Stablecoin payments go ‘invisible’ in Southeast Asia as crypto card business surges

When a tourist from Bangkok taps to pay in Singapore using their Thai e-wallet, few stop to consider what powers that transaction.

But for Singapore-based StraitsX, the company behind the stablecoin infrastructure running in the background, that seamless experience is exactly the point.

Between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the same period in 2025, StraitsX saw its card transaction volume surge by 40 times, the company’s co-founder and CEO Tianwei Liu told CoinDesk.

The number of cards issued grew even faster, increasing 83-fold. That data points to one of the fastest-growing stablecoin card programs in Southeast Asia.

Those multiples, while striking, come with context. One of StratisX’s major crypto card partnerships, with RedotPay, only soft-launched in late 2024, suggesting Q4 of that year represents relatively low baseline volumes.

Across the broader crypto card industry, Artemis Analytics estimates global monthly volumes grew from roughly $100 million in early 2023 to over $1.5 billion by late 2025, a 106% compound annual growth rate, suggesting StraitsX is riding a rising tide rather than just outperforming a static market.

Dune Analytics data shows total crypto card spending tracked onchain grew 420% in 2025, from roughly $23 million in January to $120 million by December, with Visa capturing over 90% of onchain card volume. Visa’s stablecoin-linked card spend alone reached a $3.5 billion annualized run rate by Q4 2025, a 460% year-over-year increase.

Notably, RedotPay, one of StraitsX’s BIN sponsorship partners, processed over $2.95 billion in card volume in 2025, more than four times the combined volume of its 13 closest competitors, according to available data. That positions StraitsX’s infrastructure at the centre of the category’s dominant player.

The question is whether these early-stage growth rates hold as the card base matures and the novelty of stablecoin-backed spending gives way to competition on features, rewards, and cost.

The company’s core offering sits in the background. Rather than building a consumer-facing app, StraitsX provides the infrastructure for others to build on. It acts as a Visa BIN sponsor, enabling partners like RedotPay and UPay to issue cards.

When customers tap or scan to pay with these, stablecoins settle the transaction in real time, with local currency arriving instantly on the other side.

“No user cares about whether a payment runs on stablecoins or fiat; they only care if the payment goes through,” Liu said.

That attitude frames the company’s strategy: make the stablecoin layer invisible. StraitsX processes nearly $30 billion in cumulative stablecoin transactions, but its ambition goes beyond raw volume. Liu wants stablecoins to act like fiber-optic cables: present everywhere but unnoticed.

By the end of March, StraitsX expects to launch its two stablecoins, XSGD and XUSD, on the Solana blockchain. That deployment, in partnership with the Solana Foundation, marks the first time both tokens will live natively on a high-speed blockchain.

The tokens will support the x402 standard, which allows for machine-to-machine micropayments.

“When fees drop close to zero, you can suddenly move very small amounts of money, very frequently,” Liu said. “Payments start to look more like internet data flows, continuous, low cost, and embedded directly into applications.”

XSGD already leads the non-USD stablecoin market in Southeast Asia, with more than 70% share. It maintains a 1:1 peg with the Singapore dollar, backed by monthly audits. That peg gained further relevance early in the year, when the Singapore dollar hit an 11-year high against the U.S. dollar.

Looking beyond Singapore

Now, StraitsX is looking beyond Singapore. A cross-border corridor with Thailand is set to go live under Project BLOOM, a regulatory initiative from Singapore’s central bank.

The system will allow Thai travelers to scan QR codes in Singapore using KBank’s Q Wallet and pay merchants in their local currency. The transaction will convert between Thailand’s Q-money and StraitsX’s XSGD in the background, another stablecoin-powered payment hiding in plain sight.

Liu said the model follows a familiar playbook. GrabPay and Alipay+ integrations, for instance, required no user retraining. Still, the firm has seen a 400% increase in merchant transaction volume and a sixfold jump in the number of unique users transacting with those merchants month-over-month.

Similar rollouts are planned in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Like driving an electric car

Visa, one of StraitsX’s major partners, sees the shift as a natural evolution in payments. Adeline Kim, Visa’s Singapore and Brunei country manager, told CoinDesk stablecoin-backed cards don’t change the customer experience.

The cards work the same as traditional ones, complete with chargeback protections and fiat settlements.

“It’s like driving an electric car versus a car that runs on fuel on the same highway,” Kim said. “The vehicle is different, but the road signs, toll booths, and rules don’t change.”

The growth fits a pattern visible across the industry. Full-stack crypto card issuers like Rain and Reap, which hold direct Visa principal membership and manage their own settlement, have scaled rapidly. Rain to over $3 billion annualized and Reap to over $6 billion.

Remittances are a key use case. The World Bank estimates sending $200 internationally still costs an average of 6.49%. With stablecoins, those fees drop dramatically.

Looking ahead, Kim sees stablecoin cards evolving beyond utility. She expects future offerings to include real-time spending insights, cross-border perks and reward systems tailored to user behavior.

For Liu, success means disappearing. The best stablecoin infrastructure, he said, is one people don’t see. The transaction just works.