Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Visa strips the digital-goods code from meme-coin card buys this week
Token purchases at Crossmint checkouts on Fomo and Robinhood Wallet went out under 5815, the code for e-books and streaming, and earned ordinary points. Visa's rules put crypto under 6012 or 6051 with a quasi-cash flag.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Visa told payment processors to stop coding meme coin credit card transactions as digital media, with a grace period to wind the practice down expected to end this week.
- The coding sat inside checkouts from Crossmint, a crypto payments company whose technology powers card-based token buying on the Fomo and Robinhood Wallet apps.
- Chase said one Visa charge was miscoded and should not have triggered rewards, then opened a case with Visa disputing the classification.
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Why it matters
- cost The cost lands on cardholders who were collecting points on meme coin buys: once those charges carry a crypto code, a Chase customer earns nothing on them, because the bank's terms treat crypto like cash.
- precedent A network reclassified a whole product category through correspondence with processors, so any checkout relying on a favourable merchant code can lose it when the network writes to processors.
- constraint Visa can only bind the roughly nine-tenths of on-chain card payments it carries, and Mastercard credit cards worked at the same checkouts, so the rest of the route is untouched by this instruction.
- contradiction Crossmint answers a card-network coding question with an SEC staff view on securities status, and Vanderbilt's Yesha Yadav says those are two separate regimes.
The rewards depended on the code in the transaction message. Visa's rules put a crypto purchase under 6012 or 6051 with a quasi-cash signal attached [5]. The purchases at issue went out as 5815, the category for digital goods such as e-books, streaming movies and music. Nothing in the message marked them as crypto, so they collected regular points and cash back [4]. Chase's rewards terms treat crypto transactions like cash and pay no points on them [6], so a Chase cardholder buying a meme coin through one of these checkouts was earning a reward the bank had already written out of its own programme. The recode takes that reward to zero [2].
Enforcement came by letter. Visa told at least one industry participant in correspondence that meme coin buys do not fit the digital-goods code. Processors including Checkout.com were told the code would no longer be accepted for those transactions, according to a source familiar with the matter cited by Cryptopolitan [9]. Chase turned one charge into a case with Visa disputing the classification [7]. A spokesperson for Letitia James said the New York attorney general's office is aware of and reviewing the matter [8].
Crossmint's defence runs through a different rulebook. The company pointed to a February 27, 2025 staff statement from the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance that described typical meme coins as "akin to collectibles" rather than securities offerings [11]. It said the 5815 classification was cleared with partners during onboarding [12]. Yesha Yadav, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School, called SEC guidance and card-network rules two different regimes [13].
Cryptopolitan reported in May that Visa captures 90% of on-chain card payments [17]. The remaining tenth runs on networks Visa cannot instruct [1]. The Block found customers could buy tokens with Visa and Mastercard credit cards through Apple Pay or Google Pay, with no separate check of identity [10]. Cryptopolitan's report does not include the dollar volume that went out under 5815 [18].
Rewards on these purchases probably expire once they run as standard crypto transactions [16], and the Crossmint checkout was still live as of Saturday, with meme coin buying continuing on Fomo and Robinhood Wallet [15]. The GENIUS and DEGEN tokens became unavailable through Apple Pay and Google Pay on both apps after questions about how Crossmint had categorized them [14]. In my view this is a repricing inside issuers' rewards programmes, small in dollars and interesting in method, since one network moved a product category by writing to processors [9]. The counter-case is about issuer behaviour. If banks use the quasi-cash flag to decline these charges or bill them as cash advances, card-funded meme coin buying shrinks. The only issuer term in the record is Chase's no-points rule [6]. New York moving from review to action would break the small-in-dollars reading [8].
What to watch
- Whether New York's attorney general moves from reviewing the matter to a formal action against Crossmint or the processors.
- Whether Mastercard sends processors its own instruction, given that Mastercard credit cards worked at the same checkouts.
- Whether the GENIUS and DEGEN tokens return to Apple Pay and Google Pay once they run under a crypto code.