Crypto is picking up the lunch bill. And the groceries. And the weekend away.
European Nexo Card users spent about €80 per transaction in 2025, according to the company’s new report, Digital assets and the European lifestyle. That is roughly twice the average euro-area card payment: around €38 in the first half of 2025 and €39 in the second half, according to the European Central Bank.
The purchases themselves look familiar. People are eating out, booking trips and paying for fitness classes. What changes is where the money comes from—and whether they spend their crypto or borrow against it.
Bigger tabs, familiar habits
Nexo’s report draws on anonymised, aggregated card transactions across the European Economic Area between January and December 2025.
Nearly a third of spending went toward travel, eating out and leisure. Together, those categories roughly matched all other retail spending once groceries were excluded.
Travel was the second-largest category, taking 15.9% of spending by value. Within food and drink, restaurants accounted for 88.5%.
There was plenty of ordinary shopping, too. More than half of cardholders used the card for groceries.
The fastest-growing categories suggest customers were spending more on how they live:
| Category | Spending growth versus 2024 |
|---|---|
| Health and wellness | 27% |
| Travel | 22% |
| Entertainment | 22% |
The €80 figure needs one distinction: it measures the average purchase, not a person’s total spending. It also describes Nexo’s customer base, rather than every European who owns crypto.
Nexo previewed the report on November 11 by asking its community about the most ordinary things they had bought with crypto.
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Two ways to pay for the same dinner
Imagine paying an €80 restaurant bill with the Nexo Card.
In Debit Mode, you spend assets from your available balance. Nexo handles the conversion into conventional currency, and your balance falls.
In Credit Mode, you borrow against eligible crypto holdings to fund the purchase. You keep the assets backing the loan, but now owe money. Their price can still rise or fall.
Customers can switch between the two modes in the app. The card uses Mastercard’s network, so the restaurant does not need its own crypto checkout.
When customers chose to pay directly with crypto, 72.7% of that spending used stablecoins, according to Nexo. These tokens are designed to track a reference currency, making them a more predictable spending balance than Bitcoin or Ether, although their value is not guaranteed.
That helps explain the appeal: keep some assets invested, keep others ready to spend, and choose at the checkout.
We’ve followed the borrowing story. Here’s the spending side.
Blockster has covered Nexo’s push to make digital holdings usable throughout the year.
In January, the company introduced Zero-Interest Credit, a fixed-term borrowing product with predefined repayment conditions. In April, it extended that offering to Solana and XRP holders.
That is a separate product from the card’s Credit Mode. Its advertised 0% APR does not describe the card’s borrowing terms.
The broader idea also came up in Blockster’s interview with Nexo’s Neil Steinhardt at Consensus Miami: people want ways to access the value of their crypto while maintaining an investment position.
The card report adds a practical view of what customers actually buy.
“What the data shows is a European consumer who spends on everyday categories, with higher ticket sizes.”
— Yasen Yankov, Head of Product Management, Nexo
The competition is for your everyday wallet
Nexo is part of a wider push to make crypto spending feel as straightforward as tapping a bank card.
Blockster previously covered MetaMask Card’s addition of Solana USDC spending, allowing customers to use wallet-held assets for purchases. Bitget Wallet’s expansion into South Asia offered another approach, with users funding a separate card balance.
These services address the same everyday question: how do you turn a digital balance into something you can actually use?
Nexo’s distinction is the choice between spending that balance and borrowing against holdings within one card. Its report moves the conversation beyond where a card is accepted to how customers use it.
There is a familiar way to pay, too. In an October 29 walkthrough, Nexo showed customers how to add the card to Apple Wallet and use an iPhone or Apple Watch at the checkout.
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More residents get access
Alongside the report, Nexo announced card availability in additional territories and autonomous regions associated with EU countries:
France: Réunion, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Mayotte and Saint-Martin.
Spain: the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla.
Finland: the Åland Islands.
This expands access for eligible residents, rather than simply adding destinations where existing customers can use their cards.
For crypto payment businesses, becoming someone’s regular grocery or restaurant card is a meaningful test. People may try a new payment method once out of curiosity. Using it week after week requires convenience.
Nexo’s data suggests that, for some European customers, digital assets have already found a place in that routine. The next purchase may be less about watching Bitcoin’s price and more about deciding where to have lunch.
Reporting by Sasha Steenkamp
