Tangem says crypto card demand is strongest in Latin America and the US, but physical access is still blocked in about 20 countries

Tangem’s own payment data points to a pretty familiar high-risk problem: demand and issuance eligibility do not line up neatly. More than 40% of Tangem Pay payments come from Latin America and over 30% from the US, while physical card delivery is still restricted in roughly 20 countries.

1. Tangem announced its first physical Visa card on Wednesday for in-store and online purchases, plus ATM withdrawals. The initial release is capped at 5,000 cards, so this is a controlled rollout rather than a broad launch.
2. The company says users can fund the card directly from their self-custodial wallet and move funds back to the wallet if the card is suspended or closed. In other words, the wallet side and the card side are connected, but once funds enter the card network, they sit inside a regulated payments framework.
3. According to Tangem, it cannot currently deliver physical Tangem Pay cards to about 20 countries, including China, Russia, North Korea and Palestine. The company says the blockers are not limited to crypto rules themselves: Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, sanctions, local banking rules and card-issuing compliance all affect availability.
4. Andrey Ilinskiy, head of Tangem Pay, told Cointelegraph that the question is not simply where people want crypto cards, but where demand, regulation, banking infrastructure and card-issuing requirements line up. That is the part PSPs and issuers know well: the commercial case can be obvious long before the operating map agrees.
5. Tangem is also adding cashback in Circle’s USDC stablecoin, at 1% for Basic users and 2% for Plus users on eligible purchases. The company plans to show the first physical Tangem Pay cards at Token2049 in Singapore.

The useful detail for high-risk operators is that Tangem’s demand is already concentrated in regions where alternative payment rails matter most, but physical card issuance still depends on the usual stack of KYC, sanctions, banking access and scheme compliance. That gap is the business, not the footnote.