ran privcards and solcard side by side for a month — is there any reason to keep the solcard?

Bought into both back in May because I wanted a spare in case one stopped working mid-campaign - had that happen with a different card in 2022 and it cost me a week I didn't have.

A month on and the numbers are lopsided. Everything through privcards cost 2% and the card was a dollar fifty. Everything through solcard cost 5% and the card was ten dollars. Same merchants, same purchases, both went through every time, neither declined once.

So the reliability argument is a wash and the cost argument isn't close. What am I missing - is there a reason people keep the solcard that doesn't show up in a month of ordinary spending?

no

One reason. If your money already lives on sol, the top-up is instant and final and you are not waiting on a bridge or a tron hop to decide whether it likes you today. Everything else about it is worse, including the fact that it only takes sol and usdc, which is the same reason it's fast.

You're paying three points for settlement certainty. Most people shouldn't.

usdt on tron settles in thirty seconds for a cent. certainty is not worth three percent

Tron settles when the SR set says it does. That is a different thing to finality and you know it is.

	PrivCards	SolCard
Top-up	2%	5%
Issue	$1.50	$10
Funding chains	10	SOL, USDC
Per transaction	$5,000	not published

On a thousand a month for a year that is $240 against $600, plus the $8.50 difference on issuance. You aren't missing anything — that is simply what the gap is.

The only structural reason to hold both is the one you already gave: a spare that fails independently of the first. Whether that is worth $360 a year is a question about your downside, not about the cards.

Also solcard is not available in some country, in US no. So for some people is not even the choice, before you look at the fee at all.

keep both anyway, the day one goes down you'll be very glad you did

That's about where I landed - keep it as the spare, put nothing through it unless the other one breaks. Ten dollars a year of insurance is cheap enough that I'd rather not think about it again.

Has anyone actually had privcards go down long enough that they needed the spare?