Crypto Cards 2025: 40,000 Monthly Active Users, Average Spending Under $100 per Person

Original Title: The State of Crypto Cards and What Comes Next

Original Author: @ahboyash, Crypto Researcher

Original Compilation: Odaily

Introduction

2025 is a milestone year for the development of crypto cards, as they have evolved from a niche onboarding tool to an increasingly widely used payment instrument. Whether for deposits or spending, crypto cards have demonstrated strong growth momentum this year, a trend driven by improvements in user experience, broader blockchain support, and a gradual increase in user acceptance of stablecoin-denominated spending.

This report provides an ecosystem-level overview of crypto card activity over the past two years (December 2023 to October 2025), with a focus on analyzing the observable on-chain behavior of leading crypto card providers.

Executive Summary

• From Experimentation to Practical Use: In 2025, crypto cards moved from the experimental phase to practical application, showing a sustained exponential growth trend in both deposits and spending.
• Deposits Dominate Spending: Stablecoins dominate deposit behavior, accounting for nearly all collateral assets, further reinforcing a low-volatility spending model similar to debit cards.
• @Rain Cards Lead in Usage: The @Rain series of crypto cards leads in usage rates, but most users still engage in small-value spending, indicating their primary use for daily expenses as a "top-of-wallet" behavior.
• Future Growth Potential: This growth trend is expected to continue into 2026, with further development in profitability, exchange economics, and credit-related factors, moving beyond the singular goal of user acquisition.

Methodology and Scope

This report analyzes crypto card activity through verifiable on-chain data, prioritizing observable economic behavior over self-reported metrics.

Card Coverage:

• Type 1 Cards: On-chain verifiable deposits and spending (e.g., Rain series cards, Gnosis Pay card, MetaMask card)
• Type 2 Cards: Only support on-chain verifiable deposits (e.g., WireX card, RedotPay card, Holyheld card)
• Type 3 Cards: Cards issued by centralized exchanges (CEXs) (e.g., Binance card, Bybit card, Nexo card) → Excluded from analysis due to data access limitations

Analysis Methods:

• Deposit Analysis: Includes Type 1 and Type 2 cards to capture a broader picture of liquidity inflows.
• Spending Analysis: Limited to Type 1 cards, as their transaction behavior is directly observable on-chain.

For wallet-native cards whose spending does not follow a traditional deposit process, their spending activity is treated as deposits in the analysis to maintain consistency. Non-stablecoin balances are normalized using the average price over the past 12 months, with all transaction volumes expressed in USD equivalents.

Deposits: How Liquidity Enters the System

Deposits Lead the Expansion with the Fastest Growth Rate

Throughout 2024, monthly collateral deposit volumes for crypto cards grew exponentially, accelerating further in 2025.

Card projects based on the Rain series of crypto cards have consistently maintained a leading position in deposit volume, due to their role as core infrastructure for several popular crypto card projects, including @ether_fi Cash, @KASTxyz, @OfframpXYZ, and the Avalanche (@avax) card.

Market Share: First Concentrated, Then Diversified

@wirexapp held the majority share of deposit volume for most of 2024, but since the second half of 2025, the Rain series of crypto cards has taken the lead in market share.

Key Insight: Since the second half of 2025, a wave of new crypto card projects has launched, choosing Rain as their core infrastructure partner. This trend has driven higher deposit inflows while accelerating new user onboarding.

Stablecoins Dominate Almost Entirely

Throughout the dataset, nearly 100% of deposit collateral assets consist of USD-denominated stablecoins, with USDT and USDC as the primary leaders.

This phenomenon further proves that current crypto cards are closer to international payment accounts rather than speculative spending tools, even for non-US users.

@ethereum and @0xPolygon are the Leading Deposit Chains, with Multi-Chain Usage Gradually Rising

Although Ethereum (@ethereum) and Polygon (@0xPolygon) remain the primary deposit networks, other secondary chains (such as @base, @arbitrum, @Optimism, and @solana) are steadily increasing their market share.

The rise of the multi-chain trend reflects the following factors:

• Lower Transaction Costs: Reduces the barrier for users to top up more frequently.
• Card Provider Route Optimization: No longer forcing users onto a single chain, multi-chain deposits have gradually become a "basic feature."

Spending Behavior: How Crypto Cards Are Actually Used

Monthly Active Users (MAU) Grew Rapidly and Consistently in 2025

As of October 2025, monthly active card users (MAU) have reached approximately 40,000, indicating rising user acceptance of crypto cards as a repeatedly used payment tool, rather than just a one-time experiment.

The crypto card industry is still in an early "user acquisition-driven" growth phase, indicating that its adoption curve is still in its infancy, with distribution and accessibility continuously expanding.

The Rain series of cards, due to its role as shared infrastructure (Card-as-a-Service) for multiple crypto card projects, holds the majority share of transaction volume. This data for the Rain series is better interpreted at a trend level.

Overall spending amounts remain relatively low, which may indicate that crypto cards are primarily used for daily expenses.

The low-value card usage pattern might also suggest users are employing crypto cards as an off-ramp tool for fiat withdrawals, directly bypassing the manual step of converting stablecoins to fiat.

Notably, @gnosispay cardholders exhibit higher monthly spending amounts, indicating their users are more inclined to use it consistently as a primary payment card.

Over time, the transaction frequency of active cardholders has increased year over year; similar to spending patterns, @Gnosis Pay cardholders are the most active, averaging over 30 transactions per month, fully reflecting daily payment behavior characteristics.

Key Insights

• Increased User Activity: More people are genuinely starting to use crypto cards, not just signing up, with spending and activity volumes steadily rising in 2025.
• Primarily Small, Daily Spending: Users rely more on stablecoins for small, routine expenses rather than large or speculative transactions.
• Central Role of Infrastructure Providers: The shared "Card-as-a-Service" model drives the concentration of transaction volume and dictates how the ecosystem scales.

Looking Ahead to 2026: From Experimentation to Sustainable Scaling

Data from 2025 indicates that crypto cards have moved from the experimental phase into early adoption. Despite significant growth in deposits, spending, and active usage, user behavior remains cautious, resembling a stablecoin-centric prepaid card model rather than a full replacement for traditional credit cards.

Currently, crypto cards primarily serve as a bridge between on-chain liquidity and real-world payments, not as a complete substitute for traditional credit cards.

Looking ahead to 2026, growth is expected to be driven more by economic sustainability and product design rather than relying solely on user acquisition momentum. As usage scales, card providers will need to balance expansion, the exchange economics of cross-border vs. domestic flows, routing efficiency, and increasingly complex operational management.

Key Issues to Note:

1. Privacy Concerns Persist: Transaction records are public on-chain, potentially exposing spending behavior. Once addresses are clustered or linked to CEX deposit addresses, tracking ownership becomes easy based on on-chain behavioral traces (e.g., timing, amounts).

2. The Double-Edged Sword of Public Data: While public data facilitates analysis, it can also be exploited by competitors. Rivals can monitor traffic, mimic incentives, or even attack high-value users with predatory offers.

3. Risks of Non-Vertical Integration: Most crypto card projects rely on issuers, payment processors, and a handful of "Card-as-a-Service" providers. This model can lead to single points of failure or be constrained by upstream compliance events or policy changes, potentially causing sudden restrictions or shutdowns.

4. High-Risk Merchant Categories: Categories like gaming, online casinos, and adult entertainment often face higher fraud and dispute/chargeback rates, which may lead to stricter controls from card networks and issuers. Additionally, these categories may face harsher AML scrutiny in different jurisdictions.

5. Homogenization Issue: Most crypto cards on the market currently offer similar core functionalities, with limited differentiation beyond selected cardholder rewards like cashback or points. Continued reliance on prepaid structures and a few Card-as-a-Service providers (like Rain) may pose long-term challenges for crypto card issuers seeking to compete with large traditional banks globally.

Future Trends to Watch:

• Expansion from prepaid models towards credit card-related designs, similar to the @Coinbase One AMEX card.
• Stablecoins continue to dominate as the primary unit of account.
• Increased focus on profitability and unit economics as competition intensifies.

Crypto cards are gradually becoming foundational tools for embedded payments within wallets and applications. 2025 has established market demand, and 2026 will determine which models can achieve sustainable scaling.

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