Stablecoins on Plastic: The New Wave of Crypto-Powered Cards

In this week’s Signals, I’m exploring the rise of stablecoin-powered cards: those Visa and Mastercard plastic (or metal or wood, or who knows what else) cards that directly make your stablecoins spendable in the real world.

Many like to say “stablecoins aren’t crypto,” but they are very similar. 

Stablecoins are steady-value digital currencies traded on public blockchains, like Ethereum; they bring the dollar onto the blockchain, combining fiat’s stability with crypto’s speed and programmability. Think of stablecoins as digital dollars that can zip worldwide in minutes, even when banks are closed. They’ve been around for a while as the boring workhorses of crypto trading, but recently, stablecoins have emerged as one of the most credible crypto use cases for real-world payments. 

Using stablecoins at checkout isn’t straightforward: Most merchants don’t accept crypto directly, and consumers still love their credit card rewards, fraud protections, and the convenience of swiping or tapping. Over the past year, the speed of announcements about stablecoins and cards has accelerated, with new companies and legacy giants announcing new capabilities. The idea is simple: marry the global acceptance of Visa and Mastercard (tens of millions of merchants, existing consumer habits) with the benefits of stablecoin rails (speed, 24/7 availability, lower costs). It’s like giving your credit card a crypto engine under the hood: all the performance upgrades, but you can still steer with a familiar wheel.

A wave of crypto-forward payment processors and fintech companies are leading the charge to make stablecoin-linked cards a reality. These modern issuing platforms talk about APIs, on-chain settlements, and multi-currency wallets. Let’s talk about a few trailblazers making headlines:

Billed as a “global card issuing platform built for stablecoins,” Rain is doing some very interesting product work with credit cards. In May 2025, Rain joined Visa’s pilot program for stablecoin settlement. Rain’s cards still run on the Visa network, but all settlements are made in USDC stablecoin behind the scenes. Rain fully tokenized its credit card receivables (turning the money you owe on your credit card into on-chain tokens) and now settles with Visa seven days a week, 365 days a year in USDC. No more waiting for “banking hours,” if you buy a sandwich on Saturday at 3 am, Rain can settle that transaction over the weekend. They’ve put all their authorization logic and settlement on-chain, making card transactions interoperable with multiple blockchains. In Rain’s world, a card swipe triggers a stablecoin movement from issuer to network to acquirer in near-real-time.

Perhaps most radical, Rain announced a world-first: on-chain credit card receivable financing using stablecoins. In plain English, Rain borrows USDC from liquidity partners to fund your purchase instantly (paying the merchant), then programmatically repays those on-chain loans as you make your card payments. This closed-loop financing uses smart contracts to reduce capital costs and provide lenders with transparent, collateralized receivables. In other words, Rain is selling credit receivables on the blockchain: turning your credit card debt into an investable asset for stablecoin lenders. It sounds wild, but Rain claims it’s reducing the need for traditional collateral and could unlock credit in markets where issuing bank credit is hard. “Digital asset utility” isn’t just a buzzword here; it’s Rain using stablecoins to rewrite how card issuing and funding work.

Interlace is a fintech infrastructure provider bridging Web3 and cards, known for offering “card issuing as a service” with crypto capabilities. Interlace touts itself as a key enabler of stablecoins in cross-border payments. They provide white-label card programs, global accounts, and wallet integration alongside card issuance. Notably, Interlace supports on-chain transfers and multi-currency settlements, meaning a fintech using Interlace could let users fund a card with USDC or other stablecoins and spend in different currencies seamlessly. They’ve issued over 4.5 million cards, suggesting significant adoption, possibly in emerging markets where stablecoins are in demand for everyday use.

A company building on Interlace could offer a debit card that pulls from a crypto wallet balance or a credit card where the collateral/top-up is done in stablecoin. Interlance handles the heavy lifting with compliance (KYC/KYT on crypto transactions) and multi-BIN issuance so you can launch card programs in multiple countries. If Rain is about reengineering the issuer’s balance sheet with stablecoins, Interlace provides the toolkit to let any fintech plug stablecoins into card products and “bridge Web2 and Web3.” 

It’s not just Rain and Interlace. For instance, RedotPay is a crypto super-app that issues its own stablecoin-linked cards (using Rain on the backend). It reportedly has 4 million users and has processed $380M in volume in a single month. Traditional card program managers are jumping in, too: Highnote, a card issuing platform, partnered with stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK to let fintechs fund their card programs via stablecoins instantly, even on nights and weekends. Usually, if you run a corporate expense card program, you need to pre-fund a reserve account at a bank; with Highnote’s new feature, a fintech can convert stablecoins to USD in the sponsor bank account in real-time, 24/7. This is a lifesaver for use cases like on-demand gig payouts or emergency disbursements that can’t wait for ACH on Monday. It’s a far cry from the era of batch bank transfers: stablecoin liquidity frees fintechs from the 9-to-5 banker’s schedule.

In short, a new ecosystem of card issuers and processors is coming to life. They speak fluent crypto and card networks simultaneously. Their selling point is often real-time, global money movement. If your users are global or you operate in countries with shaky banking, plugging into stablecoin rails can mean avoiding local banking bottlenecks. And yet, for the end-user, the experience is just tapping a Visa or Mastercard at Starbucks.

Whenever a fintech innovation threatens to “disrupt” cards, it’s a safe bet that Visa and Mastercard will join the party rather than get left behind. Both network giants have made high-profile stablecoin announcements this year, effectively saying: “If stablecoins are the future of payments, they’ll be on our rails, thank you very much.”

Visa has been experimenting with crypto settlement for a couple of years (remember when they tested USDC on Ethereum in 2021?) In 2025, Visa’s gone much deeper. Aside from enrolling Rain in its USDC settlement pilot, Visa partnered with Bridge (a Stripe-owned stablecoin platform) to launch stablecoin-linked Visa cards in Latin America. Developers in six countries (Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile) can now use Bridge’s API to issue Visa cards that debit a stablecoin balance when used at any normal merchant. 

When a user swipes one of these cards, Bridge converts the needed amount of stablecoin (say USDC) into local currency on the fly, so the merchant gets paid in good old pesos or soles, and the user’s crypto wallet is charged. It’s essentially the “spend crypto anywhere Visa is accepted” promise, delivered by plumbing, that handles FX and blockchain conversions invisibly. This partnership is a big step in making stablecoins usable for everyday life.

The Visa-Bridge product is launching where stablecoins have real utility: Latin America traditionally sees high inflation and has a lot of crypto adoption. It’s a smart testing ground. Everyone knows how to use cards. Now those identical cards can use stablecoins under the hood, so users don’t need to learn new tricks. For its part, Visa sees this as taking pilots to globally scalable products; they hinted that after LatAm, Europe, Africa, and Asia are next. Visa becomes a stablecoin on-ramp/off-ramp at scale while keeping itself at the center of the transaction flow. 

Mastercard has been equally busy on the stablecoin front. The company announced support for a “growing portfolio of stablecoins” on its network, naming names: USDC, PayPal’s PYUSD, Paxos’s (USDG), and even one from Fiserv (FIUSD). This isn’t just talk: Mastercard integrates these across products for on/off ramps, merchant settlement in stablecoin, and even stablecoin-powered card issuance in partnership with FinTechs. For example, Mastercard is working with PayPal to explore settling network transactions in PYUSD (imagine your PayPal Mastercard paying the merchant, then settling the bill to the issuing bank using PayPal’s dollar token). They’re also partnering with Fiserv (a big payment processor) to bring stablecoin capabilities like on-chain programmable payments to banks via a new Mastercard Multi-Token Network (to be honest, I’m not sure I know what that means, but it sounds good).

In plain terms, Mastercard ensures that if a large retailer or fintech wants to use stablecoins to pay or be paid, they can do so through Mastercard’s channels. They proudly note that today, thanks to crypto fintech partners, millions of people can already spend stablecoins at over 150 million Mastercard merchants, likely referencing programs like Crypto.com or Circle cards, where the user’s balance is USDC. Still, it’s spent as fiat at the store. Mastercard also enables payouts to stablecoin: for instance, creators or gig workers can opt to receive earnings in a stablecoin via Mastercard’s Send platform.

Mastercard teamed up with MoonPay in May to launch stablecoin cards globally (built on top of MoonPay’s Iron acquisition). The partnership will let users pay in stablecoin at 150 million merchants (that magical “everywhere” number), with transactions auto-converted to fiat for the merchant. This came alongside other Mastercard crypto partnerships, e.g., with the exchange OKX and Circle via processor Nuvei, to launch crypto cards and stablecoin payment infrastructure. Mastercard is betting big that stablecoins will coexist with traditional currency, and they want all those transactions on their network. They’re effectively volunteering to be the stablecoin trust layer, providing fraud protection, compliance, and their global reach while letting the crypto part handle speed and efficiency. 

Here’s where we are: startups are issuing cards against stablecoins, and Visa and Mastercard are embracing stablecoins more than ever. Does this mean that by next year, you’ll close your Wells Fargo account and keep all your money in USDC for a 4% yield, spending it via a Rain or Bridge-powered Visa card? Probably not, at least not in the U.S. or other developed markets.

For most consumers, cards remain the preferred option, and they work pretty darn well. Swipe my card, get rewards, pay my single bill, zero fraud liability: it’s hard to beat. Using a stablecoin directly, on the other hand, might involve managing a crypto wallet and worrying about private keys or which blockchain to use. That’s friction that most shoppers won’t tolerate for a slight speed improvement that primarily benefits the merchant. Let’s be real: instant stablecoin settlement and lower fees are a dream for merchants, but an average consumer doesn’t feel a 2-day settlement delay or a 2% fee directly. Unless some of those savings get passed back via discounts or better rewards, it’s hard to persuade everyday users to change their behavior. We’ve seen similar stories before. Remember when retailers tried pushing “pay-by-bank” or ACH debit to avoid card fees? Those still haven’t taken off in the U.S. because cards are convenient and ingrained.

Moreover, the card networks are not sitting idly by, waiting to be disrupted; they’re co-opting the tech. Visa and Mastercard are aggressively positioning themselves as the stablecoin infrastructure rails, which means stablecoin payments might run on VisaNet or Mastercard’s network, not some completely new paradigm. They essentially say, “Cool innovation, we’ll take it from here.” For example, Visa’s LatAm pilot and Mastercard’s multi-stablecoin integration ensure that even if you load up a wallet with USDC, you’ll likely still be going through a Visa or Mastercard-branded card or service at the point of sale. And those networks bring decades of expertise in security and compliance, which are not trivial concerns. As a consumer, you might not even realize a stablecoin was involved in your transaction (and maybe you won’t care, as long as your purchase is smooth and your cashback is posted).

For U.S. cardholders, especially, the value prop of stablecoin cards is still nascent. My Chase Sapphire isn’t quaking in fear that I’ll replace it with a crypto card; it gives me points, and it “just works.” However, these stablecoin cards and payment flows could be game-changing in specific scenarios: Say you’re a freelancer in Brazil getting paid by a U.S. company or managing treasury for a Latin American startup. You can bypass slow correspondent banking, avoid high FX spreads, and operate 24/7. Even in the U.S., behind the scenes, stablecoins might make things faster (like settling card transactions on weekends) without changing the front-end experience.

Stablecoin-integrated cards are bringing genuinely exciting improvements to payments. They hint at a future where money moves on new rails but with the same ease as your current payment cards. We’re seeing better speed, global reach, and capital efficiency, a glimpse of a financial system that’s always on and interoperable worldwide. Yet, it’s also a future where Visa, Mastercard, and traditional banks are still very much in the mix, just with new tricks.

The revolution will be collaborative: Your next credit card might have a crypto logo next to the network logo, and you might earn rewards in a stablecoin. You might not notice or care that under the hood, Rain or Interlace is settling your transaction on-chain at 11:59 pm on a Sunday. Visa and Mastercard will proudly tout their blockchain-powered efficiency while you still see “Processed by Visa” on the receipt. Many exciting new things are happening, but the cards in your pocket aren’t going away; they’re just getting an invisible stablecoin upgrade. That’s a fintech development that excites me to pay for something. 

Matthew Goldman is a regular contributor to TWIF Signals and is the founder of Goldman Socks, the world’s punniest banking sock company. (He’s also the founder of Totavi, a boutique fintech product & marketing consulting firm, and the publisher of CardsFTW & ProductFTW.)