Artemis, a blockchain analytics firm, said in a recent report that monthly transaction volume for crypto payment cards rose from about $100 million in early 2023 to more than $1.5 billion by the end of 2025.

On an annualised basis, that amounts to $18 billion. The Defiant reported that this is comparable to the scale of peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin remittances of $19 billion, which grew only 5 percent over the same period.

USDC and USDT effectively dominate crypto payment cards. The Defiant reported that 96 percent of assets deposited as collateral on payment cards issued through infrastructure provider Rain consist of USDC and USDT, reflecting the market power of Circle, which issues USDC, and Tether, which provides USDT.

In payment networks, Visa holds a clear advantage. Despite operating a similar number of programmes to Mastercard, Visa accounts for more than 90 percent of on-chain card transactions and recorded $3.5 billion in annual payment volume as of the end of last year. That was up 460 percent from a year earlier.

Artemis said Visa's infrastructure partnership strategy led to a widening gap with Mastercard.

A country-by-country analysis highlighted India and Argentina. In those two countries, USDC accounted for 47.4 percent and 46.6 percent, respectively, of total stablecoin payments, far above the global average. In most markets, including Turkey, China and Japan, USDT still leads payment activity. Artemis said it is still too early for direct crypto payments to fully replace card networks and assessed that card-based payments are relatively ahead in terms of transaction volume growth speed.