TREE NEWS update: Visa is shutting down a checkout loophole, supported by crypto payment infrastructure firm Crossmint, that let users buy meme coins with credit cards while transactions were classified under merchant category codes for digital media such as ebooks, films and music. Visa has told processors including Checkout.com to stop using the code for meme coin purchases, with a grace period expected to end next week. Meme coin buys must then be treated as crypto transactions under Visa’s rules.
Visa Closes Meme Coin Credit Card Rewards Loophole
The crackdown matters less for meme coin demand than for the payments plumbing that made card-funded crypto buying feel frictionless. Reclassifying these purchases as crypto transactions restores Visa's risk and fee framework, shifting costs onto merchants and processors that had benefited from the digital-media code. The open question is whether card-funded meme coin buying simply migrates to other rails or processors, and how aggressively Visa extends the same scrutiny to adjacent crypto categories.
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