When a tourist from Bangkok taps to pay in Singapore using their Thai e-wallet, few stop to consider what is driving this transaction.
But for Singapore-based StraitsX, the company behind the stablecoin infrastructure that runs in the background, the seamless experience is exactly the point.
Between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the same period in 2025, StraitsX saw its card transaction volume increase by 40 times, company co-founder and CEO Tianwei Liu told CoinDesk.
The number of cards issued grew even faster, increasing 83 times. This data points to one of the fastest growing stablecoin card programs in Southeast Asia.
These multiples, while striking, come with context. One of StratisX’s largest crypto card partnerships with RedotPay, which only soft-launched in late 2024, suggesting that Q4 of that year represents relatively low baseline volumes.
Across the broader cryptocurrency industry, Artemis Analytics estimates that global monthly volumes grew from around $100 million in early 2023 to over $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.
Dune Analytics data shows that total spending on crypto cards tracked onchain grew by 420% in 2025, from around $23 million in January to $120 million in December, with Visa capturing over 90% of onchain card volume. Visa’s stablecoin-linked card spend alone reached an annualized $3.5 billion run rate in Q4 2025, up 460% year-on-year.
In particular, RedotPay, one of StraitsX’s BIN sponsor 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. It places StraitsX’s infrastructure at the center of the category’s dominant player.
The question is whether these early-stage growth rates will hold as the card base matures and the novelty of stablecoin-backed spending gives way to competition for features, rewards and costs.
The company’s core offering sits in the background. Instead of building a consumer-facing app, StraitsX provides the infrastructure for others to build on. It acts as a Visa BIN sponsor, enabling partners such as RedotPay and UPay to issue cards.
When customers tap or scan to pay with these, stablecoins complete the transaction in real time, with local currency arriving instantly on the other side.
“No user cares whether a payment runs on stablecoins or fiat; they only care if the payment goes through,” Liu said.
That stance 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. This rollout, in partnership with the Solana Foundation, marks the first time that both tokens will live natively on a high-speed blockchain.
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 often,” Liu said. “Payments are starting to look more like internet data streams, continuous, low cost and embedded directly into applications.”
XSGD already leads the non-USD stablecoin market in Southeast Asia with a share of more than 70%. It maintains a 1:1 peg to the Singapore dollar, supported by monthly revisions. This peg gained further relevance early this year when the Singapore dollar hit an 11-year high against the US dollar.
Looking out over Singapore
Now StraitsX is looking beyond Singapore. A cross-border corridor with Thailand is set to go live 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 stablecoin-powered payment hiding in plain sight.
Liu said the model follows a familiar playbook. For example, GrabPay and Alipay+ integrations required no user training. Yet the company has seen a 400% increase in merchant transaction volume and a sixfold increase in the number of unique users transacting with these merchants month over month.
Similar rollouts are planned in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Like driving an electric car
Visa, one of StraitsX’s largest 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 in the same way as traditional ones, complete with chargeback protection and fiat settlements.
“It’s like driving an electric car versus a car running on fuel on the same highway,” Kim said. “The vehicle is different, but the road signs, the toll booths and the rules don’t change.”
The growth fits a pattern visible across the industry. Full-stack crypto card issuers such as Rain and Reap, which have direct Visa principal membership and manage their own settlement, have risen rapidly. Rain to over $3 billion annually and Reap to over $6 billion.
Money transfers are an important case. The World Bank estimates that sending $200 internationally still costs an average of 6.49%. With stablecoins, these fees drop dramatically.
Looking ahead, Kim sees stablecoin cards evolving beyond utility. She expects future offerings to include insights into real-time consumption, cross-border perks and reward systems tailored to user behavior.
For Liu, success means disappearing. The best stablecoin infrastructure, he said, is one that people can’t see. The deal just works.
