• Rain has launched Rewards, a program that allows stablecoin card issuers to offer branded loyalty programs with points, travel rewards, and statement credits directly within their own apps.
• The offering builds on Rain’s 2025 acquisition of rewards platform Uptop and is another example of fintech infrastructure providers expanding beyond payments into adjacent services like loyalty, identity, fraud prevention, and treasury management.
• As stablecoin card programs mature, providers are increasingly competing on customer engagement and retention, making rewards and other value-added services essential rather than optional features.

Stablecoin infrastructure platform Rain launched Rewards this week, a new loyalty capability for its card issuing stack. With Rewards, partners running Rain’s card programs can offer rewards for their cardholders in a fully branded experience.

Rain was founded in 2021 and has since launched more than 100 programs on its stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure platform. The company allows partners to move, store, and use stablecoins instantly through global payment cards, rewards, on and off ramps, digital wallets, and cross-border rails. Rain’s cards work at more than 175 million merchant locations in over 220 countries and territories.

The new Rewards capability is available to help every Rain partner compete with traditional fiat programs that have built loyal customer bases that drive higher spend. Just as with traditional card programs in the fiat realm, partners set the program name, define earn rates, and configure rewards redemption at the program level. The redemption experience for end customers is built into the partner’s app. Customers can apply points to a statement balance or redeem them through a white-labeled travel portal for hotels and flights. Rain plans to add more redemption offers soon.

“Card programs that win today are the ones that give people a reason to keep spending, and rewards have always been one of the most reliable ways to do that,” said CEO and Co-Founder Rain Farooq Malik. “What our team has built lets any partner launch a loyalty program that feels like theirs. The economics and the branding are entirely in their hands, and Rain has removed the integration work and vendor overhead that has historically kept rewards out of reach for so many programs.”

Powering the new Rewards program is Rain’s 2025 acquisition of onchain rewards platform Uptop. At the time, the deal signaled Rain’s intention to expand beyond payments infrastructure and into customer engagement tools. Rather than treating rewards as an add-on service, Rain is integrating loyalty directly into its platform so that stablecoin card programs can offer many of the same experiences that consumers have come to expect from traditional credit and debit card products.

Rain’s acquisition of Uptop is another example of the growing appetite among fintech infrastructure providers to own more of the services that sit adjacent to payments. Rather than acting solely as transaction processors, infrastructure companies are increasingly building or acquiring capabilities such as rewards, identity, fraud prevention, stablecoin settlement, and treasury management. The strategy helps providers capture a larger share of potential revenue while making their platforms more difficult for customers to replace.

The launch comes as the stablecoin card market is starting to form its own identity. Early crypto card programs differentiated themselves through access to digital assets, but they also need to compete with traditional card issuers on customer experience, engagement, and retention. As stablecoin-powered payment products become more mainstream, features like rewards, travel perks, and loyalty programs are likely to become table stakes rather than differentiators.

The announcement follows a successful beta with Avalanche Card, a crypto-backed Visa card that allows users to spend their USDC and AVAX stablecoins anywhere Visa is accepted. During the trial, cardholders enrolled in the Rewards program spent 25% more than those without it.

Photo by Cihan Yüce

• Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge is partnering with Banking Circle to enable clients to move stablecoins into and out of local currencies, with support for EUR, GBP, USD, and soon AUD.
• The partnership combines Bridge’s stablecoin capabilities with Banking Circle’s regulated banking infrastructure, correspondent banking network, and local clearing access to facilitate cross-border payments and fiat-to-stablecoin conversions.
• The deal reflects the growing convergence of traditional banking and stablecoin infrastructure, as businesses increasingly seek regulated on- and off-ramps that make stablecoins practical for everyday global payments.

Banking Circle, a Luxembourg-based bank, announced today that Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge is using it to move money across the globe.

Banking Circle’s money movement infrastructure enables Bridge’s clients to move stablecoins in and out of local currencies. Currently, Banking Circle supports EUR and GBP, and plans to offer support for AUD in the third quarter of this year. Bridge will also use Banking Circle’s SWIFT capabilities to allow its clients to send and receive USD.

By offering stablecoin on- and off-ramps to and from local currencies, Bridge is giving its clients the flexibility to send and receive payments in multiple European currencies without having to worry about holding the currencies themselves.

“As payment businesses continue to expand globally, access to reliable, scalable banking infrastructure is critical,” said Banking Circle Chief Digital Assets Officer Kirit Bhatia. “Banking Circle provides regulated banking rails, local clearing access, multi-currency accounts and cross-border payment capabilities through a single integration, helping companies simplify operations and accelerate growth in new markets.”

As a fully regulated, licensed bank, Banking Circle offers Bridge access to its correspondent banking network for global payments. The company was founded in 2013 to provide payments, banking, and lending infrastructure to financial institutions and regulated payment businesses.

The partnership highlights the growing convergence between stablecoin infrastructure providers and traditional banking institutions. While Bridge offers businesses a way to move value using stablecoins, Banking Circle provides the regulated banking rails, local clearing access, and correspondent banking relationships needed to move funds into and out of local currencies.

“Banking Circle’s API-led infrastructure and multi-currency capabilities support our continued global expansion,” said Bridge Head of Product Mai Leduc Blount. “By making it seamless for businesses to convert between fiat and stablecoins, we ensure that any business can use stablecoins for everyday expenses, all around the world.”

Bridge was founded in 2022 to serve as an alternative payment method to compete with SWIFT and credit cards and was acquired by Stripe in 2024 for $1.1 billion. Bridge’s technology allows businesses to move, store, and accept stablecoins using just a few lines of code. The company’s Issuance APIs help clients issue their own stablecoin and accept USD, EUR, USDC, USDT or any other stablecoin.

Photo by Tom Fisk

• Cash App launched Cash App Tags, NFC-enabled, payment “accessories” that let customers pay without their phone or card.
• The first of these new tags comes in the form of a wand, but the company said that other form factors will be available in the future.
• While payments companies have tried and failed to move the payments form factor from cards and phones, the wands may succeed because they are visible, social, and impossible to ignore.

Cash App announced a new payment form factor yesterday that is so outrageous it would have dropped the jaws of payments executives in 2014 to the floor. The payments company unveiled the first release of Cash App Tags, NFC-enabled, payment “accessories” that let customers pay without their phone or card.

The pilot Cash App Tag comes in the form of a pearlescent wand, aptly called Cash App Wand. Eligible users ages 13 and up with an active Cash App Card can activate their wand by linking their wand to their Cash App Card using the Cash App on their phone. Once the wand is activated, customers can tap to pay without holding a phone or card. 

The new form factors will work where Visa tap-to-pay is accepted and there are no minimum balance or activity requirements. Just like Cash App’s payment cards, Tags offer real-time transaction alerts, 24/7 fraud monitoring, and the ability to instantly lock, unlock, and deactivate them within the app.

Odds are that if you’re reading this, Cash App’s Tags aren’t marketed to your demographic. The company explicitly designed them for Gen Z customers as a new form of expression and for use in situations where phones aren’t allowed or are too cumbersome to pull out of a bag. Cash App is anticipating that users will want to collect them like Labubu dolls. In a recent survey of Gen Z consumers, the company found that 38% of this generation purchases collectibles, accessories, or limited edition items at least monthly.

“While digital wallets are invisible and physical cards are often buried in wallets, Cash App Tags are just the opposite,” said Block Hardware Lead Thomas Templeton. “We see a unique opportunity here to make payments visible and social for the first time. Early testers have told us that they’ve loved carrying the Wand and showing it off at checkout, so we believe there’s a real appetite for this among our customers”

The Cash App Wand is now available for $25 in the app, and the company plans to release limited runs of new designs in the coming weeks. “We see this as an early starting point for Cash App Tags. The number of form factors we can create is nearly limitless,” added Templeton. “From clothing to jewelry, almost any item can become a way to pay with this technology. We’re looking forward to hearing what our customers want to see next.”

I can’t decide whether I love this or hate this. Payment companies have tried for over a decade to move the payment form factor from the phone to a ring, fitness band, and even a Timex watch, but each effort has failed to gain traction. At the same time, the industry has been hyper-focused on making payments invisible, and this is the exact opposite. Perhaps moving the form factor to something as outrageous as a wand will succeed because it is visible, social, and impossible to ignore.

• Cash App now allows eligible users to send and receive USDC while automatically converting stablecoins to and from US dollars, eliminating the need for separate wallets or manual crypto management.
• Rather than selling stablecoins as a consumer product, Cash App is using them as infrastructure to enable faster, more seamless money movement across wallets, exchanges, merchants, fintech apps, and payment platforms.
• Keeping stablecoins invisible with blockchain infrastructure that operates behind the scenes creates a customer expectation for money to move instantly and seamlessly across financial ecosystems.

Block-owned Cash App has now made send and receive capabilities available for stablecoins. The offering includes stablecoin on- and off- ramps to fiat US dollars.

After teasing the capabilities last fall, Cash App now allows eligible customers to send and receive USDC on its platform. Because Cash App automatically converts to fiat currency, customers don’t need to manage a separate stablecoin wallet. To simplify things, Cash App manages sourcing, conversion, and settlement so that all the user sees is a single, unified balance in their app.

At first glance, it may seem strange that there would be demand for US users to send and receive stablecoins, especially if they are going to be automatically converted to US dollars. The truth is that Cash App users don’t necessarily want stablecoins themselves, but they want the experiences stablecoins enable. For example, stablecoins allow funds to move more seamlessly across financial ecosystems, making it easier for users to transfer money between wallets, exchanges, merchants, fintech apps, and payment platforms without depending on traditional banking rails.

Additionally, stablecoins increasingly function as infrastructure that helps money move more freely between otherwise fragmented financial systems. And in the future, stablecoins will be useful for agent-driven, programmable payments.

Users can send stablecoins by selecting the recipient’s wallet address and then choosing to pay in US dollars with their Cash App balance. To receive stablecoins, users select “Deposit USDC” in the Money Tab, choose their supported network, and receive a wallet address to accept stablecoins. After the funds are deposited, Cash App instantly converts the USDC into US dollars in their Cash App balance.

Cash App’s stablecoin rollout strips out the complexity that has historically limited stablecoin adoption. With its behind-the-scenes stablecoin-to-fiat and fiat-to-stablecoin on and off ramps, Cash App is essentially treating stablecoins as infrastructure instead of a product to help maintain its familiar customer experience. As more consumer-facing fintechs follow this “invisible stablecoin” approach, users will increasingly expect money to move instantly, continuously, and seamlessly across financial ecosystems regardless of the underlying rails.

“As stablecoins continue to gain global adoption, we see an opportunity to get millions more Cash App customers comfortable using open financial rails,” said Block Bitcoin Product Lead Miles Suter. “Once they’re on those rails, they’re one step closer to bitcoin.”

At launch, Cash App is supporting USDC on Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The new tools for sending and receiving USDC payments are not available to residents in New York. For other users, the capabilities are currently free, but Cash App plans to add a fee in the future.

Photo by Yusuf P