Long before most people had ever heard the word stablecoin, Visa in March 2021 announced itself as the first major payment provider to settle a transaction in the digital currency. More than four years later, the U.S. has established the first regulatory framework for stablecoin through the GENIUS Act and Visa is no longer an outlier. Several other major payment providers such as Mastercard, Swift and Zelle are now either integrating or making plans to integrate stablecoin into their services as well. But many bankers remain skeptical of the new technology, raising questions about whether it will lead to full mainstream adoption.
Leaders of the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC), an industry-led membership organization, say it is no coincidence that more payment providers are now making plans for stablecoin. Bo Berg, chair of the FPC’s Digital Assets Work Group, says the GENIUS Act provides some legitimacy to stablecoin. “I think it creates certainty,” Berg says. “But it also creates a little bit of, ‘OK, what are we now going to do with it?’”
The major credit card companies are doing a lot. Visa now offers customers the ability to link their cards to a digital wallet and make payments in four different types of stablecoins. It is piloting Visa Direct to allow businesses in the U.S. to send payouts directly to a digital wallet, and they have also set up the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform to provide financial institutions with the capabilities to issue and manage their own stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Mastercard offers additional stablecoins that can be used for payment through their cards linked to digital wallets, their own program to allow for stablecoin payouts back to individual digital wallets, a pilot that would allow for B2B stablecoin payments and settlements, and a one-size fits-all credential that would allow users to move back and forth between stablecoin and fiat currency.
Chris Dean, CEO of the embedded technology banking platform company Treasury Prime, says it is not a surprise the card companies are out in front of every other payment provider on this front, because they need to maintain their relevance. “I can get a card from my bank, and I can use that at the local sandwich shop and that works. And why does that work? Because Mastercard and Visa have managed to get a scanner at every single sandwich shop in the world,” he says. “What if, all of a sudden, I didn’t need a scanner? I had my phone with a stablecoin wallet, and I could just scan the wallet number at the sandwich shop and say, ‘Here’s your money.’”
Even without that specific scenario being a reality, stablecoin in 2024 already surpassed both Visa and Mastercard combined in terms of transfer volume — totaling $27.6 trillion, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. Dean says that is due to demand from one specific segment of the market. “It is commercial customers,” Dean says. “It’s people who have U.S. dollar bank accounts and they want to send money internationally.”
Berg says nearly everyone agrees cross-border payment is the most immediate use case for stablecoin. “[Card networks] are looking at settlements of specific international customers that move cross-border to make it cheaper but also make it faster,” Berg says.
Other Providers Are Making Plans
Perhaps it is that demand, the passage of the GENIUS Act or a combination of the two that now has other major payment providers moving forward as well. In September, Swift announced plans to add a blockchain-based shared ledger to its payments infrastructure that would allow stablecoin to be used for cross-border payments. Swift chose not to comment on its plans, but according to a company press release, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. are among the financial institutions from 16 countries that will provide Swift with feedback on the design of the ledger and its development.
Less than one month after Swift’s announcement, Early Warning Services, the network operator of Zelle, announced it would also leverage stablecoins to deliver faster cross-border payments, but gave few further details beyond that.
Elspeth Bloodgood, senior advisory technical product manager for payment solutions at Jack Henry & Associates, says it is hard to tell how many of these plans will come to fruition or what they will look like. “There’s a lot of folks out there writing press releases and announcing partnerships, but there’s not much in them,” she says. “We really think regulatory clarity is very important to this market.”
To date, neither The Clearing House nor the Federal Reserve, the two key players in the nation’s automated clearing house (ACH) payment network, have announced any plans to integrate stablecoin. While the Fed did not respond to a request for comment, The Clearing House sent a statement that said nothing specific about the future use of stablecoin and instead promoted the benefits of its real-time payments network. “The RTP® network already delivers many of the benefits often attributed to digital assets, including instant funds availability, 24/7 operation, and enhanced messaging capabilities,” the statement read in part. “Today, the network processes 1.3 million payments daily, providing real-time transactions to millions of consumers and businesses.”
A spokesperson for Nacha, the organization that governs the nation’s ACH network, deferred to the Fed and The Clearing House about their future use of stablecoin, but sent a statement saying that the network is the perfect on and off ramp for the digital asset. Jon Eisenstein, senior vice president of product for Atelio by FIS, an embedded technology platform, agrees the ACH network could become an on and off ramp for stablecoin and bank deposits, but feels that might be the only useful integration. “I think they’ll probably do it for back-end settlement. But I think it competes head on with ACH,” he says. “I don’t see why stablecoin needs to integrate with ACH other than, ‘Look, I’ll take your money from your deposit so that I can issue you the stablecoin.’”
Since the ACH network does far more in transaction volume than the credit card companies and stablecoin combined, Bloodgood says that will keep those players from doing anything quickly. “The Clearing House is a SIFMU, a [systemically] important financial market utility. And the Fed is the Fed. So, they’re not going to say anything until they’re going to say it,” Bloodgood says. ”And at that point, for the Fed, it’s three to five years before anything’s going to happen. They are captive to their transparency and process requirements.”
Do Financial Institutions Have a Part To Play?
The credit card companies and other payment providers are moving forward on stablecoin, but there is consensus that they cannot make stablecoin the predominant form of payment without the banking industry being on board. “It’s something that’s almost unique to the U.S., but everyone in the payment world, the banking world and the U.S. knows the banks are the critical players here that you can’t skip,” Dean says.
The FPC Digital Assets Work Group argues stablecoin won’t achieve true mainstream adoption without financial institutions, because they are still the most trusted intermediaries for converting digital assets into fiat currency and ensuring the end beneficiaries can get their cash instantly. It is why the FPC recommends financial institutions pilot stablecoin-to-cash solutions and join initiatives like Swift’s blockchain pilots to standardize cross-border connectivity. But FPC Executive Director and CEO Reed Luhtanen says, ultimately, it needs to play out in the market. “I think people are going to try a lot of different stuff and see where the efficiency comes from this technology versus others,” he says.
At present, many banks and credit unions seem reluctant to adopt the technology. And according to statistics from Bank Director’s 2026 Bank M&A Survey, many financial institutions aren’t even taking it into consideration. Just 21% of those surveyed say their institution is looking into providing crypto or digital asset services, while 44% have not even discussed it. “I think that any major technology change takes time for the industry to absorb. So, they get there emotionally before they can get there technically,” says Bloodgood, who notes that financial institutions are also waiting on regulations. “I think that’s why people are going to be a little more hesitant here, to wait on some of that rulemaking.”
Additional articles on stablecoins and tokenized deposits:
• Should Financial Institutions Make a Plan To Offer Tokenized Deposits?
• Should Banks and Credit Unions Look to Core Providers for Stablecoin Solutions?
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