The market is consolidating. Wallets are adding cards. Card apps and neobanks are adding onchain rails. Payment apps are adding savings and remittances. Everyone building consumer crypto products is converging on the same shape: an app that holds your money, moves it (the farther the better), and lets you spend it, regardless of what chain or currency it started as. The lines between what’s called a neobank and what is called a wallet aren’t holding anymore. This is a good sign.
MiniPay sits in that same space. Powered by orchestration—stablecoins, local payment rails, cards, digital USD and EUR accounts, all routed into one balance that works wherever a user is. That’s been the aim since MiniPay started, and in the last quarter, we moved the needle in a way that made the shape even more visible.
The updates below summarize the key initiatives delivered during the quarter and highlight our continued progress against the long-term objectives outlined in the Opera–Celo partnership proposal. Together, they reflect the work undertaken as part of this grant to expand MiniPay’s utility, grow ecosystem participation, and accelerate everyday stablecoin adoption.
By the Numbers (since launch)
-
18 million+ total wallet activations (+12% QoQ)
-
541 million+ transactions processed (+15% QoQ)
-
66+ countries
-
57+ Mini Apps live
-
4.78M $CELO staked
Minipay 160M $CELO Grant
Late last year, the Celo community approved a proposal to allocate 160 million $CELO to Opera, marking a shift in how Opera relates to the network; from a distribution partner running MiniPay on top of Celo, to a network stakeholder with a direct hand in how Celo governs and grows.
This quarter marked the first real use of that grant. Opera has staked 4.78 million $CELO through Mondo to support selected governance proposals, putting Opera’s weight directly behind the direction of the network rather than just building on it. We have also allocated 1,079,312 $CELO to fund CELO Rewards inside Opera’s browser apps, a portion of which has already been distributed to users earning CELO simply by using Opera apps.
Both moves are early, and there’s a lot more of the grant still ahead of us. But the shape of it is already clear: this isn’t capital sitting on a balance sheet. It’s being put to work — into governance, into onboarding, into the parts of Celo that need long-term participants rather than short-term partners.
Major Milestones
MiniPay Card Launch
Spend Celo stablecoins at 175M+ merchants anywhere in the world.
Over the last three years of MiniPay, one of our key focus points has remained utility—making stablecoins feel like real money to real users. It seems like a lifetime ago since we first demoed direct-to-local-merchant payments in Kenya back in 2024. Since then, everyone else has caught on.
Local payment support keeps expanding, making MiniPay feel like an intrinsically local tool to users everywhere. But cards remain the most ubiquitous payment method there is. Whether it’s travelers and nomads moving from country to country, or freelancers paying online for the tools of their trade. In conquering the cash part of the equation, we also needed to address the card part.
After months of work, it’s finally here. Through Q1, we opened up a waitlist to users in anticipation for the launch of the card. In Q2 2026, we kicked off the rollout, starting with Celo ecosystem members and our most active users, and expanding rapidly from there. Today, the card is already available to all users in Europe, and is gradually being unlocked in supported markets across Africa, LATAM and Asia. With the US to follow in Q3.
The card offers users a way to spend stablecoins on Celo anywhere that accepts Visa payments, and however they like.
Gold Cashback on Spend
The Card also gives users a percentage of every purchase back in gold, automatically, on top of the balance they’re already building.
Cashback isn’t a new idea, but paying it out in gold changes what it means. In most of the markets MiniPay serves, gold has been the way families protect value across bad years and good ones — something you buy when you can and hold when you can’t, long before anyone had a word like “savings account.” Turning everyday card spend into gold accumulation puts that same instinct on autopilot. A user doesn’t have to decide to save. It happens in the background, tied to spending they were already doing.
It’s a small mechanic, but it changes the relationship people have with their spend — every purchase leaves something behind instead of just being gone.
Read more about it here.
Gold in MiniPay
In November of 2025, the Buy Gold Mini App by SquidRouter launched in MiniPay. Since then, we’ve seen over 120,000 new XAUT0 users buying, selling, holding digital gold in the app.
The story of gold in MiniPay has always been one of access. Long before the Mini App existed, users told us they wanted to hold gold, the way generations before them had. But physical gold comes with real limitations — where do you store it, how do you move it, what happens when you need to sell a fraction of it rather than the whole bar. The Mini App solved the ownership problem. You could finally hold gold the way you hold a stablecoin: divisible, liquid, yours. And adoption grew. Today, Celo is the #1 network globally for Tether Gold holders, capturing over 90% of all XAUT0 market share and boasting nearly double the digital gold holder base of Ethereum.
This quarter, we brought gold up front. Gold balances now show right on the home screen, alongside stablecoins, as a first-class part of what MiniPay users hold. Whether it’s bought through the Mini App, received from someone else, or earned by using the Card—it’s no longer a separate thing you go looking for. It’s just part of the balance.
For users who’ve spent a lifetime thinking of gold as something physical, something you lock away and rarely touch, that shift matters. It turns a store of value into something you can actually see yourself holding, day to day.
Virtual Accounts in MiniPay
Exactly a year ago, we pre-announced Digital USD & EUR Accounts in MiniPay — a way for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and families across borders to receive USD and EUR from senders in the US and Europe, using ACH and SEPA. Each user gets a dedicated named account they can use to receive money anytime, instantly converted to stablecoins on Celo.
For users in Europe and the US, it’s a permanent, always-on way to move into stablecoins anytime by a simple local transfer. For everyone else, it’s the other side of a problem that’s followed remittances for decades: getting paid from abroad without losing days to it, or a cut of it, to the systems in between.
A year in, the feature has grown into one of the lowkey workhorses of MiniPay. Deposits through Digital Accounts are led by users in Southeast Asia, LATAM, and Africa—the same regions where “does my bank support international transfers” has always been the wrong question to have to ask.
Deposit from Apple Pay in the US & SEPA in Europe
This quarter, we added a new way to fund MiniPay: Apple Pay in the US and SEPA in Europe, powered by Daimo, with no ID verification required for deposits up to $100.
Most onramps ask for identity verification before a user moves a single dollar even just to try the app. This one doesn’t. Below the $100 threshold, a user can go from opening MiniPay to holding stablecoins in a few taps, using a payment method they already have set up on their phone.
It’s a small cap, but it’s not meant to carry someone’s savings. It’s meant to remove the one step that stops people from trying MiniPay at all.
World Cup 2026 in MiniPay
For the 2026 World cup tournament, Football Mini Apps were front and center in MiniPay for the tournament — Predictor, Multis, and Fantasy Football let users back their picks and their teams, compete with friends and win prizes. Melorize lets users generate AI songs and soundtracks for their teams and the love of the game.. While new Mini Apps like Mini Quiz ran weekly live quizzes where thousands of users competed on football knowledge at the same time.
We pushed over millions of notifications across the tournament to drive people into the participating Mini Apps. It worked. Across the Mini Apps involved, transaction volume and user activity grew multiple times over during the tournament. Transactions across participating Mini Apps grew by over 70% MoM with some Mini Apps like Data Bundle by BitGifty seeing volume growth of up to 1,241%.
Mini App Roadshow: What We Found in Southeast Asia
The Mini App Roadshow’s first stop was Manila and Ho Chi Minh City. Over 200 builders showed up across both cities, and by the end, we had more than 80 app ideas submitted.
The turnout was incredible and more intriguing was how specific the Mini App ideas coming from the builders turned out to be. Builders showed up already knowing exactly which local payment habit they wanted to fix, because they lived it. New Mini Apps with use cases like direct-to-QR payments from MiniPay, are now being built by someone who clearly understood how much of daily spending in the region already runs through a QR code, and wanted stablecoins to just slot into that habit instead of replacing it. This among many other Mini Apps now in the pipeline.
The distribution potential was instantly understood. Build inside MiniPay and you’re building on top of a wallet already live in 60+ countries, which means an app solving a very local problem can end up serving users from Europe to South America, without the builder ever touching a new market directly. Builders in Manila and Ho Chi Minh City understood that immediately, and a lot of them showed up wanting to be next.
A lot more is in the pipeline from what came out of these first stops on the Roadshow, and the next stop is already being planned.
Opera Deepens Relationship with Celo
In April, Opera rolled out CELO Rewards inside Opera for Android, Opera Mini, and Opera News apps. It sits on top of Opera’s existing loyalty program where active users already earn points for using the browser. Now, in select countries, that same activity earns real CELO. A non-custodial wallet gets created automatically, no setup needed. To date we have allocated 1 ’079’312 $CELO to support this initiative which has already been partially distributed. Also thanks to these initiatives Celo has now entered the top 10 projects on Token Terminal by token holders!
Users don’t have to seek out a wallet or decide to get into crypto to end up with one. It just accumulates from things they were already doing. Over 50 million Opera users who have earned rewards in recent months to redeem them as USD₮ on MiniPay, accelerating the wallet’s growth on Celo.
Thank you
Once again, to everyone using MiniPay, building with it, experimenting, giving feedback, or just watching where we go and what we do—thank you.
You’re helping shape a world where financial tools work for more people, in more places, without unnecessary barriers.
And we’re still just getting started.