REALITY CHECK | Over 50% of the Crypto Neobank Industry Runs on Just These 2 Card Issuers - BitKE

A review of the crypto neobank sector shows that more than half of the industry relies on just two card issuers, according to BitKE. That concentration matters because these platforms typically depend on third-party issuers to provide the payment cards that let users spend crypto-linked balances at ordinary merchants.

For users, the practical takeaway is that many apps offering similar-looking cards may ultimately sit on the same underlying infrastructure. That can mean shared exposure to operational decisions made upstream, such as changes to supported regions, compliance policies, or program availability. It also helps explain why disruptions at a single issuer can ripple across multiple brands at once.

What to watch: whether new issuers enter the market and reduce this dependency, and how the two dominant players handle regulatory and compliance pressure as the sector grows. Greater diversification could improve resilience, while continued concentration keeps a small number of firms central to how crypto spending cards actually function.