Stripe wants to make it possible to pay in stablecoins with a Visa crypto card in more than 100 countries by December. At the end of April, these cards worked in 30 countries. The online payment giant is growing in a market that has tripled in one year.
A classic Visa card, a balance in stablecoins
Stripe manages online payments for millions of businesses and says it has provided more than 400 million credit cards to other companies since 2018.
For stablecoins, Stripe has focused on Bridge. Founded in 2022, this company allows businesses to send, receive and convert stablecoins. Stripe bought it for $1.1 billion, a transaction finalized in February 2025.
In April 2025, Bridge partnered with Visa to launch stablecoin-funded cards, first in Latin America. That same year, Bridge volumes more than quadrupled, according to Stripe.
The card works like a classic Visa. It draws from a balance of stablecoins, such as USDC. With each purchase, Bridge converts stablecoins into local currency. The merchant receives his usual currency.
Henri Stern, Stripe's new crypto manager, wants to make stablecoins one more option in business tools. They must be able to use it without having to understand crypto.
Stripe provides these turnkey cards to companies, which distribute them under their own brand. Among its clients are the Morse payment application, the Phantom wallet and the Kraken exchange.
18 countries in March, more than 100 targeted in December
On March 3, 2026, Visa and Bridge announced plans to expand these cards to more than 100 countries by the end of the year. After Latin America, the deployment must reach Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East.
The cards then worked in 18 countries. At the end of April, Bridge announced 30. On October 5, Stripe reaffirmed the goal of 100 countries.
Launching a corporate card in a new country generally requires entering into agreements with local banks. With stablecoins, a Stripe business client could do without them. Stripe and Bridge support card issuance and stablecoin conversion.
No list of countries has been published. In France, arrival will also depend on the companies that distribute these cards. The Morse application is already open there, but its card is only offered in 16 countries, the United States and Latin America.
From $403 million to $1.2 billion in purchases in one year
This market is already very busy. In September, the thirty crypto card programs monitored by the Paymentscan site settled $1.2 billion in purchases. A year earlier, they settled 403 million, or 3 times less.
The number of payments has doubled, to 11.5 million per month. The average purchase amount increased from $71 to $106.
The market is led by crypto specialists: RedotPay, which alone accounts for around a third of expenses, then EtherFi and KAST.
Crypto cards now pay for around 1,000 times fewer purchases each month than the Visa network alone.
Privy, Tempo, Open USD: Stripe’s crypto strategy
Cards are only part of Stripe's crypto strategy. The group bought Privy, a wallet specialist, in 2025. In March 2026, Stripe and the Paradigm fund launched Tempo, a blockchain dedicated to payments.
Many of Stripe's card programs today use Circle's USDC. September 30 came Open USD, a stablecoin issued by Bridge and designed to compete with USDC and USDT.
Open Standard, the company behind Open USD, has over 200 partner companies. Its first investors are Stripe, Coinbase, Shopify, Visa and Mastercard. Open USD shares revenue from its reserves with its partners.
Henri Stern assures that Stripe will remain “totally agnostic” and will let its customers choose their stablecoin as their blockchain. Open Standard, however, presents Open USD as the default stablecoin for Stripe customers.
DeFi among Stripe’s tracks
The group is also studying DeFi and the acceptance of new cryptos, with no announced timetable. “By far, most of our work concerns stablecoins,” notes Henri Stern.
A USDC balance can be used to pay with these cards. It can also be lent on DeFi protocols, to aim for a return paid by borrowers, independent of market direction. Members of the 25% Club already do this, from their own wallet.
