Stablecoin Cards: Visa's Bet On Crypto Wallets As Financial Super Apps

Forbes

30-04-2025

In a significant development for cryptocurrency adoption, Baanx has announced a partnership with Visa to launch stablecoin-linked cards tied directly to self-custodial wallets. The new offering will initially roll out in the United States before expanding to additional markets globally, coming just days after Mastercard unveiled its own comprehensive stablecoin strategy with partners OKX and Nuvei.
The new Baanx-Visa partnership enables crypto users to spend USDC (a fiat-backed stablecoin) directly from their self-custodial wallets at any merchant accepting Visa. The system works through smart contracts that move stablecoin balances from the consumer to Baanx in real time upon card authorization, with Baanx handling the conversion to fiat for payment settlement.
This announcement represents a major advancement in solving what industry insiders call the "last mile problem" in cryptocurrency: enabling everyday spending of digital assets without sacrificing the self-custody principles that distinguish crypto from traditional finance.
"Stablecoin cards represent a massive leap forward for global financial access," said Simon Jones, Chief Commercial Officer at Baanx, in the official announcement. "In many regions, access to stable currency is a luxury. We're giving people the ability to hold and spend USD-backed stablecoins seamlessly, in a self-custodial, real-time way, anywhere Visa is accepted."
This approach to financial access aligns with Jones' broader vision: "Two or three years ago, crypto was very much its own thing. FinTech was very much its own thing [...] I think now what we're increasingly seeing is that the wallet space is becoming much more FinTech focused and FinTech is becoming much more crypto focused."
The implications extend well beyond crypto enthusiasts. For users in emerging markets facing currency volatility and limited banking options, stablecoin cards could provide unprecedented access to dollar-denominated spending power without requiring traditional banking relationships.
Stablecoins have emerged as crypto's breakthrough application, with over $200 billion in circulation and over 30 million addresses transacting monthly on public blockchains. In the first half of 2024 alone, stablecoins settled over $2.6 trillion in value.
Visa's involvement signals growing institutional recognition of stablecoins' potential for practical payments applications. "We know the payments ecosystem is still in the early innings of stablecoin adoption, but real-world utility is coming to the forefront," noted Rubail Birwadker, Head of Growth Products and Partnerships at Visa.
Cuy Sheffield, Global Head of Crypto at Visa, elaborated on this vision:
The Baanx solution leverages high-performance blockchain networks like Ethereum layer 2s and Solana to enable instant transaction settlement. This infrastructure allows for a streamlined user experience compared to earlier crypto payment solutions that required multiple confirmations or pre-funding of custodial accounts.
Jones predicts significant expansion of wallet-linked cards in the coming year: 'I think of the larger wallets, at least 60 or 70 percent of them will have a card within them within the next 12 months.'
The partnership builds on growing momentum in the self-custodial card space. Earlier collaboration between Baanx and MetaMask resulted in the MetaMask Card, which similarly enables spending crypto assets held in self-custodial wallets via MasterCard. The MetaMask Card, launched in multiple regions including the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, demonstrated the feasibility of non-custodial card payments and set a precedent for this new Visa partnership.
Sheffield sees this as part of a larger trend:
What differentiates these offerings from traditional crypto cards is that users maintain control of their assets until the moment of transaction, rather than depositing funds with a custodial service provider. When a user taps their card at a point of sale, the system verifies sufficient wallet balance and executes an on-chain transaction, converting the stablecoin to fiat currency that the merchant receives.
While Baanx and Visa are starting with the United States, both companies have expressed ambitions for rapid international expansion. Baanx currently powers crypto payment solutions for six of the top ten self-custodial wallets globally.
During a recent interview, Cuy Sheffield, Global Head of Crypto at Visa, observed that while tens of millions of people are already monthly active users of self-custodial wallets, only a small percentage currently have cards linked to those wallets.
"If you look at all the consumers who have money in a self-custodial wallet, how many of them are active users of a card connected to that self-custodial wallet, I would say is a very small percentage overall today," Sheffield noted. "I think we fast forward a few years from now as the barrier to entry for a consumer to get a card, as it gets easier and easier with products that Baanx is bringing to market with many of these wallets, I think we'll see a much greater number of consumers who are already storing value there, already using a wallet, now having a card linked to that wallet."
The growth of self-custodial stablecoin cards may accelerate changes in banking business models. By separating payments functionality from custody and lending, these offerings challenge traditional models where banks rely on deposits from transaction accounts to fund lending operations.
Jones sees novel use cases emerging: "One of the other use cases that I would also highlight is the ability to be able to spend money quickly. There are actually a huge amount of use cases in industry, for example in travel. Things move around the world, money has to travel with them. But the problem at the moment is that people often travel faster than money does, and that creates friction. You can start to remove a lot of that immediately by using stablecoins and the ability to spend a stablecoin that you receive in real time."
For consumers, the benefit is maintaining control of their assets while gaining seamless spending capabilities. For merchants, stablecoin settlement could eventually enable faster payment receipt than traditional card networks provide.
Perhaps the most transformative potential for stablecoin cards lies in regions with volatile local currencies or limited banking infrastructure. Jones has highlighted this opportunity: "I look at Argentina as a good use case for that, where if you want a US dollar denominated account, you have to have a certain amount of money to be able to deposit. I think it's $10,000, which for the average Argentinian is a huge amount of money. So the idea that you could automatically kind of keep your funds in dollars if you want to, but then have the ability to spend in the dollars on a card is actually quite compelling in terms of purchasing power parity."
Sheffield reinforces this global vision: 'We think there's a massive opportunity globally, and we're still at the very, very early stages. If you have $100 of USDC in your wallet today, where can you spend it? Good luck going and trying to scan QR codes and figuring out, okay, which merchant accepts, which doesn't. If you can embed a Visa credential into that wallet, if we can have partners like Baanx be able to put those cards in every self-custodial wallet, you don't have to think about it.'