Exploring the Stablecoin Payment Ecosystem: A Comprehensive Analysis from Technology to Business

The global financial system is undergoing profound changes. Traditional payment networks are facing comprehensive challenges from stablecoins due to outdated infrastructure, lengthy settlement periods, and high costs. Stablecoins are innovating the way cross-border value flows, corporate transactions, and personal financial services are accessed.

In recent years, stablecoins have continued to develop and have become an important underlying infrastructure for global payments. Large fintech companies, payment processors, and sovereign entities are gradually integrating stablecoins into consumer-facing applications and corporate cash flows. At the same time, emerging financial tools such as payment gateways, deposit and withdrawal channels, and programmable yield products have greatly enhanced the convenience of using stablecoins.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the stablecoin ecosystem from both technical and business perspectives. It examines the key participants shaping this field, the core infrastructure supporting stablecoin transactions, and the dynamic demand driving their applications. Additionally, it explores how stablecoins are giving rise to new financial application scenarios and the challenges they face as they become more integrated into the global economic process.

1. Why choose stablecoin payments?

To understand the influence of stablecoins, one must first examine traditional payment solutions. These systems encompass cash, checks, debit cards, credit cards, international wire transfers (SWIFT), Automated Clearing House (ACH), and peer-to-peer payments. Although they have become integrated into daily life, many payment channels, such as the ACH and SWIFT infrastructure, have existed since the 1970s. While they were groundbreaking at the time, most of these global payment infrastructures are now outdated and highly fragmented. Overall, these payment methods are plagued by high fees, high friction, long processing times, inability to achieve round-the-clock settlement, and complex backend processes. Furthermore, they often bundle unnecessary additional services such as identity verification, lending, compliance, fraud protection, and bank integration.

Stablecoin payments are effectively addressing these pain points. Compared to traditional payment methods, using blockchain for payment settlement greatly simplifies the payment process, reduces intermediaries, and achieves real-time visibility of fund flows, not only shortening settlement times but also lowering costs.

The main advantages of stablecoin payments can be summarized as follows:

• Real-time settlement: Transactions are completed almost instantaneously, eliminating delays in traditional banking systems.
• Safe and Reliable: The immutable ledger of blockchain ensures the security and transparency of transactions, providing protection for users.
• Cost reduction: Eliminating intermediaries has significantly lowered transaction fees, saving users money.
• Global coverage: Decentralized platforms can reach markets underserved by traditional financial services, achieving financial inclusivity.

2. Stablecoin Payment Industry Landscape

The stablecoin payment industry can be divided into four technical stack levels:

1. First Layer: Application Layer

The application layer is mainly composed of various payment service providers (PSPs), which integrate multiple independent deposit and withdrawal payment institutions into a unified aggregation platform. These platforms provide users with convenient access to stablecoins, offer tools for developers developing at the application layer, and provide credit card services for users.

a. Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is a service that facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers by securely processing payments.

Notable companies innovating in this field include:

• Stripe: A traditional payment provider that integrates stablecoins like USDC for global payments.
• MetaMask: It does not provide direct fiat currency exchange functions itself; users can perform deposit and withdrawal operations through integration with its third-party services.
• Helio: 450,000 active wallets and 6,000 merchants. With the Solana Pay plugin, millions of Shopify merchants can settle payments with cryptocurrency and instantly convert USDY into other stablecoins, such as USDC, EURC, and PYUSD.
• Some Web2 payment applications also allow users to make payments using stablecoins, further expanding the application scenarios of stablecoins.

The field of payment gateway providers can be clearly divided into two categories (with some overlap).

1. Payment gateway for developers; 2) Payment gateway for consumers. Most payment gateway providers tend to focus more on one type, thereby shaping their core products, user experiences, and target markets.

The developer-focused payment gateway aims to serve businesses, fintech companies, and enterprises that need to embed stablecoin infrastructure into their workflows. They typically provide application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and developer tools for integration into existing payment systems, enabling features such as automatic payments, stablecoin wallets, virtual accounts, and real-time settlement. Some emerging projects that focus on providing such developer tools include:

• BVNK: Provides enterprise-grade payment infrastructure for easy integration of stablecoins. BVNK offers API solutions for seamless processes, a payment platform for cross-border commercial payments, and enterprise accounts that allow businesses to hold and trade multiple stablecoins and fiat currencies, along with merchant services that provide the tools needed for businesses to accept customer payments in stablecoins. Processing over $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, with a growth rate of 200%, and a valuation of $750 million, clients include emerging regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
• Iron: Provides an API to seamlessly integrate stablecoin trading into its existing business. It offers businesses global deposit and withdrawal channels, stablecoin payment infrastructure, wallets, and virtual accounts, supporting customizable payment workflows (including recurring payments, invoicing, or on-demand payments).
• Juicyway: Provides a range of enterprise payment, payroll distribution, and bulk payment APIs, supporting currencies including Nigerian Naira (NGN), Canadian Dollar (CAD), US Dollar (USD), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). Mainly targeting the African market, with no operational data available yet.

Consumer-focused payment gateways prioritize users, offering an easy-to-use interface that facilitates stablecoin payments, remittances, and financial services. They typically include mobile wallets, multi-currency support, fiat deposit and withdrawal channels, and seamless cross-border transactions. Some well-known projects that focus on providing users with this simple payment experience include:

• Decaf: An on-chain banking platform that enables personal consumption, remittances, and stablecoin transactions in over 184 countries; Decaf collaborates with local channels in Latin America, including Western Union, to achieve nearly zero withdrawal fees, with over 10,000 South American users and high ratings.
• Meso: A fund deposit and withdrawal solution integrated directly with merchants, enabling users and businesses to easily convert between fiat currency and stablecoins with minimal friction. Meso also supports the purchase of USDC, simplifying the process for consumers to acquire stablecoins.
• Venmo: Venmo's stablecoin wallet feature leverages stablecoin technology, but its functionality is integrated into its existing consumer payment application, allowing users to easily send, receive, and use digital dollars without directly interacting with blockchain infrastructure.

b. U Card

A cryptocurrency card is a payment card that allows users to spend cryptocurrency or stablecoins at traditional merchants. These cards are typically integrated with traditional credit card networks, enabling seamless transactions by automatically converting cryptocurrency assets to fiat currency at the point of sale.

The project includes:

• Reap: An Asian card issuer with clients including Infini, Kast, Genosis pay, Redotpay, Ether.fi, and over 40 other companies, selling white-label solutions, mainly relying on transaction fees in cooperation with Hong Kong banks, covering most areas outside the United States, supporting multi-chain deposits; in July 2024, the transaction volume reached $30M.
• Raincards: A card issuer in the Americas, supporting card issuance for multiple companies such as Avalanche, Offramp, takenos, etc. Its main feature is the ability to serve users in the US and Latin America. They issued a USDC corporate card to pay for travel expenses, office supplies, and other daily business costs using on-chain assets.
• Fiat24: European card issuer + web3 bank, business model similar to the above two companies, supports card issuance for enterprises like ethsign, safepal; Swiss license, mainly serving European + Asian users, currently does not support full-chain transactions, only allows Arbitrum deposits. Slow growth with a total of 20,000 users and monthly revenue of $100K-150K.
• Kast: A rapidly growing U-card, currently over 10,000 cards have been issued, with 5-6k monthly active users, $7m in transaction volume by December 2024, and $200k in revenue.
• 1Money: Stablecoin ecosystem, recently launched a credit card supporting stablecoins, and provides a software development kit for easy integration, no data available yet.

There are many cryptocurrency card providers, which mainly differ in terms of service areas and supported currencies, and they usually offer low-fee services to end users to enhance the willingness of users to use cryptocurrency cards.

2. Layer Two: Payment Processor

As a key layer of the stablecoin technology stack, payment processors are the backbone of payment channels, mainly covering two categories: 1. Deposit and withdrawal service providers 2. Stablecoin issuance service providers. They act as a critical intermediary in the payment lifecycle, connecting payments with the traditional financial system.

a. Deposit and Withdrawal Processor

• Moonpay: Supports over 80 cryptocurrencies, offers various deposit and withdrawal methods as well as token swap services to meet users' diverse cryptocurrency trading needs.
• Ramp Network: Covers over 150 countries and provides deposit and withdrawal services for more than 90 types of cryptocurrencies. The network handles all KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and compliance requirements, ensuring the compliance and security of deposit and withdrawal services.
• Alchemy Pay: A hybrid payment gateway solution that supports bidirectional exchange and payment between fiat currency and crypto assets, achieving the integration of traditional fiat currency and crypto asset payments.

b. Stablecoin Issuance & Coordination Processor

• Bridge: The core products of Bridge include the Coordination API and the Issuance API. The former helps businesses integrate various stablecoin payments and exchanges, while the latter supports businesses in quickly issuing stablecoins. The platform is currently licensed in the United States and Europe and has established significant partnerships with the U.S. State Department and the Treasury, possessing strong compliance operation capabilities and resource advantages.
• Brale: Similar to the Bridge product, it is a regulated stablecoin issuance platform that provides stablecoin coordination and reserve management APIs. It has compliance licenses in various states in the U.S., and partner companies need to go through KYB (Know Your Business), while users need to establish accounts for KYC (Know Your Customer). Brale's clients are more on-chain OGs, and compared to Bridge, its investment backing and business development are slightly weaker.
• Perena: The Numeraire platform of Perena lowers the issuance threshold of niche stablecoins by encouraging users to provide concentrated liquidity in a single pool. Numeraire adopts a "central hub-radiating" model, where USD* serves as the central reserve asset, acting as the "hub" for stablecoin issuance and exchange. This mechanism allows for the efficient minting, redemption, and trading of various stablecoins linked to different assets or jurisdictions, with each stablecoin connected to USD* as a similar "spoke." Through this system structure, Numeraire ensures deep liquidity and enhances capital efficiency, as smaller stablecoins can interoperate through USD* without the need to provide separate liquidity pools for each trading pair. The ultimate design goal of the system is not only to enhance price stability and reduce slippage but also to achieve seamless conversion between stablecoins.

3. Layer three: Asset Issuer

Asset issuers are responsible for creating, maintaining, and redeeming stablecoins. Their business model is typically centered around the balance sheet, similar to bank operations ------ accepting customer deposits and investing the funds in high-yield assets such as U.S. Treasuries to earn interest spreads. At the asset issuer level, stablecoin innovation can be divided into