Binance claims $472.8M in losses after RedotPay allegedly diverted 470K card users. The case exposes how stablecoin cards let companies capture each other's customers.
Binance-affiliated entities filed a Hong Kong petition against RedotPay's founders, alleging the payment startup used its partnership with Binance to divert more than 470,000 Binance Card customers into its own competing stablecoin card program.
Binance claims $472.8 million in losses, built on an estimated $925 lifetime value per customer that RedotPay allegedly captured, Bloomberg News reported. The petition says RedotPay received roughly $304 million in user funds routed through Binance Pay, the exchange's payment rail.
RedotPay denies the allegations. The company said in a statement that the petition will not affect daily operations. RedotPay now serves more than 8 million users and processes roughly $14 billion in annualized payment volume. That scale reportedly has the company considering an IPO at a valuation above $4 billion.
The value of a stablecoin card is in whichever app the customer opens every day to spend, top up, or check a balance. That app captures conversion fees, card-spending revenue, merchant data, and the chance to sell the customer something else later. Binance alleges RedotPay used a funding rail meant for one purpose to build a direct relationship with those same customers.
The same structure plays out across the industry without a lawsuit attached. Circle pays Coinbase for USDC distribution and shares reserve economics based on how much USDC sits within Coinbase's products. Circle's own public filings describe the arrangement. Coinbase remains USDC's largest distribution partner and also backs Open USD, a rival stablecoin model built with Visa, Mastercard and more than 140 other companies. Open USD splits reserve income among the businesses driving adoption. Circle needs Coinbase to reach users. Coinbase gains negotiating power by making stablecoins compete inside its app.
Visa and Stripe show the same dynamic without any public conflict yet. Visa's cards give Stripe-owned Bridge the merchant reach it needs to let apps like Phantom and MetaMask spend stablecoin balances. Bridge gives Visa a route into wallet-native crypto spending. Both companies continue to expand beyond that initial deal. Stripe now offers stablecoin wallets, card issuing, and its own token infrastructure through Bridge and Privy. Visa introduced its own platform for minting, moving and settling stablecoins in July. Visa says it already backs more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across more than 50 countries. Visa expects that number to roughly double this year. Bridge-enabled Visa cards are live in 18 countries, with plans to reach more than 100 by year-end.
Mastercard agreed to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. The deal buys the plumbing that determines how stablecoin payments are issued, converted and settled. Mastercard's own crypto partner program includes Binance, Coinbase-linked wallet providers, Circle, PayPal, MetaMask and dozens of other firms. Many compete directly with each other. Owning BVNK gives Mastercard a stake in the infrastructure underneath all of them.
A similar fight is opening between stablecoin issuers and the platforms that distribute their tokens. Open USD is built to solve this on the issuer's side by splitting nearly all of its reserve income with the businesses that drive adoption. That model squeezes any issuer whose distributors currently take a smaller cut. The conflict usually shows up in quieter ways: a wallet making one stablecoin the default, an exchange waiving fees for a preferred token, or a card rewarding whichever stablecoin its partner favors.
Phantom and MetaMask can now connect a stablecoin balance directly to a Visa card via infrastructure like Bridge. Users can spend without routing funds back through a centralized exchange. The exchange may still supply stablecoins or liquidity behind the scenes. The wallet captures the balance, spending data, rewards and daily engagement that previously belonged to the exchange.
The stakes are concrete for people using these products. A top-up route that worked yesterday can stop working if a partnership ends. Rewards can tilt toward whichever stablecoin a company wants to promote. Cards can be migrated to a new issuer with little warning. Support can fragment across a wallet, a card issuer and an exchange, each blaming the others when something breaks. The tokens themselves stay transferable on-chain. The experience of using them depends on private commercial deals between companies that compete with each other as often as they cooperate.
The bull case is that competition makes the products better. Apps are starting to disclose which partner operates the wallet, card or settlement layer beneath their brand. Balances become portable across providers. Funding routes multiply. Companies compete on price and reliability to keep customers.
The bear case is that customer capture becomes the business model. Companies keep using partner rails to acquire users, then quietly build their own card, wallet or stablecoin to keep them. Funding routes disappear with little notice. Rewards get restructured to box users into a single provider. Disputes like Binance's against RedotPay may become a routine cost of doing business.
Stablecoins made the dollar portable across borders. Stablecoin cards are now making the customer just as portable between companies.
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