🙏 CardsFTW is made possible in part by our paid subscribers. If you’re one of them, thank you. If you’re not, please consider supporting CardsFTW (who knows, maybe you can expense it!) Fanatics Announces an Open Loop CardFanatics, Inc. is a global digital sports platform with 22,000 employees and brands like Topps, Mitchell & Ness, and Lids that manufactures licensed sports merchandise, trading cards and collections, and offers sports betting. The company has offered the FanCash Rewards Card, a private label card with Synchrony Bank for a number of years that earns 4% FanCash (the company’s proprietary loyalty currency) on purchases at Fanatics.  This is NOT the new card. Thank goodness. Frances would be a good card name. Last week, the company announced the upcoming launch of an open-loop credit card this spring at the NRF show. According to founder and CEO Michael Rubin, “There’s never been a credit card that a sports fan can actually care about.” Sports credit cards have always been a tough business. An old joke was that the only reason the NFL card portfolio existed was so the issuing bank’s CEO always got a Super Bowl ticket. Past efforts have shown that teams are frustrated by low volume and fan rejections. Broader underwriting has led to underperforming portfolios. Fanatics is not a single team, though, with extremely broad coverage across most major sports leagues. I am also fascinated by the alignment between sports betting and traditional financial services. More to come when details are announced later this year. Bilt’s Confusing LaunchFintech card program Bilt had a big week: it announced its new cards and rewards program. Then they changed the setup for their new cards and reward program. And, it jumped on the news cycle by announcing that the new Bilt cards would have a 10% APR on new purchases for the first year, to align with Trump’s request. Wow.  They do look nice! Snazzy MC logos. I’ve been asked quite a few times if the new Bilt card is worth it. I’ll be frank: it’s so complicated I don’t know. Having both Bilt points and Bilt cash is a lot. I think I might come from the school of: if it is too complicated, it simply isn’t worth it; or, my time is also worth money. It was so complex that Bilt rolled out a 2.0 version that gives users two reward options. Oy. I might be wrong. The internet says the average mortgage payment is around $2,300, and the average rent payment is around $1,700. Earning points on that is valuable. However, my reading of the Bilt program is that you need to spend at least 50% to 75% of your rent amount on other goods on the Bilt card to make this worthwhile. Given that rent is supposed to be 30% of your income, that’s a lot of discretionary spending. I do think Bilt will continue to grow, however. They’ll find a way to explain this, and the program will make sense to some users. More power to them. I’ll continue to pay my mortgage the old-fashioned way, with an ACH to my lender. Cards Go [Semi-]AtomicProgramming Note: Today’s main story is a guest post by Nate Krinsky, Head of Product at Agora. Introduction I spent the first fifteen years of my career in “TradFi” (that means traditional finance, not trade finance, a mistake “normies,” like myself, can sometimes make). When I left TradFi to join a stablecoin issuer, and was informed of said trad-ness, I still assumed, if I ever did write a blog post, it might be about L1 architecture or ZK proofs, but nope: it’s card programs. CardsFTW + Stablecoins = LFG. This past summer, aka "Stablecoin Summer," marked the shift. U.S. regulatory clarity screamed "GO" and everyone from fintechs to Fortune 500s scrambled to move capital. That momentum had no chill and barrelled straight into winter. We are witnessing a collision of operating models: TradFi and fintechs are getting on-chain, while crypto companies race towards compliance and fiat rails. The cultural mashup of crypto degens and white-shoe bankers attempting to change global finance together provides endless popcorn moments and bloated conference schedules. But the real output isn't just bad anthropology: it is product. Cards have become the nexus of this convergence, and they are going atomic. Going [Semi-]AtomicLast month, Visa announced stablecoin support for both Issuer and Merchant settlement for accounts at Cross River Bank (CRB) and Lead Bank (Lead). This isn't end-to-end “atomic settlement,” nor is it “atomic commerce,” but it's moving the entire space in that direction. Wade Arnold, Founder of Moov, is worth repeating: Networks do not move money. They sell a promise that money will move.
A common crypto-centric analogy that’s circulating to describe what’s happening here, from both Visa and Rain, is that stablecoins are the L1 and Visa is the L2. Stablecoins for settlement. Visa for merchant access. Rain is noticeably absent from Visa’s announcement, even though they’ve already been doing this with Visa on the issuing side for years. I’ll get into that later. This does not turn Visa into a blockchain. It is optimizing settlement. The cardholder experience and merchant interactions could have nothing to do with blockchains, stablecoins, or crypto, and still benefit from this launch. This is still not a fully atomic settlement just yet. There are intermediaries, risk buffers, and reconciliation layers. But it is closer to instant and final than what most card programs have historically operated. True atomic settlement implies instant, simultaneous exchange of value. For companies banking at CRB or Lead, you can now settle with Visa directly 24/7/365. Issuers (and partner fintechs and neobanks) gain greater flexibility in managing liquidity and settlement timing. No more pesky prefunding increases before that long holiday weekend! This should be a welcome and significant bump for fintechs working with these banks. Networks reduce risk and issuer tension. Merchants get paid faster. Cardholders may benefit? Do you believe in trickle-down value? I imagine some issuers will pass savings to their customers somehow. Stablecoins > Wires (this can be a separate post) But for now, it must be in USDC, on Solana, and you must be banking with CRB or Lead. Issuers win. Networks win. Merchants win. Cardholders tbd. Crypto Native Card Operator What the Visa announcement did not highlight is that a number of crypto-native issuers have been building and running versions of this model for years already. Stablecoin settlement is not a future roadmap item for them. It is how their systems were designed to work from the start. Their card programs also tend to involve customer-facing blockchain and stablecoin offerings. Rain is one example of this approach. Rather than retrofitting stablecoins onto legacy infrastructure, Rain built issuer operations assuming digital dollars would be the settlement asset. Custody, authorization logic, and treasury operations were designed around that assumption. The company’s recent Series C is notable not for its size, but because it signals that this model is moving from early adoption to scale for global enterprises. As more companies enter the space, differentiation will stop coming from whether stablecoins are supported and start coming from how they are supported. The differences will show up in authorization timing, custody design, treasury operations, and how systems behave under stress. There are still very few teams that understand these technologies, and that gap will matter as volumes scale. To understand how a stablecoin-backed card program actually works, a look at the names on the plastic or metal might help, but as most of this audience already knows, there’s more to it than that. From a cardholder’s perspective, the experience is familiar. Under the hood, however, the system added several new, tightly coordinated layers, each with its own responsibilities and failure modes. All of this also means more options and decisions for new card program creators! Semi-Atomic Card StackWhat follows is a simplified view of that stack. It is not exhaustive, but it should clarify who does what and where stablecoins meaningfully change the flow. 0. Start - Cardholder The payment journey begins with a cardholder attempting to make a purchase. Who: Cardholder/Customer or Business
Action: Swipes, taps, enters card details at the point of sale, or buys something online 1. Card Issuer The issuer manages regulatory compliance and validates spending permissions before any blockchain interaction occurs. Depending on the issuer's infrastructure, this layer may be tightly integrated with custody arrangements. Who: Rain, CRB, Lead
Cardholder Interaction Note: Usually via another fintech that partners with the Issuer (Chime, Current, Brex, Ramp)
Key Question: Does the Issuer have a setup that allows for settling with the network in stablecoins? Who manages the program?
Function: KYC/AML gatekeeper and cardholder verification 2. CustodyFunds reside in one of two models: - Custodial: Partner holds keys via licensed custody provider
- Self-custodial: User-controlled wallets with smart contract spending limits
This layer defines who can sign, under what conditions, and how stablecoins can be programmatically reserved or spent. Who: Fireblocks, Bitgo
Cardholder Interaction Note: Likely depends on what type of custody.
Key Question: Who controls the private keys?
Function: Holds the stablecoins and enforces spending constraints via smart contracts 3. StablecoinStablecoins (USDC, AUSD) are paired with high-throughput L1 Chains (Solana, Arc, Monad, Avalanche) or L2 chains (Arbitrum, Base, Polygon) to ensure: fast settlement, micro-transaction costs, and retail-scale liquidity. Who: Circle, Agora
Cardholder Interaction Note: Depends if the Customer or Business knows or cares that there are stables under the hood.
Key Question: Does the cardholder see additional rewards from the stablecoin?
Function: Acts as the on-chain dollar that backs card spend, allowing real-time balance checks, programmable controls, and real-time settlement 4. Issuer Processor The issuer processor must: - Receive a Visa authorization request
- Query on-chain balance
- Apply dynamic authorization rules based on real-time context (velocity, risk scoring, liability shift, spending patterns, etc.)
- Reserve stablecoins to guarantee settlement
- Returns approval/decline to the network
Legacy processors are static, binary gates that bleed revenue through fraud and false declines. Modern processors act as programmable governance layers, injecting real-time context and continuous risk signals into every authorization. Who: Marqeta, Lithic
Cardholder Interaction Note: The Customer or Business usually has no idea.
Key Question: What happens in real-time and what doesn’t? Can your auth decision engine query on-chain balances and execute smart contract holds within card network SLAs?
Function: Translate Visa authorization (BAU) → pull-in blockchain query (NEW) 5. Card Network The network treats this as a standard message, routing between the merchant acquirer/payment processor and issuer. The underlying blockchain complexity happens outside of this. Who: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Capital One/Discover
Cardholder Interaction Note: Logo on Card
Key Question: What stables do you accept?
Function: Transaction routing 6. Merchant Acquirer/Payment Processor [Payout to Merchant Only]Two stable settlement paths: - Acquirer/Processor receives stablecoins from the network and off-ramps to local currency to send to the merchant
- Merchant accepts stablecoins directly (possibly in real-time), and then holds a balance in a yield-bearing stable (hopefully) or immediately off-ramps to fiat
Who: Visa (direct for Stablecoins), Velocity
Cardholder Interaction Note: The Customer or Business usually has no idea.
Key Question: As the merchant, how quickly do I get the funds?
Function: Pays merchants, traditionally in fiat T+2, sometimes same-day, or even now in real-time using stablecoins 7. End - Merchant The merchant receives funds in their preferred form (fiat or stablecoin). Who: Merchant/Business
Action: Receives payment What’s missing? Lots! Again, this is the gist. I’ve left out a lot in the flow above, including, but not limited to: Payment Processing, FX, Smart Contracts, Risk Solutions, Ledgers, Blockchain Network, Wallet Connections, Indexing, Program Managers, and Interchange. I also left out Stripe. They now participate in almost every part of the flow above and more. What Is Dead May Never DieShamir Karkal, founder of Simple, Sila, and now Aleph Invariance, wrote a post a while back reminding folks that Old Payment Systems Never Die. The payment layer cake just gets larger and stranger. Stablecoins have not dented network volumes; they've expanded them, for now anyway. The product is a paradox: Plastic and 1970s messaging in the front, 400 millisecond settlement on the blockchain in the back. Visa nailed the stablecoin mullet strategy. Visa has almost 200 million merchant locations worldwide. You swipe plastic. The network gets a bit. Settlement happens on-chain. These analogies, maybe this whole post for that matter, might not make a whole lot of sense, but the product somehow does, and so does the distribution. Warning, Excitement, PredictionThe stablecoin space has already entered the phase of the cycle where every company is starting to say the same or similar-sounding things. They are not, I repeat, not the same. These systems are icebergs. You see a token. Beneath the surface, you find a web of compliance, indexing, and liquidity. Stablecoins reset the conversation around value, control, and access. - TradFi, which missed the fintech boom, can skip a generation.
- Fintech companies that did the hard work, built the right infrastructure, found the right audience, or did both will pivot quickly.
- Crypto companies have mainstream validation and vibes.
We have a renewed chance to realize the original promise of fintech. It starts with bold moves. Add Visa buying Circle to the 2026 bingo card. Further Reading I first met Matthew when I was doing due diligence on which BaaS bank to partner with for a previous start-up. The questions should have been: Which BaaS bank would let me be a customer for a price we could afford? But that’s a different story. Matthew was kind enough to help out a founder he had little connection with, something for which I’m still grateful. I’ve been following his content ever since, and after running into him at Fintech Nerdcon, I was pumped at the opportunity to contribute to CardsFTW. I tried my best to get this guest post rebranded StablecoinsFTW, maybe next time! If you found this helpful at all, please do two things: - Subscribe to CardFTW
- Follow me @nathankrinsky. I don’t tweet a lot. But if I get up to 1,000 followers, my company will pay to have our pretty gold logo next to my name.
About Nate KrinskyNate Krinsky is the Head of Product at Agora Finance, a stablecoin issuer and infrastructure company. He has spent his career building and operating financial infrastructure across traditional finance, fintech, and now blockchain, including leading product teams at Current and American Express. CardsFTWCardsFTW, released weekly on Wednesdays, offers insights and analysis on new credit and debit card industry products for consumers and providers. CardsFTW is authored and published by Matthew Goldman and the team at Totavi, a boutique consulting firm specializing in fintech product management & marketing. We bring real operational experience that varies from the earliest days of a startup to high-growth phases and public company leadership. Visit www.totavi.com to learn more. Interested in reaching our audience? You can sponsor CardsFTW.
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