Solid Adds Local Currency Deposits in 16 Currencies
Solid has added local currency deposits through a partnership with TransFi, and the funding screen in the Solid app now lists local payment methods alongside stablecoin deposits. Money leaves a bank account or mobile money wallet in local currency and lands in the Solid balance as dollars, with no exchange account in the middle.
The corridors live at launch are Argentina (ARS), Colombia (COP), Bangladesh (BDT), Brazil (BRL), the euro area (EUR), Ghana (GHS), Indonesia (IDR), Kenya (KES), Malaysia (MYR), Mexico (MXN), Nigeria (NGN), Peru (PEN), the Philippines (PHP), the UAE (AED), Uganda (UGX) and Zambia (ZMW). The accepted methods differ by country and follow whatever people already use locally: Pix in Brazil, SPEI and CODI in Mexico, M-Pesa and Airtel in Kenya, bKash and Nagad in Bangladesh, QRIS and OVO in Indonesia, GCash and PayMaya in the Philippines, SEPA in the euro area. Solid lists South Africa and Ivory Coast as planned without a date.
The route removes the exchange, not the verification
The step that disappears is the exchange, not the verification. Funding a self-custody balance from outside the US previously meant a second signup, a second identity check, a stablecoin purchase at whatever spread applied, a decision about which network to withdraw on, and a network fee. The local rail collapses that into a transfer of the kind the sender already makes to any other account.
TransFi handles only the fiat leg. Solid's announcement is explicit that custody does not change: balances settle to the user's own wallet, and adding bank transfers at the edge of the system does not give Solid the ability to freeze or move funds. What does carry over is that local deposits run under TransFi's terms and verification requirements, so identity checks still exist — they moved rather than vanished.
Funding coverage is not card coverage
This is the boundary most likely to be misread. Deposits are live in 16 currencies across Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Gulf and the euro area, while the Solid Card is available in supported markets across the U.S., Latin America and Africa. A deposit corridor in Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh or the UAE means the balance can be funded locally; whether a card can be issued to that same account is a separate eligibility question answered in the app.
Withdrawals are not symmetrical with deposits either. Thailand appears in the announcement as a cash-out market only, and Solid describes corridor availability, payment methods, fees, limits and settlement times as varying by country and method. A corridor that accepts money in does not automatically send money back out.
The second cost hides in the conversion rate
No fee table was published, and that is the practical part to plan around. Fees and estimated arrival time appear in the app before a transaction is confirmed, and both vary by country and by payment method. Two costs sit in every local deposit: whatever TransFi charges for the fiat leg, and the rate applied when local currency becomes dollars. The second one does not present itself as a fee.
The comparison worth running before switching funding routes is the in-app quote for a realistic top-up amount against the exchange route already in use, including its spread and network fee. For a currency that loses value month to month, the speed of reaching a dollar balance may matter more than a few basis points; for a euro area user with cheap SEPA access, the margin is narrower and the answer is less obvious. The card's spending terms are unaffected either way — cashback, fees and merchant acceptance stay what they were before this update.
Sources: Solid x TransFi: fund your account straight from your local bank