Global monthly spending on crypto cards, which let users pay for everyday purchases with stablecoins and other digital assets, topped $1 billion (about 1.32 trillion won) for the first time. Because the transactions run through overseas platforms, tax authorities cannot easily verify the records, raising concerns that the market will become a blind spot once South Korea begins taxing virtual asset gains.
Combined spending on cards issued by 29 providers reached $1.01 billion last month, according to a third-quarter industry report released on the 19th by crypto data provider CoinGecko. That is nearly triple the $398 million recorded in January. Cumulative third-quarter volume came to $2.63 billion, up about 58% from the previous quarter.
Quarterly growth has accelerated. Volume rose 8.4% to $1.67 billion in the second quarter from $1.54 billion in the first, then expanded more than 50% in the third. Over the same period, the total market value of stablecoins grew just 0.6%. Interest is also building in South Korea, where major crypto card apps were downloaded about 38,000 times in total between January last year and the end of July.
The market's growth creates a new burden for tax enforcement. If users move digital assets held on overseas exchanges or in personal wallets onto a crypto card platform and spend them there, both the investment and the payment can be completed without passing through a domestic exchange. In that case, records held by domestic operators alone are not enough to trace the transaction or verify gains and losses on disposal. RedotPay has stopped issuing new cards to users in South Korea, but existing subscribers may still be able to use theirs.
Industry officials say after-the-fact tax audits cannot easily close that gap either, given the difficulty of tracking large numbers of small overseas payments one by one and verifying the resulting gains and losses. "The crypto card market keeps growing, but identifying the tax base is not easy," an industry official said. "For users of overseas crypto cards, there could be a fairness issue in how taxes are enforced."