Crypto card spending reaches $600 million monthly as USDC gains on USDT

Crypto-linked card spending reached $600 million in monthly volume in March 2026, more than tripling from $187 million recorded a year prior—an annual increase of 211% that points to structural adoption across point-of-sale payment infrastructure.

Growth and transaction scale

Cumulative card volume across the period has reached $6.5 billion across 21.4 million transactions. Visa processed $581.8 million, or approximately 97%, of March’s total, underscoring that crypto debit and prepaid cards are becoming a meaningful real-world payments channel rather than a retail novelty.

Why the March figure is structurally significant

The $600 million monthly figure is notable less for its absolute size than for what it represents in payment architecture: a reduction in friction when converting onchain balances into everyday purchasing power. Historically, crypto spending at the point of sale was constrained by off-ramp steps such as exchange withdrawals, bank transfers, and settlement delays.

Crypto-linked debit and prepaid cards address this by allowing users to denominate balances in stablecoins or other digital assets. At the point of sale, those balances are converted through card network rails—primarily Visa—into local fiat currency before settling with the merchant.

From the user’s perspective, the transaction looks like a standard card payment. The settlement layer is handled onchain, which removes the explicit off-ramp step while maintaining compatibility with existing merchant acceptance infrastructure. Visa’s 97% share of March volume therefore reflects how deeply the Visa network is embedded in global point-of-sale acceptance.

Network and regional distribution

By blockchain, TRON captured 35% of March payment volume, while BNB Chain accounted for 15%. The distribution is described as reflecting fee economics that influence issuer and user choices rather than an ideological preference for specific networks over Ethereum.

Southeast Asia accounted for approximately 60% of global stablecoin payment volume in the period. In addition, local card issuance grew 83 times between 2024 and 2025, based on research context referenced alongside the figures.

Issuer competition and merchant adoption

Emerging issuers—including KAST, Tria, and the Solana-based Pengu Card—have expanded competition beyond earlier market leaders. Pengu Card enables USDC and USDT spending at an estimated 150 million merchants globally.

U.S. merchant adoption reached 39% in the period, indicating that the domestic market is absorbing crypto card infrastructure at a pace that was not visible in prior years.

Implications

Taken together, the $600 million monthly volume and the cumulative $6.5 billion in transaction history suggest a payments channel with sufficient transactional depth to attract sustained issuer and network investment—an adoption threshold that point-of-sale crypto spending had not previously reached.