4 Questions CFOs Need to Ask as Wall Street Embraces Stablecoins

It’s a familiar story in finance: new asset class emerges, technologists overpromise, regulators hesitate, and suddenly someone in the CFO’s office has to take a meeting about it.

Compared to other blockchain products, stablecoins are potentially poised to be one of the first to successfully capture new verticals that aren’t confined to crypto market ecosystems alone.

The Wednesday (July 9) news that BNY (the Bank of New York Mellon Corp.) has agreed to hold primary custody of Ripple’s stablecoin reserves only underscores the fact that stablecoins are being eyed, if not wholly embraced, as instruments of settlement and value transfer by the traditional financial sector.

“As primary custodian, we are thrilled to support the growth and adoption of RLUSD by facilitating the seamless movement of reserve assets and cash to support conversions,” said Emily Portney, global head of asset servicing at BNY, in a statement.

The proliferation of stablecoins is not inherently destabilizing. In fact, the emergence of fiat-referenced digital assets may offer long-term efficiencies and innovations in financial operations. But the existence of technical potential does not remove the need for rigorous analysis and institutional discipline.

For the CFO, the threshold question is not “Should we use stablecoins?” but rather “Where do stablecoins fit into our financial architecture, and under what conditions?”

Read more: Why CFOs Considering Stablecoins and Crypto Need a Cybersecurity Strategy

What Makes a Stablecoin, Exactly?

For stablecoin adoption to scale, the tokenized assets need to show they can perform outside of their native crypto markets. They’re making progress in doing so. News also broke Wednesday that FinTech Ant International is weighing stablecoin license applications in several countries.

Yet the stablecoin category itself remains poorly understood. The term “stablecoin” encompasses a broad spectrum of digital assets, varying widely in structure, governance, collateralization, and use case. For CFOs responsible for the stewardship of corporate capital and financial infrastructure, this ambiguity can be a stop sign.

The word “stablecoin,” after all, has the reassuring ring of something with a defined legal meaning, perhaps even a central bank endorsement. It does not. In practice, it’s shorthand for any tokenized digital asset pegged to the value of something else — usually a fiat currency. But that’s where the similarities end.

Some are fully backed by cash and short-term Treasurys and issued by regulated entities. Think Circle’s USDC or PayPal’s PYUSD — designed to be boring and bank-like. Others, like MakerDAO’s DAI, are collateralized by other crypto assets, rebalanced by algorithms, and governed by token-holder votes. There are also algorithmic stablecoins, though after TerraUSD’s ill-fated implosion, enthusiasm has cooled considerably.

At the end of the day, stablecoins aren’t just about blockchain. They’re about governance. Who decides what happens when something goes wrong? Who holds the reserves? Who defines the rules of engagement?

If CFOs are holding a stablecoin, it’s effectively like holding a promise. You need to know who made it, and what happens when it breaks.

Read more: Stablecoins ‘Perform Poorly’ as Money and Could Face Uphill Payments Battle

Enterprise Use Case for Stablecoins

There are good reasons spanning practical, tactical and even strategic rationales to hold value in a stablecoin, especially if a company’s operations are global, their customers digital, and their existing payments inefficient.

Cross-border payments are the obvious use case. Traditional rails are slow, expensive, and heavily intermediated. Stablecoins settle in minutes, cost pennies, and operate 24/7. For vendors, suppliers or freelancers in places with volatile currencies or capital controls, getting paid in a trusted stablecoin may be preferable to waiting days for a wire.

Still, for CFOs, this is not about replacing cash accounts. It’s about understanding where stablecoins offer a liquidity edge through faster settlement, global interoperability, and escape from the time zones and fees of the legacy system.

But with that utility comes complexity. These are not neutral assets. They are promises, governed by specific issuers, held in novel ways, and settled on unfamiliar infrastructure.

CFOs don’t need to master the cryptography. But they do need to ask the right questions.

Outsourcing is also common. Many companies don’t interact with stablecoins directly at all, they just use payments vendors who do. That can be fine. Until something goes wrong, or a counterparty needs to be audited.

There are dozens of stablecoins on paper. Most won’t matter. But the ones that do will start showing up in places CFOs didn’t expect — on invoices, in contracts, in your settlement pipeline. The sooner your team understands the landscape, the better positioned you’ll be to respond.