Stablecoin Payment: Reshaping the Global Financial Transaction Landscape

The global financial system is undergoing profound changes. Traditional payment networks are facing a comprehensive challenge from stablecoins due to outdated infrastructure, long settlement periods, and high costs. Stablecoins are revolutionizing the modes of cross-border value flow, the paradigms of corporate transactions, and the ways individuals access financial services.

In recent years, stablecoins have developed rapidly and have become an important infrastructure for global payments. Large fintech companies, payment processors, and sovereign entities are gradually integrating stablecoins into consumer-facing applications and corporate cash flows. At the same time, emerging financial tools, ranging from payment gateways to deposit and withdrawal channels, as well as programmable yield products, have greatly enhanced the convenience of using stablecoins.

This report analyzes the stablecoin ecosystem from both technical and business perspectives. It examines the key players shaping this field, the core infrastructure supporting stablecoin transactions, and the dynamic demand driving its applications. Additionally, it explores how stablecoins are giving rise to new financial application scenarios and the challenges they face in integrating into the global economic process.

1. Why choose stablecoin payment?

To understand the influence of stablecoins, we must first examine traditional payment solutions. These traditional systems include cash, checks, debit cards, credit cards, international wire transfers (SWIFT), automated clearing houses (ACH), and peer-to-peer payments, among others. Although they have become integrated into daily life, many payment channels, such as ACH and SWIFT, have existed since the 1970s. While groundbreaking at the time, most of these global payment infrastructures are now outdated and highly fragmented. Overall, these payment methods are plagued by high costs, high friction, long processing times, an inability to achieve round-the-clock settlement, and complex back-end processes. Additionally, they often come bundled with unnecessary extra services such as identity verification, lending, compliance, fraud protection, and bank integration (for a fee).

Stablecoin payments are effectively addressing these pain points. Compared to traditional payment methods, using blockchain for payment settlement greatly simplifies the payment process, reduces intermediaries, and achieves real-time visibility of cash flow, which not only shortens settlement time but also lowers costs.

The main advantages of stablecoin payments can be summarized as follows:

• Real-time settlement: Transactions are completed almost instantly, eliminating delays in traditional banking systems.
• Safe and Reliable: The immutable ledger of blockchain ensures the security and transparency of transactions, providing protection for users.
• Cost reduction: Eliminating intermediaries has significantly lowered transaction fees, saving expenses for users.
• Global Coverage: Decentralized platforms can reach markets that are underserved by traditional financial services (including unbanked populations), achieving financial inclusion.

2. Stablecoin Payment Industry Landscape

The stablecoin payment industry can be divided into four technical stack levels:

1. First Layer: Application Layer

The application layer is mainly composed of various payment service providers (PSPs), which integrate multiple independent deposit and withdrawal payment institutions into a unified aggregation platform. These platforms provide users with convenient access to stablecoins, offer tools for developers building on the application layer, and provide credit card services for Web3 users.

a. Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is a service that facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers by securely processing payments.

Well-known companies innovating in this field include:

• Stripe: Traditional payment provider that integrates stablecoins like USDC for global payments.
• MetaMask: It does not provide direct fiat currency exchange functionality, but users can perform deposit and withdrawal operations through integration with its third-party services.
• Helio: 450,000 active wallets and 6,000 merchants. With the Solana Pay plugin, millions of Shopify merchants can settle payments using cryptocurrency and instantly convert USDY into other stablecoins, such as USDC, EURC, and PYUSD.
• Web2 payment applications such as Apple Pay, PayPal, Cash App, Nubank, and Revolut also allow users to make payments with stablecoins, further expanding the application scenarios of stablecoins.

The field of payment gateway providers can be clearly divided into two categories (with some overlap).

1. Payment gateway for developers; 2) Payment gateway for consumers. Most payment gateway providers tend to focus more on one of these categories, thereby shaping their core products, user experience, and target market.

The developer-focused payment gateway is designed to serve businesses, fintech companies, and enterprises that need to embed stablecoin infrastructure into their workflows. They typically offer application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and developer tools for integration into existing payment systems, enabling features such as automated payments, stablecoin wallets, virtual accounts, and real-time settlement. Some emerging projects focused on providing such developer tools include:

• BVNK: Provides enterprise-grade payment infrastructure for easy integration of stablecoins. BVNK offers API solutions that ensure seamless connections with a payment platform for cross-border commercial payments, as well as enterprise accounts that allow businesses to hold and trade multiple stablecoins and fiat currencies, along with merchant services that provide the tools needed for businesses to accept customer stablecoin payments. Processing over $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, with a growth rate of 200% per year, and a valuation of $750 million, clients include emerging regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
• Iron: Provides APIs to seamlessly integrate stablecoin transactions into their existing business. It offers global deposit and withdrawal channels, stablecoin payment infrastructure, wallets, and virtual accounts for enterprises, supporting customized payment workflows (including recurring payments, invoicing, or on-demand payments).
• Juicyway: Provides a range of enterprise payment, payroll, and bulk payment APIs, supporting currencies including Nigerian Naira (NGN), Canadian Dollar (CAD), US Dollar (USD), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). Mainly targeting the African market, there is currently no operational data.

Consumer-facing payment gateways are user-centric, providing an easy-to-use interface that facilitates stablecoin payments, remittances, and financial services. They typically include mobile wallets, multi-currency support, fiat currency deposit and withdrawal channels, and seamless cross-border transactions. Some well-known projects focused on providing users with this simple payment experience include:

• Decaf: An on-chain banking platform that enables personal consumption, remittances, and stablecoin transactions in over 184 countries; Decaf collaborates with local channels including MoneyGram in Latin America to achieve nearly zero withdrawal fees, with over 10,000 South American users and high ratings among Solana developers.
• Meso: A deposit and withdrawal solution that integrates directly with merchants, enabling users and businesses to easily convert between fiat currency and stablecoins with minimal friction. Meso also supports Apple Pay for purchasing USDC, simplifying the process for consumers to acquire stablecoins.
• Venmo: Venmo's stablecoin wallet feature leverages stablecoin technology, but its functionality is integrated into its existing consumer payment application, allowing users to easily send, receive, and use digital dollars without directly interacting with the blockchain infrastructure.

b. U Card

Cryptocurrency cards are payment cards that allow users to spend cryptocurrency or stablecoins at traditional merchants. These cards are usually integrated with traditional credit card networks (such as Visa or Mastercard) and enable seamless transactions by automatically converting cryptocurrency assets into fiat currency at the point of sale.

The project includes:

• Reap: A card issuer in Asia, clients include over 40 companies such as Infini, Kast, Genosis pay, Redotpay, Ether.fi, etc., selling white-label solutions, primarily relying on transaction fee commissions in collaboration with Hong Kong banks, can cover most regions outside the US, supports multi-chain deposits; by July 2024, transaction volume reached $30M.
• Raincards: A card issuer in the Americas that supports card issuance for multiple companies such as Avalanche, Offramp, takenos, etc., with the main feature being the ability to serve users in the US and Latin America. They have issued a USDC corporate card that allows payment of travel expenses, office supplies, and other daily business costs using on-chain assets like USDC.
• Fiat24: A European card issuer + web3 bank, with a business model similar to the above two, supporting card issuance for companies like ethsign, safepal, etc.; licensed in Switzerland, primarily serving users in Europe + Asia, currently does not support full-chain transactions, only Arbitrum deposits. Growth is slow with total users at 20,000 and monthly revenue of $100K-150K.
• Kast: A rapidly growing U-card on Solana, with over 10,000 cards issued, 5-6k monthly active users, projected transaction volume of $7m in December 2024, and revenue of $200k.
• 1Money: A stablecoin ecosystem that recently launched a credit card supporting stablecoins and provides a software development kit for easy L1 and L2 integration, currently in beta with no data available.

There are many cryptocurrency card providers, and they mainly differ in terms of service areas and supported currencies. Typically, they offer low-fee services to end users to enhance the enthusiasm for using cryptocurrency cards.

2. Second Layer: Payment Processor

As a key layer of the stablecoin technology stack, payment processors are the pillars of payment channels, mainly covering two categories: 1. Deposit and withdrawal service providers 2. Stablecoin issuance service providers. They serve as a critical intermediary layer in the payment lifecycle, connecting Web3 payments with traditional financial systems.

a. Deposit and Withdrawal Processor

• Moonpay: Supports over 80 cryptocurrencies, providing various deposit and withdrawal methods as well as token swap services to meet users' diverse cryptocurrency trading needs.
• Ramp Network: Covers over 150 countries and provides deposit and withdrawal services for more than 90 types of cryptocurrencies. The network handles all KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and compliance requirements, ensuring the compliance and security of deposit and withdrawal services.
• Alchemy Pay: A hybrid payment gateway solution that supports bidirectional exchange and payment between fiat currency and crypto assets, achieving the integration of traditional fiat currency and crypto asset payments.

b. Stablecoin Issuance & Coordination Processors

• Bridge: The core products of Bridge include the Coordination API and the Issuance API. The former helps businesses integrate various stablecoin payments and exchanges, while the latter supports businesses in quickly issuing stablecoins. The platform is currently licensed in the United States and Europe and has established significant partnerships with the U.S. State Department and the Treasury, possessing strong compliance operational capabilities and resource advantages.
• Brale: Similar to the Bridge product, it is a regulated stablecoin issuance platform that provides stablecoin coordination and reserve management APIs. It has compliance licenses in various states across the United States, and partner companies must go through KYB (Know Your Business), while users need to set up an account on Brale for KYC (Know Your Customer). Brale's clients tend to be more on-chain OGs, and compared to Bridge, its investor endorsements and business development are slightly weaker.
• Perena: The Perena Numeraire platform lowers the issuance threshold for niche stablecoins by encouraging users to provide concentrated liquidity in a single pool. Numeraire adopts a "central hub-radiation" model, with USD* as the central reserve asset, acting as the "hub" for stablecoin issuance and exchange. This mechanism allows for the efficient minting, redemption, and trading of multiple stablecoins linked to different assets or jurisdictions, with each stablecoin connected to USD* like similar "spokes". Through this system structure, Numeraire ensures deep liquidity and enhances capital efficiency, as small stablecoins can interoperate through USD*, without the need to provide separate liquidity pools for each trading pair. The ultimate design goal of the system is not only to enhance price stability and reduce slippage but also to enable seamless conversions between stablecoins.

3. Layer Three: Asset Issuers

Asset issuers are responsible for creating, maintaining, and redeeming stablecoins.