A critical inquiry from a veteran in cross-border payments challenges the prevailing narrative surrounding stablecoin adoption. The core question addresses why established firms continue to pursue stablecoin integration when mature payment routes in major economies already offer near real-time transactions at costs approaching 0.01%. This skepticism highlights a fundamental disconnect between cryptocurrency marketing and actual corporate financial requirements. Businesses prioritize fund arrival certainty, processing speed, cost efficiency, regulatory compliance, tax clarity, and accounting integrity over abstract concepts like decentralization. For legitimate cross-border flows between jurisdictions like Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, traditional banking solutions often remain sufficient where local clearing networks are robust and compliance documentation is complete. The founder of Airwallex has previously noted that in these mature corridors, stablecoins offer no inherent speed or cost advantage over existing infrastructure.

The misconception that on-chain transfers equate to cheap cross-border payments ignores the full cost structure, including deposit fees, withdrawal charges, foreign exchange spreads, custody costs, compliance reviews, and tax processing. If the final settlement must occur in fiat currencies like euros or dollars for accounting purposes, stablecoins merely replace a segment of the transfer process without guaranteeing a cheaper total path.

However, this logic does not apply globally. Data compiled by Woofun AI indicates that the World Bank's remittance price database recorded an average global remittance cost of 6.36% as of the third quarter of 2025. While this figure reflects personal remittances, it underscores the significant friction in global capital flows, particularly in regions where bank accounts are scarce, local currencies are volatile, and access to US dollar accounts is restricted. In these markets, the funding chain is often too long, slow, and uncontrollable for small and medium-sized merchants.

The distinction between payment and clearing is the most overlooked aspect of this transition. While the front-end user experience involves simple actions like scanning a code or swiping a card, the backend involves a complex four-layer structure including issuing banks, acquiring banks, payment networks, agent banks, intermediary banks, and local clearing systems. Stablecoins primarily add value in the second and third layers of this structure. They do not imply that consumers will immediately use USDC for daily purchases or that merchants will adopt USDT for tax reporting. Instead, they enable the partial migration of fund flows that previously required coordination across bank accounts and time zones to a 7x24 hour on-chain asset transfer system.

This shift is less about consumer-facing innovation and more about optimizing the intermediate clearing layer.

Visa's strategic entry into this space confirms that stablecoins are evolving from niche trading tools to core components of traditional payment networks. In September 2023, Visa expanded USDC settlement capabilities to support the Solana blockchain, collaborating with acquiring institutions like Worldpay and Nuvei to test these mechanisms. The initiative was explicitly defined as modernizing cross-border capital flows rather than enabling direct consumer crypto payments. By December 2025, Visa launched USDC settlement capabilities in the United States, allowing issuers and acquirers to settle with Visa using Circle-issued USDC. At that time, Visa disclosed that monthly stablecoin settlement volume had exceeded an annualized level of $3.5 billion, with a key benefit being the extension of the settlement window from five business days to seven days. By April 2026, the pilot expanded to support nine blockchains, reaching an annualized settlement operating scale of $7 billion.

Although $7 billion represents a significant figure, it remains a small fraction of Visa's total fiscal year 2025 payment and cash transaction volume, which ranged around $170 trillion. The strategic imperative for Visa is not the immediate transformation of its entire network but the preservation of its position in a future clearing ecosystem increasingly dominated by stablecoins and blockchains. Visa's moat lies in its role as a global financial collaboration network connecting issuing banks, acquiring banks, merchants, and consumers, providing transaction rules, risk control, and dispute resolution. Woofun AI notes that Visa's focus on settlement rather than simple crypto payments reflects a desire to maintain relevance if global capital clearing shifts toward on-chain assets. The commercial path involves users paying with familiar wallets or cards while merchants receive fiat currencies, with the on-chain transfer, conversion, and compliance handled by payment networks and partner institutions.

This model transforms the intermediate clearing layer, moving away from a system reliant on commercial bank accounts, agent bank networks, SWIFT messages, and banking business hours. Stablecoins like USDC and USDT function as on-chain dollar debt certificates backed by reserve assets, promising 1:1 redemption. Circle's business model exemplifies this, with 2024 revenue of approximately $1.7 billion, 99% of which derived from USDC reserve interest income, while distribution costs to partners like Binance and Coinbase totaled about $1.01 billion. This structure reveals that Circle operates as a financial infrastructure company internetizing dollar assets, necessitating partnerships with entities like Visa that possess global merchant acceptance networks. Circle provides the on-chain dollar assets, while Visa facilitates their entry into the real world, creating a symbiotic relationship rather than a competitive one.

Stripe's acquisition of Bridge in February 2025 follows similar logic, aiming to provide enterprises with an end-to-end platform for stablecoin operations. PayPal's launch of PYUSD in August 2023 further validates the trend, with the stablecoin backed by dollar deposits and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. These moves signal a shift from a "card network + bank account network" to a hybrid structure incorporating stablecoin clearing networks.

However, risks remain significant. The Bank for International Settlements' 2025 annual economic report expressed a restrained attitude, acknowledging potential in tokenization but emphasizing that stablecoins cannot yet form the backbone of the monetary system. The Financial Stability Board's 2023 recommendations stressed the need for consistent global regulation to address financial stability risks.

For Chinese companies, the regulatory landscape presents distinct challenges. The People's Bank of China and ten other departments issued notices in 2021 and February 6, 2026, explicitly prohibiting virtual currency trading and related activities within the country. Consequently, Chinese entities cannot simply adopt stablecoins for payments based on the actions of Visa or Stripe. Companies must assess their business entity location, transaction scenarios, and specific operational problems. If operations are confined to mainland China, stablecoin usage poses high regulatory risks.

However, for companies with foreign entities and operations in compliant jurisdictions, stablecoins may offer value for specific use cases like global freelancer payments or markets with limited dollar access. The future stablecoin system will likely resemble a hybrid structure where traditional finance absorbs crypto finance, with stablecoins serving as a new clearing module within the global payment network.