Visa and Mesh let wallets spend stablecoins at 175 million merchants

Visa is wiring crypto wallets into its card network through a partnership with Mesh, the companies announced Monday. Users of participating wallets would spend cryptocurrency and stablecoin balances directly at more than 175 million merchant locations in over 200 countries and territories, without moving funds to a bank account and without applying for a separate crypto card.

The announcement came from Mesh. Visa's network does the merchant-facing work it already does for plastic cards: terminals, online checkout, and settlement into the currencies merchants actually bank in. Cointelegraph reported that merchants keep their existing checkout systems, and Crypto Briefing added that no new in-store equipment is required.

How a wallet becomes a card

Under the arrangement, Mesh sits between the wallet and the Visa rails. When a user pays, Mesh funds the transaction and converts between supported cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and fiat as needed. A Visa payment credential gets provisioned inside the wallet app in the background, so the same balance works at a contactless terminal or an online checkout without a physical card ever being issued. Mesh also takes on customer onboarding and know-your-client checks for the wallets that plug in, which removes a chunk of compliance buildout from platforms that would otherwise run their own card programs.

Mesh CEO and cofounder Bam Azizi framed the deal as closing a gap that card products only papered over. "Crypto never had a spending problem - it has a last-mile problem, and until now, closing it meant getting a separate card," he said.

The numbers behind the pitch come from Mesh's own research. The company counts 774 million crypto owners worldwide as of June 2026 and put monthly crypto card spending near $1.5 billion in late 2025, a small slice of both totals.

Where Mesh already plugs in

Mesh connects more than 200 enterprises to hundreds of wallets, exchanges, and financial platforms, including Kalshi, Tools for Humanity, Felix Pago, Majority, and KAST, according to Crypto Briefing. The company's existing integrations include Bybit Pay, which went live in September and let exchange customers spend from balances on supported platforms.

Capital has followed that footprint. In January, Mesh raised $75 million in a round led by Dragonfly that valued the company at $1 billion, Cointelegraph noted.

Visa has been building the stablecoin side of its business in parallel. Its work with Bridge, the stablecoin platform Stripe acquired, has pushed stablecoin-linked Visa cards toward more than 100 countries. The Mesh deal is a different route into the same spend problem: instead of loading a stablecoin onto a card, the card layer attaches to money that never leaves the user's wallet until the moment of purchase.

What platforms and users get, and what stays open

For a wallet or exchange, the pitch is operational. Running a crypto card program means BIN sponsorship, fraud rules, customer support for declines, and a compliance stack for every cardholder. Mesh absorbs onboarding, identity checks, and payment orchestration, so a platform can offer spending without becoming a card issuer in all but name. That model already worked at smaller scale with Bybit Pay, where exchange customers spent directly from balances starting in September.

For the user, the trade shows up at the moment of purchase. The wallet decides which asset funds the transaction and when conversion happens, and the merchant still receives ordinary Visa settlement. Neither company said which cryptocurrencies and stablecoins would qualify, how conversion rates would be set, or what happens in jurisdictions where wallet-based spending runs into local rules.

The competitive backdrop matters. Exchange-branded cards have carried crypto spending for years by wrapping balances in a plastic or virtual card issued through partner banks. The Mesh arrangement removes that wrapper. If it ships as described, the card layer becomes invisible plumbing inside apps people already open, and the merchant never learns that the money started as USDC in a self-custody-adjacent wallet rather than a debit balance.

What is still missing

Neither company named the wallets that would go first, the devices that will support the credential, or a launch date. Mesh said those details come as rollout plans firm up. Until they do, the partnership is a plumbing commitment rather than a product people can use this week. The merchant side, at least, is already built.