Across Asia-Pacific (APAC), crypto cards are quietly moving from niche experimentation to real-world utility. What was once widely viewed as speculative is increasingly being designed for practical use by helping consumers spend, send and store, particularly across borders. At the centre of this movement are stablecoins, improving regulatory clarity and fintechs like RedotPay, which are bridging crypto and traditional payment rails in ways that feel familiar to everyday users.
As discussed on The Issuer Academy podcast, APAC is emerging as one of the most important regions globally for crypto card adoption, not because of hype, but because the region has real consumer and business needs that legacy payment systems don’t always meet efficiently.
One of the most persistent misconceptions about crypto payments is that they exist mainly for trading and speculation. As Jonathan Chan, Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at RedotPay, puts it “Many people still think that crypto is just for speculation and cannot solve real-world problems.” He adds an important nuance that explains why crypto cards are gaining ground, “Crypto often just sits behind the scenes, facilitating everyday payments.”
RedotPay was founded in 2023 to solve a straightforward but meaningful challenge. Many people held digital assets, but lacked a secure, affordable, user-friendly way to use that value in everyday life. RedotPay’s early mindset was simple, make crypto usable and that philosophy is reflected in its proposition to help users “spend crypto like fiat.” What this signals is a broader trend in payments that shows that underlying rails are becoming less visible, and the user experience is becoming the product.
In practice, crypto cards work best when consumers do not need to think about whether they’re spending crypto, stablecoins or fiat. They simply want to tap, pay and move on. When built properly, crypto becomes an invisible layer of value transfer, powering transactions while the card experience stays familiar.
APAC’s rapid adoption of crypto cards isn’t accidental. According to Minh Ha Truong, Head of Growth APAC at Paymentology, there are several structural reasons the region is uniquely suited to this kind of innovation. Minh Ha explains that APAC has been a “hotbed for innovation,” driven by its expanding digital economy and widespread comfort with digital payments across many markets.
The cross-border nature of the region is also central to this story. Many APAC consumers and businesses operate across borders as a matter of routine, whether through remittances, travel, regional trade or remote work. Minh Ha then goes on to highlight why stablecoins matter so much here “Stablecoins offer an efficient and cost-effective solution for cross-border payments, which is extremely important for businesses and individuals in Asia Pacific.”
Regulatory clarity is another strong driver. Minh Ha points to markets such as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore as examples of jurisdictions where clearer frameworks are supporting stablecoin innovation. That regulatory direction matters because it gives fintechs space to build responsibly, earn trust and scale. As podcast host Merusha Naidu also notes, APAC consumers tend to be highly open to change, particularly when the new option is faster or more convenient. In her words, customers in APAC are “open to what is more convenient and more efficient,” and they tend to validate quickly whether a product’s use case is truly solving a real problem.
Red Dot Pay’s crypto card proposition is built around simplicity and inclusion, but it also recognises the realities of compliance and risk. Users begin with onboarding that includes KYC and AML checks, which is foundational when bridging crypto value with everyday payments. After onboarding, users fund a wallet with stablecoins or other supported digital assets, and they can also obtain stablecoin assets through fiat funding in supported currencies.
From there, the user journey becomes about choice. Jonathan frames it through the lens of value transfer, money is ultimately used to buy something, exchange something or send value to someone else. He describes how, once users hold value in-wallet, they may choose to store that value as a form of preservation, particularly in markets where people experience currency instability or inflation. As he explains “In some countries, people don’t just want to spend, they want a place to preserve value.” Once that value is stored, users can still decide whether to spend locally, travel and use the same card experience or send money to family and friends in other regions.
RedotPay’s challenge, like many regional fintechs, is delivering consistent experiences across many countries while dealing with different languages, cultures and regulatory expectations. Jonathan captures the complexity in a simple line “Our key is simplicity,” but he also admits that achieving simplicity is hard because it requires deeply understanding payments while hiding that complexity from users.
The most compelling argument for crypto cards in APAC is not novelty, it is access. Jonathan’s definition of inclusion is direct and human “Inclusion means empowering individuals who are left behind such as migrant workers, overseas students and unbanked families.” He also points to small businesses that struggle to access affordable services from legacy banking systems and that may face friction when attempting to move money or accept payments.
Crypto cards can play a meaningful role here because they combine two worlds, the accessibility and programmability of blockchain-based value transfer, and the global usability of card rails. That combination makes it possible for users to hold and access funds more continuously, including when they move across borders. Merusha emphasises this reality through a relatable example, noting that in some markets many people may only have an ATM card and cannot pay online or participate fully in the digital economy. In that context, a crypto card linked to a wallet experience can become more than a product feature, it can be an entry point into modern financial services.
Minh Ha adds that innovation in digital wallets and cross-border payments helps close the inclusion gap by increasing access to services in underserved areas, lowering transaction costs that can otherwise be punitive for lower-income users and improving speed and efficiency by reducing reliance on physical infrastructure. She also highlights the role of ongoing visibility and education in helping users build financial literacy and become more confident participants in the economy.
Even when the front-end experience is simple, trust is earned through infrastructure. Both RedotPay and Paymentologyemphasise that users ultimately care less about whether a transaction is routed through crypto or fiat rails and more about whether their money is safe and reliably accessible.
From an issuing and processing perspective, Paymentology supports partners like RedotPay by enabling secure and compliant card programmes. Minh Ha explains that tokenization plays an important role in protecting sensitive card data, while transaction processing capabilities cover essential functions such as authorisation, clearing and settlement when value moves onto fiat rails. She also highlights robust security measures for fraud and risk management and the practical benefit for fintechs which includes partnering with an issuer-processor that can reduce build time and cost, allowing them to focus on core user experience and product differentiation.
Minh Ha also stresses why resilience matters in modern payments. Multi-cloud architecture and avoiding vendor lock-in reduce single points of failure and help support high availability, which is essential for services users expect to work at any time. Merusha reinforces that payments never sleep, and that strong resilience is particularly important when users are accustomed to always-on access to their digital assets.
Jonathan sees this future as collaborative rather than competitive. He argues that trust is built through reliability and that the next phase of stablecoin adoption will depend on different experts working together. As he puts it, “It’s less about competition. It’s more about the combination of different expertise coming together,” with the ultimate goal being a smoother user experience where the rails happen quietly “behind the scenes.”
If this article on crypto cards and stablecoin-powered payments in APAC sparked your interest, explore “How Card-as-a-Service works” It unpacks how modern issuing infrastructure enables fintechs to launch, scale and innovate faster, covering many of the same themes discussed here, from regulatory readiness and resilience to the power of partnership in building next-generation payment experiences.