Tiger Research: The $1.5 Billion Monthly Crypto Payment Card, Trapped in the 1990s

Key Takeaways

• This article is from Tiger Research. The current state of crypto payment cards mirrors that of debit cards in the 1990s on the eve of commercialization: both leverage existing payment networks to bypass the merchant acceptance stage. However, the daily financial relationships built around primary bank accounts-such as payroll deposits and recurring payments-have not yet been established.
• The annualized transaction volume of crypto payment cards is approximately $18 billion, with RedotPay alone accounting for over half of the market share, and users concentrated in emerging markets. At this stage, crypto payment cards are merely supplementary tools in regions with limited access to the US dollar, far from becoming universal financial infrastructure.
• Relying solely on transaction volume growth cannot establish the infrastructure status of crypto payment cards. The market landscape will ultimately be determined by three types of players: platforms that control capital flow, service providers that occupy areas not covered by traditional finance, and enterprises that build daily core account relationships on top of underlying payments.

The Parallel World of Debit Cards in 1990

In September 1958, Bank of America mass-mailed credit cards to 65,000 residents of Fresno, California, marking the first payment card without supporting underlying infrastructure. After one year, the business performed poorly, with a delinquency rate of 22% and losses reaching $20 million. The industry took 15 years to build an electronic settlement system; debit cards took 17 years to officially launch; and Visa spent a full 20 years establishing a global payment standard.

The biggest divide between traditional payments and crypto payments lies in whether they embed users' normalized financial account relationships. Debit cards were born in 1975, but it was not until the popularization of direct payroll deposits in the 1990s that they became the standard tool for personal core bank accounts. In contrast, today's crypto payment cards primarily function merely as user self-funded stablecoin top-ups; the vast majority of crypto wallets cannot handle routine financial activities like payroll deposits or recurring payments. Overall, the industry's development stage roughly corresponds to debit cards around 1990.

The future leader in the crypto payment card sector will not be determined by the number of cards issued, but by who first builds a core account that truly serves daily income and expenses, or finds the growth fulcrum to drive long-term user retention.

$1.5 Billion Monthly Transactions Does Not Mean Mature Industry Development

According to data from Artemis, the monthly transaction volume of crypto payment cards grew from $100 million in early 2023 to $1.5 billion by the end of 2025, with an annualized scale of approximately $18 billion. Due to the granularity of on-chain data statistics, the actual annualized figures may vary slightly, but the explosive growth in transaction volume is a fact.

Upon closer examination of these metrics, a clear concentration of services and regions is evident. The top service provider, RedotPay, accounts for over half of the industry's total transaction flow; platform user access is highly concentrated in emerging markets, with Bangladesh at 11%, India at 8%, Egypt at 6%, Nigeria at 6%, and the US at only 4%.

This shows that the real demand for crypto payment cards does not come from developed mainstream markets, but from developing regions with insufficient financial services and limited access to US dollars.

Compared to mature financial networks, the scale gap for cryptocurrencies remains enormous. Visa and Mastercard handle an annual total payment volume of $24 to $25 trillion, while the annualized transaction volume of crypto payment cards is only $18 billion, placing them on completely different scales.

The velocity metric, which measures the prevalence of daily payments, is also quite low. According to Visa's statistics, the velocity of on-chain stablecoin retail circulation is only 0.08, which is merely one-twentieth of the velocity of fiat narrow money M1 (1.65). Users' pattern of using stablecoins is not a normalized cycle of payroll deposits, daily consumption, and recurring top-ups, but rather more like one-time top-ups followed by intermittent card swiping for purchases.

The growth in transaction volume does not equate to the market forming a mature universal clearing system. Currently, a large portion of crypto payment card transactions come from users in emerging markets who lack convenient access to open US dollar accounts. For these users, crypto cards do provide practical financial value.

However, in developed markets, crypto payment cards have yet to find a stable product-market fit, nor have they established the deep account-binding relationships brought about by direct payroll deposits and automated recurring payments.

Considering the channels of capital inflow and consumption scenarios, crypto payment cards today are more suited to specific national needs, acting as supplementary tools rather than universal financial infrastructure. Nevertheless, amidst the high-speed industry growth, the top players across four major business models are simultaneously improving the links in each part of the value chain.

Four Mainstream Business Models for Crypto Payment Cards

The crypto card industry can be roughly divided into four business models, with various participants competing to gain an edge at different levels. These models vary in form, from companies focused on providing backend infrastructure to those that merely borrow the card format but have completely different underlying structures.

Card Issuance Infrastructure

The two well-known payment networks, Visa and Mastercard, are also leveraged within the cryptocurrency card ecosystem. Beneath them lies the card issuance infrastructure layer, extending down to consumer cards. As shown in the diagram above, there are two structures within the card issuance infrastructure layer. The first is a traditional two-layer structure, where the project management party responsible for operations is separate from the issuing bank responsible for membership management and settlement. The second is the full-stack card issuer, such as Rain and Reap, which combines these two functions into one.

Many seemingly independent payment card brands all rely on a few underlying project service providers underneath. Phantom Card, MetaMask Card, and Gnosis Pay are typical examples.

Seemingly independent payment card products like Kast, Ether.fi, Tria, and Plasma One also share a small number of underlying infrastructure providers, with Rain handling the vast majority of consumer-level card business.

This high concentration in card issuance infrastructure is attracting traditional digital banks with mature experience to enter the space. In March 2026, Nium launched a stablecoin card issuance platform supporting both Visa and Mastercard networks. Other traditional financial infrastructure players include Bridge, acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion in early 2025, and BVNK, which Mastercard agreed to acquire for up to $1.8 billion in March 2026.

As competition in the card issuance track intensifies, with full-stack issuers, established project service providers, and emerging fintech companies all competing, it is becoming difficult to build a high moat based solely on card issuance business.

Rain differentiates itself through daily stablecoin settlement. Traditional card settlement cycles can take days. Rain achieves T+0 stablecoin settlement via Visa, significantly improving the capital turnover efficiency of partner platforms like Ether.fi. Recently, the platform launched an AI agent control layer, allowing programs to automatically generate single-use virtual cards, expanding beyond basic card issuance infrastructure.

Card issuers that can break through must not only provide basic payment channels but also quickly implement differentiated value-added features that traditional infrastructure cannot achieve.

Exchange-Affiliated Payment Cards

For exchanges, payment cards are not a core source of revenue; their primary role is to retain existing users. By leveraging the platform's existing user base, assets, and transaction data, and adding card functionality, they prevent user churn. The platform's real revenue comes from trading fees, lending services, and asset custody, not from card spending itself.

Exchanges view payment cards as a gateway to building a financial super app. However, the model of offering cashback in the platform's native token carries risks: the price volatility of the native token can directly lead to unstable actual cashback rates.

Alternative solutions in the industry include stablecoin cashback and interest-bearing balances. However, the US GENIUS Stablecoin Act prohibits interest-bearing activities, creating an obstacle to market expansion.

Decentralized Wallet/DeFi

The core logic of this model is that the wallet itself serves as the user's account, assets are self-custodied on-chain without needing to be deposited in a centralized exchange, and card spending is settled directly from on-chain assets. It also offers credit lines, where assets can be used as collateral.

However, users need to set up their own vaults, manage collateral, and monitor liquidation risks, which creates a high barrier to entry, resulting in a limited user base for this model.

During payment, the system converts on-chain assets into fiat in real-time for settlement, generating on-chain gas fees for each transaction. When public chain throughput is insufficient or the network is congested, transaction fees may exceed the spending amount, and transaction authorization delays are frequent.

As a result, MetaMask Card chose to use its self-developed Layer 2 network, Linea, reducing the single transaction gas fee to approximately $0.01, alleviating the pain points of fees and delays for small payments. Tria uses a gas-free top-up scheme, where the platform covers the fees incurred during top-ups, eliminating the need for users to choose a public chain or calculate fees.

However, until the interactive experience balances asset self-custody with the convenience of card swiping to the level of traditional debit cards, users of this model will remain limited to native crypto users.

Stablecoin Digital Bank

This track currently accounts for the largest share of transaction volume in the market. Its focus is on account functionality rather than the card itself. Stablecoin balances integrate functions like foreign exchange, cross-border remittances, and wealth management, with the payment card serving merely as the top-layer consumption vehicle. This model has strong competitiveness in emerging markets where local currency values are volatile, cross-border remittance costs are high, and access to US dollars is difficult.

To achieve sustained growth, this track must move beyond the "prepaid card" model, where users purchase stablecoins and transfer them to their balance.

Cashback strategies among platforms are diverging based on market positioning. Industry leader RedotPay and traditional fintech veteran Revolut offer no cashback programs at all, while later entrants like Kast and Plasma One aggressively use dollar or platform token cashback to attract users.

However, relying solely on subsidies and benefits cannot drive the deep integration of crypto payment cards into users' daily consumption.

Single Payment Function Cannot Support Long-Term Development

The history of traditional bank cards and digital banks proves that the profitability ceiling for pure payment businesses is extremely low. These enterprises only achieve profitability after integrating the concept of a primary account along with structures like deposit and lending margins into their business model. The crypto payment card industry has now reached a similar developmental crossroads. However, global regulatory frameworks, such as the US GENIUS Act and the EU's MiCA, restrict the development of interest-bearing stablecoin activities and asset management, making it difficult to break through.

Under the constraints of macro regulation, players in the industry must seize three core strategic priorities to survive long-term:

• Directly control the capital flow chain;
• Hold onto unique application scenarios in emerging markets;
• Build proprietary user account systems that cannot be replaced by underlying infrastructure providers.

Once industry standards are formed, companies that fail to achieve these three points will gradually fall behind.

Looking back at the history of debit cards, the eventual market leaders were not the issuers with the highest card volumes, but the enterprises that first controlled users' primary bank accounts. The crypto payment card industry now faces the exact same challenge.

Crypto card operators need to directly control the capital flow upstream of the Visa payment layer, seize the early lead in niche markets, and control consumer infrastructure, much like the rise of bank accounts in traditional finance. This means building a global standard without any precedent to follow.

Crypto payment cards that fail to achieve the above will never become essential tools integrated into daily life, but will remain merely prepaid cards used by small niche groups for minor cashback rewards.