You may have paid with a digital wallet while traveling and never stopped to think about what happened in the background. The payment just worked, the merchant got paid, and you walked away. That seamless experience is exactly what some crypto companies are now building with stablecoins across Southeast Asia.
One of them is StraitsX, a Singapore-based payments infrastructure firm that powers stablecoin-backed cards. Over the past year, the company says its card transaction volume increased 40 times, while the number of cards issued grew 83 times between late 2024 and late 2025.
Those numbers stand out, but what matters more is what they represent. Stablecoins are moving from trading platforms into real-world payments.
Jemi Motesho
Crypto Card Growth Is Accelerating
The wider crypto card market has also been expanding quickly. Industry data shows that global monthly crypto card volumes have climbed sharply since 2023, rising into the billions of dollars by late 2025. On-chain analytics platforms report that spending through crypto-linked cards grew several hundred percent over the past year alone.
Much of that growth runs through major networks like Visa, which has increasingly supported stablecoin-linked settlement behind the scenes. By late 2025, stablecoin-linked card spending on Visa had reached a multi-billion-dollar annualized run rate. This suggests that the surge is not isolated to one company, and instead reflects a broader shift in how digital assets are being used.
For StraitsX, partnerships have played a central role. One of its key collaborators, RedotPay, processed nearly $3 billion in card volume in 2025. That level of activity places StraitsX’s infrastructure at the center of one of the fastest-growing segments in digital payments.
Making Stablecoins Invisible
What makes this trend interesting is that users often don’t realize stablecoins are involved. StraitsX doesn’t focus on building a consumer app. Instead, it acts as infrastructure. It enables other companies to issue cards that are backed by stablecoins, while settlement happens almost instantly in the background.
When someone taps their card at a store, the merchant receives local currency. Behind the scenes, a stablecoin may have been used to settle the transaction. But for the person paying, nothing feels different.
Tianwei Liu, co-founder and chief executive of StraitsX, explained the philosophy clearly. “No user cares about whether a payment runs on stablecoins or fiat; they only care if the payment goes through,” he said. That mindset shapes the company’s strategy. The goal is not to make stablecoins visible. The goal is to make them reliable.
Solana and the Push for Faster, Cheaper Transfers
StraitsX is also expanding the technical layer that supports these payments. The company plans to launch its Singapore dollar and US dollar stablecoins, XSGD and XUSD, natively on the Solana network. Solana is known for high-speed processing and low transaction fees, which make it attractive for payment use cases.
Lower fees open the door to smaller and more frequent transactions. Liu has said that when costs fall close to zero, payments can begin to move like internet data, flowing constantly and quietly inside applications. That vision includes not just human payments, but also machine-to-machine transfers, where devices or software systems pay each other automatically.
In Southeast Asia, where mobile payments are already common, this infrastructure could blend naturally into existing habits. Projects supported by Singapore’s central bank are also testing cross-border QR payment systems, allowing travelers to scan and pay in local currency while stablecoins handle conversion behind the scenes.
Southeast Asia has long been a testing ground for new payment models. The region has a young, mobile first population and strong cross-border trade flows. Stablecoins add another layer to that mix. They can move value quickly across borders and settle almost instantly, while still connecting to traditional currencies.
The rapid growth in crypto card usage suggests that stablecoins are finding a practical role beyond trading and speculation. They are becoming part of the payment rails that support everyday commerce.
David Adubiina
