Crypto Cards: A Ten Year History From Bitcoin Debit Cards to Stablecoin Spending

On January 4, 2018, a small company in Gibraltar called WaveCrest lost its Visa license. Most people in crypto had never heard of WaveCrest. But WaveCrest was the licensed institution behind almost every bitcoin debit card in Europe. Xapo, Wirex, TenX, Cryptopay, Bitwala. All of them. Hundreds of thousands of cards stopped working overnight.

The companies that sold those cards had cool apps, BTC wallets, and slick marketing. None of that mattered. One licensing decision in Gibraltar wiped out an entire product category in a day.

That story tells you everything you need to know about how crypto cards actually work. And it keeps repeating. Here's the full history of crypto cards, from the first bitcoin card in 2014 to the stablecoin cards of 2026.

How Crypto Cards Actually Work

When you tap your Coinbase card at a coffee shop, here's what happens: Coinbase sells some of your crypto, converts it to fiat, loads dollars or euros onto what is basically a normal debit card, and Visa settles the payment to the merchant. The merchant has no idea crypto was involved. A licensed bank or e-money institution (not Coinbase) carries the regulatory responsibility.

Your crypto is just the funding source. Every crypto debit card on the market works this way.

This has been true since the very first crypto card in 2014. It's still true in 2026.

The First Cards (2014-2016)

Xapo shipped the first bitcoin debit card in 2014. The idea was simple: let people spend bitcoin at any store. You linked the card to your BTC wallet, swiped, and Bitstamp sold enough bitcoin to cover the purchase in real time. Fiat hit the card. Done.

Coinbase followed in late 2015 with the Shift Card in the US. BitPay launched in 2016 with a different approach: you converted BTC to dollars first, then spent from a prepaid balance.

All of these ran through WaveCrest in Gibraltar. WaveCrest held the Visa license. The crypto companies were just riding on borrowed credentials.

WaveCrest Dies, Everything Breaks (January 2018)

Visa terminated WaveCrest for continued non-compliance with their operating rules. No warning for users. Cards bricked. The entire bitcoin card ecosystem in Europe turned out to depend on one small company with a Visa license.

This was the first time the market learned the hard way: your crypto card is only as stable as the licensed company behind it.

ICO Money Meets Plastic (2017-2018)

Before WaveCrest died, a new wave of crypto cards showed up, funded by ICOs instead of venture capital.

TenX raised $80 million selling PAY tokens to build a crypto Visa card. Monaco (later Crypto.com) sold MCO tokens with tiered card benefits. Metal cards. Airport lounges. Crypto card rewards paid in tokens that were definitely going up forever.

The actual product was identical to what Xapo built in 2014. Prepaid card, licensed issuer, crypto converted to fiat behind the scenes. The only new thing was using token sales to pay for it.

WaveCrest's death killed many of these programs before they shipped. The 2018 bear market killed the rest. PAY token cratered. The promised revenue-sharing stopped making sense when there was nothing to share.

TenX never recovered. Crypto.com survived by becoming a full exchange and raising real money.

Exchanges Take Over (2019-2021)

By 2019, the big exchanges realized they were best positioned to run crypto cards. They already had user balances, trading infrastructure, and some actual licenses.

Coinbase launched a card in the UK through Paysafe as issuer. A US version followed in 2020, powered by Marqeta and MetaBank. Binance rolled out a Visa card in Europe through Contis. Crypto.com rebuilt its program after migrating off WaveCrest.

The big upgrade: just-in-time funding. Processors like Marqeta could sell your crypto and load fiat onto your card at the exact moment you tapped. No more pre-loading. It felt instant.

Visa went public with the numbers. Over $1 billion spent on crypto-linked cards in the first half of 2021. Fifty-plus crypto platform partners. The category was real.

Then came the second issuer disaster.

Wirecard: Same Lesson, Bigger Explosion (June 2020)

Wirecard was a German payments company that handled card issuing for huge chunks of European fintech. Crypto.com and TenX both used Wirecard Card Solutions.

In June 2020, Wirecard admitted €1.9 billion was missing from its books. Insolvency. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority ordered Wirecard Card Solutions to stop all activity. Crypto.com cards across Europe froze. TenX cards froze.

The FCA lifted the freeze a few days later. Crypto.com migrated to new issuers and survived. TenX never came back.

Different issuer, different year, same result for users.

2022-2023: The Crash Hits Cards

FTX had plans to launch Visa debit cards in 40 countries. Then FTX collapsed in November 2022. Visa cut all FTX card agreements within weeks.

BlockFi had a credit card that paid 1.5% back in bitcoin. Standard credit card, normal spending, crypto rewards only. Issued by Evolve Bank & Trust. Then BlockFi went bankrupt (also November 2022, also FTX contagion). Card gone.

Binance had cards in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Then the SEC and CFTC sued Binance in 2023. Mastercard dropped Binance in four countries. Visa stopped issuing co-branded cards in Europe. By December 2023, Binance's European Visa card was done. The issuer, Contis, walked away.

Being the biggest exchange in the world didn't protect Binance's card program. When Visa and Mastercard decide you're too risky, the card disappears. The product can be working perfectly.

Stablecoins Enter the Picture (2023-Present)

The newest crypto cards look different on paper. Gnosis Card lets you hold EURe (a regulated euro stablecoin) in a self-custody smart contract wallet and spend crypto via Visa. Holyheld does something similar with USDC and Mastercard.

Gnosis Card is the most interesting one architecturally. Your money sits in a Safe wallet on Gnosis Chain. When you tap, the system debits EURe from your wallet, Monerium (a licensed e-money institution) converts it to euros, and Visa pays the merchant.

You hold the keys. The stablecoin is regulated. KYC is handled by Sumsub. On-chain monitoring by Elliptic. The issuer is Monavate. The processor is Paymentology.

Real improvement in transparency and user control compared to 2014.

But the merchant still gets euros from Visa. And if Monavate lost its license tomorrow, the card would stop working. Even though your EURe is sitting right there in your own wallet.

Visa has also started settling some back-office flows in USDC (they did a pilot with Crypto.com through Anchorage in 2021). Interesting for treasury operations. But merchants still get fiat. Users still see a normal transaction.

MiCA Reshapes Europe

The EU's MiCA regulation, with stablecoin rules taking effect in June 2024, created real legal requirements for stablecoin issuers: reserves, redemption rights, regulatory oversight.

For crypto cards in Europe, this means the stablecoins backing your card are increasingly governed by the same rules as regular e-money. Gnosis Card uses EURe from Monerium, which is a licensed e-money institution. That regulatory alignment makes the whole setup more credible. It also means the gap between "stablecoin card" and "normal fintech card" is shrinking.

What We Can Learn From the Past

Look at the list of failures:

WaveCrest lost its Visa license. Cards died.
Wirecard committed fraud. Cards froze.
Contis decided Binance was too risky. Cards ended.
FTX went bankrupt. Cards canceled.
BlockFi went bankrupt. Cards gone.

Not once did a crypto card fail because of a blockchain problem. Every time, it was the issuer or the sponsoring company. That's worth remembering when you're choosing a card today. Check who holds the license.

But after each failure, the industry rebuilt on stronger foundations. In 2014 there was one bitcoin card running through one company in Gibraltar. In 2026 there are dozens of cards across multiple networks, issuers, and regions. Self-custody is real. Regulation exists. People pay their rent with these things.

Where Are We Heading

For ten years, crypto companies were knocking on the door of traditional payments. That dynamic has flipped.

Stripe bought Bridge (a stablecoin platform) for over a billion dollars in early 2025. By April, Bridge and Visa launched a product that lets any fintech create stablecoin Visa cards across multiple countries through one API. Rain, a stablecoin card infrastructure company, raised $338 million in 2025 and is now valued at nearly $2 billion. It settles 100% of its Visa card volume in stablecoins. Its card base grew 30x in one year.

Visa crypto card spending jumped 525% in 2025. Monthly volumes went from $100 million in early 2023 to over $1.5 billion by late 2025. Still small compared to total card payments. But the trajectory is obvious.

Stripe is treating stablecoins as core infrastructure. Visa is actively building with stablecoin platforms. The GENIUS Act and MiCA gave everyone a legal framework to work with. Between Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gnosis Pay, Holyheld, EtherFi, Plutus, Wirex, Kast and others, the competition for best crypto card keeps pushing crypto cashback rates higher and fees lower.

Merchants still get fiat. Visa and Mastercard still sit in the middle. But stablecoins are becoming normal payment infrastructure, and there have never been more ways to spend crypto anywhere in the world.