At the start of 2026, the digital asset conversation was dominated by stablecoins. Market hype and fear of missing out (FOMO) were growing, while the GENIUS Act brought greater clarity to the regulatory path for payment stablecoins. Across the industry, financial institutions, FinTechs and payments companies were asking the same questions. Should we issue, integrate or partner?
I heard a similar urgency in my own conversations with credit union executives and boards. Could stablecoins become the next ChatGPT, with adoption accelerating before institutions were prepared? Could they drive member deposit outflows or cannibalize card interchange? Credit union leaders were looking to us for answers, but also for help identifying the questions they hadn’t thought to ask yet. Over the past nine months, I’ve heard many put it this way: “Tell me what I don’t know.”
That request gets to the heart of how I, and my department as a whole, approach emerging technologies at Velera: with curiosity and a willingness to challenge what we think we know, while learning and growing alongside our credit union partners. With stablecoins evolving so quickly, we wanted to get beyond the hype and understand what was actually taking shape across the digital asset space. To that end, my team and I brought together an inaugural cohort of credit unions, technology providers and other industry stakeholders to assess emerging technologies and use cases, evaluate potential partners, and explore the infrastructure and integrations needed to make digital assets viable for credit unions.
So far, the research and rapid shifts within the industry haven’t supported some of the more immediate concerns about stablecoins. We aren’t seeing strong peer-to-peer or point-of-sale applications, and concerns about material deposit outflows and card-interchange cannibalization have not been borne out so far. Instead, I’ve seen attention turning toward commercial applications, including B2B and cross-border payments, where digital assets may address clearer sources of friction.
The discussion is also expanding beyond just stablecoins to digital money more broadly. Stablecoins may offer advantages for certain use cases, while tokenized deposits present another approach, offering many blockchain-enabled capabilities while remaining connected to deposits held at regulated financial institutions and the existing banking framework.
That evolution raises another question. How can the industry avoid creating new silos?
If each institution develops a proprietary tokenized-deposit ecosystem, we could reproduce the fragmentation already present in traditional payments. Increasingly, I’m hearing conversations about shared infrastructure, interoperability, consortiums and networks that can connect institutions and move tokenized money at scale, something to which we at Velera are paying close attention.
As we move into Q4, my team and I will continue working with credit unions and industry partners to understand where digital assets could be useful and how different approaches might work together. There’s still a lot to learn, especially as new technologies and offerings are rapidly impacting the financial services industry. Our goal is not to chase every headline or claim certainty in an ever-evolving payments landscape. It is to listen, investigate and help credit unions prepare to act when the value becomes clear. Curiosity and collaboration are at the center of all we do and all we will continue to do.
