Crypto Payment Cards Top $10.6 Billion as Stablecoin Spending Accelerates

Crypto-linked payment cards have surpassed $10.62 billion in cumulative onchain spending volume, underscoring how stablecoin-based “card rails” are moving from early experimentation toward wider everyday use. New data suggests the sector’s growth has shifted markedly in the past year, with monthly top-ups accelerating at a pace more consistent with an early ‘mass adoption’ phase than a slow-burn niche product.

The figures come from Paymentscan, an onchain payments data analytics platform that tracked crypto payment card activity from March 2023 through July 2026. Over that period, Paymentscan recorded roughly 25.33 million transactions tied to about 1.72 million active addresses, with total processed volume reaching $10.62 billion.

The most notable takeaway is the market’s changing growth profile. Paymentscan’s dataset splits into two distinct phases: an initial “infrastructure build” period marked by gradual gains, followed by a sharper expansion phase beginning in late 2025.

From March 2023 through mid-2025, monthly top-up volume rose steadily but slowly, taking nearly two years to reach around $400 million. That period aligns with foundational work across the ecosystem—issuer onboarding, integration with payment networks, and the slow process of acquiring and retaining card users who can reliably fund and spend from onchain balances.

After September 2025, however, the curve steepened. Monthly top-ups roughly doubled over about 10 months, approaching $900 million around June 2026. In chart terms, Paymentscan’s data implies that the volume accumulated over the most recent 10 months is comparable to what the market built during the prior two and a half years—an inflection that points to broader adoption rather than incremental growth.

Usage intensity also appears to be increasing. Based on Paymentscan’s totals, 1.72 million active addresses generated 25.33 million transactions—about 15 transactions per address on average. While active addresses cannot be cleanly equated to unique individuals (a single user can control multiple wallets), the repeat-use density is more consistent with routine spending than one-off testing. For a subset of users, crypto cards may be shifting from a backup option to a primary ‘day-to-day payment’ method.

Paymentscan’s transaction mapping indicates that stablecoins underpin most of this activity. Top-ups are typically executed via onchain transfers of dollar-pegged tokens such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), then routed through card programs that convert the stablecoin balance into a point-of-sale purchase experience. The scale—tens of millions of transactions—adds weight to the argument that stablecoins are increasingly functioning as practical ‘payment instruments’ rather than purely trading collateral.

At the same time, the market structure appears highly concentrated by program. Paymentscan’s breakdown shows RedotPay accounting for a dominant share of observed activity, with other programs such as KAST, EtherFi, Plasma One, Karta, Tria, and Kolo trailing at a significant distance. With much of the growth clustered among Asia-based issuers, that concentration raises sensitivity to program-level policy changes, banking partner shifts, or regulatory developments that could ripple through headline metrics.

In absolute terms, $10.62 billion remains small against global card payment giants. Visa ($V) alone processes on the order of $15 trillion annually, making the crypto-card total equivalent to less than a day of Visa’s throughput. Still, the signal Paymentscan emphasizes is not scale but slope: the recent acceleration suggests expanding distribution and improving product-market fit, particularly as stablecoins continue to offer fast settlement and relatively low-friction cross-border value transfer.

The trend also carries implications for South Korea’s payments landscape. Paymentscan characterizes the current adoption curve as being built on dollar-based stablecoin rails, even as South Korea remains in the discussion stage around a won-denominated stablecoin. In the absence of a widely used KRW stablecoin, a central question is which issuer networks and settlement currencies will capture domestic onchain payment demand as crypto cards and stablecoin-linked spending become more common at the point of sale.