card issuer itself was never named. That distinction matters more than it sounds — it is the difference between a deposit protection question and a counterparty question, and I will come back to it in the risks section.

One more loose end, and this one is unofficial. A third-party review describes the card as “issued in the United States” and USD-denominated, and reports that a Spotify payment attempted from Argentina was rejected because the card’s country and the user’s country did not match. That review, dated 24 October 2025, also describes sign-up as requiring only an email address with no identity verification, which is consistent with what the official beta post said. Treat all of it as unofficial: none of it comes from the card’s own pages, and the card has not confirmed any of it. The country-match rejection is the kind of detail that tends to matter a lot in practice, so I would not dismiss it — but I also would not plan around it as a rule.

If you already have the card: what to do with the balance

This is the section that matters if the card still means something to you. Here is what was announced after the suspension, and what it leaves open.

• Remaining balances are refunded in USDT on Liquid.
• Refunds go through a secure request form on the website.
• You can receive them in your AQUA wallet or in any Liquid-capable wallet.
• Processing starts once Aqua receives funds from its provider, with email confirmations along the way.
• Pending merchant refunds will not return to the card. That money is gone, as far as the card is concerned.

That last point is the one that hurts holders most, and it is worth dwelling on. If you paid for something and the merchant still owes you a refund, that refund is not coming back to you through this programme. It does not matter whether the purchase was approved a day before or a week before the suspension. The chargeback process is not stated. What is stated is only the negative: those refunds will not return.

The mechanics of loading, for context, were narrow: the card was reloadable and funded with BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt via the Card Management page in the AQUA app. The post recommends making a small test load first and warns the balance may take a moment to update. Neither the top-up fee nor the minimum is stated.

A few things holders might look for and will not find. ATM withdrawal is not stated — there is no mention of cash access anywhere, so do not assume you had a card that worked in a cash machine. The spending limit was a maximum of $4,000 USD per month, which tells you the intended scale: this was designed for online and everyday low-value spend, not large transfers. Refund fees are not stated.

The unofficial review adds two details about funding that are worth knowing if you are moving money around during the refund. On-chain BTC top-ups need miner fees and three to four network confirmations before the balance is credited, and BTC held on the card was converted automatically to USD. The card was nameless. Again: unofficial, not confirmed by the card, but plausible and consistent with how these things are usually built.

My honest read of the advice here is short. Check that you have submitted the request form if your balance was not returned to you automatically, watch for the email confirmations, and keep the confirmation messages — if Aqua cannot receive funds from the provider, processing does not start at all, and that dependency is outside your control. And if you have a pending purchase with a merchant, chase the merchant directly rather than the card.

What can go wrong

The suspension is the headline risk, and it has already happened to everyone. But there are structural lessons here that apply to any card you might replace it with, and they are the reason I scored reliability at 1 out of 10 rather than 0.

The issuer was never named. You cannot assess a licence you cannot read, and you cannot complain to a body that does not appear anywhere. When a card programme reaches for a third-party provider, the entity that ends up on the other end of your payments matters — and here the provider was unnamed even at the moment of the emergency.

A card is not a bank deposit. Aqua was a crypto platform, not a bank. Elsewhere in this review I will say more about how e-money differs from deposits, but the practical version is this: your balance lived with a commercial counterparty, and that counterparty’s continued operation is a precondition for your money being available. The refund route itself shows it — money is USDT on Liquid, an asset you hold after transfer, rather than a bank balance you can spend as before.

Pending refunds are the quiet loss. Programme shutdowns typically follow a pattern: a notice period, spending and loading stop, users are asked to withdraw. What falls through the cracks is money that was in motion — merchant refunds, disputed payments, deposits still crossing a network. Here that loss was explicit and total.

This has happened before in the category. Visa terminated its global agreements with FTX on 13 November 2022 and the FTX US debit card programme was wound down by its issuer. WaveCrest, a Visa issuer that supplied crypto card brands, was suspended by Visa in Europe in 2018, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. I found no user complaints about the AQUA card on Reddit or Trustpilot — which tells you the card was young and short-lived, not that it was well regarded.

Security specifics were never published. Not stated: whether there was two-factor authentication, whether the card could be frozen instantly, what the spending-limit controls looked like. The card was managed inside the AQUA app’s Marketplace, and the JAN3 CEO said user funds are safe. That is a statement of intent, not a control.

Two background mechanics help explain why this sort of shutdown is survivable rather than catastrophic, if you act early. A declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds that stays for several days, typically up to 7 — relevant if you are watching a balance and wondering why it is not there. And blockchain transfers are irreversible: a deposit sent on a network the provider does not support, or to an address belonging to a different network, can be lost or need manual support recovery with no guarantee. That is why the Liquid-capable wallet requirement in the refund process is worth respecting literally.

What to take instead

Three live cards came out of the comparison, and the honest thing to say is that each solves a different part of the problem AQUA was trying to solve. None of them is a like-for-like replacement, and anyone who tells you otherwise is glossing over the details.

MetaMask — 7.1 out of 10, the strongest of the three on the evidence I read.

• Sign-up is open in 45 listed countries and territories, including Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain and Uruguay; other regions join a waitlist. Proof of residency is required. Citizenship rules are not stated. US and UK sign-ups are temporarily closed per the FAQ.
• Mastercard. A virtual card is issued instantly; Metal can be pre-ordered in the app after Virtual is approved. One card per user. Issuer Monovate, card provider Crypto Life. Card currency not stated.
• Virtual is free, with no annual or maintenance fee. Metal is $199/year.
• Fees are described as a “minimal fee for each transaction”, amount not stated on the pages I read, with a fee table linked; no additional MetaMask fees, and no foreign transaction fee — the Mastercard rate is used.
• Spends directly from the connected wallet, on Linea, Base, Monad and Solana, with named tokens including mUSD, wETH, EURe, GBPe, USDC and USDT. Solana-only wallets cannot withdraw credit.
• Cashback in mUSD into the Money Account: 1% on Virtual; 3% headline on Metal, with a footnote limiting 3% to the first $10,000 spent and 1% after. Plus a $FLY bonus of 5X (Virtual) or 7X (Metal) via the Blackbird dining app.

KAST — 6.1 out of 10, and the most explicit about who it will and will not take.

• Eligibility is decided at KYC by residence, and the country list is not published: “If your country isn’t listed, it means KAST is not available there”. A Restricted Locations list is referenced without naming countries. Citizenship matters separately — living in a supported country with only 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 bypass any of it. You can create an account in an unsupported country but KYC stays locked.
• Virtual and physical, up to 10 cards per user: Visa Platinum (Standard), Visa Infinite metal (Premium), Visa Infinite gold plated (Private), with Pengu, Solana and Bitcoin designs. Balance in USD, stablecoin deposits converted 1:1 at 0% spread.
• Annual membership: Standard 0 USD, Premium 1,000 USD/year, Private 10,000 USD/year, billed annually upfront with no monthly option. Extra virtual card 2 USD; Standard physical card 0 USD card fee plus 40 USD delivery. Inactivity fee 1 USD/month after 12 months. Renewal and reactivation fees exist but amounts are not stated.
• Fees are unusually clear: stablecoin top-up 0%, card spend in USD 0%, transaction fee 0%, Apple and Google Pay 0%. The costs are non-USD FX at 0.5%–1.75% depending on residence country, transaction country and card programme; non-USD transactions under 25 USD at 0.10 USD; declined transaction for insufficient balance at 0.50 USD. Non-stablecoin tokens may be auto-converted at a fee shown in the app.
• Funds with USDT, USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD; USDT and USDC on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and TRON. No bank account needed. Note that the Terms say acceptable tokens are “currently USDT and USDC”, which conflicts with the PYUSD and RLUSD in the app. Spending comes straight from your balance, not credit.
• Cashback in USD: Standard 1.5% on the first 2,000 USD/month, Premium 2% on the first 10,000 USD/month, Private 3% on the first 40,000 USD/month. KAST Points add +1% (Premium) or +2% (Private) of eligible spend; Standard gets none.

Zeal — 6.1 out of 10, and the one to look at if the KAST membership tiers do not suit you.

• Spend in 150+ countries, though issuance “depends on eligibility and regional availability”. The card programme is live in the EU, UK, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, with Mexico, Colombia and Bolivia also mentioned in update notes.
• Visa, with a virtual card for online use that can be added to Apple Pay. Accounts in EUR, USD and GBP through Gnosis Pay. A physical card is not stated.
• Costs are not stated — no fee schedule is published on zeal.app or in the App Store.
• No additional FX fee from Zeal; conversion at the Visa wholesale rate. Gnosis Pay fees, for example on ATM, may still apply.
• Spends from balances in the card Safe — EUR/USD/GBP stablecoin accounts on Gnosis Chain and Celo per the docs. The exact coins are not stated for Zeal.
• Up to 4% cashback, paid in GNO on Gnosis Chain, with GNO held in the card Safe to qualify; rates can change. The App Store also advertises up to 5% variable APY on EUR/USD balances.

If you want a quick shape of the comparison rather than the detail:

My own take, offered as opinion rather than fact: if your problem is “no ordinary bank card, anywhere”, KAST’s published fee schedule and its honest “if your country isn’t listed, it isn’t available” line are worth more to you than a headline cashback rate. If your problem is simply wanting to spend from a self-custody wallet, MetaMask is the more straightforward instrument, at the cost of a fee you have to look up. And if you are in one of the countries where Zeal’s programme is live and you want multi-currency balances without a membership tier, Zeal’s silence on fees is the thing to ask about before you commit.

Who I would recommend it to

I would recommend the AQUA card to nobody, in the present tense, because it does not exist as an option. What I would recommend instead depends on which of the three problems you actually have.

If you are an existing holder with a balance. Follow the refund process rather than anything else on this page. Watch for the request form and the email confirmations, remember that processing begins only once Aqua receives funds from its provider, and chase any pending merchant refund through the merchant. If your funds have not moved and you cannot get a confirmation email, that is the problem to raise — and note that no support channel is stated on the card’s own pages, which is itself the difficulty.

If you are looking for a replacement because ordinary cards are hard to get. KAST is the one I would read most carefully first, because it is the only one of the three that tells you its prices and tells you plainly when you are ineligible. Read its residence rule before anything else: if your country is not in the list, there is no application to make. Be equally clear that citizenship and ID country are screened separately from residence, so a supported address with the wrong passport can still fail at KYC.

If you are looking for a card that spends straight from your own wallet. MetaMask fits, and the trade-offs are honest ones — a per-transaction fee you must look up, a hard cap on the better cashback rate, and sign-ups in the US and UK currently closed.

If you are looking for a card in several currencies at once. Zeal is the relevant name, with EUR, USD and GBP balances, but the missing fee schedule is a real gap. Ask.

If your main worry is what happened here — the overnight suspension, the unnamed issuer, the refund in USDT rather than your original balance — then the category-wide answer is more useful than any single card. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves; they license issuers, and they can suspend a programme. That happened with FTX in November 2022, when Visa said it had terminated its global agreements, and with WaveCrest in Europe in 2018. A crypto brand is often only a programme manager or a front end, and the entity whose name appears on your card is the one that matters. When I looked, the AQUA card’s issuer was not named. On a card that is live today, check that it is.

There is also a practical test I would apply to any replacement, and it costs nothing: read the published fee schedule before you load anything. The AQUA card disclosed neither its costs nor its top-up terms, which meant that when the programme stopped, nobody could tell what they owed or what they were owed. KAST publishes every fee I could find. MetaMask links a fee table. Zeal publishes none, which is a reason to write to them first.

And one last thing about money movement, because it caused real losses in this category. Blockchain transfers are irreversible. Sending a deposit on a network the provider does not support, or to an address of a different network, can lose it or require manual recovery with no guarantee. On-chain fees for your deposit are charged by the blockchain, not by the card company, so they are never avoidable — which is why the unofficial note about BTC top-ups needing miner fees and three to four confirmations matters if you are moving funds under time pressure. USDC has been natively supported on 38 networks as of 16 September 2026 per Circle, but note that Circle stopped supporting USDC on Tron in February 2024, so “USDC over TRC20” is not a native option, and Tron fees are paid through bandwidth and energy rather than a plain transfer.

Frequently asked questions

What was the AQUA card?

It was Dolphin Card, a virtual Visa issued and operated by JAN3 through the AQUA brand, denominated in USD and reloadable from the app. It was built for users outside the US and Canada, and sign-up during the beta needed only a JAN3 account with an email verification code — no identity documents were mentioned. There was no physical version, only a virtual card managed inside the AQUA wallet app.

Is the AQUA card still available?

No. All Dolphin Cards were suspended globally on 4 December 2025, effective immediately, after a problem with the card provider, whose name was not given. The JAN3 CEO had said on 30 November that all cards were suspended and that alternative providers would be sought. No replacement provider and no relaunch turned up in 2026 searches, and other Aqua wallet services were unaffected.

Who owns AQUA?

AQUA is a crypto platform operated by JAN3, not a bank. The card was issued and run by JAN3 through the AQUA brand, and the card issuer itself was never named — which is why I would not treat an AQUA balance as anything like a bank deposit. One third-party review describes the card as “issued in the United States”, but that is unofficial and not confirmed by the card.

Can I still use an AQUA card in my country?

You could not before the suspension in many places either. It was a virtual Visa, so no physical card existed and tap-to-pay was not available; Apple Pay and Google Pay were planned “in the coming months” but were not live at launch. Some merchants in certain countries were unsupported, and which merchants were blocked is not stated.

Do I need KYC to get an AQUA card?

During the beta, no identity verification was described. The requirement was a single step: a JAN3 account with your email and an emailed verification code, with no ID documents mentioned. That is the card’s own public information; a third-party review said the same, but unofficial. Note that low entry friction is also why the closure left so many people with a balance and no relationship to escalate to.

How did I top up the AQUA card, and what happened to my money?

You loaded it with BTC, L-BTC or Liquid USDt through the Card Management page in the AQUA app; the announcement suggested a small test load first because the balance may take a moment to update. Neither the top-up fee nor the minimum was stated. After the suspension, remaining balances are refunded in USDT on Liquid through a secure request form, to your AQUA wallet or any Liquid-capable wallet.

Why did I not get my merchant refund back?

Because it will not return to the card. After the suspension, pending merchant refunds are not returned to the Dolphin Card at all — that is stated plainly. The chargeback process itself is not stated, so chase the merchant directly rather than waiting on the card. Relatedly, a declined authorisation can leave a hold on funds for several days, typically up to 7, which sometimes looks like a missing balance.

Is AQUA card safe?

The card programme is suspended, so the question of safety is now about the category rather than the product. No details on two-factor authentication, instant freeze or spending limits were ever published, and the card sat inside the app’s Marketplace section. What I can say is that Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards themselves — they license issuers and can suspend a programme, as with FTX in 2022 and WaveCrest in 2018 — so the issuer’s identity is the thing to check on any replacement.

Is AQUA a bank, and is my balance protected like a deposit?

No, and no. AQUA is a crypto platform, not a bank, and an e-money institution’s safeguarded customer funds are not bank deposits — they sit in dedicated accounts or are insured, and deposit guarantee schemes do not automatically cover them. That distinction is exactly why a shutdown leaves you holding USDT on a blockchain rather than a spendable balance.

What should I use instead of the AQUA card?

Three live options came out of my comparison: MetaMask at 7.1 out of 10, spending from a connected wallet on a Mastercard; KAST at 6.1, a Visa with virtual and physical cards, a published fee schedule and a residence rule shown at KYC; and Zeal at 6.1, a Visa with EUR, USD and GBP balances and up to 4% cashback in GNO. Pick by your problem: no ordinary bank card, wallet spending, or multi-currency.

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