Crypto Cards: A New Record of $759 Million, Far from Exchanges

Nine million times eighty-six dollars. This is roughly what the new record set in July by crypto payment cards represents, with $759 million spent in a month, according to data published by a16z crypto on August 7. A figure that climbs quietly, transaction after transaction, while the sector's attention remains focused on Bitcoin prices. Key points of this article:

• Crypto payment cards set a new record in July with $759 million spent in a month, a figure that has more than doubled in a year.
• USDC and USDT now dominate transactions, relegating EUR and Gnosis to a marginal share of the stablecoin settlement market.

The amount has more than doubled in a year, rising from $306 million in July 2025 to $759 million today, a jump of 2.5 times driven almost entirely by stablecoins converted to local currency at the time of payment. For the merchant, nothing distinguishes this transaction from a classic card payment.

Behind this figure lies primarily a currency change. USDC now captures 58% of volumes and USDT 26%, compared to 48% and 7% a year ago. The EUR, which almost solely dominated in 2024 with 88% of spending on the Gnosis chain, now accounts for only 2%. The digital dollar has eaten into the digital euro, and Gnosis, once a pillar of the sector, now represents only 2% of settlements, surpassed by Optimism, Solana, and Base.

On the issuer front, RedotPay remains at the top of the rankings as of July 31, far ahead of its competitors, although its figures remain self-reported rather than directly observed on-chain. EtherFi, Kast, and Karta have been making progress since late 2025, but currently do not threaten the leader.

This battle is taking place away from major centralized exchanges. The user does not necessarily need a traditional bank account; they hold their stablecoins either directly with the card issuer or in self-custody via their own wallet. This model expands access to dollar-denominated accounts for populations that previously did not have access, particularly outside the United States.

When compared to traditional card networks, which process trillions of dollars each month, this market remains microscopic. And yet, the momentum does not weaken. In October 2023, when tracking began, the monthly volume did not exceed one million dollars. Crossing the symbolic threshold and then surpassing it at this pace tells a story that raw capitalization figures do not necessarily reveal, that of a usage becoming commonplace in daily life rather than in order books. The number of transactions follows a comparable trajectory, with nearly 9 million purchases settled in July compared to 5.2 million a year earlier, resulting in an average ticket of about $86, closer to a full tank of gas or a grocery basket than a speculative bet. Almost all of these payments go through Visa, which early on built the necessary partnerships with crypto card issuers to capture this emerging flow.

This shift towards cards rather than exchanges speaks volumes about the direction of stablecoin adoption. The topic goes far beyond the cards themselves. Visa and Mastercard are multiplying partnerships with tech giants to prepare a payment infrastructure where stablecoins become just another rail, invisible to the end user as well as to the merchant.