Stablecoin-funded payment cards crossed $1 billion in monthly top-up volume for the first time in July, reaching $1.084 billion—a 15.9 percent jump from June and several times higher than where the figure stood at the start of 2026. USDC drove the majority of that settlement activity, and low-fee chains led by TRON handled most of the underlying transactions.
The milestone lands inside a market that has been cooling at the headline level. Total stablecoin supply ended July at $308.3 billion, down roughly 1 percent from $311.4 billion in June. The broader market has held inside the $300 billion–$320 billion band for 10 consecutive months, with no meaningful new net issuance pushing it higher or a wave of redemptions pulling it lower. Stablecoins also saw a third straight month of net outflows, with roughly $13.3 billion leaving the sector between May and July—the longest such run since the 2022–2023 stretch.
Inside that flat headline number, the two dominant issuers are pulling apart. USDT set a new record for raw transaction count in July and leads in payment frequency. USDC, meanwhile, moves two to three times more value per transaction on-chain and now settles more than twice USDT's volume on crypto payment cards. The two coins are optimizing for different use cases at scale—USDT owns the long tail of smaller, frequent transfers; USDC owns the high-value settlement layer.
Ethereum and TRON together still account for roughly 80 percent of stablecoin supply, but that share is being trimmed. Solana, Hyperliquid and Binance Smart Chain each gained ground during the period. Solana's position is partly tied to Jupiter, the exchange aggregator whose USDC-backed card product contributed to the industry crossing the $1 billion threshold.
The institutional infrastructure being built around stablecoins in July was extensive. On June 30, Open Standard announced Open USD—ticker OUSD—a consortium stablecoin with backing from more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock and Coinbase. The structure distributes most reserve income to partner companies and hands governance to an independent board rather than a single controlling issuer.
On July 10, Circle received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to charter First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. operating as Circle National Trust. The bank will initially provide federally regulated digital asset custody for Circle and its affiliates; management of USDC reserves is listed as a planned future capability once operational.
Six days later, on July 16, Visa announced the Visa Stablecoin Platform—VSP—a managed environment letting institutions mint, store, transfer and redeem stablecoins. Open USD is the first stablecoin supported on the platform. Then on July 23, Ripple launched Ripple Mint, a web and API tool for institutions to mint, redeem, bridge and monitor RLUSD. Ripple simultaneously expanded RLUSD's reach to five additional networks: Base, Optimism, Ink, Unichain and the XRPL EVM Sidechain.
The largest single transaction in the institutional buildout came just after the month ended. On Aug. 3, Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. BVNK operates infrastructure connecting fiat and stablecoin payments across more than 130 countries. Mastercard said it will deploy the technology for cross-border remittances, business payments, payouts, settlement and treasury operations—a direct play on the card volume milestone the sector just posted.
Venture capital tracked the infrastructure theme closely. Stablecoin and crypto payments attracted approximately $244 million in VC during July, the second-highest funded category in crypto that month. The capital came in on fewer, larger rounds—a sign that early-stage bets on payments infrastructure are consolidating into fewer, better-capitalized platforms.
The supply picture carries a genuine tension. Three consecutive months of outflows totaling $13.3 billion against a supply ceiling near $320 billion means the sector is not in a growth phase by that measure. But on-chain activity and card settlement volume are moving in the opposite direction—more transactions, more card spend, more institutional rails being laid. The divergence between supply contraction and usage expansion is the defining data tension in stablecoins right now, and July's $1.084 billion card figure is the clearest evidence yet that activity has decoupled from raw supply size.
