Solana bought a bank and that's Lead Bank.
It's one of the two banks that currently enabling Visa to settle $USDC transactions over the solana:So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112 blockchain. The other is Cross River Bank.
At this point, combination of crypto + banking is becoming undeniable useful especially as stablecoin adoption grows and crypto cards become more popular.
And yes, crypto cards still rely on banking infrastructure. For example, Lead Bank is also the banking partner behind Plasma's USD deposit rail.
> It provides the US bank account and payment rails for receiving your USD transfer.
> Once received, Plasma credits the corresponding balance to the users' account.