Corporate Stablecoin Payments Rocket 30x—TradFi Banks Left Scrambling

Forget waiting 3-5 business days—B2B crypto settlements just ate Wall Street’s lunch.

The 30x explosion: How stablecoins hijacked cross-border payments

No SWIFT delays. No 3am FX desk panic. Just USDC moving at internet speed while legacy finance still processes paperwork. The real kicker? CFOs don’t even care about ’decentralization’—they just want cheaper rails than what their Goldman Sachs rep offers.

Real-world use case or hot money? Follow the liquidity

When treasury departments save six figures per transaction avoiding correspondent banks, adoption isn’t ideological—it’s spreadsheet math. Though let’s be honest: half these ’operational efficiencies’ probably fund carry trades during APAC market hours.

The suits finally get crypto. Pity they’ll ruin it with compliance bots and KYC waterfalls.

Source: Artemis

Stablecoin: Remittance lags card payments

P2P consumer payments or cross-border stablecoin volumes were about $1.5B, half of B2B usage as of February, the report showed. Crypto card-linked volumes came in third at $1.1 billion. 

But from a growth perspective, P2P volumes lagged crypto cards-related transactions. 

Source: Artemis

This suggested that more users were embracing digital dollars for real-world payments for goods and services and not just for remittances, added Hadick. 

In fact, P2P volumes fluctuated around $1B for the past two years while crypto cards’ traction jumped from below $300M to $1.1 billion over the same period. 

That said, Tether’s USDT remained dominant (86%) in the space, followed by Circle’s USDC (13.9%). This wasn’t surprising given USDT’s dominance, and the data used only covered up to February 2025. 

Notably, in April, Circle unveiled a stablecoin-powered cross-border payments system, an aggressive MOVE that could challenge USDT’s moat. In fact, the report noted USDC’s regional outperformance in India, Argentina, and Mexico. 

According to Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, stablecoin growth will explode if related bills (GENIUS Act) are passed into law.

In fact, the U.S. Treasury projected the sector could grow from the current $240B to $2 trillion by 2028. 

However, despite being the fastest-growing sector with massive use case, it has been challenging for retail to get investment exposure in the sector.

Stablecoins are pegged 1:1 to traditional currencies like the U.S. dollar. As such, they don’t appreciate in value like BTC or SOL. 

Circle’s IPO (initial public offering) may offer one of the best shots for retail investors to buy its shares. But some have warned of potential dumping by insiders. 

Another option may be through Plasma’s upcoming XPL tokens. Plasma is a blockchain built specifically to power stablecoins and backed by Tether’s Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex, PayPal’s Peter Thiel, among others.