Crypto card spending tops $1 billion as stablecoins move into everyday purchases

News
08/23/2026, 11:00 PM

Tracked card volume more than tripled in a year, with USDC and USDT funding over 70% of spending as users increasingly paid for groceries, rides and subscriptions.

Crypto card spending tops $1 billion as stablecoins move into everyday purchases

Crypto card spending more than tripled over the past year, reaching $1.04 billion in July, driven largely by dollar-backed stablecoins and increasingly ordinary purchases such as groceries, ride-hailing and food delivery.

Dollar-backed stablecoins funded 70% of the more than 10 million tracked transactions, according to Paymentscan data, cited by venture capital firm a16z. USDC accounted for 50.8% of July volume and USDT another 20.3%, compared with roughly 48% and 7%, respectively, a year earlier.

Monthly volume, meanwhile, rose to $306 million in July 2025, according to the data. And the average payment rose to about $86 per transaction, up from $59 year over year. Data for August is not yet complete.

The growth points to an important shift in how consumers use stablecoins. They have become popular as a way to hold digital dollars and move money across borders.

“The real measure of crypto’s progress is not simply how many people own digital assets, but how useful those assets become in everyday life,” Thomas Gregory, VP of Payments and Fiat at Binance, told CoinDesk.