Battle for the Default Money Bucket

This is a fight to become the user’s default money bucket, not just their card. The winner is the app a person opens first to receive salary, top up cash, hold balances, and tap to pay. Coinbase and Crypto.com start with trading balances and can turn those balances into spend. Revolut starts with everyday banking. RedotPay starts with stablecoins, where the core pitch is hold dollars on chain, then spend or cash out anywhere a card works.1 2 3 4 5 6

• Coinbase already lets users fund a card from USD or crypto held on the exchange, choose which asset to spend, and use the card anywhere Visa debit is accepted. That means payments can be a retention layer on top of an existing trading account, not a standalone business that has to earn the whole relationship from scratch.2 5 7
• Crypto.com runs a similar play from the other direction. Users buy or hold crypto in the app, convert it to fund card spend, and earn rewards in BTC or CRO. Its prepaid card terms also separate the card balance from on card crypto custody, which shows the product is really a trading wallet plus a payments wrapper.3 8 9
• Revolut is different because crypto is one feature inside a much larger banking app. By 2025 it had an estimated $6B of revenue, with $1.3B from card payments and $800M from FX, while crypto driven Wealth growth had already slowed. In markets where it operates, the main advantage is that paychecks, transfers, cards, and crypto already live in one account.4 6 10

The next phase is a bundle war around stable balances. Exchanges will keep adding payments so trading accounts become everyday accounts. Banking apps will keep adding crypto so salary accounts become investing accounts. RedotPay’s path is to make stablecoins feel like the simplest place to store and spend digital dollars, especially for cross border users who care more about payouts, ATM cash access, and merchant acceptance than trading rewards.1 3 4 6 10