Visa is moving to stop payment processors from treating certain memecoin purchases like ordinary digital-media transactions, closing a loophole that allowed customers to buy highly speculative crypto tokens with credit cards while still earning the points or cash-back rewards normally excluded from cryptocurrency purchases.
The change centers on Crossmint, a crypto-infrastructure company whose Token Checkout product powers direct memecoin purchases inside Fomo and Robinhood Wallet.
Those transactions had been processed using merchant category code 5815, a designation intended for digital goods such as electronically delivered books, movies and music.
Visa has told payment processors that the classification is not appropriate for memecoin purchases, according to reporting from Crypto in America and The Block. Checkout.com, which processes at least some of Crossmint’s Visa transactions, was reportedly instructed directly to change the practice.
A grace period is expected to expire next week.
After that, affected purchases will need to follow Visa’s standard rules for cryptocurrency transactions rather than being processed as conventional digital goods.
The checkout option remained live on Fomo and Robinhood Wallet as of Saturday.
The change is financially significant less because of the rewards themselves than because Crossmint built one of the lowest-friction ways to move consumers directly from a credit card into speculative crypto assets.
Closing that route could make the transaction more expensive, reduce card approval rates or introduce additional compliance requirements, weakening one of the features Crossmint has promoted as a driver of user adoption.
The Coding Difference Changed the Economics
Visa’s own merchant standards provide a fairly clear distinction.
Merchant category code 5815 is designed for digital goods and media.
Direct purchases of cryptocurrency at non-financial institutions generally fall under MCC 6051, while Visa also requires crypto transactions to carry additional information identifying them as purchases of non-fiat currency.
That classification can affect how an issuer treats the purchase.
Credit-card rewards programs frequently exclude cryptocurrency and other cash-like transactions. When The Block tested Crossmint’s checkout earlier this month using Visa and Mastercard cards, the purchases earned ordinary rewards because they were not identified to the issuing bank as crypto.
JPMorgan Chase told The Block it believed the Visa purchase had been categorized incorrectly and opened a case with Visa. Chase’s rewards terms do not allow points on cryptocurrency purchases.
The transactions also lacked the special Visa indicators normally attached to crypto purchases.
Crossmint defended its classification at the time.
The company argued that eligible memecoins function more like digital collectibles than conventional currencies, pointing partly to U.S. securities regulators’ treatment of certain memecoins.
SEC staff said in 2025 that typical memecoins can resemble collectibles because their value is driven primarily by speculation and community interest rather than rights to a business or cash flow. The SEC subsequently stated more broadly that qualifying digital collectibles do not inherently have the economic characteristics of securities.
That does not determine how Visa categorizes a card purchase.
Securities classification and payment-network merchant coding are separate systems governed by different rules.
Crossmint itself says its Token Checkout supports secondary purchases of approved memecoins while excluding stablecoins, conventional cryptocurrencies such as Ether or Solana, and investment-style tokens.
Visa is effectively drawing a different line: regardless of whether a memecoin qualifies as a security, a collectible or neither, buying a fungible crypto asset cannot be disguised from the payment network as purchasing an audiobook or digital movie.
Frictionless Buying Helped Drive Adoption
The payment flow had become an important part of Crossmint’s pitch to crypto trading apps.
Users could select a supported token inside an application, pay with a credit card through Apple Pay or Google Pay and receive the token directly in their wallet.
Crossmint says Fomo’s weekly active traders increased sevenfold after integrating the checkout product. Earlier this year, the company said Fomo had grown to more than 625,000 users and billions of dollars in trading volume.
Fomo told The Block that Crossmint represented about 7% of user inflows, however, indicating that losing or modifying the payment channel would not eliminate most of the app’s funding activity.
Robinhood Wallet introduced the Crossmint integration much more recently.
Robinhood itself did not determine how the transactions were coded. The company told The Block that Crossmint handles the underlying payment process as an outside provider.
For Crossmint, the impact could be more direct.
The company earns transaction-based fees on products including Checkout and onramps, with pricing varying based on payment type, geography, volume and other factors.
Anything that makes card-funded token purchases harder could reduce conversion or transaction volume.
Crossmint has not disclosed revenue from memecoin checkout specifically, so the size of the financial impact cannot yet be calculated.
Mastercard Is the Next Question
The change currently appears clearest on Visa.
Mastercard has not publicly said whether it will issue equivalent instructions, even though The Block’s testing found that Mastercard-funded Crossmint purchases were also categorized as digital media and earned normal card rewards.
If Mastercard reaches the same conclusion, the existing payment structure could effectively disappear across both major U.S. credit-card networks.
Crossmint could still offer memecoin purchases.
They would simply have to move through the payment and compliance framework appropriate for crypto rather than the one used for ordinary digital content.
The scrutiny also extends beyond the card networks.
The New York attorney general’s office told The Block earlier this month that it was aware of the Crossmint product and reviewing the matter. Crossmint responded on September 4 that it had received no subpoena, investigative demand, inquiry letter or other formal or informal notice indicating that it was under investigation.
That distinction remains important. Visa changing its network rules is not the same as a government enforcement action against Crossmint.
Visa Is Still Expanding Its Crypto Business
The move should also not be interpreted as Visa retreating from cryptocurrency.
Only 11 days ago, Visa said settlement volume tied to stablecoin-linked card programs had surpassed a $20 billion annualized rate, more than 15 times the level a year earlier. More than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs were already operating globally in its fiscal second quarter.
Visa is simultaneously developing infrastructure for stablecoin settlement, onchain lending and crypto-linked cards.
That makes the Crossmint decision more about controlling how crypto activity enters the card network than restricting crypto itself.
The next development to watch is whether Crossmint changes its checkout flow once Visa’s grace period expires and whether Mastercard follows with the same merchant-coding requirement.
If both networks force memecoin purchases into standard crypto categories, one of the simplest ways for retail traders to move directly from a rewards credit card into a speculative token will have largely disappeared.