Inside the Race to Bring Stablecoins to the Checkout Counter

The winners in crypto payments may not be the most innovative, but the least disruptive.

“You don’t want to be there waiting for 20 seconds just for the payment conversion to go through,” Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect, told PYMNTS.

While for years the promise of crypto payments has largely unfolded online, embedded in eCommerce flows, trading platforms and digital-native ecosystems, stablecoins are now moving from browser-based checkouts into physical retail environments.

That transition, while subtle on the surface, could fundamentally reshape how merchants think about cost, speed and customer experience at the point of sale.

“A lot of global retail is happening in person. In some countries it’s up to 80%. And I think that represents how important the physical is,” Houlgrave said.

But what works online doesn’t always translate cleanly to a checkout counter. In eCommerce, latency is tolerable. A few extra seconds for transaction confirmation can go unnoticed amid page loads and form fields. In-store, that same delay becomes friction. Payments must clear in seconds, queues must move quickly, and compliance must happen without interrupting the customer flow.

That’s becoming the new challenge for crypto payments today, and it’s one that WalletConnect recently teamed up with iMin to help tackle, announcing an April 21 integration to bring stablecoin payments to smart POS devices.

“The goal here is that the merchant shouldn’t care if somebody’s paying with crypto,” Houlgrave said, drawing a parallel to card networks like Visa and Mastercard.

Moving Digital Dollars From Merchant Novelty to Commerce Infrastructure

If crypto is to succeed in mainstream retail, it may need to disappear entirely from the merchant’s perspective. That philosophy reflects a broader trend in FinTech: abstraction. The most successful payment systems are those that hide their complexity behind familiar interfaces. Whether a customer taps a phone, scans a QR code or uses a hardware wallet, the experience must feel consistent.

“We have to make sure that it’s really easy for the in-store operator,” Houlgrave said. “They don’t need to learn about chains and tokens.”

This emphasis on familiarity extends globally. Payment preferences vary widely: Tap-to-pay dominates in some markets, while QR codes lead in others. The challenge is not to impose a new behavior, but to embed crypto into existing ones.

Still, one major constraint to crypto payments in physical retail settings can be tied to the lack of interface. Unlike online checkouts, where merchants can gather extensive customer data, in-store environments offer limited “real estate” for compliance workflows.

“We’ve been really focused on moving some of that data capture and data collection into the wallet interface … [so] we can continue to make compliant payment flows even though you don’t have all of this real estate,” Houlgrave said.

In effect, the burden shifts from merchant to wallet — embedding identity, compliance and verification directly into the user’s device. That architectural change could be key to making crypto viable in physical retail without slowing down transactions.

“Compliance is always a top topic,” Houlgrave noted. “Merchants really want to see that this is being built right from the ground up with compliance in mind.”

Why Merchants Are Paying Attention Now

The timing of the retail checkout stablecoin push is not accidental. Retailers are under pressure from rising payment costs, particularly in-store, where expenses like cash handling and card interchange fees add up.

“There’s a lot of different cost structures in store with payments, including things like cash handling,” Houlgrave said. “That can often increase the pricing, which means that merchants are often interested in this capability.”

Still, scaling any payment method requires a two-sided equation: merchant acceptance and consumer usage. Houlgrave was clear that neither side will move without the other, stressing the importance of being “merchant ready.”

That’s where partnerships with terminal manufacturers come into play. By integrating stablecoin functionality into existing hardware ecosystems, friction can be removed at the point of adoption.

The strategy is straightforward: Meet merchants where they already are, and it’s a strategy that WalletConnect itself is embracing with products like WalletConnect Pay.

“Most merchants want to accept crypto in a way that is just really compatible with their existing payment systems,” Houlgrave said. “They don’t want to have new terminals, new devices. … Most of them just want a really easy switch.”

The second phase centers around operational continuity. Once enabled, crypto payments should not disrupt existing workflows — from staff training to accounting to refunds.

“It’s really thinking about all of these things end-to-end so that there’s predictability,” Houlgrave said. “On an ongoing basis, this just settles to them and looks and feels like any other payment method.”

That vision — crypto as just another line item in the payments stack — may ultimately determine whether stablecoins break out of their niche.