Stablecoins Fund Most Crypto-Card Spending as July Volume Leaps

Crypto-linked payment cards moved a lot more money in July than they did a year earlier, and most of it was in dollar stablecoins, not volatile tokens. That much every account agrees on. The data all trace to one tracker, Paymentscan, surfaced by the venture firm a16z crypto. Where the accounts split is the size of the jump: one outlet put July's card spending at $759 million, another at $1.04 billion. Both cite the same source and the same year-earlier baseline of $306 million, and the two totals do not reconcile.

Two totals, one dataset

The lower figure came first. In an 18 August report, crypto.news put July card spending at $759 million, about 2.5 times the $306 million of July 2025, across nearly 9 million purchases. Five days later CoinDesk, working from the same Paymentscan data, published a higher number: $1.04 billion, which it called more than triple the year-earlier total, across over 10 million transactions. The gap between $759 million and $1.04 billion is not small, and neither outlet explains why the same dataset produced two totals a few days apart. This desk could not establish which figure supersedes which. What both agree on is the direction and the average ticket. Each put the typical card payment at about $86, up from $59 a year earlier.

Stablecoins did the spending

The consistent story underneath the totals is what funded the cards. Dollar-pegged stablecoins, tokens designed to hold a fixed value, accounted for the clear majority. CoinDesk's read had them behind 70% of transactions, with USDC at 50.8% of July volume and USDT at 20.3%. The crypto.news figures ran higher, USDC at 58% and USDT at 26%, for a combined 84%. The two splits do not match, and again both come from the same tracker. They point the same way. The dollar stablecoins now governed by the GENIUS Act are increasingly the thing people spend, while the euro-pegged EURe that led card settlement in early 2024 has faded to about 2% of July volume.

Where the growth is coming from

Concentration and geography both matter here. A handful of issuers carried most of the volume. RedotPay alone accounted for $395.1 million in July by CoinDesk's tally, with EtherFi and KAST next, the three together near 77% of the tracked total. The growth is not evenly spread across the world either. One figure in the CoinDesk report, sourced to the payments firm StraitsX and worth treating as single-sourced, put the rise in card transaction value at about 600% in lower-GDP markets over the year to February, against 150% in wealthier ones. If that holds, the everyday-spending shift is running fastest where local-currency rails are weakest, a pattern that tracks with the regional push behind projects like the dirham-backed stablecoin cleared for Dubai. Visa framed its own position plainly.

Visa's role is "not to pick winners," chief executive Ryan McInerney said, describing the company's approach as "multi-coin, multi-chain."

What the numbers cannot yet settle is how durable the shift is. Card spending that leans on stablecoins depends on those tokens holding their peg and staying cheap to move, and July was a single strong month, not a trend confirmed. The unresolved gap between the two totals is a reminder that even the trackers are still catching up to how fast the category moves. Visa counted more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs live or in development as of June, a number from its own disclosure. The next monthly read will show whether August held the line or gave some of July back.