Crypto card volume hit $18 billion annualized—106% compound growth from early 2023. Rain just raised $250M at a $1.95B valuation, up 17x in 10 months. Something fundamental is shifting in how people access and spend digital dollars.
Nick Pinto, VP of BD & Partnerships at Rain, sat down with Amira Valliani on Bits to Bricks to explain what's driving this breakout—and what most people still get wrong about stablecoin infrastructure.
What Rain actually does
Rain is a stablecoin infrastructure company with 200 global clients. They're a Visa principal member (rare for non-banks in the US), which means they issue cards directly rather than relying on bank sponsors.
When someone swipes a Rain card, the stablecoin sits in a smart contract until the moment of purchase. Rain underwrites a line of credit against that collateral. The merchant gets paid in dollars through Visa's network. The user gets a familiar card experience, and the entire payment flow stays on-chain.
What's unique is that Rain settles all payment volume with Visa in stablecoins. No off-ramping. Visa redeems directly from Circle every day in USDC.
"The entire thing is taking place on-chain. We're settling with our partners on-chain or their customers directly."
They're the largest global stablecoin settler with Visa, processing billions in annualized volume.
Cards as the Trojan horse for stablecoin adoption
One striking insight from the conversation: stablecoin cards now rival peer-to-peer transfers in volume. Monthly crypto card spending grew from roughly $100 million in early 2023 to over $1.5 billion by late 2025. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers grew just 5% to $19 billion annualized over the same period.
In Pinto's view, cards won because they plugged into existing infrastructure: no merchant retraining required, no new payment terminals. The user swipes at Starbucks or buys Netflix exactly like they always have, and the innovation happens behind the scenes.
"Most people globally understand how to swipe at a Starbucks or use a card to pay for their Netflix subscription. The beauty of what we've built is that the end consumer should feel like it's any other card product they have."
Users don't need to know which blockchain. They don't need to manage wallets or understand gas fees. They just spend dollars—dollars that happen to be backed by stablecoins running on 12 different blockchains, including Solana.
Where the real growth is happening
Rain's initial customers were crypto-native companies, such as neobanks, exchanges, and buy-sell-hold platforms. But the enterprise shift is accelerating: they're now working with Western Union for remittances and other traditional financial players who want stablecoin infrastructure without building it themselves.
Latin America is driving significant adoption. Some clients launched targeting Colombia, then completely reoriented their strategy after seeing unexpected demand from Bolivia based on live spend data.
"We can turn on programs in every country in LATAM on day one. There's no additional contract or API needed. It's all out of the box."
The common thread across markets: access to the dollar. In emerging markets with currency instability, stablecoin cards are about preserving value and accessing global commerce.
"We're not replacing card infrastructure. We're extending dollar access to people who've never had it." — Nick Pinto, VP of BD & Partnerships at Rain
The post-GENIUS Act proliferation
Before the GENIUS Act passed last year, enterprises were cautiously exploring stablecoins. After regulatory clarity, the market shifted: now everyone wants to launch their own stablecoin.
"The biggest change I've seen is enterprises coming to us and their first question is: what stablecoin issuer should we work with to launch our own token?"
There are obvious benefits. Companies can capture yield economics from their own stablecoin float. There's branding value in having a proprietary token. But for many enterprises, the operational benefits matter most: it is cheaper and faster to move money using stablecoins on Solana compared to cross-border payments or wire transfers.
Pinto advocates for a measured approach. Use existing stablecoins with proven network effects first to understand actual demands and usage patterns. Then, once the economics and operational benefits are clear, consider launching your own token. The "crawl, walk, run" strategy prevents companies from over-investing in infrastructure before proving the use case.
The go-to-market story: from 6 clients to 200
Pinto joined as employee 12 in May 2024. At that point Rain had six clients and a corporate card product. Twenty-eight months later: nearly 100 employees, 200+ clients, billions in annualized volume, and three funding rounds (A, B, C) raised in 10 months.
Rain was patient and got all the necessary approvals from key players, and all the while, was building important relationships in the space.
"We had conversations, got dinner, hung out at conferences with all the relevant infrastructure providers in the space. Over time this flywheel effect happened where those partners would be asked: who should I work with on card issuance? We became the go-to."
The product quality helped. Their fast time to market, strong documentation, and sandbox environments meant that clients can go from signed MSA to cards in customers' hands faster.
This builds on top of Rain's "compliance-first" infrastructure that embeds regulatory requirements directly into their product. They use rigorous Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks, as well as apply geographic and sanctions controls (OFAC) to block transactions in restricted regions. In July 2025, Rain announced it achieved Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, ensuring secure handling of cardholder data. This complements their existing SOC 2 certification and the ongoing audits of the smart contracts by external third parties.
What disappears into the infrastructure
Rain is processing billions in annualized transactions. Cardholders are transacting at Alibaba, Amazon, Walmart using stablecoin balances. Meanwhile, merchants settling with the network in fiat have no idea. That invisibility was the key to adoption.
"We're settling with our partners on-chain, but the merchant doesn't even know that's happening."
Looking five years ahead, Pinto sees two paths for Rain:
First: make stablecoin-powered payments feel completely invisible. Rain already acquired Up Top (rewards platform) and Fern (stablecoin orchestrator) to build a one-stop shop for enterprise stablecoin infrastructure needs.
Second: entirely stablecoin-to-stablecoin financial systems. Card networks are valuable long-term partners, but there's innovation happening around terminal-level and network-level stablecoin transactions that could bypass traditional rails entirely.
"Who knows what the world looks like in five years? Maybe everything is just stablecoin to stablecoin."
For now, his focus is reach. Getting more credentialed cardholders, more volume through their rails, becoming a truly global enabler in every key market they can access. How they get there will depend on what happens next—regulation, market adoption, enterprise demand.
Cards proved to be the unlock stablecoins needed. They bridge digital assets and global commerce without displacing infrastructure that already works. And companies like Rain are capturing economics that used to be distributed across banks, processors, and networks by collapsing the stack into a single platform.
This article draws from Amira's conversation with Nick Pinto, VP of BD & Partnerships at Rain, on Bits to Bricks. For the full discussion on Rain and scaling stablecoin infrastructure, listen to the complete episode: