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Seventy-seven percent of consumers say they’d open a crypto or stablecoin wallet if it lived inside the banking or FinTech app they already use, according to a July 2026 report from PYMNTS Intelligence and Paymentology.
The findings come as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins increasingly move beyond their traditional role as investment assets. Consumers are showing interest in using them for purchases, transfers and other payments, but adoption continues to face obstacles including limited merchant acceptance, trust concerns and fragmented user experiences.
Rather than asking consumers to learn an entirely new payment system, the report suggests that financial institutions could make digital asset payments more accessible by connecting them to established banking interfaces, payment cards and processing networks.
The strongest signal in the report is the preference for familiar financial platforms. Seventy-seven percent of consumers surveyed said they would open a crypto or stablecoin wallet through their existing banking or FinTech application.
That preference could give banks and FinTech companies an advantage as they consider entering the digital asset payments market. These institutions already have established customer relationships, authentication systems and interfaces that consumers understand.
Instead of downloading another application or creating a new financial relationship, customers could potentially access crypto and stablecoin functionality from the same platform they already use for conventional payments.
The report argues that this familiarity could make digital currencies feel less foreign to consumers. The approach also has the potential to reduce friction associated with managing separate wallets, exchanges and payment applications.
However, consumer interest does not necessarily translate into widespread usage. Merchant acceptance remains a significant obstacle, particularly for consumers who want to spend stablecoins and other digital assets at physical and online businesses.
Card-based spending offers another potential bridge between digital asset ownership and conventional commerce.
According to the report, 71% of stablecoin holders would use a linked debit card to spend their assets. Such cards could allow consumers to use their stablecoin balances at merchants that already accept conventional card payments.
The underlying process would largely remain invisible to the merchant. A transaction could convert the customer’s digital asset at the point of sale, move through existing payment infrastructure and deliver payment through systems the merchant already understands.
That model could address one of the biggest practical problems facing digital asset payments: consumers may own crypto or stablecoins but have limited opportunities to spend them directly.
The report also points to payment infrastructure provider Rain as an example of how modern processing technology can support the expansion of digital-asset payment programs. Rain reportedly grew its annualized spending roughly 38-fold in 2025, reaching more than $3 billion after securing direct Visa network membership.
The example underscores the role of infrastructure in connecting digital assets with established payment networks. Rather than replacing existing systems, the approach seeks to make digital currencies compatible with them.
The opportunity for digital asset payments extends beyond consumer purchases.
According to the PYMNTS report, business-to-business cross-border transfers account for most global stablecoin payment volume. Companies are using stablecoins in part because they can offer faster settlement, lower costs and access to dollar-linked value in markets where local currencies may be volatile.
The business use case could prove particularly important because cross-border payments have traditionally faced delays, multiple intermediaries and relatively high transaction costs.
At the consumer level, however, demand still appears to exceed actual usage. Forty-two percent of stablecoin holders said they want to use digital assets for major purchases, compared with 28% who currently do so.
Merchant acceptance remains a major constraint. Nearly half of respondents cited the limited number of merchants accepting digital assets as a barrier to greater use.
That gap between willingness and availability illustrates the challenge facing digital asset adoption. Consumers may be prepared to use stablecoins, but the payment ecosystem must provide enough places and sufficiently simple methods for them to do so.
For financial institutions, integrating wallets with existing apps and connecting digital balances to established card networks could therefore provide a way to close some of that gap.
Regulatory clarity is another factor shaping the future of digital asset payments.
The report points to Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework and the United States’ GENIUS Act as developments that have created clearer standards for digital-asset issuers and service providers.
The importance of regulation goes beyond compliance. Clearer rules could give banks, FinTech companies, payment processors and merchants greater confidence when deciding whether and how to integrate crypto and stablecoin services.
The broader direction of the market suggests that digital asset adoption may depend less on creating entirely new payment experiences and more on connecting digital currencies to infrastructure consumers already trust.
The report’s findings point to a relatively straightforward proposition: consumers do not necessarily need a completely new way to pay. They may simply need digital assets to work within the financial applications, cards and payment networks they already understand.
If banks and FinTech companies can provide that experience while maintaining appropriate safeguards, digital asset payments could move closer to everyday commerce.
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