Crypto cards did not stall only because of volatility. They stalled because the product has rarely been good enough to compete with ordinary payments.
That may sound obvious, but the data back it up. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City says the share of U.S. consumers using crypto for payments fell from nearly 3% in 2021–2022 to under 2% in 2023–2024, which suggests crypto payments still have not become habitual behavior.
At the same time, this is not a dead market. McKinsey estimates actual annualized stablecoin payments at roughly $390 billion, including about $90 billion in payroll and remittances and $226 billion in B2B payments.
That is still tiny versus global payments, but it proves something important: people do use crypto-linked money movement when it is cheaper, faster, or more useful than the alternative.
That is why the real bottleneck for crypto cards is less ideological than operational.
Users can tolerate volatility if the spending experience is smooth; what they do not tolerate is slow settlement, unclear fees, weak rewards, and the sense that a simple purchase creates tax and accounting friction.
In other words, crypto cards have often asked consumers to accept a worse version of fintech in exchange for the vague promise of future relevance.
The more interesting opportunity now is stablecoin-led spending. Once a card is tied to assets people actually want to spend, the success factors become clearer: transparent fees, reliable conversion, fast settlement, and rewards that feel meaningful rather than promotional.
If those basics improve, crypto cards stop looking like a niche experiment and start looking like a useful payments layer. That is where products like the BitMart Card can benefit.
If the category’s biggest weakness has been friction rather than demand, then the platforms that win will be the ones that make crypto spending feel simple, familiar, and worth repeating.
The bullish case is no longer that users suddenly want to spend volatile assets every day. It is that better products, especially those built around smoother stablecoin access and cleaner payment UX, can finally make crypto cards practical.
