On June 17th, Infini announced that it would officially cease its crypto card services for individual users. For many users, this decision came as a complete surprise; however, for the Infini team, this was the result of prolonged deliberation.

What was once a highly anticipated solution, the crypto card, has now increasingly been labeled as “challenging” and “effort-intensive with little return.” Regulatory barriers, cross-border settlements, risk management—these are issues traditionally associated with legacy financial institutions, yet they have become unavoidable challenges for these Web3 entrepreneurs. Faced with the trade-off between substantial resource investment and limited business returns, Infini ultimately decided to hit the stop button on this segment of their operations.

What exactly happened behind the scenes? What specific challenges arose during the implementation of the crypto card (U Card)? Why are compliance costs so prohibitively high? With these questions in mind, BlockBeats conducted an exclusive interview with Infini’s co-founder Christine (“Junzhu”), shedding light on the full picture of this strategic decision through the lens of a key insider.

The following is the interview transcript.

The Origin of the U Card: When NFT Enthusiasts Fell in Love with “Simplified DeFi”

In May 2024, Blast launched the “dividend-style” stablecoin USDB, allowing users to earn capital gains derived from its underlying assets simply by holding USDB. This attracted a significant influx of NFT community members who deposited their assets onto the Blast blockchain. “Iron Shun,” a top-tier entrepreneur in the NFT realm, leveraged this stablecoin product to help many NFT players experience the appeal of “simplified DeFi.”

Meanwhile, Ethena democratized its Funding Rate Arbitrage strategy by offering returns to individual retail users through USDE, similarly providing mainstream users access to complex blockchain earning opportunities.

Junzhu and Christian, both members of the NFT community, recognized the potential of stablecoins during this period. To them, this was an opportunity to deliver blockchain-based yield opportunities to everyday people—a venture with immense potential to break the barriers between the blockchain world and the mainstream audience. This inspired them to embark on their journey in the stablecoin space.

At the time, industry discussions around stablecoins were relatively subdued, making Infini an undisputed early mover in the space. However, the challenges of stablecoin entrepreneurship far exceeded their expectations. This field was a stark departure from the relaxed, “playhouse-like” ethos often associated with Web3 startups. Junzhu and Christian confronted harsh financial realities and the entrenched dominance of the “old money world.”

The Genesis of Infini

BlockBeats: What was the initial motivation and intent behind founding Infini?

Princess Junzhu: When we started Infini, it was back in July of last year. At that time, yield farming for stablecoins was quite popular. We noticed that Blast had launched a stablecoin called USDB, which offered an APY of about 5%-10%.

We realized that a significant number of GameFi and NFT users were very interested in USDB. Many of these users were previously unaware of the yield opportunities provided by DeFi. What Blast did was essentially package the complex and abstract yields of DeFi into this stablecoin. As long as users held USDB, they could automatically receive earnings.

DeFi yields come from various sources, such as lending, RWA (Real World Assets), and others. We noticed that USDB, which is somewhat like a synthetic asset-backed stablecoin, was appealing to these users. This indicated that "simplifying complex on-chain yields and making them accessible to the masses" fulfilled a real demand. This was the core reason we initially wanted to create Infini.

In fact, the idea had already come to us as early as May last year. I was deeply involved as a user of Blast and found what they were doing very intriguing—introducing DeFi products to the NFT and GameFi communities. Around that same time, I noticed that suddenly, a lot of people around me were talking about stablecoins, and many institutions were starting to show interest in them.

This was a revelation for me, and I felt that we needed to do something to expand the ecosystem. NFTs became a big thing because they brought a lot of beginner users into the crypto space. Similarly, Blast became popular because it bridged NFT users into the DeFi ecosystem. Blast truly did something meaningful by helping many people discover DeFi, effectively playing a role in educating the market.

At that time, we were also considering creating a stablecoin. However, we realized that the sector was highly competitive. Furthermore, we didn’t believe we had the same level of resources, team strength, or funding as projects like Ethena to compete head-to-head. So, we began thinking about ways to adopt a differentiated competitive strategy.

We started pondering the main use cases for stablecoins and analyzed them based on their practical applications. This brought us back to a fundamental thought: Currency was invented for the purpose of being used.

So we thought, why not start with payments?

Initially, our idea was to create our own stablecoin, where all the payments made by Infini's U Card users would be settled with our proprietary stablecoin.

We also looked into the costs of USDC and USDE. The cost of USDC is exceptionally high, and they are already the pioneers in this industry. As for USDE, I think it's backed by genius-level strategy, but Binance still hasn't supported a USDE trading pair. This shows how difficult it is to push a new stablecoin onto mainstream exchanges. So instead, we thought we could start small and focus on niche but meaningful scenarios, enabling people to use it in their daily consumption. After all, the two most critical functions of a stablecoin are either supporting trading or supporting payments.

BlockBeats: After your research, you concluded that creating a stablecoin requires high costs. Why do you think launching the U Card doesn't incur such high costs?

Junzhu: We believe that the U Card doesn't require as much in terms of resources, like distribution channels, for instance. We can scale the card using a growth hacking strategy targeted at consumers. And facts have proven that we managed to launch the U Card with minimal costs. But stablecoins are a different story; they require exceptionally strong resources to back them. We don't have a "soul figure" like Arthur Hayes to lead this effort.

We’re a fairly grassroots startup, and for a startup like ours, the lack of top-tier resource support is a significant disadvantage.

BlockBeats: That’s actually quite intriguing because, structurally speaking, Infini has already launched its own stablecoin. It’s just not branded under the name "USDe." What’s displayed in the app as "USD" is already functioning in a way that’s remarkably similar to a stablecoin.

Junzhu: Right, I don’t think there’s much value in slapping a label on it. Sure, rebranding it might increase the company’s valuation—after all, a stablecoin company’s valuation would definitely be higher than that of a U Card company, right? But if the rebranding doesn’t come with achieving product-market fit (PMF), I think it just wastes time. So, I’d rather fully focus on accomplishing PMF first and consider rebranding once we’ve nailed the business.

U Card Business

BlockBeats: After the initiation of the U Card business, what preparations did Infini make?

Princess Jun: After project initiation, our first step was research, as we had zero knowledge about payment systems. The first person we consulted was Yishi from OneKey. He’s a very nice guy and someone we knew who had experience with U Card, so he brought a wealth of valuable experience.

Yishi shared a lot, including the costs of this business, how to acquire customers, and the reasons for shutting down similar ventures. As for the shutdown, he explained it was primarily due to high compliance requirements. At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but looking back now, he was actually spot on. I underestimated compliance and naively thought as long as we didn’t cross any legal lines, we’d be fine. In reality, “compliance” involves a lot of hidden costs.

BlockBeats: At the time, did you realize how complicated handling compliance issues would be?

Princess Jun: No, we didn’t. From the very beginning of our startup journey, we were very clear about not doing anything illegal or crossing any regulatory red lines. However, during the course of our business operations, we realized that the compliance requirements and the costs associated with obtaining licenses for this line of work were incredibly high—not to mention the significant hidden costs of compliance.

BlockBeats: In what ways do compliance costs typically manifest for companies running U Card-related businesses?

Princess Jun: First of all, you need to have a very professional legal team, and good legal professionals are expensive. Secondly, the cost of applying for licenses is also high. If you can’t obtain a license directly, you may need to acquire another company to gain access to theirs. For instance, in Hong Kong, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain MSO licenses, so the best way to get one is often via acquiring a shell company. The cost for such acquisitions depends on the seller's asking price, but on average securing a license this way could cost around 3-4 million HKD.

Beyond the financial expense, the time spent on communication is a significant hidden cost. This varies a lot—some licenses can be secured within weeks or a month, while others may take several years. Every region and every kind of license has different processing times. From the first day we initiated this project, we hired a dedicated legal team to handle these processes.

At first, we didn’t anticipate how much effort and cost compliance would require. Since we intend to follow the compliance route, we aren’t considering the payback period for now; our priority is to secure the necessary licenses, no matter the cost. This approach sets us apart from many Web3 projects. Over time, we’ve come to see ourselves as more of a FinTech company than a typical Crypto venture. What we’re actually doing is payments, not Crypto.

BlockBeats: Do you feel like you've been overly aggressive in pursuing the U-Card initiative? Did you regret it at any point?

Princess: That's a great question. Actually, when you're doing something and getting positive feedback for it, it's hard to realize that it might be wrong—you just want to keep pushing forward. Our user growth was very rapid, and seeing the daily increase in numbers became addictive for me.

Before doing anything as a company, we always set an OKR first. At the beginning, our entire business logic was founded on the assumption that as the number of U-Cards increased, our TVL (Total Value Locked) would naturally rise as well. We believed user growth for the card would correlate strongly with increased TVL, so we used user growth as our North Star metric. This led me to abandon the pursuit of TVL, at least for a significant period.

However, we later realized this assumption was incorrect. While user numbers did skyrocket, there was no noticeable increase in TVL. We came to understand that although we were driving the car fast, we were heading in the wrong direction. Our initial business assumption—that the more users loved the card, the more they would deposit—was flawed. In practice, users were only depositing money when they needed to spend it.

BlockBeats: How much did you earn from the U-Card business?

Princess: Net losses. We didn’t earn a single penny.

BlockBeats: Would you mind if your company became a Fintech company?

Princess: I wouldn’t mind if we became any type of company—we could even become a yoga apparel company for all I care. The key is for the company to make money; we can't stray from the essence of business. And the essence of business is to generate sustainable and effective profit. Clearly, the U-Card business was purely consuming our human, material, financial, and mental resources. If a business continues to drain resources without generating profit, it needs to be terminated.

BlockBeats: When did you start thinking about shutting down the U-Card business?

Princess: In May, I already started considering gradually winding down the business, at least halting efforts to promote growth. The core reason was that refunds for the U-Card were painfully slow at that time. Typically, international card refunds take about one to two weeks, but ours were taking four weeks, a month, or even as long as a month and a half in some cases. We repeatedly followed up with our upstream channels, but they simply couldn’t process the refunds faster. We were bombarded with customer complaints every day, which left us feeling powerless. Being at the downstream end of the industry, the only thing we could do was consistently push the upstream parties. Beyond that, there was nothing else we could do—we were simply unable to improve the situation despite our efforts.

This caused me nearly two to three weeks of internal conflict.

Starting a U-Card company is not difficult. I believe anyone with money, time, and patience can do it—the barrier to entry is not high. If you want to make it compliant, of course, you'll need to spend money. However, if compliance isn’t a concern, it’s something practically anyone can do. Essentially, all you need is a custodial service provider and an upstream provider offering a card issuing API. Once you integrate the API, you can start issuing cards.

Almost every card in the market today is set up in this way, but many people don’t know how many layers exist in the supply chain. Some might work directly with the card issuer, while others might go through multiple layers of intermediaries, like peeling an onion. These intermediaries could potentially stack infinitely—for example, we could create an API for you, and then you could create another API for someone else.

Now that we’ve been working on the U-Card business for a few months, the more we delve into it, the more I feel that Infini is essentially moving backwards in financial innovation. Personally, I want to break down the barriers in traditional payment systems. However, U-Cards essentially turn stablecoins into USD, send them to a bank, and then users spend via traditional banking cards. This just reverts back to the old path of traditional finance, which is precisely why I’ve decided I don’t want to continue with it. I believe this approach is fundamentally flawed.

For example, take the issue of refunds that we discussed earlier—it has been a major source of internal struggle for me. That's because I’ve come to the realization that U-Cards haven’t changed any of the underlying logic of the payments industry. They’re merely a traditional payment solution, not an ultimate answer to the problem.

BlockBeats: Do you think the U-Card addresses a genuine demand, or is it merely a compromise solution?

Princess Jun: If you could buy a burger directly using USDT or USDC, would you still have the need to cash out? It’s precisely because this type of transaction isn’t feasible at the moment that people turn to an intermediary solution like U-Cards to meet this need.

I believe U-Cards do fulfill a real demand, but they’re not the final solution. In my opinion, major platforms like ChatGPT, OnlyFans, and Twitter will inevitably adopt stablecoin payments in the future—it’s an unstoppable trend. Once they do, the U-Card will lose most of its practical use cases.

Recalibrating – What’s Next for Infini?

Making DeFi simpler for users has been the starting point of Infini’s journey. After stepping back from the day-to-day consumption habits of crypto users, the team is returning to this original mission. Now, Infini plans to refocus attention on on-chain yield opportunities and financial management. This is a departure from stablecoins and crypto payments as the core business model, presenting the team with many new and existing challenges to tackle. For instance, how should the Infini brand position itself moving forward? And after dealing with a hacking incident and halting operations, how can Infini rebuild trust with its users?

However, the Princess and her team remain steadfast in their determination: Infini must not regress into historical practices. Stablecoins and crypto-based payments cannot return to the traditional banking system. "Use Stable Coins Directly—this is the future."

BlockBeats: After shutting down the U-Card service, what is Infini's current positioning?

Princess: We are now focused on two main objectives. First, we aim to excel at what we planned to prioritize during the early stages of our venture—asset management. Currently, our primary returns come from on-chain lending. With the onset of a bear market and reduced chain activity, yields have inevitably declined. During bull markets, it’s common to see APRs of over 40% in a single day, while in bear markets, it could drop to as low as 2%. To counter this cyclicity, we aim to incorporate some CeFi products into our portfolio to achieve more anti-cyclical returns, diversify risks, and build a more comprehensive FoF. Essentially, we want to create a user-friendly and dependable "crypto Money Market Fund" that offers peace of mind to our users.

This, in fact, was our initial vision: simplifying complex returns and making them accessible to the public. However, this vision was increasingly overshadowed by "payments," which diverted our focus. Over the past few months, we’ve spent no time on our core business, which is the primary revenue driver. As such, we decided to cut off "payments," which was the most time-consuming yet non-profitable part of our business.

BlockBeats: So it’s not really about pivoting to a new direction but rather returning to what you originally intended to do?

Princess: Yes. As early as last August or September, we were already working on integrating investment products. At that time, our aim was to onboard diversified CeFi products. For most people, navigating CeFi is not easy; the good CeFi strategies don’t lack funding, while the poor ones are constantly fundraising and tend to result in losses.

Our approach back then was to leverage economies of scale to secure relatively medium-to-low frequency investment products with stable returns. For example, an annualized return of around 10% would already be highly appealing to regular users. From Blast, where we simplified the complex DeFi returns, to our current focus of democratizing structured investment for retail users, our fundamental vision hasn’t changed. However, the U-Card initiative significantly distracted us from this path, consuming an inordinate amount of time in the process.

So, the first thing we must do next is to manage finances effectively, ensuring it is extremely secure and highly resilient to market cycles.

BlockBeats: Do you think this track will become very crowded?

Junzhu: I do think it will become crowded, but it also depends on the demand. After all, funds will always flow towards options with higher returns or places that are safer and more stable in the long run. Therefore, we will categorize our financial products into different tiers in our offerings based on varying customer needs.

BlockBeats: You've previously mentioned multiple times that Infini has no plans to issue a token and does not intend to use token issuance expectations to drive new user growth. Now, after the business pivot, has there been any adjustment in this area? Or are you considering going public or pursuing a reverse merger instead?

Junzhu: Whether it's issuing tokens or going public, it essentially involves asset issuance. Once an asset is issued, it becomes a form of liability. You need to be accountable to Token/Share Holders. If our business lacks stable cash flow or cannot yet achieve a perfect PMF (Product-Market Fit), rushing into token issuance would be irresponsible both to ourselves and the community.

So, I'd like to respond to this question in a very straightforward manner: in my opinion, issuing tokens or going public are tools for financing and customer acquisition. We must leverage this tool wisely and deploy it at the right time. It’s simply a financial instrument. I won't give a definitive Yes or No answer; we will consider it when the time is appropriate. For now, everything is too premature. Our focus remains on solidifying our core business, building excellent products, and meeting user needs in a productized way. Only after we achieve good cash flow and revenue should we consider these financialized operations. After all, product quality and achieving PMF are the foundations for everything.

BlockBeats: Speaking as a C-end user from the U-Card service, is there anything we can participate in after your business transition? If you completely shift to To-B services, it seems like a waste of the significant user base you've built up.

Junzhu: Reflecting on this journey, I believe there are three major takeaways.

First and foremost, we’ve cultivated an excellent team. The team is always the top priority. I firmly believe that as long as we share the same vision and have the skills, resilience, and determination, we will achieve great progress even after the transition. Building and nurturing the team has been the most significant achievement for us over the past six months.

The second point is branding. In this space, having a good reputation is essential as it serves as the foundation for everything we want to achieve in the future. Without a good reputation, it's actually very difficult to achieve sustainable growth. We have no interest in short-term user acquisition or cashing out; rather, we hope to turn this into a long-term endeavor, spanning decades or even centuries.

The third point is understanding. We are committed to fully embracing decentralized payment solutions, avoiding centralized ones, as we must not regress in the course of history. Imagine that in the future, our platform is deployed on MegaETH or BNB, and users can simply open their wallets, scan a QR code, and pay for their ChatGPT subscription directly from their wallets using stablecoins. That would be a really cool scenario.

This is how stablecoins should be spent—not by issuing something like a U Card. I believe such payments hold greater value and meaning than reverting to the traditional banking system.

We need a decentralized payment solution like this: your transactions are confirmed on-chain, your payments are conducted directly via your wallet, and when you make a payment, it's done using stablecoins directly.

I believe this is the future.

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