USDC Dominates Crypto Card Payments as Market Share Climbs to 58%

USDT holds the second slot at 26%. Euro-backed alternatives have effectively collapsed from 88% to 2% of the same volume. The shift is a practical reallocation of payment-rail demand, not a philosophical realignment.

Dollar dominance on the card network

The 10-point jump in USDC's share tracks with merchant-side adoption. Card-issuance partners — Visa, Mastercard, and a growing roster of crypto-native issuers — have steadily expanded USDC settlement corridors over the past twelve months. USDT's 26% slice represents continued traction for Tether's token across several regional acquiring corridors, particularly where USD liquidity is structurally thin.

Euro-backed stablecoins lost ground for the same reason euro liquidity loses ground in TradFi FX: limited settlement infrastructure. EURe's drop from 88% to 2% suggests the merchant side never built the acquirer relationships required to compete on volume.

What banks are doing about it

U.S. banks are not standing still. According to Markets Media, deposit-tokenization programs are accelerating as a direct counter-move to stablecoin payment-rail encroachment. Tokenized deposits keep settlement inside the bank balance sheet, removing the correspondent friction that stablecoins were designed to solve. For issuers with large merchant-acquisition books, this is a defensive integration play — protect acquiring revenue by rebuilding the same rails on regulated infrastructure.

The operational question for payment strategists: how quickly can tokenized deposits match stablecoins on transaction cost and 24/7 settlement? Early tokenized-deposit pilots still depend on operating-hour windows.

Settlement friction as the wedge

Cross-border friction remains the structural advantage. Stablecoins compress multi-day correspondent settlement into minutes; tokenized deposits compress it back to hours. Until that gap closes, card-issuance partners will keep routing volume through USDC and USDT rails for non-domestic corridors. The push toward standardized disclosure is visible in adjacent sectors — Colombia's second national climate transparency report is the kind of codified reporting framework that stablecoin settlement data could adopt if regulators push for consistent on-chain disclosure.

For TradFi, the read is straightforward: stablecoin payment rails have crossed the merchant-acquisition threshold. The next milestone is regulatory recognition of tokenized deposits as settlement-grade instruments on par with stablecoins.