The competition for stablecoin payments is heating up comprehensively, and Rain's valuation of nearly $2 billion ignites the "payment stack war" of cryptocurrency cards According to BlockBeats, on January 21st, as encrypted card infrastructure company Rain completed a $250 million Series C financing this month with a valuation of nearly $2 billion, the competition in the encrypted payment field around "how stablecoins can be truly spent" is rapidly intensifying. According to Artemis data, the scale of encrypted card payments is growing at an annualized rate of 106%, with an annualized transaction volume of $18 billion, approaching the scale of stablecoin peer-to-peer transfers of approximately $19 billion. Artemis researcher Patrick Kim predicts that by the end of this year, encrypted cards will become the primary retail payment scenario for stablecoins. At present, this' payment stack battle 'is mainly unfolding on three paths: One is the full stack distribution model. Rain and Hong Kong based Reach have become main members of Visa, integrating complete infrastructure such as card issuance and settlement to bypass the traditional banking system. Rain disclosed that its card user base has increased by 30 times year-on-year, payment amounts have increased by 38 times, and the platform has more than 200 customers. The second is the orchestration layer pattern. Stripe's acquisition of Bridge for $1.1 billion and Zero Hash, valued at approximately $1 billion, represents a major technology and financial infrastructure company's bet on "chain agnostic" solutions to help merchants receive and settle stablecoins without caring about the underlying blockchain. The third is the payment specific blockchain. Some new players believe that general blockchains such as Ethereum were not created for payments. Stable, supported by Bitfinex, will launch a blockchain focused on payments by the end of 2025 and has obtained approximately $2 billion in pre deposited funds, with the goal of achieving a stablecoin transfer experience without additional gas costs. Geographically speaking, emerging markets are the core driving force behind the growth of stablecoin payments. The real payment demand in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia is significantly higher than that in the European and American markets. Data shows that Visa currently holds over 90% of the on chain card payment market share, mainly due to its support for USDC's native stablecoin settlement pilot, while USDT has not yet been included in the system.