At Money20/20 USA, Tianwei Liu said StraitsX processes over $500 million a month in card payments, mostly small everyday purchases
Stablecoins spent years as the parking lot of crypto trading. According to StraitsX CEO Tianwei Liu, they are now paying for diapers.
Speaking at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas, Liu said stablecoin-backed cards are pulling digital dollars into ordinary, daily spending.
Small tickets, big volume
Liu, who co-founded StraitsX, said the company now processes over $500 million in monthly transactions through its stablecoin-backed Visa debit cards.
The more interesting figure is what those transactions look like. Roughly 85% of them come in under $50.
These are routine purchases like groceries and household basics. They are not speculative bets or exotic cross-border transfers.
The growth curve behind those figures is steep. Between Q4 2024 and Q4 2025, StraitsX card transaction volume grew 40-fold, while the number of cards issued jumped 83 times.
Partners are a big part of that story. RedotPay, one of the firms issuing cards on StraitsX rails, processed over $2.95 billion in card volume through the company during 2025.
Across its broader business, StraitsX says it has handled nearly $30 billion in cumulative stablecoin transactions.
The Visa expansion and the plumbing underneath
The Money20/20 appearance followed a fresh deal with Visa. In October 2026, StraitsX announced a partnership with the card giant aimed at extending stablecoin card issuance to more than 100 markets globally.
That push builds on what StraitsX has already done in its home region. The company reported more than $6 billion in annualized card gross transaction value in Asia.
StraitsX acts as a Visa BIN sponsor. A BIN, or bank identification number, is the prefix on a card that tells the payment network who issued it and how to route a transaction.
By sponsoring those numbers, StraitsX lets partner companies launch cards without building that infrastructure themselves. Fintech apps and crypto platforms get to issue Visa cards, and StraitsX handles the regulated plumbing.
The result is that the stablecoin layer becomes invisible to the person tapping their card at checkout. The merchant gets paid like any other Visa transaction, and the shopper does not need to know what moved behind the scenes.
Who StraitsX is
StraitsX is a licensed Major Payment Institution under the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The company also issues its own stablecoins. XSGD is pegged to the Singapore dollar, while XUSD tracks the US dollar.
That combination gives StraitsX an unusual position. It sits in the middle of three worlds at once: stablecoin issuance, regulated payments, and card network access.
The pitch Liu made in Las Vegas is that stablecoins are maturing from a trading tool into payments infrastructure. The usage data, especially the share of sub-$50 purchases, is the evidence he is leaning on.
What this means for payments and crypto
The research behind Liu’s talk ties much of that demand to access to stable USD liquidity, particularly in emerging markets. In places where holding dollars through a bank is difficult or expensive, a stablecoin-funded Visa card offers a workaround that still functions at a normal checkout counter.
The Visa partnership targets more than 100 markets, and each one brings its own rules on payments, stablecoins, and consumer protection.
Licensing in Singapore gives StraitsX a credible base. Translating that into dozens of new jurisdictions is a much larger operational lift, and the pace of the rollout will depend heavily on how local regulators respond.
There is also a concentration angle. A meaningful share of StraitsX volume flows through partners, with RedotPay alone accounting for over $2.95 billion in 2025.
Investors tracking the stablecoin sector should pay attention to the metrics StraitsX chose to highlight. Monthly volume, average ticket size, and card counts are the language of payments companies, not trading platforms.
