When a Bangkok tourist agrees to pay in Singapore using their Thai e-wallet, few stop to consider what drives that transaction.
But for Singapore-based StraitsX, the company behind the stablecoin infrastructure that runs in the background, that seamless experience is exactly the goal.
Between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the same period in 2025, StraitsX saw its card transaction volume increase 40 times, company co-founder and CEO Tianwei Liu told CoinDesk.
The number of cards issued grew even faster, multiplying by 83. That data points to one of the fastest growing stablecoin card programs in Southeast Asia.
Those multiples, while surprising, come with context. One of StratisX’s major crypto card partnerships, with RedotPay, launched only in late 2024, suggesting that the fourth quarter of that year represents relatively low baseline volumes.
Across the broader crypto card industry, Artemis Analytics estimates that global monthly volumes have increased from approximately $100 million in early 2023 to more than $1.5 billion by the end of 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 106%, suggesting that StraitsX is riding a rising tide rather than simply outperforming a static market.
Data from Dune Analytics shows that total crypto card spending tracked on-chain grew 420% in 2025, from approximately $23 million in January to $120 million in December, with Visa capturing more than 90% of on-chain card volume. Spending on Visa stablecoin-linked cards alone reached an annualized run rate of $3.5 billion in Q4 2025, a 460% year-over-year increase.
Notably, RedotPay, one of StraitsX’s BIN sponsor partners, processed more than $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 center of the category’s dominant player.
The question is whether these early-stage growth rates hold up as the card base matures and the novelty of stablecoin-backed spending gives way to competition in features, rewards and costs.
The company’s main offering takes a backseat. Instead of creating a consumer-facing application, StraitsX provides the infrastructure so others can develop it. It acts as a sponsor of Visa BIN, allowing partners like RedotPay and UPay to issue cards.
When customers tap or scan to pay with them, stablecoins settle the transaction in real time and the local currency instantly arrives on the other side.
“No user cares whether a payment is made with stablecoins or fiat; they only care if the payment goes through,” Liu said.
That attitude frames the company’s strategy: making 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.
At the end of March, StraitsX hopes to launch its two stablecoins, XSGD and XUSD, on the Solana blockchain. That deployment, in partnership with the Solana Foundation, marks the first time that both tokens will live natively on a high-speed blockchain.
The tokens will support the x402 standard, which enables machine-to-machine micropayments.
“When rates drop close to zero, you can suddenly move very small amounts of money, very frequently,” Liu said. “Payments are starting to look more like Internet data streams, continuous, low-cost and integrated directly into applications.”
XSGD already leads the non-dollar stablecoin market in Southeast Asia, with over 70% share. It maintains a 1:1 peg to the Singapore dollar, backed by monthly audits. That link became more relevant earlier this year, when the Singapore dollar hit an 11-year high against the US dollar.
Looking beyond Singapore
Now, StraitsX is looking beyond Singapore. A cross-border corridor with Thailand is planned to be put into operation under Project BLOOM, a regulatory initiative by 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 payment powered by a stablecoin hiding in plain sight.
Liu said the model follows a familiar manual. The GrabPay and Alipay+ integrations, for example, did not require user retraining. Still, the company has seen a 400% increase in merchant transaction volume and a six-fold increase in the number of unique users transacting with those merchants month over month.
Similar deployments are planned in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
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Visa, one of StraitsX’s main partners, sees the change as a natural evolution in payments. Adeline Kim, country manager for Visa in Singapore and Brunei, told CoinDesk that stablecoin-backed cards do not change the customer experience.
The cards work just like traditional cards, with chargeback protections and fiduciary agreements.
“It’s like driving an electric car versus a fuel-powered car on the same road,” Kim said. “The vehicle is different, but the traffic signs, tolls and rules do not change.”
The growth fits a pattern visible across the industry. Full-stack crypto card issuers like Rain and Reap, which are direct core members of Visa and manage their own settlement, have grown rapidly. Rain at over $3 billion annualized and Harvest at over $6 billion.
Remittances are a key use case. The World Bank estimates that sending $200 abroad still costs an average of 6.49%. With stablecoins, those fees drop dramatically.
Looking ahead, Kim sees stablecoin cards evolving beyond utility. She hopes future offerings will include real-time spending information, cross-border benefits and rewards systems tailored to user behavior.
For Liu, success means disappearing. The best stablecoin infrastructure, he said, is the one that people don’t see. The transaction just works.
