Stablecoins account for less than 1% of payouts at firms like Remote — but that number is rising fast. At Money20/20, payment leaders explored how early use cases in B2B flows are shaping the future of cross-border infrastructure
Stablecoins are no longer confined to the world of crypto speculation.
While they still represent a small share of global payment flows, their role in B2B finance is expanding — slowly, and often without headlines. At Money20/20, a panel featuring executives from Stripe, Remote, Fireblocks and Sardine suggested that stablecoins may not be transformative yet, but they are already doing practical work behind the scenes.
The term stablecoin first entered the mainstream lexicon around 2018, though the concept dates back earlier. Designed to maintain a fixed value, typically pegged to fiat currencies like the US dollar, stablecoins emerged as a response to volatility in early cryptocurrencies. Where Bitcoin and Ethereum prices could shift dramatically in hours, stablecoins promised predictability: a digital dollar that wouldn’t lose 20 percent of its value overnight.
In the early years, most stablecoins were used within trading platforms. They acted as on- and off-ramps, allowing crypto users to exit volatile assets without converting back to traditional bank currencies. Tether (USDT) was one of the first and remains the most widely circulated, despite ongoing scrutiny about its reserves. Others, like USDC from Circle and Paxos’s BUSD, positioned themselves as more transparent and regulated alternatives.
A turning point came in 2019, when Meta (then Facebook) announced plans for its own stablecoin project, initially called Libra. The initiative, later renamed Diem, triggered regulatory pushback around the world and never launched, but it forced financial institutions and policymakers to take stablecoins seriously. From that point, stablecoins moved from niche trading tools to infrastructure under examination by central banks, fintechs, and enterprise software companies alike.
By 2023, major fintech platforms – including PayPal, Stripe, and Revolut – had begun integrating stablecoin payments or issuing their own dollar-backed digital tokens. Simultaneously, countries experiencing currency instability saw stablecoins emerge as informal alternatives to failing banking systems. The question shifted from “if” stablecoins would matter to “where” they would matter first.
It’s against this backdrop that the Money20/20 panel took place; less focused on hype, and more interested in how businesses are embedding stablecoins to solve familiar problems: managing global payroll, settling merchant accounts, and improving treasury liquidity in hard-to-reach markets.
From narrative to infrastructure
For Neetika Bansal, Head of MaaS at Stripe, the firm’s late-2024 acquisition of Bridge was driven by a shift in customer demand. “The kind of demand we’re seeing from our users is incredible,” she told the audience. “Whether these are entrepreneurs in countries that Stripe’s not served before… or large enterprises trying to figure out their treasury functions… it’s coming from all sorts of users.”
That demand isn’t limited to payments. As Bansal explained, the integration of Bridge’s stablecoin infrastructure was about enabling Stripe to meet users where they are, without forcing them to learn new tools or understand blockchain mechanics.
“If our end business, end user, doesn’t have to think about stablecoins… and stablecoin just happens to give them more markets and more flexibility and so on, I think we would have really helped our users,” she said.
The shift from curiosity to implementation has been gradual, but the trend is clear. Job van der Voort, CEO and co-founder of Remote, described how his company began offering payouts in USDC. “For a really large part of the world’s population, it’s actually amazing to use stablecoins,” he said.
In many regions, contractors face lengthy wait times, high fees or receive payment in a currency that quickly loses value. “Even if you spend a lot of time and effort building a treasury function and a payments function that allows us to pay anybody very quickly… you might still not receive the funds quickly. And you might receive them in a currency that you’re not very happy with.”
Adoption, for now, remains modest. Van der Voort noted that less than one percent of Remote’s payouts are in stablecoins, a figure he attributes more to caution than disinterest. “People are really worried about the funds that they’re getting. We must be accurate. It must be safe. We don’t want something that’s volatile,” he said.
But growth in that one percent matters. Ran Goldi, SVP of Payments and Network at Fireblocks, said, “I would buy that stat any day. You tell me right now that stablecoins would power one percent of global payments, I think that would be amazing after all this time.”
Goldi has been working in digital payments for close to a decade, and he was candid about the state of play. “Let’s be honest, this is overhyped. But there are a lot of use cases where it’s the best thing to use,” he said.
Stablecoins didn’t begin as a payments tool, he explained. They emerged from the need for traders to exit volatile crypto positions without returning to fiat. The fact that they’re now used to send payroll in Argentina, settle invoices in Nigeria, or convert pesos to dollars in minutes is evidence of something more fundamental: product-market fit.
B2B payment flows
While much of the early attention around stablecoins focused on consumer applications, the panel made it clear that B2B payment flows are where traction is building fastest. These include merchant settlements, cross-border payroll, global treasury repatriation, and digital invoicing, each offering a more efficient alternative to traditional rails.
Bansal pointed to several examples emerging within Stripe’s ecosystem. “We have AI companies like Hydra, Shadeform, Text.com, they’re accepting six-digit invoices,” she said. “And companies that start accepting stablecoin pay-ins are selling to twice as many countries.”
For software firms and digital platforms that are global from day one, stablecoins offer a way to bypass the delays and compliance friction of international bank transfers.
Cross-border payout flows were another area of focus. Beyond the work Remote is doing with USDC, Bansal highlighted clients like Scale.ai, a US-based tech firm with contractors in more than 70 countries. “They’re paying their contractors in 70-plus countries using stablecoins,” she said. “It’s the same problem: treasury, volatility, settlement. Stablecoins help solve it.”
The panel also discussed global treasury operations — particularly how stablecoins are being used to move local currencies back into dollars. “Imagine a SpaceX,” said Bansal. “They sell their Starlink device into Argentina, collect local currency there, and now they want to take it out back in USD. They’re using stablecoins to instantly send that back into USD.”
For small and mid-size businesses, the appeal is often more immediate. Stablecoins enable merchant settlement across time zones, currencies and banking hours; a meaningful upgrade for firms operating on tight margins and short cash cycles. Goldi referenced partnerships such as Wallpay, where merchant payouts are settled in stablecoins to speed up cash flow. “That flow is happening more than ever,” he said.
There is also growing momentum in markets where access to hard currency is limited. “Entrepreneurs in countries like Argentina, Vietnam… they don’t have access to dollars,” said Bansal. “With stablecoins, we’re giving them dollar-denominated accounts so they can operate their business.” In these markets, demand is often not just strong — it’s urgent.
That urgency is reflected in user behaviour. Van der Voort noted that when Remote introduced the ability for users to reserve different currencies, “the number one currency in Latin America was US dollars.” Stablecoins are filling a need where traditional banking infrastructure hasn’t, providing access to financial stability in regions where that’s otherwise hard to find.
A quiet shift with systemic consequences
The panel resisted sweeping predictions, but there was little doubt among the speakers that stablecoins are becoming part of the financial infrastructure, even if slowly. For now, adoption is small, patchy, and largely invisible to the end user. But that may be the point.
As Goldi noted, the most successful payment technologies don’t arrive with fanfare. They are adopted where they solve real problems, then scale. “What we will see in 2025, more than anything else, is payout flow increasing, both to merchants and directly to consumers,” he said.
That growth is likely to be driven not by marketing or speculative interest, but by quiet, persistent demand from businesses that need faster, more flexible ways to move money.
There is also a shift in how stablecoins are being perceived. What began as a technical workaround – a dollar on the blockchain – is becoming something more durable. It is being integrated into payroll, treasury, and global invoicing. It is being abstracted into tools like cards and APIs. And it is being evaluated not as a crypto experiment, but as a financial utility with strategic implications.
Some challenges remain. Stablecoins are still treated as liabilities, and few regulators have offered definitive guidance on their classification. But sentiment is changing. Seventeen banks now support USDC accounts. Stripe is embedding stablecoins into its infrastructure. Remote is using them to serve contractors. And platforms like Fireblocks are enabling financial institutions to move value securely, 24/7, across borders.
At some point, these developments begin to look less like innovation and more like plumbing. The kind that users don’t see, but come to rely on.
