Lithic bridges crypto to card payments
Bo Jiang, co-founder and CEO of Lithic, on the key primitives in card issuing
The key unlock in DeFi x TradFi cards is that crypto stops being a speculative asset and starts behaving like spendable money. Lithic sits at the bridge layer. It lets products like Eco turn on chain balances into ordinary card transactions that can buy groceries, subscriptions, or transit, while keeping the hard parts, card network connectivity, controls, reporting, and compliance, inside familiar card rails.
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Lithic is built as a card issuing primitive, not an all in one bank stack. That matters here because hybrid products often need custom compliance, custom KYC, and multiple partners. Lithic handles issuing and transaction processing, while other providers handle ACH, ledgers, or crypto pieces.
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The consumer benefit is concrete. Earlier crypto products often asked users to care about yields, protocols, or token mechanics. Hybrid card products instead let users hold value in a new system and still pay anywhere cards work. Rain shows the same pattern on the business side, where on chain balances become usable for SaaS, travel, and everyday spend.
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The business model also becomes easier to understand. Card based products monetize through interchange and sometimes software fees, so the experience can feel free or better priced to users. That is the same basic playbook that helped embedded finance spread from fintechs into mainstream apps and brands.
From here, the winners will be the companies that make digital money invisible to the end user and legible to regulators. As more products package stablecoins and other on chain balances behind normal card and account workflows, card issuers like Lithic become the control layer that turns crypto utility into mainstream financial behavior.