This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/sony-backed-startale-launches-a-visa-card-unveils-ofk-and-startale-card-at-webx-2026. Startale Group launched Startale Card, a self-custodial Visa, and Startale OFK at WebX 2026. Check more stories related to web3 at: https://hackernoon.com/c/web3. You can also check exclusive content about #web3, #good-company, #blockchain, #startale, #japan, #rwa, #tokenization, #visa, and more. This story was written by: @ishanpandey. Learn more about this writer by checking @ishanpandey's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Startale Group launched two products at WebX 2026 in Tokyo on 13th July: Startale OFK, a packaged onchain-finance infrastructure suite for banks and enterprises, and Startale Card, a self-custodial Visa card that spends Soneium assets and pays cashback in USDSC. The card's headline pitch, that eligible assets keep earning yield until the moment of payment, is presented as a break from "conventional crypto cards." It is now the category standard. MetaMask, ether.fi and Plasma One all shipped versions of it before this announcement. Soneium, the chain the card spends against, held $7.94m in DeFi TVL on the morning of the launch, per DefiLlama. Aave V3, the lending venue MetaMask taps for exactly this feature, holds $136,000 on Soneium. The chain earned $71 in fees over the previous 24 hours. Japan's coming tax reform gives crypto trading gains parity with equities at 20.315%. It leaves staking, lending and DeFi yield taxed as miscellaneous income at up to 55%. That is the bracket the card's yield sits in, if Japan is a launch market. Startale has not said whether it is. What Startale does have, and rivals do not, is Sony and SBI. It co-built JPYSC, Japan's first trust-bank yen stablecoin, which went live on 24th June. That, not the card mechanics, is the real asset. Q: What is Startale Card? A: A self-custodial Visa card built on Soneium, announced by Startale Group at WebX 2026 on 13th July 2026. It lets users spend onchain assets at Visa-accepting merchants and pays cashback in USDSC. A waitlist is open in the Startale App; the public launch date, issuing bank, launch markets and cashback rate have not been disclosed. Q: What is Startale OFK? A: Startale Onchain Finance Kits, a packaged infrastructure suite for financial institutions and enterprises covering stablecoin, wallet, privacy, developer, digital-asset and settlement infrastructure, with tokenisation infrastructure and a custody wallet API planned. Target markets are Japan and the United States. Q: Can you earn yield while spending with Startale Card? A: Startale says eligible assets can continue generating yield until the moment of payment, via yield-generating vaults in the Startale App. The feature is not unique: MetaMask Card routes balances into Aave, ether.fi Cash lets users spend against yield-bearing staked ETH, and Plasma One launched a self-custodial Visa with a yield tier on 17th June 2026. Q: Is Startale Card available in Japan? A: Startale has not confirmed launch markets. If Japan is included, cardholders should note that under Japan's 2026 Tax Reform Outline, DeFi, lending and staking yield remains taxed as miscellaneous income at up to 55%, while trading gains on specified crypto assets move to a flat 20.315% from an expected 2028. Q: How big is Soneium? A: Startale reports more than 500m cumulative transactions, 5.4m active wallets and 250-plus dApps since the January 2025 mainnet launch. On 13th July 2026, DefiLlama recorded $7.94m in DeFi TVL, 28,585 active addresses in 24 hours and $71 in chain fees over the same period.
