The telemedia payments landscape has always evolved in waves. From premium SMS to app store billing, from card payments to wallets, each innovation promises to unlock new users, new revenues and new markets. But rarely do two seemingly opposing trends emerge at the same time – one expanding payment access, the other exposing just how fragile that access really is.
That is exactly what we are seeing now.
On the one hand, the launch of the Lydian Card – built on Visa rails and powered by Rain – marks a significant step forward in making digital assets usable in everyday commerce. On the other, new research from Transaction Network Services (TNS) reveals that nearly half of consumers have experienced payment failures at checkout in the past year.
Taken together, these two stories tell us something important: payments are becoming more inclusive, but not necessarily more reliable. For telemedia companies, that distinction matters more than ever.
The Lydian Card is, in many ways, a breakthrough moment for crypto in commerce. By allowing users to spend more than 300 digital assets anywhere Visa is accepted, it removes one of the biggest barriers that has held crypto back for years: usability. No more clunky conversions, limited merchant acceptance or confusing wallet flows. Crypto becomes just another funding source behind a familiar card interface.
For telemedia, this is a clear opportunity. A whole new cohort of users – many of them in regions with limited access to traditional banking – can now pay for services as easily as any cardholder. Markets across Latin America, Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, where crypto adoption has surged, suddenly become more accessible.
For content verticals such as gaming, streaming, adult content and digital subscriptions, this could translate into meaningful uplift in conversion and spend.
It also solves one of crypto’s long-standing weaknesses: recurring billing. Subscription models, the backbone of much of telemedia, have historically been difficult to execute with native crypto payments. By wrapping crypto inside a card, the Lydian model enables seamless renewals, upgrades and lifecycle management.
In short, crypto cards don’t just bring new users, they bring them in a format the industry already understands.
The frictionless payments illusion
But here’s the catch: they also bring all the problems of card payments with them. And that is where the second story becomes critical.
The TNS data is a stark reminder that the global card infrastructure, for all its scale, is far from perfect. A 46% payment failure rate is not a marginal issue, it is systemic. Connectivity gaps, fragmented systems and inconsistent performance all contribute to transactions failing at the worst possible moment: checkout.
In traditional retail, a failed payment might mean a lost sale. In telemedia, it often means a lost customer.
This is a sector built on immediacy. Transactions are low-value, impulse-driven and designed to be frictionless. Whether it is a user subscribing to premium content, purchasing in-game currency or accessing a one-off service, the expectation is simple: one click, instant access.
When that fails, the user does not retry. They leave.
This has a cascading effect. Acquisition spend is wasted. Conversion funnels break. Churn increases. ARPU declines. And perhaps most damaging of all, trust erodes. In an environment where billing transparency is already under scrutiny, failed payments can trigger confusion, disputes and regulatory attention.
Now layer crypto cards on top of this. While they expand the top of the funnel, they do nothing to address the underlying fragility of the payment rails themselves. In fact, they may amplify it. Crypto-funded cards are still subject to the same authorization issues, network outages and issuer declines as any other card. Add in factors such as balance volatility or funding delays, and the potential for failure increases further.
So, while the Lydian Card brings more users into the ecosystem, it does not guarantee that their payments will go through.
Carry on carrier billing
And that is where an old telemedia staple begins to look very relevant again. Direct carrier billing (DCB) has often been positioned as an alternative payment method for when cards fail or are unavailable. But in today’s environment, it is increasingly becoming something more strategic: a resilience layer.
Unlike card payments, DCB operates on operator-controlled infrastructure. It leverages mobile network authentication, billing relationships and real-time connectivity that telcos have spent decades refining. Yes, it is not without its own dependencies – network availability, SMS delivery, aggregator performance – but these are areas where mobile network operators have deep expertise and strong incentives to maintain uptime.
More importantly, DCB aligns closely with the way telemedia services are consumed. It supports low-value, impulse purchases. It reduces friction. And it provides a level of payment certainty that is critical in high-churn environments.
In a world where nearly half of card transactions may fail at some point in the user journey, that certainty has real value.
Tuning the hybrid orchestra
This is not to say that DCB will replace cards, or that crypto cards are anything other than a positive development. Quite the opposite. The future of telemedia payments is not about choosing one method over another, rather it is about orchestrating multiple methods intelligently. What we are moving towards is a hybrid payment landscape.
In this model, crypto cards expand reach. They bring in new users, unlock new geographies and enable new spending behaviours. Traditional cards continue to serve the mass market, particularly in mature economies with high banking penetration. And DCB acts as both a primary method in certain regions and a fallback mechanism everywhere else.
The regional dynamics are key here. In Western Europe and North America, where card penetration is high but payment failures remain a concern, DCB’s role as a backup becomes increasingly important. In emerging markets, where banking infrastructure is less developed but mobile penetration is high, DCB may remain the primary billing method, complemented by crypto cards for more affluent or digitally engaged users.
Content type also plays a role. For high-frequency, low-value transactions – such as gaming microtransactions or pay-per-view content – DCB’s reliability and simplicity are a strong fit. For subscription-based services, particularly those targeting higher-spending users, card-based models (including crypto cards) offer greater flexibility and scalability.
In sectors such as adult content, where discretion and ease of payment are critical, offering a mix of options can significantly improve conversion.
The key takeaway for telemedia companies is this: payment diversity is no longer optional. Relying solely on card payments, even with the added reach of crypto, is a risk. Equally, ignoring the opportunities presented by new payment innovations means leaving growth on the table.
The winners in this next phase will be those who build payment strategies that are both expansive and resilient. Who can onboard users from anywhere, using any funding source, but also ensure that when it matters – at the moment of purchase – the transaction actually goes through.
Because in telemedia, access is only half the battle, reliability is what turns access into revenue. And, as these two stories show, the future of payments will belong to those who can deliver both.
