From niche to mainstream: Stablecoins, settlement & trust

Stablecoins are not yet mainstream payment infrastructure. But they are no longer experimental. Early traction is real and concentrated: Business payments, settlement, liquidity movement, and corridors where existing rails are slow, expensive or difficult to access.

The appeal is easy to understand. A digital asset pegged to a fiat currency can move around the clock, settle quickly, and support international transactions without depending on every layer of the correspondent banking system. In theory, that solves a lot. In practice, the gap between theory and live payment infrastructure is still wide.

Headline numbers around stablecoins often need careful reading. McKinsey, working with Artemis, puts stablecoin activity at $35 trillion annually, but much of that reflects trading, internal transfers and automated blockchain activity. Filtered for actual payments, the estimated annual stablecoin payment volume drops to around $390 billion, based on December 2025 activity. That equates to roughly 0.02% of global payments volume.

It’s a figure that shouldn’t be dismissed. It has more than doubled year-on-year, and it shows that stablecoins already solve real problems in certain parts of the market. But it also shows how early the payments story is. Early is not the same as marginal.

Where the commercial case is clearest

Business-to-business payments account for around $226 billion of that volume a year – roughly 60% of global stablecoin payment activity. Asia dominates on the source side, generating around $245 billion in annualised volume, or 60% of the global total. Those two facts point in the same direction: stablecoins are gaining ground where existing rails leave businesses dealing with delays, poor visibility, high costs, or trapped liquidity.

That’s not a coincidence. The strongest use cases cluster in corridors where cross-border payments remain operationally clunky – where businesses need to move funds outside banking hours, settle across markets quickly, or reduce the number of intermediaries touching a transaction.

Plenty of payment flows already work well on existing rails. Domestic card payments, account-to-account transfers, and local real-time payment systems are already effective in many markets. Stablecoins become compelling where those systems fall short. The realistic path forward is targeted adoption – stablecoins earning a place by solving specific problems better than the alternatives, not replacing the entire stack.

Speed without controls isn’t progress

The industry often talks about instant settlement as an obvious goal. Faster money movement can improve cash flow, reduce settlement risk, and make cross-border commerce easier. All of that is true, but payments are not just pipes – they are systems built around trust, and trust requires more than speed.

Banks, acquirers and merchants need time and data – to detect fraud, screen transactions, manage sanctions exposure, meet anti-money laundering requirements and respond when something looks wrong. If stablecoin payments remove every pause without replacing those controls, they may increase risk rather than reduce it.

The challenge is not to remove checks; it’s to make them smarter. Payment firms need to know who is sending funds, who is receiving them, what the payment relates to, and whether the transaction fits expected behaviour. They also need a clear process when something fails. A payment that settles instantly can still create a serious problem if nobody knows who carries responsibility after an error, dispute or fraud event.

Mainstream users will not care whether the underlying rail uses blockchain. They will care whether funds arrive, whether value holds, whether fees make sense, and whether someone can resolve a problem if needed.

Regulation is starting to define the usable market

Regulation will also influence which stablecoins payment firms can issue, hold, convert or support. The direction of travel is becoming clearer – major markets are moving towards licensed issuance, stronger reserve requirements, redemption rights and closer supervision of stablecoins used for payments.

The EU’s MiCA rules for asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens have applied since June 2024. The US GENIUS Act was signed into law in July 2025, creating a federal framework for payment stablecoins, though its implementation continues. The UK is still finalising its approach, with the Bank of England consulting on systemic sterling stablecoins and due to finalise codes of practice later in 2026. 

For payment firms, the practical point is this: Stablecoin infrastructure will need to operate across different regulatory regimes simultaneously. Reserves, redemption rights, custody, transaction monitoring, reporting, and financial crime controls will all vary by market. A stablecoin may move globally, but regulated payment use will still depend on whether it can be issued, held, converted and monitored in line with local requirements.

Stablecoins need more than a blockchain rail

Stablecoins will move further into payments when financial institutions and merchants can connect them to the systems they already use. That means fiat conversion, ledgering, compliance workflows, reporting, reconciliation, wallet connectivity, card acceptance and account-based rails all working together – not separately patched in after the fact.

Asia illustrates this clearly. In markets where cross-border movement, wallet adoption and fragmented banking access create genuine demand for new rails, stablecoins still require more than a payment address and a blockchain connection. They need APIs that connect stablecoin activity into existing payment flows, compliance controls that can adapt across markets, and risk monitoring that works in real time.

The same logic applies to risk tools. Issuers, acquirers, banks and fintechs already expect payment infrastructure to support rule-setting, transaction monitoring and adaptable controls across card and account-based payments. Stablecoin payment flows will need the same level of configurability and oversight, especially if firms want to use digital asset rails without rebuilding their entire stack.

"The legacy correspondent banking model is expensive, slow, and opaque," says Tristan Kirchner, CEO, ClearBank Europe. "Stablecoins don't diminish the role of banks, rather we see them as reframing their role in a hybrid future - one that's defined by interoperability and real-time movement of value."

The more realistic future is hybrid. A merchant, bank or fintech may use stablecoins for settlement in one corridor, cards for consumer acceptance in another, local payment methods in domestic markets, and account-to-account rails where they make commercial sense. The user may never see the rail underneath. What they will experience is whether the payment works.

Card-linked stablecoins are one signal to watch

One of the more interesting McKinsey findings is the growth of stablecoin-linked card spending – products that let users spend stablecoins through existing card acceptance networks by converting on-chain balances into local fiat currency at the point of sale. It estimates that stablecoin-linked card spending reached $4.5 billion in 2025, up 673% from 2024. That remains small in the context of global card volumes, but it shows how stablecoins may enter payments through familiar user experiences rather than entirely new behaviour.

Cards already have global acceptance, dispute processes, risk tools and merchant infrastructure behind them. If stablecoins can connect into that environment, they may gain practical utility without asking merchants or consumers to change everything at once.

Infrastructure tends to scale when it becomes almost invisible. Businesses want better economics, faster settlement, improved reliability and enough control to satisfy customers, regulators and internal risk teams.

The tipping point will be operational

Stablecoins have moved beyond theory, but the market has not yet reached mainstream payments adoption. The next phase will depend less on broad claims about transformation and more on whether firms can prove measurable value in live payment environments.

That means stronger reserve standards, reliable redemption, better transaction monitoring, cleaner integration with fiat rails and tools that let banks, acquirers and merchants manage risk in real time. It also means being honest about where stablecoins add real value, and where existing payment methods already do the job quite well.

The first mainstream use cases may be less about consumers choosing to ‘pay with stablecoins’ and more about stablecoins operating behind the scenes for settlement, liquidity and cross-border movement. For payment firms, that changes where adoption is likely to start. Stablecoins don’t have to become a new front-end payment habit to influence how money moves between businesses, platforms and markets.

Stablecoins will gain ground where they make payments cheaper, faster or easier to manage without asking the industry to trade away trust. Firms will be better placed to benefit when they can connect new forms of money into existing payment flows while keeping control, security and commercial discipline intact. That combination is harder to build than a blockchain connection; it’s also what the market will actually require.