A Mastercard for Mexican residents, built on crypto you can borrow against

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Orbi is a Mastercard that Mexican residents can load with stablecoins and spend like an ordinary payment card, with a credit line secured against digital assets you already hold. On paper that is a genuinely useful combination for someone who has crypto but no easy access to a normal bank card. The catch is that almost none of the numbers that decide whether a card is worth having are published: the card’s own pages state that services are available only in Mexican territory, and the terms point to a fees section without printing a single amount. I scored Orbi 5.0 / 10 — mid-table, not because the product looks broken, but because you are being asked to trust on faith where your money goes when you tap.

I checked the card’s public pages and terms in October 2026 and worked through what they actually say.

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

Verdict: 5.0 out of 10

Let me walk you through the score before anything else, because a single number tells you little and the parts tell you a lot. Orbi is not a bad card. It is an incomplete public picture wrapped around a real, working product — and that combination produces a middling mark rather than a low one.

Two things stand out from that table. The first is that the lowest score — who can get it, 2 out of 10 — is not a flaw in the product but a fact about its market. Orbi is built for one country. If you are reading this from anywhere else, everything below this line is moot, and no amount of enthusiasm changes it. The second is the cost row: a 5 is the score you give when a provider has not told you what it charges. That is not automatically a bad price; it is an unknowable one, and unknowable is its own kind of expensive.

Who does it suit? Mexican residents, eighteen or older, who already hold stablecoins or other digital assets, who can pass identity verification, and who want a card that spends a crypto balance directly — plus, if the credit line appeals, people willing to borrow against holdings rather than sell them. That last group is the one the product seems designed around: Mexican residents borrowing against digital assets on a Mastercard.

Who does it not suit? Everyone outside Mexico. Anyone who needs a card with published, itemised fees. Anyone whose priority is a physical card in the post, a cashback scheme they can count on, or a stablecoin well known enough that its reserve backing and network support are documented in public. And anyone for whom custody of funds by a provider they have never heard of is a dealbreaker — which brings me to the section that decides whether Orbi will even send you a card.

Will they give you the card?

Short answer: only in Mexico, and only to some people inside Mexico.

The card’s own site states plainly: “Services available only in Mexican territory” — services available only in Mexican territory. Its terms go further and say some services are limited to Mexican citizens or permanent residents. Those are two different restrictions layered on top of each other, and the distinction matters if you are, say, a foreign national living in Mexico with residency, or a Mexican citizen living elsewhere. The first limits where you must be; the second may limit who you must be. Neither is spelled out at a level of detail I could test, so if you fall between those two groups, the honest answer is that you will only find out by asking Orbi.

This is the single most restrictive thing about the card, and it is why “Who can get it” scored 2 out of 10 rather than something in the middle. Most cards in this category publish a long jurisdiction list; Orbi publishes one country and then a citizenship caveat on top of it.

If you are in Mexico and eligible, the next thing is verification. What that looks like, in detail, I explain in the signup section below — but read the eligibility line first, because no amount of good documentation helps if you are applying from the wrong country.

How to get it

Orbi verifies your email address, your mobile number, your personal data and your documents. That is the whole of what the page says about the checks: specific documents are not named. There is a help centre section called “Identity Verification” containing five articles, which suggests the detail exists somewhere, but it is not on the pages I could read. Proof of address is not stated. The step-by-step application flow is not stated either.

Users must be at least eighteen. Nothing suggests a higher minimum age, though some issuers set higher limits rather than higher ages.

The card itself is a Mastercard managed by Orbi. A virtual card is issued immediately. A physical card is not mentioned on the card page; news coverage says physical and virtual were both planned, but that is not the same as a physical card being on offer today. Card currency is not stated. Delivery, for a physical card, is not stated.

What this means for you

Three honest observations. First, the identity checks are described but not specified, so you cannot pre-assemble a document list with confidence — expect some back-and-forth with support, in Spanish. Second, “al instante” virtual card does not automatically mean a physical card follows; if you need plastic, confirm that first. Third, the currency of the card being unstated is a small gap with real consequences for the fees you will meet on your travels, which is the subject of the next section.

Fees: what it really costs

This is where Orbi is quietest, and I would rather tell you that plainly than dress it up.

The cost of the card is not stated. The fees are not stated. The terms say that fees are listed in the fees section of the website, and then give no amounts. The table below is therefore mostly a record of what is absent — and that absence is itself the answer for anyone comparing cards.

Read that limits row twice. Orbi reserves the right to change per-transaction and per-period limits without asking you first. That is a broad power, and it is normal in this category, but it means your practical ceiling on spending is a variable, not a fact you can plan a month around.

Three everyday payments, and what applies to each

Since no fee schedule is published, the only honest way to show the cost picture is to walk three ordinary situations and point at what could apply.

A coffee in Mexico City. You tap, the merchant sees a Mastercard and charges you in pesos. Your balance is converted to fiat at the point of sale, so a conversion rate is being applied at that moment — and its terms are not stated. Whether Orbi charges a spread, and how wide it is, is not stated. What you know is that money left the card.

An online subscription priced in euros. Here a second variable appears on top of the conversion: the currency the merchant charges in is not the currency your balance is held in, and the card’s currency is not stated, so I cannot tell you which pair of currencies gets crossed. The rate you receive will be whatever the conversion and the FX treatment produce, and neither is disclosed. If Orbi’s terms set an FX fee, you will meet it here; the amount is not stated.

Withdrawing cash from an ATM. The card explicitly supports cash withdrawals at ATMs. Whether Orbi charges a fee, whether the ATM operator charges one, and how much cash you may take out before limits bite — none of that is published. The terms also let Orbi change those limits without notice. This is the costliest of the three in most cards of this type and the least documented here.

I want to be careful not to overstate this. Silence is not theft, and Orbi may well publish a tariffs section that simply did not reach the pages I could see. But until it does, treat every one of these as an unknown you are absorbing risk on, not a cost you have priced.

How to top it up

The card works with USDG, USDT and USDC. That is three dollar-pegged tokens and one peso-linked option, which is a wider stablecoin shelf than some rivals offer. There is also a credit line that “se garantiza con activos digitales” — secured by digital assets — so holding assets can unlock spending power without selling them.

Networks are not stated. That single omission does most of the damage here, and I want to explain why rather than just flagging it, because it is the detail that quietly decides whether a transfer works.

A blockchain transfer has to arrive on a network the receiving side actually supports, at an address belonging to that network. If you send on the wrong network, the funds can be lost outright: transfers are irreversible, the network cannot freeze or return them, and recovery then depends on manual support work with no guarantee. With three tokens and no published networks, you cannot tell from the card’s pages whether a given transfer is a good idea. The transfer is reversible in no case.

One further point, because it catches people: network fees are charged by the blockchain, not by the card provider, so your top-up costs more than nothing even before any card fee. And if you are holding USDT on Ethereum, a wallet with USDT but no ETH in it cannot send at all, because gas is paid only in ETH. Tron-based transfers bill differently again, using internal resources and often burning TRX. None of this is Orbi’s doing — it is the layer underneath.

Deposits themselves are not stated. How to top up, minimums, arrival times: nothing published. Nor is withdrawal described. What the terms do say is that closing an account requires no active obligations and no positive crypto balance — which is worth knowing now rather than at the moment you want out.

What this means for you — How to top it up

Before your first transfer, get the supported network from support in writing. Do not infer it from a screenshot or from habit. And if you hold several tokens, the wrong-network mistake is the single most likely way to lose money on a card that otherwise behaves well.

Paying with it every day

The virtual Mastercard is issued “al instante” and that is the core of the daily experience: you have something you can put into a payment field or a mobile wallet immediately, without waiting for post. Cash withdrawal at ATMs is a listed use. Funds are converted to fiat at the point of sale — news coverage of the programme notes that merchants receive fiat, which is the ordinary arrangement and a good thing for acceptance.

Everything beyond that is unspecified, so here is the list of things you will look for and not find.

• Wallets. Which digital wallets the card connects to is not stated. You will want this before you assume you can tap a phone.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay. Not disclosed. Both are listed on the page only as app store links for Orbi’s own app, which is a different thing entirely. There is no statement about either mobile wallet.
• Cashback. The card page does not mention cashback. Orbi Boost offers rewards for freezing digital dollars and says outright that it does not guarantee rewards. Read that as: rewards may exist, may vary, may not arrive.
• The app. Google Play and App Store listings exist. I did not read the ratings, so I will not characterise them.
• Disputes. No timeframe is stated for disputing a transaction, and the terms allow Orbi to hold assets during a dispute. That is worth weighing if you are spending a meaningful balance: a frozen balance during a dispute is a balance you cannot use.

One piece of background that explains a lot of the friction people hit with cards like this. A card number begins with six or eight digits identifying the issuing institution, and merchants can look that up to see which institution and country issued it. Some apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. It is why a card issued in one country can look foreign to a shop in another, and it is a plausible reason for a decline that has nothing to do with your balance.

What can go wrong

Nobody’s complaint record, which cuts both ways. I found no official incidents involving Orbi and no reviews of the card — not in search results, and not on Trustpilot, where there is no page. A clean sheet is mildly reassuring. It is also what a very young product looks like, and this one is young: on 8 October 2026, SoFi Tech Solutions, Orbi and Mastercard announced a crypto-linked card programme in Mexico. That is two weeks before I checked. You have essentially no track record to lean on, in either direction.

The company, and who stands behind it. The operator is Orbi Payments, S.A.P.I. de C.V., incorporated in Mexico. The BIN sponsor and fintech infrastructure come from SoFi Tech Solutions, with Mastercard as the network. Licences are not named — not the type, not the regulator, not the number. For a product that holds your balance and lends against your assets, “which regulator supervises this” is not a detail. It is the first question.

Custody. The credit line is secured by your digital assets, and the custody model is not stated — which is to say, whether your assets sit in a wallet you control or a wallet Orbi controls is not something the pages tell you. This is the difference that matters most in this whole category, so let me put it plainly. Control of crypto belongs to whoever holds the private key or seed phrase; with a custodial wallet, the provider holds the credentials and you must trust them completely. A seed phrase is typically twelve to twenty-four words in an unencrypted form of the private key, and anyone who obtains it can restore the wallet and spend the funds. Transfers are typically irreversible and a stolen key has no recovery path — the network cannot freeze or return anything. Custodial platforms have a real record of failure: Mt. Gox, about US$350 million reported stolen between 2011 and 2014; Coincheck, about US$400 million in 2018; Ronin Network, US$625 million in 2022.

None of that is an accusation against Orbi. It is the background rate you accept when the custody model is not published.

Account-level security. Not stated: whether the card can be frozen instantly, whether two-factor authentication is offered, and how the app protects the account. These are the first things to ask about.

Sanctions and screening. Nationality is recorded and screened separately from residence, because sanctions screening and issuer risk policy are often applied to citizenship and country of birth as well as address. Expect questions about where you are from as well as where you live.

Stablecoin risk is real, and it is upstream of the card. USDT and USDC are US-dollar-pegged and together they account for about 90% of stablecoin market capitalisation by the BIS’s July 2025 count. Circle says USDC is redeemable 1:1 for US dollars and fully backed by cash and cash equivalents, mostly in an SEC-registered government money market fund, with monthly reserve attestations. Tether describes USDT as a token on multiple blockchains with reserves intended to back it 1-to-1. But stablecoins can and do depeg: TerraUSD collapsed in May 2022, and USDC briefly lost its peg in March 2023 during the US banking crisis. They are not censorship-proof either — Tether says it disables tokens in wallets on the OFAC sanctions list and has frozen funds tied to illicit activity. Your card is spending these instruments; their behaviour is your risk.

Tax. Not advice, and not specific to Mexico — just the mechanism you should know exists. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so exchanging them for goods, services or dollars generally produces a taxable gain or loss, measured in local fiat currency at fair market value on the date of the transaction. If Orbi converts a stablecoin balance as you spend, each payment funded from crypto can be a separate disposal. Whether that applies to you, and how, is a question for a professional.

Support is Spanish and bounded. Chat in the app and on the website, 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, plus a Spanish-language help centre. Useful to know before you are up at 3 a.m. watching a transfer sit on a network the card does not support.

What to take instead

Three cards I looked at alongside Orbi, all of which publish rather more than it does. Note that they are not in the same regulatory situation — two are outside Mexico entirely, which is precisely the point.

Read that table the way I read it. Sponge at 4.9 is not an improvement on Orbi — it discloses less, in some ways. Xplace at 7.7 earns its mark on two specific things: a published annual fee per tier with no origination fee on borrowing, and a cashback ladder that is stated rather than hinted. ether.fi at 6.7 publishes its FX schedule by tier and has the largest, most precisely bounded rewards programme of the four — capped at $50,000 a month at Pinnacle, with ATM, cash advances, P2P and gambling categories excluded, paid in ETHFI and locked for seven days before you can claim.

The catch with all three is eligibility, and it is a real one. ether.fi publishes a long jurisdiction list — Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, plus 31 US states, with Belgium and Ireland eligible without physical delivery — and states flatly that if your jurisdiction is not listed you will not be able to apply. It also blocks ATM withdrawals in North Korea, Iran and Myanmar. Xplace says plainly that services are not available in all jurisdictions and does not publish which. Sponge publishes no country list at all.

So the honest comparison is not “these are better than Orbi”. It is: if you are in Mexico, Orbi is one of very few options where eligibility is settled rather than uncertain; if you are elsewhere and ether.fi or Xplace lists your country, both publish numbers that let you decide, and Orbi publishes none. For a Mexican resident, ether.fi also covers Mexico with a $10 first virtual card in regional-pricing countries and a stated FX schedule — that is a comparison worth making before you commit.

Who I would recommend it to

If you live in Mexico, are over eighteen, hold stablecoins or other digital assets, can pass identity verification, and would rather spend a crypto balance than keep converting it in a separate app, Orbi is a card that plausibly does what it says: a Mastercard, issued instantly in virtual form, working from USDG, USDT or USDC, with the option of a credit line secured against holdings instead of selling them. For that person, the appeal is real and I would not talk them out of it.

I would ask them to do four things first, in this order.

1. Get the supported networks in writing before you send anything. This is the one that can cost you money outright, because transfers are irreversible.
2. Get the fee schedule, or decide you will absorb the unknown. Tap a coffee, tap an online purchase in another currency, take cash out. Those three actions price the card for you in a way no document will.
3. Ask who the custodian is and which regulator licenses them. Not a rhetorical question — an answer you would like to see. Given that your assets secure the credit line, this is the question that matters most.
4. Ask what happens to your balance during a dispute, because the terms allow assets to be held and no timeframe is published.

And I would say plainly to the person outside Mexico: stop reading, this is not for you. The card is not available to you, and it will not become available to you by trying harder.

The honest summary

The category around this card deserves its own scepticism, independent of Orbi. Visa and Mastercard do not issue crypto cards to consumers themselves — they license issuers and can suspend a programme. In November 2022 Visa said it had terminated its global agreements with FTX, and the FTX US debit card was wound down by its issuer. In 2018 Visa suspended WaveCrest in Europe, closing all WaveCrest-issued Visa programmes. Programme closures follow a pattern: a notice period, then spending and loading stop, then users are asked to withdraw what remains. A card that works today can stop working, and the sequence gives you little time.

Regulation around this space is tightening rather than loosening, which mostly helps. MiCA, the EU’s markets-in-crypto regulation, took legal effect in June 2023; its rules on stablecoins applied from 30 June 2024 and the remaining crypto-asset service provider rules from 30 December 2024. Under MiCA, e-money tokens may be issued only by a credit institution or an electronic money institution. Its transitional period lets providers already operating under national law continue only until 1 July 2026 or until they are authorised or refused, whichever comes first — so if you are in the EU, a provider’s remaining in the transitional window says nothing about where it will be afterwards. ESMA keeps an interim register of authorised providers that you can check. And a card is regulated separately from the crypto side: the crypto side needs a crypto licence, the card needs an e-money or payment-services licence, so a crypto card often rests on two of them. Mexican rules are their own thing and I have not examined them here.

None of this makes Orbi a bad card. It makes it a young, Mexico-only, thinly documented one — which is exactly what 5.0 out of 10 is describing.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Orbi card?

Orbi is a Mastercard that Mexican residents can load with stablecoins and spend as an ordinary payment card, plus a credit line secured against digital assets. The operator is Orbi Payments, S.A.P.I. de C.V., incorporated in Mexico, with SoFi Tech Solutions as BIN sponsor and fintech infrastructure, and Mastercard as the network. A virtual card is issued immediately. The card’s own site states that services are available only in Mexican territory.

Does Orbi work outside Mexico?

No. The card’s site states plainly that services are available only in Mexican territory, and its terms add that some services are limited to Mexican citizens or permanent residents. If you are reading this outside Mexico, this card is not available to you, and no workaround changes that. If you want a comparable card that publishes its jurisdiction list, ether.fi names a list of countries plus 31 US states.

Is Orbi a bank?

Not as far as the published pages show. Orbi is described as a Mastercard managed by Orbi, operated by a Mexican entity, with SoFi Tech Solutions as BIN sponsor and infrastructure partner. No licences are named — not the type, not the regulator. That is an important gap: if you want a named regulator and a named licence, that is a question to ask before you deposit anything meaningful.

How do I get an Orbi card?

You need to be in Mexico, at least eighteen, and able to pass identity verification. Orbi verifies email, mobile number, personal data and documents — but the specific documents are not named, and proof of address is not stated. The application steps are not stated either. A virtual Mastercard is issued immediately; a physical card is not mentioned on the card page.

What does the Orbi card cost?

Nobody outside Orbi knows, because the card does not say. The card price is not stated, the monthly fee is not stated, and conversion and FX fees are not stated. The terms say fees are listed in the fees section of the website, without giving amounts. The most reliable way to price it is to make three test purchases — a local payment, a foreign-currency payment and an ATM withdrawal — and see what happens.

How do I top up the Orbi card?

With USDG, USDT or USDC. There is also a credit line “se garantiza con activos digitales”, secured by your digital assets, so you can spend against holdings rather than selling them. The critical gap is networks: they are not stated. Blockchain transfers are irreversible, so sending on a network the provider does not support can lose the funds with no guarantee of recovery. Confirm the network with support first.

Is the Orbi card safe?

There is no track record to judge. I found no official incidents and no reviews of the card, including on Trustpilot, where no page exists. The programme was only announced on 8 October 2026. The custody model is not stated, so it is unclear whether assets securing your credit line sit in a wallet you control. Immediate card freeze and two-factor authentication are also not stated. Those are the first three things to ask about.

Does Orbi offer cashback or Apple Pay?

Cashback is not mentioned on the card page. Orbi Boost offers rewards for freezing digital dollars but says outright that it does not guarantee rewards. Apple Pay and Google Pay are not disclosed either. For comparison, Xplace publishes cashback by tier from 0.5% to 2% paid in USDC, and ether.fi publishes a schedule topping out at 3% up to $50,000 a month at Pinnacle.

Is the Orbi card worth it?

For a Mexican resident holding stablecoins who wants to spend a crypto balance directly, potentially yes — particularly if the collateralised credit line lets you keep your assets rather than sell them. It is much harder to justify on price, because no fee is published, or on track record, because the programme was announced in October 2026. Compare it against ether.fi, which also covers Mexico and publishes a $10 first virtual card price and a tiered FX schedule.

Can I pay with Orbi in another country?

The card’s terms limit services to Mexican territory, so the practical answer is no. Beyond that, a general constraint applies: a card’s first digits identify the issuing institution and country, merchants can look that up, and some apply extra scrutiny when the issuer country differs from the billing address. Address verification services are mainly offered in the US, Canada and the UK and are generally unavailable for foreign-issued cards, which can cause declines.

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