Visa Closes Meme Coin Card Rewards Loophole via Crossmint
Visa is moving to close a checkout loophole that let credit card users earn ordinary rewards on meme coin purchases, after Decrypt reported the payment giant told at least one industry participant the merchant code for digital goods media is not appropriate for those transactions. The workaround ran through Crossmint, a crypto payments infrastructure firm whose checkout tools appeared inside the Robinhood Wallet and Fomo apps.
The decision lands days after banks lost their push for tighter stablecoin rules when the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate this week. In this narrower fight over card rewards, JP Morgan came away with the win, Decrypt reported, citing Crypto In America. Cointribune, which also covered the change, described the merchant code at the centre of it as 5815, a four-digit category normally used for digital books and movies.
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Key facts
- Visa told payment processors, including Checkout.com, that the digital goods media code will no longer be accepted for meme coin purchases, with a grace period expected to end next week, per Decrypt.
- Chase told The Block that one Visa transaction had not been flagged as a cryptocurrency purchase, had been given the wrong merchant category code and should not have earned rewards.
- The New York attorney general’s office told The Block it was aware of and reviewing the matter; Cointribune names Attorney General Letitia James’s office as the reviewer.
- Crossmint said in April that it had registered 68,000 first-time buyers through its Apple Pay button, while Fomo raised $75 million in June at a $550 million valuation, according to Cointribune.
- Mastercard has announced no similar change, Cointribune reported, leaving Visa as the only network with a precise measure on the loophole.
How the workaround functioned
The Block’s September 1 investigation found that users of Robinhood Wallet and Fomo could buy meme coins with credit cards through Apple Pay or Google Pay without completing a separate KYC process. Test purchases, powered by Crossmint and made with both Visa and Mastercard cards, were coded as digital goods media rather than crypto transactions, which let customers collect points or cash back on the buys. Cointribune reported that some dogwifhat (WIF) purchases were among those processed under the digital goods label.
Crossmint defended its approach by pointing to a 2025 SEC staff statement that described certain meme coins as akin to collectibles rather than securities. “Every product we support goes through a detailed review with the relevant partners, including transaction categorization,” a Crossmint spokesperson told The Block, as quoted by Cointribune. Visa’s own rules carry other categories for direct crypto purchases, including codes 6012 and 6051 with a specific indicator — a route the misclassified transactions bypassed.
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Visa and Crossmint did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Decrypt reported. The two accounts agree on the core facts; Cointribune supplies the specific code number and the Crossmint funding details, while Decrypt names Checkout.com as one of the processors told to wind the practice down.
Why it matters
The change does not block meme coin purchases by card, but it removes the rewards that made those buys feel like ordinary digital media spending. That touches platforms such as Fomo and Crossmint, whose Apple Pay checkout has been pitched as a low-friction entry point for new buyers, and it draws a clearer line between crypto and media transactions across Visa’s network. It also hands banks a partial win after their stablecoin lobbying failed, and puts the New York attorney general’s review on a separate track from the card network’s own rulemaking.
What to watch
The processors’ grace period is expected to end next week, the deadline that will show whether the recoding holds. Beyond that, the New York attorney general’s review and any move by Mastercard to match Visa will shape how far the tightening spreads. This article is not financial advice, and crypto markets are volatile and uncertain.
Sources: Decrypt, Cointribune
