TL;DR:
- The new financial product from Solayer allows users to spend USDC balances on physical and electronic purchases, as well as ATM withdrawals.
- The Solayer Pay platform, originally presented under the Emerald Card brand, began its initial deployment with a base of 40,000 users across more than 100 countries.
- The overall stablecoin market recorded a cumulative increase of approximately 79,000 million dollars over the past year.
The layer 1 infrastructure developer Solayer presented a new Visa-compatible card designed exclusively for seamless payments with the USDC stablecoin. The corporate initiative expands the operational capabilities of its digital financial ecosystem in the global market. The commercial launch will be carried out through the firm’s app, facilitating the daily use of assets in physical and digital businesses connected to traditional card processing networks.
Solayer Pay physical cards are live — order yours on iOS, Android, or web. pic.twitter.com/HFmudCop1z
— Solayer Pay (@Solayer_Pay) May 14, 2026
According to Solayer’s official report, the physical card allows customers to directly use their funds in the digital wallet without requiring prior manual conversions on exchange platforms. The company’s documentation details that existing users of the ecosystem can request the plastic card with no additional issuance costs. Conversely, new clients wishing to register on the Solayer Pay application must pay an annual activation fee set at $20.
The underlying platform initiated its market operations in April 2025 under the provisional name of Emerald Card. According to the company’s historical data, the pilot program distributed financial credentials to some 40,000 users spread across more than 100 countries. The current phase of the project leverages the infrastructure of infiniSVM, a layer 1 network that shows full compatibility with the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) and uses the native cryptocurrency SOL to pay transaction processing fees.
Expansion of payment solutions with stablecoins
Solayer’s strategy joins a broader trend within the crypto industry, where traditional payment firms and digital asset issuers consolidate strategic integration alliances. Market data collected in May 2026 shows that global companies such as Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe increased the deployment of corporate solutions linked directly to self-custody wallets and regulated asset exchange platforms.
An industry report details that in January of this year, the OKX exchange introduced a card linked to Mastercard for European users through the issuer Monavate, with specific support for USDC and the Global Dollar (USDG) asset. Likewise, during the month of February, MetaMask enabled its own corporate plastic card in US territory, allowing direct transactions from non-custodial commercial wallets.
The growth of the transactional sector coincides with an upswing in the aggregate capitalization metrics of these digital assets pegged to traditional currencies. According to current DefiLlama statistics for May 2026, the total stablecoin market expanded from the $243,300 million recorded in the same period of the previous year to reach an approximate valuation of $322,500 million. In this market setup, Tether retains the primary share with its USDt token, which maintains a capitalization of $189,700 million, while Circle occupies the second sector position with a supply of USDC valued at $76,700 million.
