How much do people really pay with crypto? Payment statistics as of October 2026

Far less than the headlines suggest, and the most careful statistics show where the growth is: stablecoin payments between businesses. Worldpay puts payments made directly in crypto at 0.19% of global transaction value (Global Payments Report 2026, March 2026), and in a US Federal Reserve survey taken in October 2025 only 2% of adults said they had used crypto to buy something or make a payment. McKinsey counts about $390 billion of real stablecoin payments in 2025, more than double 2024, and roughly 60% of that was one business paying another.

What share of the world's payments goes through crypto

Every number on this page is valid as of 2 October 2026, and each one comes with who measured it, when, and what exactly was counted. That last part matters most: in crypto, two honest numbers about "payments" can differ more than a hundredfold.

Two measurements look at payments directly:

• 0.19% of global transaction value. That is the share people paid directly in crypto across the 42 markets in Worldpay's Global Payments Report 2026, published on 30 March 2026. Purchases made with cards that spend crypto settle as ordinary card payments and are not in this number; Worldpay says that share is likely much higher.
• About $390 billion, roughly 0.02% of global payments. This is McKinsey's estimate of actual stablecoin payments in 2025, built with Artemis Analytics and published on 18 February 2026. It is more than double the 2024 figure.

A stablecoin is a token pegged to a currency, almost always the US dollar: one USDT or one USDC is meant to be worth one dollar. The two shares above do not compare with each other. Worldpay counts any crypto paid directly in its 42 markets; McKinsey counts only stablecoins and divides them by all the world's payments.

Why other reports count trillions

Look up stablecoin volume and you will find figures in the tens of trillions of dollars. They are not wrong; they count something else. Activity on a blockchain, the public ledger where crypto transfers are recorded, comes in three layers:

• Everything that moves. Visa's Onchain Analytics dashboard shows $80.6 trillion of stablecoin transactions in the 12 months to 2 October 2026. The a16z crypto State of Crypto report gave $46 trillion for the 12 months to about September 2025, and Circle reported $14.8 trillion of USDC on-chain volume in the second quarter of 2026 alone. This layer includes trading, transfers between exchanges and automated programs moving the same money back and forth.
• Adjusted volume. Visa's dashboard removes transfers by exchanges, blockchain programs, bots and bridges (services that move tokens between blockchains) and is left with $2.8 trillion over the same 12 months. The a16z adjusted figure was $9 trillion, with its own, looser filter. Visa refreshed its address labels on 18 September 2026, so older quotes of its adjusted volume, around $10 trillion a year, belong to the previous method.
• Payments. McKinsey keeps only transfers that look like payments: commercial transfers, settlement, payroll and remittances, meaning money people send home to family abroad. That leaves about $390 billion for 2025. Visa also counts retail-sized transfers on their own: $76.4 billion over the 12 months to 2 October 2026.

A figure in the tens of trillions describes the first layer. For the question of how many people and businesses pay in crypto, the third layer is the one to use.

How many people own crypto, and how many pay with it

Crypto.com Research estimates 774 million crypto owners worldwide in June 2026, up 4.5% from 741 million in December 2025 (report of 10 August 2026). About 373 million of them own bitcoin. This is a model built from on-chain data and exchange deposit patterns, not a survey.

Owning and paying are different things. Central bank surveys, which ask people directly, show the same picture in three places:

• United States: 2% paid with crypto. In the Federal Reserve's survey of household finances, fielded in October 2025 and published on 13 May 2026, 10% of adults used crypto for any purpose. 9% bought or held it as an investment, 2% used it to buy something or make a payment, and 1% sent money to friends or family. The share who paid has stayed at 1–2% every year since 2021.
• Euro area: owners mostly hold. The European Central Bank's 2024 survey of consumers' payment habits, published on 19 December 2024, found that 9% of respondents owned crypto, up from 4% in 2022. Among owners in the Netherlands, 2% used crypto only for payments and 90% only as an investment; in Germany the split was 6% against 82%, in France 25% against 57%.
• Canada: most owners never spend it. A Bank of Canada survey from December 2023, published in March 2025, found that about 10% of Canadians owned bitcoin. Most owners never used it to buy goods or services, though about a third did so at least once a month, and most of those spent it last at a crypto business such as an exchange.

Why the people who pay in crypto choose it

The same Federal Reserve survey asked people who had used crypto for a payment or a transfer in 2025 what their main reason was:

• The person or business being paid preferred crypto: 26%.
• It was faster: 19%.
• Privacy: 17%.
• It was cheaper: 14%.
• It felt safer: 9%.
• They don't trust banks: 7%.

This group is small: about 2% of roughly 12,900 people in the sample, a few hundred respondents, so read single percentages as a direction rather than a precise share. The same survey found that 6% of adults without a bank account used crypto for transactions, against 2% of those with one.

For a seller, the first line is the useful one. The most common reason someone paid in crypto was that the person or business on the other side wanted it.

How many businesses accept crypto

Two recent surveys give answers four times apart, and both are right about what they measured:

• 10% worldwide. The Merchant Risk Council's 2025 Global eCommerce Payments & Fraud Report, prepared with Visa Acceptance Solutions and Verifi and published in July 2025, surveyed 1,082 e-commerce payment and fraud professionals from 38 countries in October–November 2024. 10% said their company accepts cryptocurrency and 5% had added it in the past 12 months, the lowest of 11 payment methods; cards stood at 80%, digital wallets at 73% and bank transfers at 58%.
• 39% in the United States. A Harris Poll for the National Cryptocurrency Association, released with PayPal on 27 January 2026, asked 619 payment decision makers in October 2025. They came from four industries where crypto is most common: retail and e-commerce, hospitality and travel, luxury and specialty goods, digital goods and gaming. 39% accept crypto at checkout: 50% of large enterprises, 34% of small businesses and 32% of midsize ones.

The 39% describes merchants in the industries most open to crypto, not all US businesses. The 10% covers e-commerce companies across 38 countries, though its respondents are payment specialists who answered a survey, not a random sample of companies.

The same US survey also measured demand:

• Customers ask. 88% of the merchants said customers ask about paying in crypto.
• Sales grow where it is offered. 72% of the merchants who accept crypto saw their crypto sales grow over the past year.
• Merchants expect more. 84% expect crypto payments to become common within five years. A Deloitte survey of 2,000 US retail executives in December 2021 found a similar mood, with 85% expecting digital currency payments to be everywhere in their industry within five years, a horizon that ends in December 2026.

Payment companies' own data points the same way for stablecoins. Stripe reports that stablecoin transaction volume on its platform grew 30% month over month in the first half of 2025, and that customers paying with stablecoins were twice as likely to be net new customers as those paying in other ways. Stripe does not publish the starting volume, so the growth rate says nothing about size.

For a business deciding whether to start accepting crypto, these surveys say more about customer interest than about cost. The cost side, from the processor's percentage to network fees, is broken down in what crypto payment processing costs a business.

Who pays whom in stablecoins

McKinsey's estimate splits the $390 billion of stablecoin payments in 2025 by who pays whom:

• Businesses paying businesses: about $226 billion. That is roughly 60% of the total and 733% more than a year earlier.
• People paying people: $77 billion. Transfers from one individual to another.
• People paying businesses: $76 billion. Shoppers paying shops and online services sit here.
• Businesses paying people: $11 billion. Payouts from companies to individuals.

The money comes mostly from Asia, according to the same McKinsey analysis:

• Asia: about $245 billion, or 60% of the total, driven mostly by payments sent from Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
• North America: $95 billion.
• Europe: $50 billion.
• Latin America and Africa: under $1 billion each.

Spending with cards linked to stablecoins added about $4.5 billion in 2025, up 673% from 2024. So most of the money paid in stablecoins today goes from one company to another. If your own company is weighing that route for its partners in other countries, the practical side is in our guide on paying suppliers abroad with stablecoins.

How much stablecoin money crosses borders

Chainalysis's 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, published on 23 September 2026, covers July 2025 to June 2026. It reports that stablecoins moving across borders rose 77.5%, from $124.2 billion to $220.3 billion. Its monthly estimate more than doubled, from $11 billion in January 2025 to $24 billion in June 2026.

The average cross-border stablecoin payment in that index is about $3,000. An average can hide a mix of very small and very large transfers, and Chainalysis counts only flows where both sides can be placed in a country, so the real total is likely higher.

Inside countries the shift is sharper. Value moving between personal wallets within the same country rose 302.9% in the 12 months to June 2026, from $56.8 billion to $228.7 billion, and 96% of it is now in stablecoins.

For comparison, the World Bank puts the average cost of sending money abroad through banks and money transfer services at 6.36% of the amount, for a transfer of about $200, fees and exchange-rate margin included (Remittance Prices Worldwide, the figure shown on its site in October 2026). The UN target is 3% by 2030. A stablecoin transfer has a different price, set by the network it travels on, so it is worth checking how much a USDT transfer costs on each network and how long it takes.

Which stablecoins and networks hold the money

DefiLlama's dashboard shows $311.5 billion of dollar-pegged stablecoins in circulation on 2 October 2026, up 4.4% from $298.4 billion a year earlier. That is the stock of tokens in existence, not the amount paid. Two tokens hold about 82% of it:

• USDT, issued by Tether: $184.1 billion, or 58.8% of supply.
• USDC, issued by Circle: $74.1 billion, or 23.6% of supply.

The issuers' own reports for the end of June 2026 agree:

• Tether: about $184.6 billion of USDT. That figure comes from its second-quarter results of 31 July 2026, where Tether also puts its market share above 60% by its own definition of the market.
• Circle: $73.3 billion of USDC. That is 19% more than a year earlier, according to its second-quarter results of 5 August 2026.

The same token lives on several blockchains at once, and DefiLlama shows where the supply sits on 2 October 2026:

1. Ethereum: $146.1 billion, 46.6%.
2. Tron: $93.9 billion, 30.0%.
3. Solana: $16.4 billion, 5.2%.
4. BNB Chain: $13.8 billion, 4.4%.
5. Base: $5.1 billion, 1.6%.

This is where tokens are held, not how much moves on each network. Raw transfer volume per network mixes in the exchange and bot traffic from the first layer above, so supply is the steadier way to compare networks. For a business deciding which stablecoin to take first, USDT's lead in supply is the starting point, along with the benefits and risks of accepting USDT payments.

Where crypto is used most

Chainalysis ranks 117 countries in its 2026 index, covering July 2025 to June 2026. Each country's place combines four factors:

• Money flowing into crypto services, weighted by income per person.
• Peer-to-peer transfers between people within the country.
• Cross-border transfers in and out of the country.
• Balances held on-chain by people in the country.

The top ten:

1. Brazil, a crypto economy of $252.5 billion.
2. United States.
3. Nigeria.
4. Japan.
5. South Korea.
6. India.
7. Ukraine.
8. Thailand.
9. South Africa.
10. Canada.

Further down, Russia is 16th, Vietnam 18th and Türkiye 20th. The 2026 edition uses a new method, so its ranks do not compare with the 2025 edition (published 2 September 2025), where India was first, the United States second and Pakistan third. Adjusted for population, the 2025 edition put Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia at the top.

The 2025 edition also measured how much crypto value each region received in July 2024 – June 2025:

• Europe: $2.6 trillion, up 42%.
• Asia-Pacific: $2.36 trillion, up 69% from $1.4 trillion.
• North America: over $2.2 trillion, up 49%.
• Middle East and North Africa: over half a trillion dollars, up 33%.
• Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa: growth of 63% and 52%.

Within Europe, Chainalysis's chapter of 16 October 2025 ranks the countries by value received over the same 12 months:

1. Russia: $376.3 billion, up from $256.5 billion a year earlier.
2. United Kingdom: $273.2 billion.
3. Germany: $219.4 billion.
4. Ukraine: $206.3 billion.
5. France: $180.1 billion.

Chainalysis links Russia's growth to a surge of institutional-scale transfers and to decentralized finance, meaning lending and trading run by programs on the blockchain. Transfers over $10 million grew 86% in Russia, against 44% in the rest of Europe. All these regional figures are flows, mostly trading and transfers between services; they are not spending.

What these numbers mean if you sell online

Put together, the data says two things. Few people pay in crypto: in the United States the share of adults who paid this way has stayed at 1–2% since 2021. But the payments that do happen sit where a seller with foreign customers already works:

• Across borders. Stablecoins moving between countries came to $220.3 billion in Chainalysis's 2026 index.
• Between businesses. About 60% of real stablecoin payments in 2025 were one company paying another, by McKinsey's estimate.
• In stablecoins. Dollar-pegged tokens, not coins whose price swings, now carry 96% of the value moving between personal wallets inside countries, according to Chainalysis.

That makes crypto a rail for specific situations, not a replacement for cards. The clearest one is a customer in another country whose card payment or bank transfer does not get through. Crypto is one of several answers there, and it is worth weighing against the others in the guide on how to accept payments from customers abroad when the money won't come through.

The data also points to where to start. The top reason people paid in crypto was that the person or business on the other side asked for it, and among stablecoins USDT has by far the most money in circulation. Taking a volatile coin and holding it is a different matter: its price can move between the sale and the moment the money is spent.

A payment processor, a service that issues the invoice, watches the blockchain and credits the seller, handles this for a fee. At CryptumPay, incoming payments are converted to USDT as soon as they arrive, so the balance never sits in a volatile coin, and USDT is accepted on several networks. The price is 1% per successful payment, down to 0.5% at higher volumes, plus a fixed transfer fee for servicing the one-time deposit address on the chosen network. Whether those fees are passed on to the customer is the seller's decision.

How the statistics on this page were collected

Every figure here comes from its publisher's own page: the report, the survey, the press release or the live dashboard. Each was checked against that page on 2 October 2026; retellings in news stories and compilations were not used as sources.

The sources fall into four kinds, and the kind tells you how to read the number:

• Surveys. The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, the Merchant Risk Council, the Harris Poll for the National Cryptocurrency Association and Deloitte asked people or companies about themselves. These show behaviour and intentions, within the limits of each sample.
• On-chain analysis. Chainalysis, McKinsey with Artemis Analytics, Crypto.com Research and a16z crypto estimate activity from blockchain data with their own filters and models. Their figures depend on those filters and do not compare across providers.
• Company reports. Worldpay, Stripe, River, Tether and Circle publish figures from their own data or research. Tether and Circle are issuers stating their own circulation.
• Live dashboards. DefiLlama, Visa Onchain Analytics and BTC Map change daily; the values here are those of 2 October 2026.

Numbers from different methods are never added together or set side by side as if they measured the same thing. Shares of stablecoin supply by token and by network are calculated from DefiLlama's own figures for the same day. The page is updated once a month: dashboard values are refreshed and new editions of reports replace old ones.

The short version

About 774 million people owned crypto in June 2026, but only around 2% of US adults used it to pay in the year to October 2025, and direct crypto payments make up 0.19% of global transaction value. Real stablecoin payments reached about $390 billion in 2025, and businesses paying businesses make up roughly 60% of them. The trillions quoted elsewhere are mostly trading and transfers, not purchases.

Questions people ask next

How many shops accept bitcoin?

BTC Map, a volunteer map built on OpenStreetMap, listed 27,155 merchants accepting bitcoin on 2 October 2026, up from 18,389 on 1 December 2025. The United States leads with 9,909 merchants, then Brazil with 2,204 and El Salvador with 1,285. Across all 29,631 mapped places, ATMs and exchanges included, 11,813 take regular bitcoin transfers and 23,421 take Lightning, a faster layer on top of bitcoin built for small payments; one place can take both. Only 53% of listings were re-checked within the past year, so part of the growth is more mapping, not only more merchants.

Is the Lightning Network actually used for payments?

River, a bitcoin brokerage, reported on 24 February 2026 that Lightning passed $1 billion in monthly volume and grew 300% in 2025. The average Lightning transaction reached $223. River does not describe its measurement method on the public page, so treat the figures as an industry estimate rather than an independent count.

How big is the crypto payment gateway market?

Estimates vary with the definition. Future Market Insights puts the market at $1.68 billion in 2025, growing to $6.85 billion by 2036 (report of 25 May 2026). Market Research Future gives $1.708 billion for 2025 and $8.806 billion by 2035 (page updated 17 September 2026). The 2025 starting points are close, but the end values and growth rates differ. Both firms describe their approach on their public pages, but the data and the calculation behind each number sit in paid reports, so these are commercial forecasts, not measurements.

Why do counts of crypto owners differ so much between reports?

They use different methods. Crypto.com Research infers owners from wallet and exchange behaviour, while central banks ask a sample of people what they hold and how they use it. Even within one publisher, a change of method can break comparison with earlier years, so compare a number only with the same series.

How often is this page updated?

Once a month. Live dashboard values such as stablecoin supply, Visa's volumes and the bitcoin merchant count are refreshed, and when a source publishes a new edition, its numbers replace the old ones. Each figure keeps its date, so a citation stays traceable.