In the high-speed theater of global commerce, payments remain stuck in slow motion.
Settlements stretch across days, working capital gets tied up in transit, and intermediaries from correspondent banks to clearinghouses each take their cut at every hop.
However, a new wave of technology is reframing that picture. Stablecoins, digital assets pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, are emerging not as cryptocurrency’s speculative cousin, but as a foundational payment layer for B2B transactions.
“It’s been accelerating a lot in the last few years, especially this year with new regulations coming in the U.S. and prior year in the EU,” Bryce Jurss, vice president, head of Americas, digital assets at Nuvei, told PYMNTS. “That guidance has helped really shape blockchain as an infrastructure and stablecoins on that blockchain infrastructure.”
Despite momentum, misconceptions remain about what the technology can and cannot do.
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“One misconception is around the idea that stablecoins magically fix all of these problems that have traditionally made it difficult to do cross-border payments,” Jurss said.” I don’t think that’s necessarily true” because, in some cases, costs can even rise.
“The encouraging part is that there’s been a real kind of product market fit around payments and stablecoins,” he added. “The real opportunity isn’t about chasing the buzzwords, but it’s more about being disciplined, identifying where stablecoins truly outperform a so-called legacy payment system.”
From Buzzwords to Product-Market Fit
That nuance is vital. The hype cycle may be filled with pilot projects and headline-grabbing experiments, but beneath the noise, specific B2B flows are proving ripe for transformation.
The sweet spot for stablecoins lies in B2B cross-border flows involving multiple intermediaries, Jurss said. Think scenarios where money can take a circuitous journey across correspondent banks and clearing networks.
The payoff is reduced friction, faster settlement and more accessible liquidity. That has knock-on effects for corporate finance, particularly companies juggling complex vendor payouts across multiple geographies.
“Sometimes it reduces working capital constraints,” Jurss said. “That could be things like marketplaces or online travel agency groups paying airlines. These are areas where stablecoins have found a way to make it more efficient and faster.”
Another emerging trend is the convergence of payments and capital markets. Tokenized products, such as treasuries and money market instruments, are becoming accessible to corporates that previously lacked entry. For treasury teams managing liquidity across multiple geographies, stablecoins could enable faster allocation of cash, more flexible pre-funding, and the ability to earn yield on idle balances.
This integration may even hint at the broader transformation of cross-border payments evolving from a stand-alone function into part of a smarter treasury strategy.
Infrastructure, Not Issuers
For payment providers, the race is not about betting on one stablecoin issuer but about becoming blockchain-ready. Companies are prioritizing integration with certain blockchains and participating in incentive programs from blockchain foundations. The goal is to follow merchant demand, monitor transaction volumes and weigh economics carefully.
“All the core risks around payments still exist,” Jurss said. “…The harder part has been around regulatory gray areas.”
Despite innovation, traditional risks like money laundering, sanctions and fraud persist. The larger challenge is regulatory ambiguity. Classifying stablecoins consistently across markets remains unsettled, creating operational complexity for multinational firms.
“Strong KYB still matters a lot, strong KYC does,” Jurss said, predicting as well that new compliance tools will emerge that are designed specifically for blockchain-enabled payments.
Looking Three to Five Years Ahead
The three- to five-year stablecoin outlook is less about disruption than integration. Stablecoins are unlikely to replace all traditional rails but may become embedded as part of a “network of networks,” Jurss said. Local payment methods, stablecoins and on-chain foreign exchange could interconnect to offer merchants true global flexibility.
At Nuvei, Jurss said he and his team are already charting a path toward that future.
“We’ve started with settlement as a big layer,” he said, adding that the challenge, as always in payments, is the chicken-and-egg problem. Merchants don’t want to adopt unless networks are ready, and networks won’t scale until merchants adopt.
Nuvei’s own solution is to begin where merchants already are.
“At the settlement layer, we started with the card networks and the different card schemes settling us in different stablecoins,” Jurss said.
From there, the company is partnering with alternative payment methods, piloting local rails that can also settle in stablecoins, he said.
The long-term vision is that businesses end up with stablecoins on their balance sheets regardless of how their customers pay. That, in turn, makes B2B flows more efficient and eventually trickles down to consumers, who may not even realize they’re using stablecoins at all.
“Ultimately, once it does trickle down to the consumer, they may have stablecoins, they might not even know they’re using stablecoins,” Jurss said. “And you’re getting all these faster payments happening on the back end.”
The key unlocks are scaled foreign exchange on-chain, custody solutions that look more like traditional business banking, and tighter integration of capital markets and payments.
“That hasn’t ever been done in payments before effectively, and I think this is a real opportunity,” Jurss said.
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