Crypto Payments Infrastructure | Debit, Credit & Rewards

The digital asset economy has matured, and with over $2T in global investment, the market is demanding more than just speculative trading.

A new imperative has emerged: bridging the gap between digital assets and traditional finance to enable real-world utility. Crypto holders want the ability to seamlessly use their assets for everyday payments, rewards, and financial services. The challenge for crypto firms, fintechs, and financial institutions isn't finding a market—it's securing the right infrastructure to meet it. This page is your go-to guide for understanding what a modern payments platform should provide to build products that move at the speed of your customers.

Why a Crypto-connected strategy is no longer optional

The demand for crypto-linked payment solutions is accelerating at an unprecedented pace.

The global market for crypto payment apps alone is projected to grow from $557M in 2024 to a staggering $2.4B by 2033, a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.8%. This growth is a direct result of user demand, with studies showing that 87% of active users want crypto-linked cards, and a similar percentage are looking for rewards programs backed by digital assets.

This isn't just a niche trend. The financial industry is in the midst of a fundamental shift. Mainstream adoption is here, and enterprises that delay risk irrelevance. While North America is a major market leader, the Asia-Pacific region is the fastest-growing. Demographically, adoption is expanding beyond the early-adopter, crypto-native community as established financial players enter the space and attract a more diverse user base. This shift is a clear signal: modern financial services demand a modern infrastructure.

Navigating a legacy ecosystem

Bringing a new crypto payment product to market is fraught with challenges, largely due to reliance on outdated technology. Legacy systems were not built for the unique, real-time, and asset-agnostic demands of crypto. This leads to critical friction points that undermine success.

Rigid technology

Legacy platforms were designed for an era of overnight batch processing and static financial products. Their rigid structures make it difficult to handle the dynamic nature of crypto, leading to lengthy product launches, brittle integrations, and a constant fear of vendor lock-in.

Regulatory uncertainty

The global digital asset landscape is a complex patchwork of frameworks. From Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements to varying consumer protection laws, building a globally compliant product requires a deep understanding and a platform that can adapt in real-time.

Security and fraud risk

The decentralized nature of crypto creates unique security challenges. A robust platform must include real-time controls and sophisticated fraud detection tools to protect both the institution and the end user.

Poor user experience

 Early crypto off-ramping solutions often created a clunky and frustrating user experience. High conversion fees, slow transaction times, and a lack of transparency lead to customer churn. A successful product must be as seamless as a traditional fiat transaction.

What a modern platform should provide:

The foundational requirements

To overcome these challenges, a crypto product owner should look for a platform that is purpose-built for the digital asset age. This means your infrastructure partner must provide:

API-first design

An API-first platform abstracts away the complexities of traditional card rails, fiat ledger management, and multi-currency conversion. It should give you full control over every stage of the payments lifecycle, allowing you to build and iterate at the speed of the market.

Cloud-native architecture

A cloud-native platform should not be an adapted legacy system. It must be built from the ground up to handle the unique demands of digital assets, offering unparalleled performance and resilience at global scale.

Modularity and flexibility

The platform should be modular, allowing you to choose the components you need without being forced into a one-size-fits-all solution. It should support a diverse range of use cases and be infinitely configurable, giving you the flexibility to build products that haven't even been imagined yet.

The core of the platform: The universal ledger

At the heart of any modern payments infrastructure for digital assets is a powerful, universal ledger.

Unlike legacy systems that are rigid and single-currency, a universal ledger is asset-agnostic and infinitely flexible. It can track, manage, and settle any asset type—whether it's crypto, fiat, loyalty points, or even tokenized real-world assets.

This single source of truth provides unparalleled real-time control and transparency. It is the key that unlocks a new generation of programmable finance, as it provides the core functionality for everything from virtual accounts to revolving credit and revolving credit lines. By eliminating the need for separate ledgers for different asset classes, it reduces operational complexity, lowers costs, and gives you the agility to launch creative, multi-asset products.

The essential capabilities of a modern partner

A modern payments partner should provide the infrastructure to launch a variety of groundbreaking products. Look for a platform that enables:

Crypto off-ramp debit cards

This capability allows customers to instantly spend their digital assets at any point-of-sale. The platform should handle the instant crypto-to-fiat conversion and transaction processing, allowing you to launch a crypto debit card that works on global payment networks.

Credit secured by crypto

This empowers customers to unlock the value of their crypto without having to sell it. The platform’s ledger should track the value of their digital assets in real-time, allowing you to offer a credit limit secured by the value of a crypto wallet. This enables a new class of financial products that provide liquidity while the customer retains ownership of their crypto.

Multi-asset wallets

A modern platform should allow you to connect digital wallets to a full suite of traditional financial services. From a single platform, you should be able to offer customers fiat accounts, peer-to-peer payments, and even integrated rewards programs where users earn crypto or other digital assets.

The importance of a proven partner: what's possible

Choosing the right technology partner is critical.

Look for a provider with a proven track record and tangible outcomes. Here is what's possible with a resilient, cloud-native platform:

Real-world adoption

The global success of major partnerships between crypto trading platforms and traditional card providers is a testament to the immense demand for crypto-linked cards. Official reports show a 29% year-over-year surge in spending on these cards, validating that consumers are eager to use their crypto for everyday purchases.

Bridging the gap

 A modern platform can facilitate landmark partnerships between crypto firms and traditional financial institutions. These partnerships demonstrate how compliance, auditability, and robust technology can bridge the gap between two previously disparate financial worlds.

Proven performance

A modern platform should provide enterprise-grade performance and reliability. A real-world case study shows a client migrating over 300,000 accounts and cards from a legacy provider in under five months. The result was a  300% improvement in API response times and a rise in throughput from 600 to over 1,000 requests per minute, with major outages dropping to zero.

Technical requirements: what your platform needs

For a platform to truly be fit for the future of finance, it must have specific technical capabilities:

Real-time processing

The system should have a real-time, double-entry ledger for all value types. It should support complex sub-balances, holds, overdrafts, and escrow, all with instant updates.

High uptime and availability

A modern platform should offer a minimum of 99.99% uptime across multiple global cloud regions. Its architecture should support continuous innovation with frequent, low-risk updates.

Configurable everything

You should be able to configure every aspect of your product in real-time via API or a user interface. This includes account structures, fees, billing, credit rules, interest logic, and transaction workflows.

Seamless integration

The platform should provide real-time hooks for fraud tools, ERP systems, card networks, and treasury software. This ensures you can integrate new partners or features without needing to re-platform.

Infrastructure for a new financial age

The crypto economy has moved beyond speculation, and so should its financial products. At Episode Six, we provide the enterprise-grade payments infrastructure that bridges the gap between digital assets and traditional finance. We’ve built a cloud-native, API-first platform that delivers the speed, configurability, and compliance crypto firms need to bring new products to market fast—without vendor lock-in or brittle integrations.

We partner with the full spectrum of crypto players, including exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure providers. Our universal ledger, which supports both crypto and fiat on a single system, is the foundation for real-world utility—from turning balances into spendable cards to enabling real-time crypto-to-fiat transactions and programmable rewards. With deployments live in 30+ countries, our resilience is proven at scale. Episode Six gives you the tools to move beyond speculation and into real-world financial utility.

FAQs

What is a cloud-native platform and why does it matter for crypto?

A cloud-native platform is built from the ground up to run on cloud infrastructure. This is critical for crypto because it provides instant scalability, high availability, and no legacy code or batch constraints, allowing for the real-time processing needed for digital assets.

What's the difference between a crypto debit card and a credit card?

A crypto debit card draws directly from the user's digital asset balance, converting crypto to fiat at the point of sale. A credit card allows the user to spend against a credit limit, which can be secured by their crypto assets. A modern platform should be able to support both models.

Can I integrate my existing wallet?

Yes. A modern payments infrastructure provider is typically wallet-agnostic. They provide the payment infrastructure that connects your existing crypto wallet to the traditional financial system.

Is this only for crypto companies?

No. A modern platform can serve Tier 1 banks, global brands, regional banks, and non-financials offering embedded finance. Its flexibility and modularity make it ideal for complex or hybrid models.

Is Episode Six a direct competitor to our business?

No. We are a B2B payments infrastructure provider. Our business is to empower you to build and launch your own innovative financial products, not to compete with them.

How does your ledger handle different types of digital assets?

Our universal ledger is asset-agnostic. It can be configured to manage any asset type, including various cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, loyalty points, and more, on a single, unified system.

How does the platform facilitate real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion?

Our API-first architecture enables seamless, real-time connectivity to liquidity providers and exchanges. At the point of sale, our system initiates the conversion, bridging the gap between digital assets and traditional card networks in a fraction of a second.

Does the platform support global expansion and multi-currency transactions?

Yes. The Episode Six platform is built for global scale and supports multi-market deployments from day one. Our ledger supports multi-currency accounts and cross-border payments natively, with no workarounds or siloed infrastructure required.

Can I integrate with my existing tech stack and other third-party services?

Yes. The platform’s API-first architecture allows for plug-and-play integrations with fraud tools, wallets, ERP systems, and card networks. Our APIs provide real-time access to customer and product data, and we provide dedicated toolkits for a seamless integration with your existing infrastructure.

What is the main difference between Episode Six and a traditional processor?

Traditional processors were built for a different era of overnight batch processing and manual reconciliation. Episode Six is a cloud-native issuer processor built from the ground up to support real-time payments, instant card issuance, and dynamic configuration via APIs. This provides instant scalability, higher resilience, and continuous innovation with frequent, low-risk updates.

Crypto-linked payment solutions:

The new mandate for financial services

The digital asset economy has matured, and with over $2T in global investment, the market is demanding more than just speculative trading.