COMMENTARY: Stablecoins Are Moving From Crypto Debate to Payments Use Case

For decades, payments progress has been measured by how much friction disappears between initiation and transaction.

Checks and cash gave way to credit cards. Credit cards gave way to digital wallets. And now, stablecoins are emerging as a new payments rail, with the potential to change how businesses move and receive money.

Today, ordering a pizza can take three taps: open an app, pay with a digital wallet, and get instant confirmation. But while the customer experience has become nearly effortless, the payment infrastructure supporting merchants, platforms, and payouts often still relies on legacy settlement processes.

Even in the case of a simple pizza order, payments can pass through multiple banks and intermediaries, get delayed by operating hours and settlement windows, and force businesses to keep pre-funded accounts in different markets just to ensure merchants and delivery drivers get paid.

That’s the bottleneck DoorDash is trying to address. The company recently said it plans to use stablecoins to speed payout time and settlement for merchants and delivery drivers on its platform, targeting one of the slowest parts of the payments process. If stablecoin rails are added to its payment operations, settlement could happen near instantly, 24/7.

By bringing settlement closer to real time, stablecoins can reduce friction in today’s payment infrastructure and give businesses faster access to funds, more visibility into the movement of money, and less dependence on delayed settlement cycles. In doing so, stablecoins could improve the infrastructure that supports global commerce.

Until recently, the main question surrounding stablecoins was whether they belonged in the financial system at all. The tech sector saw stablecoins as a way to update payment infrastructure using blockchain technology, while traditional banks remained skeptical of the broader crypto ecosystem.

The conversation shifted quickly last summer when Congress passed the GENIUS Act, establishing a regulatory framework for payment stablecoins and requiring issuers to fully back digital dollars with reserve assets. With that regulatory foundation in place, attention is shifting from whether stablecoins are viable to where they can create the greatest business value. Cross-border settlement and liquidity management are emerging as two of the clearest opportunities.

Many financial institutions keep capital in pre-funded accounts around the world to support cross-border payments. Stablecoin infrastructure would make it possible to move liquidity in real time, reducing idle capital and giving treasury teams greater flexibility over how funds are deployed.

Adoption is still early, which gives financial institutions and fintechs room to learn before the market matures. Four principles should guide that process:

1. Chase business outcomes, not technology. The strongest stablecoin initiatives don’t begin with the question, “How do we use stablecoins?” They begin with a business challenge. At Globant, we worked with a leading agricultural company that wanted to improve liquidity across its ecosystem. By enabling stablecoin payouts to digital wallets, producers could access funds much sooner after harvest and immediately pay affiliated merchants through accessible channels like WhatsApp.

But the objective wasn’t to deploy digital assets for their own sake. They were the right mechanism for improving cash flow and accelerating payments across the agricultural value chain.

• Start with a high-impact use case. The agricultural project focused on liquidity because it was a clear business constraint. Similar opportunities exist in cross-border settlement, treasury operations and payouts, where delays in the movement of money have a direct impact on working capital and operational efficiency
  
  
• Learn through pilots. The agricultural company didn’t need to transform its entire payment operation overnight. It started with a specific liquidity challenge. A focused pilot allows you to validate business outcomes, refine operational processes and build internal expertise while limiting operational and financial risk before expanding to additional payment flows.
  
  
• Think integration first. Customers, suppliers and partners shouldn’t have to learn a new way to get paid. Stablecoin infrastructure should modernize how money moves behind the scenes while integrating with the payment experiences and operational systems businesses already rely on.

The payments industry has spent decades making it easier for consumers to pay. Stablecoins offer an opportunity to bring similar progress to the movement of money behind the scenes, where merchants, financial institutions and global businesses stand to benefit most.

Stablecoins won’t replace today’s payment rails, but they can complement them with a faster settlement layer that is available around the clock. As adoption grows, the focus should remain on practical experimentation: solving specific business problems, integrating with trusted infrastructure, and improving the speed and visibility of money movement.

—Erin Stillwell is executive vice president and head of payments at Globant.