The Next Frontier of Crypto Payments Is Already in Your Pocket

For years, the cryptocurrency space has battled allegations that its ecosystem can come across as abstract and inaccessible to the everyday end-user.

While blockchain payment and financial solutions can promise decentralization and ownership, they frequently suffer from clunky user experiences and steep onboarding curves.

Adam Lowe, PhD, chief product and innovation officer at CompoSecure, told PYMNTS that what the sector needs is a “tangible crossover point” that allows users to spend their crypto in the real world with the same ease as fiat while still benefiting from the sovereignty and programmability of Web3 assets.

CompoSecure and crypto wallet MetaMask have joined forces to launch a new metal payment card designed to do just that, he said.

The new offering, powered by CompoSecure’s Arculus tap-to-authenticate technology, serves three primary functions: a traditional payments card; a secure authentication device; and a crypto wallet interface. The ability to spend stablecoins directly from a self-custodied wallet marks a shift from earlier crypto cards, which typically required centralized custodians to hold user funds.

“What’s really important is that first scenario,” Lowe said. “I’m tapping to pay at my favorite coffee shop as just a Mastercard… I’m spending my crypto out of my self-custody. That’s typically a stablecoin. The stablecoin goes from your wallet to the Mastercard network and eventually to the merchant.”

The target demographic for the MetaMask card is crypto-native users — those who understand and prefer self-custody of digital assets.

This ethos of control is central to the value proposition. With the MetaMask card, users retain their private keys, dictate their spending, and manage their on-chain interactions directly — without depending on third-party intermediaries.

“Most of their assets are with themselves versus a centralized custodian,” Lowe said. “It’s much more like cash in your pocket.”

For these users, the appeal is philosophical and practical.

“It’s like global Web3 Johnny Walker,” Lowe said. “You have a whole bunch of assets in your pocket. You can travel the globe, spend them anywhere you want, turn them into anything you want — permissionlessly.”

Lowe said he is confident that 2025 will be “the year of stablecoins, the year of Web3 payments.” That optimism isn’t unfounded. Regulatory clarity around stablecoins in the United States is increasing, and political sentiment is trending toward support for crypto-based financial innovation.

“Legislation and political tone have made it much more friendly for the space,” he said.

The growing stability is also attracting attention from other issuers.

“On the day [the MetaMask card] launched at ETHDenver, the sign-up broke because it was so popular,” Lowe said.

The card is more than just another crypto debit card, Lowe said. It represents a strategic alignment of technology, regulation and consumer behavior. For a space in need of a bridge to the real world, that kind of tangibility might just be the thing that takes crypto payments mainstream.

Beyond day-to-day usability, the card opens new dimensions in rewards and loyalty programs. Because all transactions are posted to chain in real time, Lowe said he envisions a future where loyalty is gamified and automated.

“The issuer or platform can instantly mint an NFT, you can gamify the purchase — and it can all be automated and real time,” he said. “So, you have that tradability aspect, that gamification aspect. For the consumer, there’s also the opportunity for staking and yield.”

Yield underscores a growing trend in crypto: capital efficiency.

“If you have a dollar in your wallet, in your pocket, it’s not doing anything for you,” Lowe said. “If you have a dollar in a yield-bearing stablecoin, every moment it’s earning you 4%-plus yield.”

This creates an incentive for consumers to keep their assets in a digital, decentralized form, and products like the MetaMask and CompoSecure card with Arculus technology make it easy to use those assets in the real world, he said.

At the same time, CompoSecure is actively testing direct on-chain payments, which would bypass traditional rails altogether. The goal is to enable the same simplicity and ubiquity of tap-to-pay while maintaining the flexibility and efficiency of blockchain settlements.

“There’s no reason you can’t directly work paying on-chain,” Lowe said. “The stablecoin goes directly to a merchant wallet. We skip everything in the middle.”

In cases where a merchant prefers fiat, Lowe said the solution can handle real-time asset conversion.

“We flip it to something they’ll accept, or even a stablecoin, off-ramp it, and do a once-daily wire,” he said. “Again, cut out middlemen.”

Ultimately, he added, “consumer choice is everything. This innovation allows you to stay in the self-custody realm and still spend your assets wherever you want.”

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