MetaMask Launches Its First-Ever Crypto Debit Card, Focusing Heavily on Stablecoins

The concept of spending cryptocurrencies on everyday, regular purchases such as groceries and bills has resulted in the launch of several debit cards that let users

The concept of spending cryptocurrencies on everyday, regular purchases such as groceries and bills has resulted in the launch of several debit cards that let users spend crypto as easily as they would with regular money.

However, there were still points of friction, such as market volatility, fees, and low stablecoin adoption, that have kept crypto debit cards from really taking off.

Crypto Debit Cards

MetaMask, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform and crypto wallet provider, recently launched its first-ever crypto debit card with Mastercard. This card allows users to spend their digital assets directly from their self-custodial wallet.

Fascinatingly, it’s the first crypto card to focus so heavily on stablecoins such as Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), and e-money tokens such as Monerium’s GBPe and EURe as means of payment.

It currently supports only one volatile crypto, Wrapped Ethereum (WETH). The card also integrates with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Its fee structure is okay. USDC and USDT transactions will incur a variable but “typical” fee of $0.02. WETH transactions will incur a similar fee but with an additional 0.875% swap fee on top.

It’s the fifth crypto debit card to launch in 2025, following Zebec, OKX, KAST, and Limited Card. All of these cards have launched with stablecoin payments and low fees as their main offerings.

Now, with stablecoin regulations being pushed through the halls of the U.S. government, it’s just a matter of time before stablecoins proliferate beyond the confines of crypto cards and conversion fees.

Stable Adoption

The earliest crypto debit cards were launched more than ten years ago in 2014. The Xapo Bitcoin debit card was the world’s first BTC card. Later that year, BitPay’s pre-paid BTC/USD Visa Card was also rolled out.

In 2015, Coinbase and Wirex launched their debit cards, and eventually expanded their offerings from BTC to include altcoins such as Ethereum (ETH). They were some of the first multi-crypto debit cards in the world.

With all of these cards, support and offerings varied depending on the region. Furthermore, fees were often too high to justify using one daily.

When users pay with their crypto debit cards, the crypto needs to be converted into fiat first, and then it’s transferred. This incurred a spread fee of up to 1%, or a flat transaction fee of up to 2.49%.

Though some did offer generous crypto cashback offers, the experience wasn’t as frictionless as it could have been. That was, however, until stablecoin adoption took off.

When most of these earlier cards were launched, the two biggest players in the stablecoin sector were barely getting started. Tether (USDT) launched in 2014, and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) wouldn’t arrive until 2018.

It comes as the U.S. gears up to regulate dollar-denominated stablecoins at the Federal and State levels. This, to assert U.S. dollar dominance in the digital asset economy and open up new, frictionless, on and off-ramps between stablecoins, consumers, merchants, and the banks.