“We asked around 10 banks and payment companies if they could do a crypto debit card, and they all said, ‘No, we can’t.’ That’s not possible,” Pavel Matveyev said. on the margin Reminiscing on 2015 with a podcast. “And cryptocurrencies are only being used to buy drugs and weapons.”
“Many companies, many founders may have given up a little too early,” Matveev said. “And we just kept moving forward and kept trying.” Eventually one company agreed, and Wirex shipped one of the first cryptocurrency debit cards in 2015. This is a prepaid card that can be loaded with Bitcoin and used like cash. Eleven years later, the company he co-founded has quietly stopped competing for those cardholders. Instead, sell the machine underneath.
“We have packaged what we spent eight years building and now offer it to builders as a stablecoin card or stablecoin bank infrastructure,” Matveev said. For most of its life, Wirex has been a retail app for people who want to use cryptocurrencies, including cards, bank accounts, yield, and cashback. Two years ago, the company made the choice to stop fighting the new wave of stablecoin banks for its customers and start supplying them. “Rather than competing head-on with them on the B2C front, let’s use this opportunity to serve them,” he said. “Let’s actually work with them.”
“There is no intermediary.”
“Wirex is also a key member of Visa and Mastercard,” Matveev said. “For a cryptocurrency or stablecoin company, this is very unique.” This status, which Wirex secured in 2020, means there is no sponsoring bank between Wirex and the network and it issues cards directly.
“Being a key member means we have a direct connection to this plan,” he said. “We have more flexibility in terms of product. We have more flexibility in terms of geographic distribution, the types of cards we can issue, and unit economics. There are no intermediaries, so there are no banks between us and this system.”
That plumbing demand came to Wirex, not the other way around, he said. “Companies basically came to us and said, ‘I want what you have, but for my company. I want Wirex, but for my company,'” Matveyev said. “Can I issue a card through you? Can I issue a bank account through you?” The company that owns the card program maintains the exchange fees that merchants pay and the foreign exchange spread when users with dollars pay in euros. Those who are renting the license will split it up. Wirex says it currently has more than 8 million users and has processed more than $20 billion since 2014, according to the company. The company said its Banking as a Service line, which launched in late 2025, reached $1 billion in annual card spending in 131 days.
“Banking is becoming a stablecoin.”
“Ten years ago, just having a better user experience and no fees was the main value proposition,” Matveev said, describing the first fintech boom that produced Revolut, Chime, Nubank, Monzo and Starling. “This time, the underlying rails are changing and the underlying rails are becoming stablecoins. Banking is becoming stablecoins.”
Stablecoins are no longer a niche market. By some calculations, the two companies moved more value in 2025 than Visa and Mastercard combined, but the comparison compliments the technology because much of that volume is in transactions and money flows rather than shopping. The supply of non-dollar-denominated stablecoins has still roughly tripled since early 2023, driven by payments and payroll rather than speculation.
Matveyev argues that incumbents cannot simply follow suit. The Revoluts and Monzos of the world are either listed or heading towards becoming one, and their businesses operate along traditional rails. “It’s very difficult for them to just give up on their existing rails and switch to stablecoins,” he says. “That creates an opportunity for a new wave of challenger banks.” He estimates that there are currently around 1,000 stablecoin neobanks in existence, a number that is higher than most industry trackers. He said companies like his are the reason so many companies are able to start. “If you go to a company like Wirex, you have all the building blocks. You can issue a card linked to a stablecoin, a bank account linked to a stablecoin. You can offer cashback as a service, and it’s very easy to do.”
View of pickaxe and shovel
There is independent evidence that Wirex has become that tier. Will Harborn, CEO of Rhino.fi, said: on the margin The podcast reports that Wirex casually names his clients, listing the companies his stablecoin payment company services.
“Wirex and many companies like Banking as a Service that is built on Wirex are our customers,” Harborn said. He also frames the same rail-changing theory from a different direction, arguing that the biggest fintech companies will absorb technology rather than be replaced by it. “All the top players in fintech, whether it’s Revolut or Robinhood or WISE or Stripe, are instead just taking the best parts of the technology and using the fact that they already have great distribution and a lot of customers to improve their products,” he said.
Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, goes deeper into the ownership discussion and discusses blockchain itself. “Most people don’t realize it yet, Polygon is just a payment chain,” he said on the same podcast. The logic is the same as Matveev’s. That means you choose the part of the stack where you actually settle money, own it end-to-end, and stop renting it.
“Structurally, nothing has changed.”
Not everyone thinks that issuing a card in addition to a stablecoin is equivalent to owning something. Neo, CEO of on-chain neobank UR, said: on the margin Podcasts where most of the categories are going in the easy direction.
“In today’s Web 3, Web 2 world, everyone is taking the easy way out,” Neo said. “A simple USDC stablecoin, when you issue a card, all of a sudden it becomes NEO Bank and you can spend your money, which is pretty cool. But its core structure hasn’t really changed anything.” The actual ownership in his version is at the deposit and license level, not the card’s BIN. That is an open question that cuts across this category. Is the moat a payment license held by Wirex, or is it something deeper?
Matveev frankly said that the path here was not straight. “Being the first mover is the hardest thing of all,” he says. This benefit lasts for 3-6 months before you see your copy. “We don’t want to be the first movers. We want other players to be the first movers,” he said. “Then you might be able to copy some of the things they’re doing.” Wirex was a pioneer, but not the inventor it sometimes claims. Xapo shipped a Bitcoin debit card about 10 months earlier, in 2014.
“One year in the crypto industry is probably equivalent to three or four years in the traditional industry,” Matveev said. The cycle is intense, and if it’s too early, it won’t protect you. He points to Singaporean competitor TenX, which raised about $80 million during the 2017 ICO frenzy, while Wirex raised some of that. TenX closed by 2021. “We had the product, but they created the hype,” Matveyev said. “Promote the product, win the product.”
Wirex’s own stablecoin app, Wirex One, is built on Circle’s Arc blockchain and was launched after the category it helped seed was filled with rivals. He’s open about what he’s going to say to everyone.
“This is a very good time to build stablecoins and AI or anything related to stablecoins and AI,” he said. “If I were a new builder or a new founder, I would just go and try something instead of sitting around and waiting.”
