NextFin News - Global stablecoin card spending is forecast to quadruple to $50 billion a year by 2028, a projection that sounds large until it is measured against the more than $20 trillion consumers will spend on traditional cards this year. The forecast from stablecoin payments firm RedotPay, released Aug. 25, lands on the back of a record month for the sector: Paymentscan data shows stablecoin card spending crossed $1 billion in July 2026 for the first time, reaching about $1.04 billion versus roughly $339 million in July 2025, a more-than-threefold year-over-year increase. The question is not whether the growth is real — it is whether the next two years can compress a three-year ramp into eight months, and what that shift means for the payments rails that have dominated consumer spending for half a century.
The Numbers Behind The $50 Billion Forecast
RedotPay, a Hong Kong-based stablecoin card provider, expects the industry to process its next $10 billion in cumulative card spending in about eight months, after taking roughly three years to reach the first $10 billion. Cumulative stablecoin card spending has now crossed $10.9 billion. By 2028, the company expects stablecoin-powered cards to handle $50 billion in annualized spending — four times the current annualized run-rate implied by July's $1.04 billion month.
The arithmetic is aggressive. Annualizing July's $1.04 billion yields roughly $12.5 billion a year; reaching $50 billion by 2028 requires the sector to grow about fourfold in a little over two years, far faster than the threefold year-over-year pace that produced the July print. RedotPay frames the target against a deliberately chosen benchmark. "When you consider that over $20 trillion will be spent this year on traditional cards, $50 billion per year no longer seems unattainable," the company said. On that framing, $50 billion is only 0.25% of traditional card volume — a rounding error in the broader payments system, but a fourfold expansion for a nascent sector. The company also noted that when it launched its first card about three years ago, it estimated the entire industry was processing around $60,000 a month; current volumes can reach the same amount in roughly four minutes.
The growth is not evenly distributed. RedotPay co-founder and head of partnerships Jonathan Chan said Latin America leads adoption, followed by Africa, and that the fastest markets are not necessarily those with the highest crypto penetration. "The growth is driven by the confluence of several factors: real payment pain, easy stablecoin access, strong fiat off-ramps, and regulatory clarity," Chan said. RedotPay reported more than 8 million users across over 100 countries, with total annualized payment volume — including top-ups and card spends — above $14 billion and annualized revenue above $180 million. The company said it is profitable.
Transaction-level data reinforces the scale of the shift. Paymentscan recorded more than 10 million tracked transactions in July 2026, with dollar-backed stablecoins behind about 70% of that volume. The composition has flipped decisively: USDC accounted for roughly 51% of stablecoin card transaction volume in July and Tether's USDT about 20.3%, compared with approximately 48% and 7% respectively a year earlier, while the euro-backed EURe fell from about 88% of volume in early 2024 to roughly 2%.
Why The Growth Is Structural, Not A Sentiment Cycle
The first question any fourfold forecast raises is whether the driver is cyclical — a mean-reverting wave of crypto enthusiasm — or structural, a durable change in how payments are routed. Three pieces of evidence point to structure rather than sentiment.
First, the product solves a real payments problem rather than a speculative one. RedotPay cited customers using the cards for groceries, subscriptions, travel and rent in countries where local banking products do not offer reliable dollar-denominated balances or access to international digital services and mobile wallets. Chan framed the user base accordingly: "Our users are not necessarily crypto traders. They are people who found a better way to manage their finances because the previous options they had weren't good enough. This is where the growth will come from." A use case anchored in remittances, dollar preservation and access to global services does not mean-revert when crypto prices fall, because the pain point — weak local currency and closed banking rails — persists independently of the bitcoin cycle.
Second, the composition of card volume has migrated toward assets that function as digital dollars rather than crypto exposures. The shift from EURe's 88% dominance in early 2024 to USDC and USDT's combined 71% share in July 2026 signals that users are choosing stability over regional fiat linkage. That matters for durability: a payments rail built on dollar-pegged liabilities is a substitute for bank deposits and foreign-exchange access, not a bet on token appreciation.
Third, the regulatory scaffolding is now being built rather than merely discussed. The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025, and takes effect on the earlier of Jan. 18, 2027, or 120 days after federal regulators issue final rules. RedotPay obtained its first U.S. state money transmitter license, announced Aug. 27, with applications pending in more than 20 additional states, and already holds a Canadian money services business registration and an Argentine virtual asset service provider license. In June, Mastercard added settlement support for six regulated dollar-backed stablecoins — Circle's USDC, Paxos-issued PayPal USD, Global Dollar and Pax Dollar, Ripple USD and SoFiUSD — across eight blockchain networks, with intraday and weekend settlement cycles. Regulation does not create demand, but it lowers the cost of supplying it, and that is a structural change in the industry's cost curve.
"Stablecoin-powered cards have reached their mainstream moment, hitting all-time highs in spending volume on the strength of their utility in daily life."
The Second-Order Trade: Cards Are The On-Ramp, Reserve Demand Is The Destination
The first-order reading of the RedotPay forecast is straightforward: more consumers will spend crypto on cards. The second-order implication is what matters for capital markets. Every dollar of stablecoin liability backing a card balance must be held in reserves — predominantly short-dated U.S. Treasuries and cash for regulated issuers. The broader stablecoin supply is approaching $420 billion, and forecasts for 2030 range from Citigroup's base case of $1.9 trillion to a bull case of $4 trillion; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has publicly raised his estimate to $3 trillion by 2030, saying stablecoins could "grow tenfold."
Card spending is the use case that converts stablecoins from a settlement and trading tool into a medium of exchange — and a medium of exchange requires larger, stickier reserve balances than a trading tool does. Circle executives have pointed to daily transaction volumes rising from about $1 trillion before the GENIUS Act to roughly $4 trillion after its passage, arguing the law has already shifted behavior. If card volume quadruples as RedotPay projects, the liability base that must be reserved grows with it, and the marginal buyer of short-duration government debt is no longer only foreign central banks stepping back from purchases — it is the liability side of a payments network.
The transmission channel is already visible at the settlement layer. Onchain stablecoin transfers settled about $7.2 trillion in February 2026, surpassing the U.S. ACH network for the first time, while Asia accounted for $12.5 trillion of stablecoin flows in 2025, up 67% year over year. Visa's stablecoin settlement program reached a $7 billion annualized run rate across nine blockchains by April 2026, up 50% from the prior quarter, and Mastercard agreed in March to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. None of these figures make stablecoins a macro force today — $420 billion of supply against $50 billion of projected card spend remains small next to a $20 trillion card market. But the direction of the flow is the story: card spend is the retail proof that the reserve-accumulation thesis can compound.
The Counter-Case: Concentration, Measurement, And The Eight-Month Problem
The strongest argument against the 2028 target is arithmetic and concentration. Moving from an implied $12.5 billion annual run-rate to $50 billion in roughly two years requires sustained monthly growth well above the already-strong threefold year-over-year pace, and it assumes no regulatory interruption. Much of the current volume is concentrated in a handful of issuers and in emerging markets whose regulators can restrict access with a single directive. RedotPay's own U.S. expansion rests on licenses that are still pending in more than 20 states, and California's Digital Financial Assets Law, which took effect July 1, 2026, illustrates how state-level regimes can narrow the operating perimeter for non-bank payment firms serving local residents.
There is also a measurement caveat that cuts both ways. Paymentscan tracks crypto card volumes from onchain activity and explicitly distinguishes "top-ups" — deposits into a card-linked account — from true "spend" recorded at the clearing or settlement level. Its methodology notes that top-up volume may not correspond to card spend, because deposited funds can be withdrawn onchain or off-ramped through banking rails. If a meaningful share of the $1.04 billion July figure is top-up rather than merchant spend, the base from which the quadrupling is measured is smaller than the headline suggests. Conversely, the onchain lens cannot see spend that settles through traditional card networks without a visible blockchain leg, which means the true figure could be larger. The uncertainty cuts against precision, not necessarily against direction.
Finally, the competitive response could compress margins even as it validates the rail. Mastercard's BVNK acquisition and Visa's expanding settlement program mean the incumbent networks are building stablecoin capability into their own infrastructure rather than ceding the layer to challengers. If settlement becomes a commodity feature of existing card relationships, the premium that early movers like RedotPay can charge may narrow, and revenue may not scale in line with volume.
None of this disproves the direction of travel. It does mean the forecast should be read as a ceiling under current conditions rather than a base case. The signal that would falsify the structural thesis is specific and observable: if monthly stablecoin card spending does not exceed roughly $2.1 billion — the pace needed to reach a $25 billion annualized midpoint — by mid-2027, or if RedotPay's pending U.S. state licenses remain unresolved past 2027, the 2028 target moves out of reach. A second falsifier would be a reversal in stablecoin composition, with the combined dollar-backed share falling back toward the euro-backed dominance of early 2024.
What To Watch Across Three Time Horizons
Short term (6–12 months): the sector needs to prove the July print was not a seasonal spike. Monthly spend above $1.2 billion by year-end 2026, with transaction counts holding above 10 million, would confirm momentum. The first read should come from Paymentscan's monthly releases and from whether the combined USDC and USDT share holds above 70%.
Medium term (2027): the GENIUS Act implementation becomes the binding constraint. If final rules land on schedule and state licensing proceeds, traditional financial companies are likely to increase their use of stablecoin settlement infrastructure, as RedotPay expects, and the $25 billion annualized midpoint becomes reachable. If rules slip or states tighten licensing, the growth curve flattens and the 2028 target drifts later.
Long term (2028–2030): the question is whether card spend remains a niche overlay on the payments system or becomes a meaningful rail. At $50 billion, stablecoin cards would still be 0.25% of traditional card volume — small, but no longer negligible. The larger prize is the reserve base: if stablecoin supply reaches the $2–4 trillion range that major banks and the Treasury now discuss, the payments use case will have done its work by anchoring durable demand for short-duration government debt.
The base case is that stablecoin card spending grows strongly but falls short of the $50 billion mark by 2028 unless U.S. licensing clears and emerging-market access holds. The upside case is that regulatory clarity pulls traditional issuers into the rail faster than expected, compressing the ramp toward the target. The downside case is that concentration, measurement gaps and margin compression surface together, and growth reverts toward the broader crypto cycle.
The takeaway: $50 billion is not a bet that stablecoin cards will displace Visa and Mastercard — it is a bet that they will become the default dollar account for consumers whom the legacy system underserves. That is a smaller market, but a far more durable one.
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