Crypto cards—those plastic (or digital) tickets to spend stablecoins and other crypto at your local coffee shop—have quietly become one of the fastest-growing segments in digital payments. According to new research from Artemis, monthly crypto card volume has surged from roughly $100 million in early 2023 to over $1.5 billion by late 2025, a 106% compound annual growth rate. The market now exceeds $18 billion on an annualized basis, nearly matching peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers at $19 billion, which grew just 5% over the same period.
Despite growing interest in direct stablecoin merchant acceptance, Artemis notes that cards remain the dominant bridge for stablecoin spending. Why? They require no new merchant integrations, letting users tap into existing Visa and Mastercard networks without a hitch. Stablecoin-native settlement is on the rise, but it's still nascent: Visa's stablecoin-linked card spend hit a $3.5 billion annualized run rate in Q4 2025, representing about 19% of total crypto card volume.
Across nearly all markets, USDT dominates stablecoin volume. However, two countries stand out as true global outliers: India (47.4% USDC) and Argentina (46.6% USDC), the only markets where USDC usage approaches parity with USDT. The report also highlighted India's crypto boom, noting it has become the largest crypto market in Asia-Pacific by inflows, with $338 billion in value over the 12 months ending June 2025—a staggering 4,800% growth over five years.
Artemis emphasizes that the crypto card ecosystem largely runs on the same rails as traditional Visa and Mastercard payment networks, issuers, and program managers. And Visa is capturing more than 90% of on-chain card volume through early partnerships with crypto-native infrastructure providers.
