A PYMNTS and Paymentology survey found 42% of stablecoin holders want crypto for major purchases; only 28% do. Acceptance and costs gate the checkout.
Alpha Score of 74 reflects strong overall profile with strong momentum, moderate value, strong quality, strong sentiment.
If the option existed, 71% of stablecoin holders would spend their digital assets through a debit card, according to a Payments Innovation Tracker from PYMNTS Intelligence and Paymentology. The report, "From Asset to Everyday Money: Making Digital Currencies Spendable," found consumers want stablecoins to behave like the money they already use. Demand for crypto payments is running ahead of the infrastructure built to handle them.
Forty-two percent of stablecoin holders said they want to use digital assets for major purchases. Twenty-eight percent already do. The 14-point gap, the report said, suggests the main constraint is no longer consumer curiosity. Demand is growing for everyday purchases and subscriptions. What's missing, in the report's telling, is more places to pay and a simpler route from the asset in a wallet to a completed transaction. The debit card number shows where that simpler route leads, in the report's framing: a product that runs on rails consumers already trust.
Monthly crypto card spending grew about 15-fold from early 2023 to late 2025, reaching an annualized rate of roughly $18 billion, the report found. At that size, crypto card volume is still a small slice of global card spending. The report's emphasis, however, is on the growth rate. Stablecoins are also moving into cross-border business payments, where faster settlement and lower costs solve practical problems, the tracker said. Access to dollar-denominated value is part of the draw. A wire through correspondent banks can take days and accrue fees at each step; a stablecoin transfer settles in minutes.
Friction remains. Nearly half of consumers surveyed cited limited merchant acceptance as a hurdle. Transaction costs drew complaints from 45%. Volatility worried 43%. Fraud concerns came in at 36%.
The report's path forward is to keep the checkout familiar and change what moves behind it. Stablecoins flow through linked cards and real-time conversion, the tracker said, while the issuer's processing layer handles settlement. A stablecoin debit card converts the asset at the point of sale and clears over existing card rails, so the merchant never handles crypto. The conversion step neutralizes volatility: the stablecoin is sold the moment the card is run.
Part of that plumbing is already under construction. Mastercard is testing a single-audit stablecoin compliance system with Borderless.xyz, a shared standard that replaces separate issuer-by-issuer checks. The test targets the route the survey says is missing, from a wallet balance to a completed sale.
Drafted by a large language model from the source reporting linked above, then screened by automated publishing checks. It is not read by a journalist before publication. Some articles cite our Alpha Score. Verify prices and figures against the original source. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.