When we talk about payment vision and discuss PayFi narratives, little do we know that cryptocurrency payments centered on stablecoins have quietly advanced to the stage of application landing.
The CoinGate 2024 Cryptocurrency Payment Report also points out that CoinGate processed 1,677,288 cryptocurrency payments that year, of which 35.5% were completed in stablecoin form.
At the same time, traditional payment giants such as Stripe, Paypal, Visa, and Mastercard have also entered the space.
However, despite the fact that cryptocurrency payments can now achieve payment functions in real life, Mass Adoption still remains at the 'last mile'.
According to eMarketer's forecast, from 2024 to 2026, while the number of cryptocurrency payment users in the U.S. is expected to grow rapidly by 82%, the payment share will only increase by about 20%, reaching 39.1% of U.S. users. Additionally, the report predicts that by 2026, only 2.6% of users globally will use cryptocurrency payments.
CoinGate's data also confirms this—21% of U.S. orders use cryptocurrency payments, Germany is at 6-6.5%, the UK at 5.2-5.7%, and emerging markets like Nigeria and Ukraine do not exceed 1%.
What is the reason for this?
Ecological Map: Current State of the Cryptocurrency Payment Industry Chain
Imagine that when you buy a drink at a convenience store abroad, you can simply open your mobile wallet, scan a code, and complete the payment with cryptocurrency—without a bank card, without cumbersome binding, and with instant settlement.
This is the daily scenario that cryptocurrency payments should truly achieve for Mass Adoption, and it is also the goal that the entire industry is currently striving for.
To achieve such a seamless and convenient cryptocurrency payment experience, a complex and coordinated infrastructure needs to be supported behind the scenes. Every link in the chain, from asset issuance, payment transit, user entry to merchant terminals, is indispensable.
Asset issuance
In the payment field, although any cryptocurrency can theoretically be used for transfers, in practice, BTC and stablecoins have become the most commonly used payment mediums due to considerations of price volatility and payment settlement stability, with stablecoins showing a clear dominant position in both transaction count and amount.
Currently, Circle (USDC), Tether (USDT), and PayPal (PYUSD) are the major stablecoin issuers. Among them, USDC and USDT are widely circulated across multiple blockchain networks and have become mainstream payment methods. In particular, USDT, according to CoinGate's report, accounts for 97.2% of transaction volume, while USDC ranks second.
Currently, stablecoin issuers are actively expanding their cooperation channels with payment gateways, cross-border settlement platforms, and traditional financial institutions.
For example, Circle has partnered with Visa since 2023 to integrate USDC into Visa's cross-border settlement network, covering approximately 190 countries, effectively reducing friction costs in traditional foreign exchange transactions; PayPal also launched PYUSD in 2024 and is gradually integrating it into Venmo and X (formerly Twitter), expanding the application of stablecoins in social payment scenarios.
Payment transit
The payment transit phase plays a crucial role in connecting on-chain asset flow with off-chain consumption systems.
Native cryptocurrency payment transit, such as Binance Pay, Coinbase Commerce, and AlchemyPay, focuses on bridging on-chain assets with real fiat systems, assuming key functions such as asset exchange, transaction matching, and payment clearing.
At the same time, traditional payment giants are also accelerating their expansion into the cryptocurrency payment field.
In February 2025, Stripe acquired the stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge for $1.1 billion, marking its formal entry into the on-chain settlement field; Visa chose to collaborate with Circle to support USDC clearing in its cross-border settlement network and gradually expand to high-performance public chains like Solana.
User entry
In the early development of cryptocurrency payments, users mainly used cryptocurrency debit cards, U cards, etc., as payment entry points, converting on-chain assets into fiat account balances, and then connecting to traditional VISA or Mastercard clearing systems to achieve consumption payments. Although this model has broadened the asset usage scenarios, it still relies on traditional financial infrastructure and has not truly realized the native circulation of on-chain assets.
As wallet applications continue to evolve, on-chain wallets are gradually becoming new user entry points for cryptocurrency payments. Mainstream wallets like MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and Bitget Wallet not only manage user assets and transaction signatures but also enable users to initiate payment requests directly via QR codes and other methods by integrating on-chain payment APIs or third-party payment gateway interfaces, allowing them to use stablecoins and other on-chain assets for consumption, bypassing traditional fiat account systems.
Merchant terminal
Merchant terminals cover industries such as retail, e-commerce, tourism, and hospitality, and are the final application scenario for cryptocurrency payments to achieve Mass Adoption in the real world, also serving as the core driving force for the industry chain to complete the closed loop.
Traditionally, due to factors such as technical barriers, volatility risks, and compliance uncertainties, merchants have been cautious about directly receiving cryptocurrency assets. In recent years, as stablecoins have become more popular, payment gateway technologies have matured, and settlement cycles have shortened, merchants' willingness to adopt cryptocurrency payments has gradually increased. According to an NFT Evening report, the number of merchants accepting cryptocurrency payments worldwide reached 12,834 in 2024, a 50% increase from 2023. Among them, Europe leads with 5,677 merchants, while Brazil ranks first among countries with 1,292 merchants.
At the same time, some regional markets, such as Southeast Asia and Latin America, which have a high penetration of mobile payments, have become pioneering areas for cryptocurrency payment applications. Platforms like PayPal, AlchemyPay, and Binance Pay collaborate with local merchant networks to promote cryptocurrency payments in real consumption scenarios, gradually breaking the path dependence of traditional payment systems.
The crux of the last mile: Why is it stuck at the consumption end?
In today's continuously improved stablecoin settlement system and evolving wallet functions, why has cryptocurrency payment not yet penetrated daily consumption scenarios?
From a technical and product perspective, users can currently settle quickly using cryptocurrency, but in the real consumption end, the lagging user experience constitutes an insurmountable 'last mile'.
High integration costs
Currently, one of the biggest resistances to cryptocurrency payments at the merchant end comes from the "disconnection between wallets and merchant systems". Due to the lack of a unified standardized structure, merchants often need to conduct redundant development for different wallets and different chain environments when integrating cryptocurrency payments, significantly increasing integration difficulty and costs.
According to a Deloitte survey, 89% of surveyed companies reported that the complexity of integrating digital currencies with existing financial infrastructure is one of the main challenges. In response, Pakning Luk, strategic director of the blockchain payment gateway Paydify, proposed at the Money20/20 summit to connect all wallets and blockchains, support instant settlement of stablecoins, and zero fees to make it easy for global merchants and users to receive and pay in cryptocurrency.
Long settlement cycles
Although on-chain payments theoretically support instant settlement, in actual commercial environments, the settlement process still heavily relies on traditional payment infrastructure.
Taking Stripe as an example, while it provides on-chain payment functions, merchants usually have to wait 2-3 business days to complete the funds' arrival. This delay poses a significant cash flow management obstacle for retail and cross-border trade enterprises that require high liquidity.
Ecological Island
The resistance on the user side comes from the increasingly severe fragmentation of the cryptocurrency payment ecosystem in a multi-chain environment.
When users make on-chain payments, they often need to manually switch chain networks or wallet plugins, increasing operational complexity and affecting payment smoothness. Meanwhile, some large payment platforms, due to platform lock-up strategies, deeply bind merchants within their own ecosystems, limiting their flexibility to switch to other payment networks and exacerbating the 'ecological island' phenomenon.
Taking Binance Pay as an example, its payment path is primarily limited to the Binance ecosystem, with limited support for non-Binance wallet users, making it difficult to achieve interoperability with other mainstream wallets (such as MetaMask, Bitget Wallet, etc.) or non-BSC public chains, further raising the liquidity barrier for on-chain payments.
High volatility
Even if a merchant successfully integrates cryptocurrency payments, the problem of asset value instability due to price fluctuations remains one of the key factors constraining its large-scale application.
Compared to the stable and predictable settlement amounts in fiat payment systems, during the on-chain payment process, especially when using highly volatile assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, merchants face significant exchange rate loss risks.
Even the cryptocurrency payment model centered on stablecoins is not completely risk-free. For example, in extreme market conditions, some pegged stablecoins (such as USDT, USDC) have experienced temporary decoupling, raising concerns among merchants.
In addition, most current cryptocurrency payment solutions have failed to achieve payment as lock pricing (i.e., locking the settlement exchange rate at the moment of payment initiation), causing price slippage during on-chain confirmation time during the payment process, which further amplifies the merchant's risk exposure.
From integration complexity to price volatility, the real challenges of cryptocurrency payments are not the technology itself, but the channel structure that has not yet been truly connected between the chain and people.
Outlook on cryptocurrency payments
When we look back at the development of cryptocurrency payments over the past few years, we find that it has never lacked technology, but rather a true 'usability leap'—from on-chain accounts to merchant terminals, from wallet operations to daily habits.
Currently, the premise of this leap has already matured:
Stablecoin regulation is gradually being implemented, with issuers like Circle and Tether actively promoting industry compliance standards in various regions in Europe, America, and Asia;
Global payment interface standardization is underway, for example, several Southeast Asian countries are promoting national-level QR payment interoperability standards;
Cross-chain interoperability protocols (such as Cosmos IBC, LayerZero) are also breaking ecological fragmentation and building a universal asset circulation network.
The puzzle of infrastructure is being completed, and the Mass Adoption of cryptocurrency payments is also within reach.
At this point, what truly determines whether cryptocurrency payments can cross this 'last mile' is not the superiority of the protocol or the multitude of functions, but whether it can provide merchants and users with a 'no need to understand blockchain' experience.
When offline merchants do not need to integrate multiple wallet SDKs, users do not have to switch chain networks or bear slippage costs, and when cryptocurrency assets are no longer just investment targets but become 'everyday currency' in restaurant QR codes, app subscriptions, and cross-border settlements, cryptocurrency payments can be considered truly realized.
This requires not only technical openness but also a deep understanding and continuous optimization of 'scene adaptation', 'merchant trust', and 'user fluency'.
Only by bridging this 'last mile' can we truly welcome the era of large-scale cryptocurrency payments.
Mass Adoption is not just about being on-chain; it's about that one scan-to-pay in the streets and alleys.
Related Information
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