Crossmint is standing by its classification of memecoin purchases as digital collectibles, even as Visa reportedly tells payment processors to stop coding those purchases under a category that earns credit card rewards.
The platform, which handles secondary sales of memecoins through checkouts on Robinhood Wallet and Fomo, said it believed merchant category code 5815 was the right fit for its transactions. MCC 5815 is the code used for digital goods like streaming movies and audiobooks, and purchases under it earn ordinary card points and cash back. Crossmint pointed to guidance from the SEC that some memecoins can be treated as akin to collectibles in a securities context.
Payments experts told a different story: SEC opinions do not typically determine how purchases are categorized under card-network classification rules. That gap sits at the heart of the dispute. Crossmint leaned on a securities regulator’s framing, while the card networks run their own coding system, and the two do not have to agree.
The reclassification itself was first reported by the newsletter Crypto in America, which cites a single source familiar with the directive and correspondence it reviewed. Visa declined to comment. Processors were reportedly given a grace period expected to end the week after September 19, after which memecoin purchases must be coded as cryptocurrency transactions, a category that carries no rewards and falls under Visa’s standard crypto restrictions.
Crossmint says nothing on its side has moved. A company spokesperson said its procedures for processing digital goods had not changed and that the company would update them if the relevant guidance changed. “Crossmint maintains good standing with Visa, Mastercard, and all of our payment and card network partners,” the spokesperson said.
Whether other networks follow is an open question. Mastercard has not disclosed whether it issued similar instructions, and neither Mastercard nor processor Checkout.com responded to comment requests.
