Visa Moves to Close Credit-Card Rewards Loophole for Crossmint Memecoin Purchases

Visa is directing payment processors to stop treating Crossmint-powered memecoin purchases as digital-media transactions, a classification that had allowed some cardholders to receive ordinary rewards. The reported grace period for shifting those payments into the card network’s cryptocurrency categories is expected to end during the week of September 21, 2026, according to The Block. The change concerns merchant category coding, the system card networks use to identify the nature of a transaction. It would bring the purchases into Visa’s designated crypto treatment rather than the digital-media category used at the affected checkouts. The Block’s report describes Visa’s direction to processors; Visa’s published merchant-data manual sets out the underlying coding requirements for cryptocurrency purchases. Visa shifts Crossmint memecoin purchases to crypto codes On September 1, The Block reported that Crossmint-powered checkouts in Fomo and Robinhood Wallet enabled users to buy memecoins with Visa or Mastercard credit cards through Apple Pay or Google Pay. Those transactions were processed under merchant category code 5815, a category for digital media, and could earn standard card points or cash back. That treatment mattered because a purchase coded as digital media can be handled differently by a card issuer’s rewards programme than a purchase identified as cryptocurrency. The reported intervention is aimed at the classification mechanism, rather than at the availability of the Crossmint-powered checkout itself. Under the expected timetable, processors would cease using MCC 5815 for the purchases and instead apply the relevant cryptocurrency rules. The Block reported the expected end of the grace period on September 19, leaving the week of September 21 as the key implementation point cited in its account. The reporting does not establish how individual issuers will treat every transaction after the coding change. But it would remove the digital-media classification that enabled the affected purchases to earn ordinary rewards at the time of The Block’s earlier report. Visa’s merchant rules for cryptocurrency purchases Visa’s April 2026 Merchant Data Standards Manual separates cryptocurrency purchases by the type of institution processing them: nonfinancial institutions must use MCC 6051, while financial institutions must use MCC 6012. Crypto transactions also require designated transaction indicators. The framework places those codes apart from MCC 5815, the digital-media category used by the Crossmint-powered memecoin checkouts described in The Block’s September 1 report, so MCC 6051 and MCC 6012 are not interchangeable labels for a digital-content sale. The reporting does not identify which code will apply to each Crossmint-related merchant or checkout; Visa’s manual makes that dependent on whether the institution is nonfinancial or financial. Crossmint’s token policy and changing guidance Crossmint’s own published token-support policy places limits on the memecoin transactions it supports. The company defines eligible memecoins as approved collectible-style fungible tokens and permits only secondary memecoin sales.