The new offering, announced Thursday (Oct. 8), extends a collaboration that began last July, and is set to roll out in the U.S. during the last week of October as Coinbase tries to expand the footprint of its USDC stablecoin.
“Samsung’s global reach makes this a significant distribution milestone for USDC,” Alec Lovett, head of infrastructure products at Coinbase, wrote on the company blog.
“By combining Coinbase’s trusted custody infrastructure with Samsung Wallet’s broad consumer adoption in the global market, we can help accelerate the ongoing expansion of USDC and stablecoins in the global economy.”
The blog post notes that there is “clear momentum behind USDC,” with circulation increasing 72% last year to top $75 billion, while wallets holding USDC rose 59% to almost nearly 7 million.
According to CoinDesk, Samsung Wallet users who top up their stablecoin balance will see USDC appear automatically as the default dollar stablecoin. Coinbase is using Bastion as the licensed stablecoin custodian.
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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstong said last month that the company sees stablecoin payments as a key revenue driver for the cryptocurrency exchange.
Armstrong told Bloomberg News the company is working with banks, FinTechs and other businesses to transfer more payment activity into stablecoins, projecting that the $300 billion market for the digital assets will expand tenfold by the end of the decade.
“That’s going to be a very big growth industry,” Armstrong said. “Payment volume can be a very interesting business for us.”
In other cryptocurrency news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about new Federal Reserve research that shows stablecoins have not drawn much corporate demand, even as they enjoy greater institutional support and expanded infrastructure.
The research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found the biggest roadblocks to corporate adoption of stablecoins were not tied to regulatory uncertainty or lack of access.
“Companies instead were satisfied with existing payment methods, unsure of the economic benefit of stablecoins and, critically, were not being asked by customers or suppliers to transact differently,” PYMNTS wrote.
The findings are in line with research by PYMNTS Intelligence research, which found that 42% of middle market companies were interested in stablecoins, though only 13% had used them.
“The findings separately illustrate the widening gap between corporate curiosity and production deployment,” the report added.
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