You Can Earn Credit Card Points Buying Meme Coins — By Pretending They're Audiobooks
Buy Bitcoin with a credit card, and card networks typically block it or charge you cash-advance fees. Buy a meme coin on two specific apps right now, and you might earn points instead.
Robinhood Wallet and social trading app Fomo let users purchase meme coins like dogwifhat directly with a credit card via Apple Pay or Google Pay — no separate identity verification required at checkout. The Block tested this directly with real purchases on both Visa and Mastercard.
Here's the mechanism making this possible: the transactions get coded as merchant category 5815, "digital goods media" — the same category used for audiobooks and digital movies, not cryptocurrency. That single coding choice, powered by a payment processor called Crossmint, is what lets some cards hand out normal rewards points and cashback on a volatile meme coin purchase.
Compare that to buying $BTC or $ETH on these same apps: users still have to transfer crypto in from an outside wallet or buy USDC with a debit card first, then swap — the traditional friction stays firmly in place for established coins, just not for meme tokens.
This hasn't gone unnoticed. JPMorgan Chase asked Visa to formally investigate the classification, stating these purchases shouldn't qualify for card rewards under their rules. New York's Attorney General's office is reviewing the structure too.
Fomo's CEO defended the approach, comparing buying a meme coin to paying for morning coffee — frictionless, instant, no big deal. Cryptopolitan also reported over 99% of Robinhood Chain's trading volume now comes from meme coin activity alone.
Does classifying meme coin purchases as "digital media" expose a genuine blind spot in how card networks built their crypto rules, or is this exactly the kind of workaround that gets shut down fast once banks push back? 👇
#Robinhood #Memecoin #WIF #zyverra #CryptoNews
Buy Bitcoin with a credit card, and card networks typically block it or charge you cash-advance fees. Buy a meme coin on two specific apps right now, and you might earn points instead.
Robinhood Wallet and social trading app Fomo let users purchase meme coins like dogwifhat directly with a credit card via Apple Pay or Google Pay — no separate identity verification required at checkout. The Block tested this directly with real purchases on both Visa and Mastercard.
Here's the mechanism making this possible: the transactions get coded as merchant category 5815, "digital goods media" — the same category used for audiobooks and digital movies, not cryptocurrency. That single coding choice, powered by a payment processor called Crossmint, is what lets some cards hand out normal rewards points and cashback on a volatile meme coin purchase.
Compare that to buying $BTC or $ETH on these same apps: users still have to transfer crypto in from an outside wallet or buy USDC with a debit card first, then swap — the traditional friction stays firmly in place for established coins, just not for meme tokens.
This hasn't gone unnoticed. JPMorgan Chase asked Visa to formally investigate the classification, stating these purchases shouldn't qualify for card rewards under their rules. New York's Attorney General's office is reviewing the structure too.
Fomo's CEO defended the approach, comparing buying a meme coin to paying for morning coffee — frictionless, instant, no big deal. Cryptopolitan also reported over 99% of Robinhood Chain's trading volume now comes from meme coin activity alone.
Does classifying meme coin purchases as "digital media" expose a genuine blind spot in how card networks built their crypto rules, or is this exactly the kind of workaround that gets shut down fast once banks push back? 👇
#Robinhood #Memecoin #WIF #zyverra #CryptoNews