Coinbase Launches Stablecoin Payments Platform for B2B

Coinbase Business is launching a new B2B payments suite of tools designed to make USDC, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, as easy to move as sending an email.

The new global payouts feature allows companies to send the USDC stablecoin to any on-chain address or directly to an email recipient, according to a Thursday (Oct. 16) company blog post.

For vendors or contractors without a crypto wallet, Coinbase automates the onboarding. Recipients receive an email link, create a free account, and can instantly claim or cash out their funds in local currency, the post said.

Combined with a new Payouts API, the solution allows businesses to automate payment workflows, triggering on-demand, batch or scheduled disbursements, according to the post.

The launch also signals the next phase of Coinbase’s evolution in merchant services. The company plans to merge Coinbase Commerce, its crypto checkout product, into Coinbase Business in the coming months, the post said. The unification will combine the strengths of both products, including full custody, instant cash-outs, API integrations and the operational backbone required for enterprise-scale finance.

Read also: Stablecoins Aren’t Created Equal: Mapping the Issuer Marketplace for CFOs

Making Getting Paid Frictionless

Coinbase’s entry into business payments isn’t just a product launch. It’s a bet on the direction of global commerce. The company is wagering that the future of money will be instant, interoperable and programmable, and that businesses will adopt crypto not because it’s trendy, but because it’s cheaper and faster.

For B2B firms, sending money is only half the problem. Collecting it is the other. Traditional payment processors have long served as the toll booths of digital commerce, charging merchants around 3% per transaction and holding payouts for days. Credit card networks were designed for the analog age, a world where a human clerk ran a carbon copy of your card through a machine.

Coinbase’s payment links upend that logic. Instead of integrating a card processor or bank gateway, a business can generate a shareable link requesting a specific amount in USDC, the blog post said. Customers click and pay using a supported wallet, and the transaction settles in under a second. There are no network fees, no chargebacks and no waiting period.

For developers, the forthcoming Payment Links API will automate that process at scale and could enable embedded crypto checkout buttons in software-as-a-service (SaaS) dashboards, app stores or eCommerce platforms, per the post.

See also: Stablecoins ‘Perform Poorly’ as Money and Could Face Uphill Payments Battle

“The biggest problem in crypto is not adoption; it’s the user experience,” Mesh CEO and co-founder Bam Azizi told PYMNTS in an interview posted in May. “You need to make payments so simple that even a grandmother will use it one day, maybe without even knowing that the mechanism behind the scenes is a stablecoin … to do that, you need to do a lot of heavy lifting.”

Stablecoin payments are a shared vision across payments innovation. FinTech startups from Stripe to Ramp are experimenting with stablecoin payouts and on-chain settlement. However, Coinbase’s liquidity and compliance experience could prove to be a unique asset.

“All of this comes down to what consumers and businesses want,” Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in May. “It’s not just about cost, but also trust, simplicity and convenience. Customers want an end-to-end experience.”

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