Monthly stablecoin card spending surged 16% in July to a record $1.03 billion, according to data cited by The Kobeissi Letter, marking roughly 200% year-over-year growth and more than 10 million individual purchases made during the month.
The growth lines up with a separate dataset from venture firm a16z crypto, which tracks a narrower slice of the market: crypto payment cards specifically. That data showed card spending reaching $759 million in July, up from $306 million a year earlier, a 2.5x increase, and up from less than $1 million when a16z began tracking the category in October 2023. Nearly 9 million purchases were made on those cards in July, averaging $86 per transaction. The two datasets measure overlapping but not identical scopes, yet both point to the same underlying trend: stablecoin-linked spending has moved from a niche crypto perk to a payment channel with real, growing transaction volume.
USDC Has Taken Over From Euro-Backed Stablecoins
According to a16z crypto's own tracking, USDC accounted for 58% of July's card spending volume and USDT another 26%, a dramatic shift from early 2024, when euro-backed stablecoins like EURe controlled roughly 88% of the market. Visa now operates more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across over 50 countries, while Mastercard has been expanding its own settlement capabilities to support regulated stablecoins for faster cross-border transactions.
What's Driving the Surge
The growth reflects surging demand for instant settlement and global accessibility that traditional card rails, with their multi-day settlement cycles and currency-conversion friction, don't offer as cleanly. As more issuers and card networks build out stablecoin settlement infrastructure, the addressable market for this kind of spending keeps widening beyond the crypto-native users who first adopted stablecoin cards.
Related: US Spot Bitcoin ETFs Post $145M Outflow as Ether Funds Also Retreat
Both datasets remain small next to the trillions traditional card networks process monthly, but the trajectory, consistent month-over-month growth paired with a near-total shift toward dollar-backed stablecoins, suggests the category is compounding rather than plateauing.
