Crypto Card Payments Near $760 Million in July

The market for cards tied to digital assets is growing steadily.

a16z Crypto, the digital-asset unit of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote on X on August 9 that digital-asset payment cards have grown from a niche product into a sizable market. Monthly payment volume reached $759 million in July.

Digital-asset cards allow users to spend their holdings through existing card payment networks.

Usage is rising quickly as well. Payments made with digital-asset cards totaled about 8.8 million transactions in July, up about 69% from roughly 5.2 million a year earlier. The average payment amount was about $86. a16z Crypto said growth in transaction volume is tracking closely with the increase in overall payment value.

The blockchains processing those payments are also becoming more diverse. At the start of 2024, Gnosis accounted for most of the digital-asset card payment market, driven by Gnosis Pay, a Visa card linked directly to self-custody wallets. But as new card programs have launched, payment infrastructure that had been concentrated on one chain has started to spread across multiple networks.

As of July, Optimism processed about 29% of total digital-asset card payment volume, the largest share. Solana and Base followed at about 19% each, while Gnosis, which had previously led the market, fell to about 2%.