Infrastructure moat behind stablecoin cards
Farooq Malik and Charles Naut, co-founders of Rain, on stablecoin-backed credit cards
The real moat here is not the card itself, it is the control layer Rain had to build between wallets, card networks, compliance, and settlement. A normal card program can lean on off the shelf processors, sponsor banks, and fiat ledger systems. Rain is trying to let a business spend stablecoins through Visa rails, often from self custody, while still handling authorization, compliance checks, conversion, receivables, and network settlement in a way regulators and partners will accept.
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That stack is unusually broad. Rain describes its product as infrastructure for B2B and consumer cards tied to self custody wallets, custodial wallets, or fiat accounts. Later launches added native support across Solana, Tron, and Stellar, which shows the in house work was not just card UX, but multi chain wallet connectivity and settlement logic.
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The closest comparison is a company like Lithic, but Lithic mainly abstracts card issuing for software companies on traditional rails. Rain has said its own stack combines pieces of Brex, Lithic, a bank, and external card issuing infrastructure. That is why reducing partners matters, each extra dependency adds another institution that must get comfortable with crypto linked funds flows.
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This work also creates an operating advantage once the system is live. Rain moved Visa settlement for its cards to USDC and tokenized its credit card receivables, allowing 24 by 7 settlement instead of waiting for normal banking windows. In a market where stablecoins are winning on speed and cross border utility, owning that plumbing makes the product more defensible than a simple branded card program.
The next phase is a shift from proving stablecoin cards can work to becoming the default infrastructure layer behind them. As Visa partnerships, processor partnerships, and multi chain support expand, the companies that built their own orchestration and compliance stack early are positioned to power many more fintech, wallet, and enterprise programs without rebuilding the core system each time.