A business receives $10 million in stablecoins on Monday, and by Friday, much of it could be back in a bank account. The payment worked. The problem, however, is what needed to happen next.
Stablecoin payments may have eliminated hours of settlement friction, but they haven’t eliminated the financial infrastructure waiting on the other side. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Waiting for Certainty: Why Most CFOs Are Holding Back on Crypto and Stablecoins” found in March that 88% of firms receiving stablecoins convert them immediately into U.S. dollars.
Chief financial officers still run payroll through banks, mid-market suppliers still expect conventional currency, and even the most forward-thinking corporate treasurers still need deposits they can invest, borrow against and use to meet obligations today.
A new Financial Stability Board report, “Global Stablecoin Arrangements: Cross-Border Vulnerabilities and Financial Stability Monitoring,” published Monday (Oct. 12) ahead of the G20 finance ministers’ meeting, highlights that, for finance teams eyeing stablecoins as a better B2B payment mechanism, it’s becoming crucial to account for what blockchain innovation removes, what it transfers and what it creates.
See also: SAP and Samsung Shift Stablecoin Competition From Issuance to Distribution
The Stablecoin Payment Isn’t the Whole Transaction
The economics of stablecoins are compelling at the point of transfer. A multinational can potentially receive dollar-denominated value from an overseas customer without waiting for conventional correspondent banking processes. Money can move around the clock, across jurisdictions, with greater settlement speed. These possibilities are generating excitement at the highest levels of the payment ecosystem. Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said Friday (Oct. 9), for example, that cross-border payments are proving to be the strongest use case for stablecoins.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “From Asset to Everyday Money: Making Digital Currencies Spendable” found in July that cross-border B2B transfers are already one of the largest use cases for stablecoins and represent the majority of global stablecoin payment volume.
But receiving money is not the same as having spendable working capital.
Stablecoins may be creating a faster global payments network without creating a self-sufficient financial system. The more money that network handles, the more consequential its dependence on traditional banking could become.
We’d love to be your preferred source for news.
Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks!
Consider what happens after that $10 million arrives. The recipient needs to pay employees in local currency, settle supplier invoices, fund operating accounts and manage foreign exchange exposure. Unless those counterparties accept stablecoins directly, the money must pass through another conversion process.
Unless the B2B partner is blockchain-native, in other words, stablecoins will bypass parts of the banking system during transmission only to encounter that same system at the point of economic use and may even create new redemption and liquidity dependencies. A transfer that settles in seconds may deliver little working capital benefit if the recipient cannot deploy the money without additional cost or delay.
The more stablecoins succeed at moving money outside conventional payment hours, the more important reliable access to conventional liquidity becomes. These implications are in line with the March PYMNTS Intelligence research, which found that 42% of middle-market companies were interested in stablecoins, although only 13% had used them.
Read also: Nobody Told the ERP That Blockchain Won
The Next Stablecoin Winner Will Be Found at the Last Mile
For banks, FinTechs and stablecoin issuers, the commercial opportunity is shifting from the transfer itself to everything surrounding it. Moving $10 million is a technical capability today over the blockchain, but making that $10 million immediately useful to a multinational corporation is a more complicated financial service.
PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster has repeatedly highlighted this with Ryan Rugg, global head of digital assets for Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS), on the “From the Block” podcast, saying ERPs serve as “the gating factor for adoption at scale.”
Stablecoins have spent the past year and a half acquiring nearly everything an emerging payments technology is supposed to need to go mainstream, PYMNTS reported Tuesday (Oct. 6). Clearer regulation? Check. More institutional backing? Check. Better infrastructure and growing support from banks, FinTechs and payment providers? Check, check and check.
The ultimate test of a new financial system isn’t whether it can move money faster than the old one. It’s whether businesses can use that money without needing the old one to finish the job.
Add as Preferred Source
