MiniPay launches Visa debit card for stablecoin spending across Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe

Opera-owned MiniPay has rolled out a Visa debit card that lets users in selected markets spend stablecoins directly from their wallets, with merchants settling in local currency. For high-risk PSPs, the relevant detail is not the branding; it is the plumbing: stablecoin balances on one side, card-network acceptance on the other.

1. According to Tuesday’s announcement, the card is powered by Gnosis Pay’s infrastructure and is tied to MiniPay wallets. Users pay from their MiniPay balance, while merchants receive local currency through Visa’s network.
2. MiniPay said it has grown to more than 16 million activated wallets across 65 countries since launching in 2023, with most of the adoption concentrated in Africa and other emerging markets. That gives the product enough scale to matter as a distribution channel, not just a pilot.
3. The card can be added to Apple Pay and Google Pay. Eligible users in some markets will also receive cashback rewards denominated in stablecoins USDt and USDC, as well as Tether Gold.
4. MiniPay is a stablecoin wallet owned by Opera, the Nasdaq-listed software company best known for its web browser. Built on the Celo blockchain, it focuses on payments, transfers and savings using dollar-backed stablecoins.
5. The launch lands as stablecoins keep gaining traction in emerging markets. In Latin America, a recent Bitso report said dollar-backed stablecoins overtook Bitcoin as the most-purchased crypto asset among the exchange’s users in 2025, with USDC and USDT accounting for a combined 40% of purchases. Bitso also said stablecoin transaction volumes among its institutional clients rose 81% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, and banks plus licensed payment providers made up more than 60% of new business customers added during that period.

Africa is showing a similar pattern. In March, Circle partnered with African fintech Sasai to expand USDC-powered cross-border payments across the region, and last week Ripple acquired a stake in Flutterwave, a $3.3 billion fintech operating in 35 African countries, with plans to integrate RLUSD and other blockchain-based payment tools. Meanwhile, DefiLlama puts the total value of stablecoins in circulation at roughly $315 billion, up from about $250 billion a year ago.