Opera-backed wallet MiniPay has launched a digital Visa debit card that lets eligible users spend stablecoin balances through conventional card acceptance. The product links MiniPay’s self-custodial wallet on Celo to Visa’s network through infrastructure operated by Gnosis Pay.
MiniPay announced the card on June 23 in collaboration with Visa. The company said the initial rollout covers selected markets in the European Economic Area, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. This is a live product launch for eligible users, although availability depends on market and user eligibility.
Stablecoins meet the card-acquiring layer
The operating model separates the user’s source of funds from the merchant’s checkout experience. Users spend from stablecoin balances in MiniPay, while merchants receive local currency through the existing card flow and do not need crypto-specific acceptance tools. Gnosis Pay bridges the wallet balance to Visa’s network and acts as technical enabler and program manager.
Monavate provides the regulated card-issuing component, according to Opera. Users can add the digital card to Apple Pay or Google Pay for contactless transactions, as well as use it for online purchases. Opera says there are no monthly or annual card fees, while transactions can incur a foreign-exchange fee.
For merchants and acquirers, the proposition is deliberately conventional: authorization and acceptance remain within familiar card infrastructure. The blockchain component sits upstream, where the consumer holds and initiates spending from stablecoins. That design lowers the integration burden for merchants, but it also means the product relies on the economics, compliance controls and geographic reach of a card program rather than creating a separate crypto acceptance network.
A distribution route for wallet balances
MiniPay launched in 2023 as a self-custodial stablecoin wallet built on Celo. Opera says it has since reached more than 16 million activated wallets across more than 65 countries. Those figures are company-reported and do not by themselves indicate active card users or transaction volume.
The card extends a wallet that already connects to local financial access points. Opera cited integrations with M-PESA in Kenya, OPay in Nigeria and Mercado Pago in Latin America, as well as virtual bank accounts that can receive funds into MiniPay in stablecoins. The card adds a broadly recognized spending endpoint to those deposit, transfer and local-rail connections.
Independent reporting from TechCabal confirmed that MiniPay launched the card with Visa and Gnosis Pay on June 23. The publication framed the launch as an effort to make wallet balances spendable across online and physical commerce, particularly for users in African markets such as Nigeria and Kenya.
What payments teams should watch
The launch illustrates a pragmatic path for stablecoin wallets seeking merchant reach. Rather than asking retailers to hold digital assets or integrate a new checkout method, a wallet provider can connect stablecoin funding to established issuing, processing and acquiring infrastructure. The result expands utility for the wallet while preserving fiat settlement for the merchant.
That model also concentrates several operational dependencies. Card eligibility, supported jurisdictions, foreign-exchange treatment, on-ramp and off-ramp availability, fraud controls and the issuer-program relationship will determine how consistently the product works across markets. MiniPay itself says that third parties provide payment, exchange, top-up and related services available through its ecosystem.
Opera says eligible users can spend anywhere Visa is accepted and cites more than 175 million merchant locations worldwide. That figure describes the potential reach of Visa acceptance, not the number of merchants directly integrated with MiniPay. It should therefore be read as network coverage rather than evidence of merchant adoption of a new crypto payment method.
Selected markets will also offer rewards in digital assets including Tether Gold, USDT and USDC. For payments operators, the more consequential feature is the underlying conversion and settlement design: a self-custodial stablecoin wallet can fund a standard card transaction without requiring the merchant to change its point-of-sale setup.