Visa Shuts the Merchant Code That Paid Rewards on Memecoins

Visa has told payment processors that merchant category code 5815 can no longer be used for memecoin purchases, closing a classification that let cardholders earn ordinary rewards on crypto buys. The code covers digital goods and media, the bucket streaming subscriptions and audiobooks sit in. Crossmint, which runs memecoin checkout inside the Robinhood Wallet and Fomo apps, had been coding card purchases that way instead of using the crypto codes. The Block reported the decision on Saturday morning in New York, eighteen days after its own investigation set out how the arrangement worked. Checkout.com, the acquirer in the flow, was among the firms told to recode.

What a four-digit code decides

Every card transaction carries a merchant category code, and that code tells the issuing bank what was bought. Crypto purchases belong under 6012 or 6051, and both Visa and Mastercard bar rewards on those. Digital media under 5815 earns points, like any other retail spend. The Block's reporters bought dogwifhat, a Solana memecoin, on the Visa and the Mastercard networks through Apple Pay and Google Pay. They collected standard rewards and finished without an identity check. Crypto Briefing puts the ceiling for unverified buying at $1,000 a day against a $1 million total cap, figures no other account read here carries.

Responsibility for the coding is spread thin. Checkout.com is the acquirer, with Cross River Bank and Pathward also in the flow, an arrangement The Block says leaves it unclear who was supposed to catch the wrong category. Visa and Mastercard both declined to comment directly on that reporting and said only that they enforce their compliance rules.

Chase asked first

The chain starts with an issuer, not a regulator. Chase judged the 5815 coding wrong and opened a case with Visa, which agreed. The New York attorney general's office was aware of the matter and reviewing it, according to The Block, and nothing published since says that office has taken a step. Crossmint's defence has been that memecoins are digital collectibles under SEC guidance, and so are not payment cryptocurrency.

"These are two very separate regimes," Yesha Yadav, a law professor, said of that defence, adding that the networks' rules carry no exception for collectibles.

Fonz Olvera, Crossmint's head of strategy, told The Block on Saturday that complying with regulation "is super important" now that the company is a regulated financial entity. In the September investigation he had described the business differently, saying of no-KYC memecoin checkout: "As far as I know, we're the only game in town."

The deadline nobody agrees on

Crypto Briefing gives a date, 26 September. The Block and CryptoTimes say only that a grace period is expected to end the week after the report, and name no day. Neither account acknowledges the other. Visa has published nothing itself. Mastercard, whose network carried part of what The Block bought, has disclosed no equivalent step. Two tokens The Block asked about, GENIUS and DOGEN, became unavailable once the questions were put. The purchases themselves keep working under the crypto codes. What stops is the points. Scale is the piece none of the accounts establishes. How many purchases were coded 5815, what they were worth, and what the points cost the issuing banks are all unpublished. Neither Crossmint nor Robinhood has said what changes for a buyer once the code goes.