Crypto Card Spending Tops $1 Billion as Stablecoins Move Into Everyday Purchases

Crypto payment card spending hit $1.04 billion in July. That is more than triple the figure from a year earlier, with dollar-backed stablecoins funding the bulk of over 10 million transactions, CoinDesk reported, citing data from payment analytics firm Paymentscan.

It is the first tracked monthly card volume above $1 billion. The spending pattern suggests stablecoins are migrating from trading desks and DeFi plumbing into everyday consumer purchases: groceries, rides, subscriptions. On the merchant side, nothing looks unusual. The charge arrives as a standard Visa transaction.

A separate a16z crypto report drew from the same Paymentscan dataset but landed on a lower on-chain verified total of $759 million for July, up from $306 million a year earlier. The gap comes down to methodology. RedotPay, the largest issuer Paymentscan tracks, self-reports its spending instead of settling transactions on-chain. That adds volume the dataset cannot independently verify, a distinction a16z flagged in its methodology notes.

USDC and USDT together made up 84% of tracked spending, a16z reported. USDC handled about 58% of card volume. USDT took about 26%. A year earlier those shares were roughly 48% and 7%, respectively, so USDT posted the bigger gain. “Crypto payment card spending now happens overwhelmingly in digital dollars,” the a16z report read.

Cardholders completed nearly 9 million purchases in July, averaging about $86 each. A year earlier the count was 5.2 million transactions. Paymentscan started tracking the market in October 2023, when monthly volume sat below $1 million. The climb to $1.04 billion covers roughly 33 months.

Dollar tokens have squeezed out their euro-denominated rivals. EURe, a euro-backed stablecoin, accounted for close to 88% of card volume in early 2024, mostly settled through Gnosis. By July its share had dropped to about 2%. The shift tracked as card issuers added support for more blockchains and dollar-backed assets.

Settlement has fanned out across chains. Optimism carried about 29% of card volume, followed by Solana and Base at roughly 19% each. Gnosis, once the dominant settlement network, fell to about 2%. Nearly all tracked spending moved through Visa.

Here is how the cards work. Holders spend stablecoin balances at checkout. The issuer converts the digital asset into the merchant’s local currency and routes payment through an established card network. Merchants receive the transaction in the same form as a standard card payment. Some programs also give users access to dollar-denominated balances without a conventional bank account. Paymentscan’s data covers on-chain activity it can link to individual card programs, though the dataset handles its largest issuer differently, relying on figures the company supplies.

Gnosis Pay introduced what a16z described as the first Visa card connected directly to a self-custodial wallet. Solayer followed in May with a Visa card letting customers spend USDC from Solana-based Solayer InfiniSVM. Those launches came after Visa and Bridge opened a stablecoin card program in 18 countries earlier in the year.

The spending growth runs parallel to a developing U.S. regulatory framework. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, set federal standards for payment stablecoin issuers, establishing requirements tied to reserves, redemption, and supervision. In February, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed rules covering reserve composition, liquidity, redemption procedures, capital treatment, and federal oversight of approved issuers.

Visa has kept building across several stablecoins rather than tying its network to a single token. CEO Ryan McInerney described the strategy as “multi-coin, multi-chain” on the company’s July 28 earnings call and said Visa’s role was “not to pick winners.” Visa also backs Open USD, a planned stablecoin supported by a consortium of more than 140 companies, and introduced a platform in July that gives banks, fintech firms, and crypto companies access to stablecoin minting, burning, storage, and transfer tools.

In June, USDC processed about $1.21 trillion of the $1.79 trillion in adjusted stablecoin transfers on Visa’s on-chain analytics dashboard. USDT handled approximately $576 billion. Adjusted transfer volume rose 63% from May and 125% from June 2025, even as the stablecoin market’s total value declined by $7.7 billion.

Earlier in 2026, Visa and Stripe-owned Bridge announced plans to offer stablecoin-backed cards in more than 100 countries by year-end. Customers would be able to spend stablecoin balances at more than 175 million Visa merchant locations. Lead Bank handles on-chain settlement for the cards.

Even at $1.04 billion a month, crypto card spending is small next to traditional networks. They process trillions each month. The next number is Paymentscan’s to count.