Head to head
Kast vs Plasma One
Both cards run on the same benchmark test, so this compares deducted cost rather than advertised rates.
| Metric | Ka Kast | Pl Plasma One |
|---|---|---|
| Overall rank | #7 of 11 | #11 of 11 |
| Gross FX spread | 7.93% | 2% |
| Net cost on test | $1.60, expensive on small tickets | |
| Base cashback | 1.5%, locked for 14 days | 4 |
| Custody | Custodial | Non-custodial |
| Virtual card | $2 | Free, Core tier is ~$120-$199/yr or 10,000-20,000 XPL lock; Platinum tier is 100,000 XPL lock |
| Physical card | ~$40 + delivery | Upper tiers only |
| Spend limit | Unlimited daily purchases | |
| ATM withdrawals | $3 flat + 2% of the withdrawal | No ATM access on Lite tier |
| Setup time | ~10 minutes | 10 minutes |
| KYC steps | 6 | 4 |
| Score | 6.3/10 | 4/10 |
Kast
Kast works if you spend heavily in USD or move large amounts on Solana. For daily small-ticket ZAR spending, coffee, groceries, the flat low-transaction fee makes it one of the most expensive cards you could use in South Africa.
Plasma One
Plasma One combines self-custodial stablecoin spending with integrated DeFi yield, skipping the friction of swapping tokens. However, the free tier is limited; the premium tiers only give tokens as their cashback, and FX fee's are high. The gated code-invite mode is not recommended
Who ranks these cards
I'm Tristyn Pawson, founder of ConsistenC.xyz. Over the last five years I've worked on marketing, development and growth across five crypto cards and neobanks, building at least three of them from scratch.
Alongside that I've run in-depth research on 20+ crypto banks to understand what actually makes someone keep a card in their wallet. These rankings reflect that: which problems are tolerable, and which ones are genuine deal breakers.
- Years in market
- 5
- Cards built on
- 5
- Neobanks researched
- 20+