TLDR
Oobit has launched a crypto payment card in Colombia, letting people pay in crypto while merchants receive local fiat.
- Oobit, a non custodial payments app, has rolled out its crypto card in Colombia after raising $25 million in a round led by Tether.
- The launch targets a market where the Colombian peso ranks second globally for centralized exchange stablecoin purchases, signaling strong demand for USDT based everyday payments.
- Early data from Brazil shows users already using Oobit mostly for groceries and daily spending, making Colombia a key test of whether this pattern scales across Latin America.
Deep Dive
1. What Launched In Colombia
Oobit, a crypto payments company, has officially launched its crypto payment card in Colombia on 17 May 2026, its ninth active market after Argentina, Brazil and Chile in Latin America. The expansion follows a $25 million Series A funding round led by Tether, giving the company capital to push deeper into real world payments across the region. The card lets users pay in crypto, primarily stablecoins such as Tether USDt (USDT), while merchants receive regular fiat, so shops do not need to handle digital assets directly.
For Colombian users, this looks and feels like a normal card, but balances are held and spent in crypto behind the scenes.
2. Why Colombia Is A Strategic Target
Oobit is explicitly targeting Colombia because the Colombian peso ranks second worldwide for centralized exchange stablecoin purchases, a signal that residents already use crypto heavily for saving and transacting. By plugging a card on top of this behavior, Oobit is trying to convert holding USDT on exchanges into frictionless in store and online payments. The move is part of a broader shift in Latin America where crypto is used as a workaround for inflation, capital controls and slow banking rails, not just as a speculative asset.
Colombia offers a ready made user base that already understands stablecoins, so card adoption could grow faster than in markets where crypto is still niche.
3. Early Usage Patterns And What To Watch
In Brazil, Oobit reports 200 percent user growth, with customers averaging about 20 transactions and around $400 in spending per month, mostly in USDT, and 35 percent of payments going to groceries and supermarkets. Similar spending patterns in Colombia would confirm that crypto cards are becoming a genuine alternative to bank cards for day to day expenses. Oobit has also launched Agent Cards, corporate Visa cards designed for AI agents, hinting at a longer term push into automated, on chain payments.
The key signals to watch are Colombian transaction volumes, merchant acceptance, any local regulatory response and whether other issuers or banks move to copy stablecoin backed cards.
Conclusion
A crypto card launch in Colombia shows how stablecoin heavy usage in Latin America is maturing from exchange balances into everyday spending at supermarkets and other retailers. If Oobits Colombian rollout mirrors Brazils strong usage, it will strengthen the case that the first mass market crypto payment product in the region is not a volatile token, but a stablecoin funded card layered on existing card networks.
CoinsKid.Com