Nearly 4 in 10 US Merchants Now Accept Crypto

Not long ago, paying with crypto at a regular store was nearly impossible. Now it's an option at roughly every second store in some categories. In March 2026, Mastercard opened crypto payment acceptance at more than 100 million merchant locations worldwide, Mastercard says. And according to PayPal research, 39% of US merchants — nearly 4 in 10 — already accept crypto right at checkout.

Here's how it actually works: a shopper pays with a crypto card exactly like a regular bank card — tapping it at a terminal or paying online. At the moment of payment, the system converts the crypto into regular money automatically, so the merchant never needs to know anything about blockchain — it just receives dollars or euros as usual.

This isn't just talk: net spending across six Visa-linked crypto cards rose 525% in 2025, from $14.6 million in January to $91.3 million in December, Cointelegraph calculated. That means people aren't just holding crypto as an investment — they're actually spending it on everyday purchases.

Why this is happening now: the big payment companies — Visa, Mastercard, Stripe — are building a shared platform for settling payments in stablecoins (crypto pegged to the dollar). In other words, it isn't users adapting to crypto — crypto infrastructure is adapting to the way people already like to pay.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.