Stablecoins are starting to show up in everyday card payments in a way merchants may not even notice.
According to The Block on Aug. 19, Rain CEO Farooq Malik said the stablecoin payment flows supported by Rain now reach more than 100,000 merchants, with most of those merchants unaware that settlement is happening through stablecoins behind the scenes.
Merchants see a standard card payment
That largely comes down to Rain’s product structure. The company issues Visa and Mastercard cards for businesses that settle against stablecoin balances. When a cardholder makes a purchase, the merchant receives what looks like a routine credit card payment, processed through the existing card-network clearing system. From the merchant side, there is no separate integration and no obvious sign that the funds originated from an on-chain stablecoin balance.
Malik has made a similar point before: the most successful stablecoin use case may be one that neither consumers nor merchants pay much attention to.
Using existing card rails to expand merchant reach
By placing stablecoins behind a familiar payment card, Rain can bypass the need for merchants to directly opt in to stablecoin acceptance. Instead, it can ride on the existing Visa and Mastercard networks, which the report said together reach more than 150 million merchants worldwide.
Under that setup, the merchant’s payment flow does not change. Stablecoins function as the settlement layer in the background, while the checkout experience remains the same as a conventional card transaction.
Rain says transaction volume is up about 10x this year
Rain has also been active on the partnership front. The company has expanded its card-issuing work with Visa and Mastercard. Western Union’s Stablecard is also supported by Rain, using the USDPT stablecoin for settlement while spending through the Visa network.
Rain said it has signed more than 100 partners, operates across more than 150 countries, and has grown transaction volume by about 10x so far this year.
As stablecoin usage gets packaged inside a card that looks and behaves like any other payment card, the line between traditional payments and stablecoin-based settlement is becoming harder to spot. That, in Rain’s framing, is one path for stablecoins to move into the mainstream.