Crypto card spend triples to $1.37bn a month as weak players drop out

Crypto card spend tracked by Paymentscan reached $1.372 billion in October 2026, up from $463.7 million a year earlier, about three times as much.Paymentscan public daily JSON (projects and issuers, with and without offchain, spends only), data to 2026-11-10. Paymentscan is a site that tracks crypto card spending, mostly from blockchain data, with some figures sent by card firms.Paymentscan, Methodology: How we track crypto cards. A crypto card is a payment card that spends stablecoins, tokens meant to hold a value of one dollar, or other crypto, on the Visa or Mastercard networks.

The growth came with churn. Over the same year a string of card programmes closed, most of them after the company behind the card failed, lost its licence, was sold or changed its model.Octopus (@Octop3s), table image in the post, transcribed.

Growth

On blockchain data alone, excluding figures card firms send in, tracked spend rose from $168.9 million in October 2025 to $940.6 million in October 2026, about 5.6 times as much, by our calculation from Paymentscan’s data.S-Curve computation from Paymentscan daily JSON.

The largest single name is RedotPay, at $423.5 million, or 31%, of tracked spend in October 2026, and its figures are self-reported rather than read on-chain. The largest on-chain programmes that month were Rain cards outside named programmes at $204.4 million, other Wirex cards at $172.3 million, ether.fi at $141.9 million and KAST at $121.0 million. Visa’s stablecoin-linked card business has grown to more than 225 programmes and about 5 million cards, crypto.news reported from Visa’s 27 October earnings call.crypto.news, Visa sees 10x stablecoin settlement growth, adds over 225 card programs.

Churn

Five of the closures came when an issuer, the licensed firm that puts out the card for a brand, shut down or lost its licence.

Quicko, a payments firm, lost its Polish payment licence: XYZ.pl reported that Poland’s financial regulator, the KNF, upheld the revocation.XYZ.pl, KNF upholds revocation of Quicko payment licence. CryptoCardHub says CEX.IO stopped card payments and new issuance on 3 February after Quicko lost its authorisation.CryptoCardHub, CEX.IO card page. Paytend Europe lost its e-money licence, the permit to issue electronic money: LRT reported that the Bank of Lithuania revoked it after an inspection found serious and systematic violations.LRT, Bank of Lithuania revokes e-money license of Chinese-owned Paytend Europe.

Kulipa, a stablecoin card issuer, shut four months after a $6.2 million seed round, according to a KuCoin news summary of 31 July, which said Kulipa had not commented.KuCoin News, Kulipa shuts down four months after 6.2M seed round. It “abruptly stopped services, leaving around twenty wallets and crypto firms like Solflare and Ready without access,” the summary said. User funds were unaffected because Kulipa used a self-custody model, in which users hold their own keys.

Others ended with a sale or a change of model. Nium, a payments company, bought Cypher in July.Nium newsroom, Nium acquires Cypher. Cypher’s notice set 6 September as the date after which its app and card would no longer work.Cypher, Notice of Termination. Moonwell’s card ran on Cypher and ended with it, Crypto Briefing reported.Crypto Briefing, Moonwell card shutdown. The Cardano Card was due to end on 31 October because Wirex, its partner, was moving from custodial infrastructure to a non-custodial model, Digital Today reported.Digital Today, Cardano Card service to end at end of October.

Some closed for their own reasons. UnCash, a card service that Jason Mikula of Fintech Business Weekly profiled as a “No KYC” site, shut in February.Jason Mikula (Fintech Business Weekly), note on UnCash statement. Its notice said “It’s Over. Thanks, Mastercard.” and blamed the card network for cutting off its issuers. Offramp was to disable its cards from 31 July, Phemex News reported.Phemex News, Offramp to shut down by year-end. Two more exits have dates: VaultLeap says that on 1 December “cards close, bank payouts stop and the app closes,” and 1inch tells card users to move their balance “at the latest by 18 December 2026”.VaultLeap, VaultLeap is closing; 1inch Help Center, 1inch Card FAQ.

Small against the market

The programmes that ended were small next to the market, on Paymentscan’s data. Kulipa-issued cards peaked at $9.0 million of spend in January 2026, Ready at $8.24 million the same month and Solflare at $0.95 million in March, by our calculation. Ready and Solflare have recorded no spend after July. Cypher peaked at $13.51 million in October 2025. Total tracked spend in October 2026 was $1.372 billion.

A market growing up

The firms behind the growth are getting bigger and more formal. Rain is the largest issuer in Paymentscan’s table, with $571.3 million in the past 30 days.Paymentscan, Crypto card metrics by issuer (rendered table). Spend on its cards grew from $135.5 million to $584.2 million a month in a year, about 4.3 times as much, by our calculation.

It is not taking over. Rain’s share of on-chain issuer spend fell from 81% to 64%, as Wirex rose from $5.5 million to $239.9 million and Immersve from $0.4 million to $69.0 million. Much of Wirex’s rise came in one month, from $7.0 million in January 2026 to $69.8 million in February.

In January, The Block reported that Rain had raised $250 million at a valuation of $1.95 billion.The Block, Rain valuation nears 2 billion after 250 million Series C. Rain’s chief executive, Farooq Malik, said then: “In the last year, our active card base has increased 30x and our annualized payment volume has increased 38x, but we’re still in the early innings.” In May, Fortune reported that Rain “plans to issue cards with Mastercard in a push to woo institutional customers”.Fortune, Rain plans to issue cards with Mastercard. Rain now describes its “own work as a Mastercard Principal Member and Visa issuer”, and in August it announced it was buying Ansa, a stored-value payments platform.Rain, Rain acquires Ansa.

Some card brands are turning into suppliers. Gnosis Pay wrote that it is now an enterprise card programme manager, “working with Monavate for card issuance,” and that over the coming months it will close “the consumer chapter, web app included”.Gnosis Pay blog, The next era. Gnosis Pay also sent customers a breach notice this month, as we reported on 9 November.The S-Curve, Gnosis Pay breach email lists card number, CVV and linked wallets.

How far to trust the numbers

Paymentscan says that “For a small number of cards, we also incorporate offchain data sourced directly from the issuer via API.” SpendNode, a card comparison site, reported “$86.20M of measured card spending plus a separately tracked RedotPay account-funding proxy” in its latest weekly report, treating RedotPay’s figure as money paid into accounts rather than card spend.SpendNode, weekly crypto card report, week ending 8 Nov 2026.

On either count, the cards that closed this year were small against the cards that kept growing. The issuers behind that growth are raising money, joining card networks and buying other firms.