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The global payments system isn’t outdated. It’s broken. Today, banks charge an average remittance fee of 13% to send just $200 across borders, and often it takes two days. That’s not just a costly or inefficient aspect of the system; it’s the system itself. Simply put, it’s a tax on people and businesses who can least afford it.
Summary
- From experiment to infrastructure: Stablecoins grew from a $4B niche in 2020 to a $250B market today, on track to power $1T in annual payments by 2028.
- Breaking barriers in payments: They cut remittance costs from 6–13% to under 1%, while B2B settlement cycles that once took 59 days are now instant and borderless.
- Regulatory clarity emerging: Laws like the CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act are cementing stablecoins’ legitimacy, while local tokens like Brazil’s BRL1 and Mexico’s MXNB show how digital-native money adapts to each economy.
- Programmable money revolution: Beyond speed and cost, stablecoins enable real-time payroll, automated insurance, and machine-to-machine payments — redefining what money can do.
Stablecoins eliminate this friction — they settle in seconds, cost less than 1%, and operate without the permission of a banker or the delays of a correspondent network. Payments can be entirely programmable, received in real time, and completely automated. Rather than presenting a modest upgrade to financial infrastructure, it’s a complete replacement of the maimed system. The stack is being rewritten, and stablecoins aren’t a crypto curiosity anymore. They’re becoming the foundation of a new financial order, and the world is slowly beginning to grasp its implications.
The trillion-dollar stablecoin surge
In 2020, stablecoins represented a mere $4 billion market, and at the time were considered “an experiment.” Five years later, that figure has exceeded $250 billion, now an unavoidable opportunity for the global financial system.
And it’s only the start, as analysts forecast more than $1 trillion in annual payment volume by 2028, with stablecoins capturing 12% of cross-border flows by 2030. At maturity, they could hold 25% of the U.S. Treasury bill market and 10% of the entire U.S. money supply.
These are no longer “niche tokens”; they are liquid instruments at the heart of global finance. Stablecoins are quickly and quietly delivering the disruption fintech has been promising for the past two decades.
Where stablecoins are already winning
Corporate payments remain astonishingly outdated. Nearly every process is manual, and the average settlement cycle stretches to 59 days. Meanwhile, stablecoins are already powering more than $36 billion in B2B flows — settling instantly, compliantly, and across borders. We’re seeing CFOs move from “dabbling in crypto” to completely abandoning the wire transfer for good.
As previously mentioned, remittances fiercely expose the system’s inequities. Sending $200 internationally costs an average of 6.3%. With stablecoins, that drops to below 1%, and the settlement takes place immediately. Bitso, a Mexico-based exchange, processed more than $12 billion in remittances last year, showcasing its proof of scale. For millions, stablecoins become a key survival tool.
Consumer payments are also shifting. Stablecoin-linked debit and credit products quadrupled in just two years, from $250 million per month in 2023 to over $1 billion per month in 2025. Beyond payments, tokenized receivables turn stablecoins into live credit lines that settle in seconds. Quickly, you can see how clumsy legacy card rails look by comparison, with programmable cash working much better.
The downfall of skeptics’ arguments
Skeptics argue that regulation, cash-out options, and liquidity remain unsolved. But these arguments grow weaker every day. On regulation, the debate over legality has come to a close. The CLARITY Act confirmed that stablecoins are not securities, while the GENIUS Act proposes meaningful oversight that balances safeguards with space for innovation. It’s encouraging to see the industry not only embrace regulation but demand it.
On last-mile payouts, fiat off-ramps remain uneven, particularly in emerging economies. But local stablecoins are rising rapidly, such as BRL1 in Brazil or MXNB in Mexico. These are creating programmable, digital-native cash tailored to their local markets. It’s about building custom digital money fit for each economy, rather than exporting the dollar everywhere.
On liquidity, friction remains, as more than $5 billion in trades still see slippage above 0.1%. However, on-chain market makers are scaling layer-2 solutions for depth and stability faster than traditional exchanges ever did. 1inch aggregates liquidity from several automated market makers, reducing slippage by finding the best price across multiple pools. Allowing the next layer of finance to be live, liquid, and ledger-native, rather than just off-chain.
The endgame: Programmable money
The real breakthrough isn’t just its speed or cost. It’s stablecoins’ programmability. With smart contracts, money itself becomes an intelligent infrastructure: Workers can be paid in real time, by the hour, or even the minute; connected devices can handle machine-to-machine payments without human involvement. Insurance payouts can execute automatically, before a claim is even filed.
That could mean a remote-based freelancer is paid immediately following the end of their task; an electric vehicle autonomously charges at a smart station, paying the kilowatt per hour, and the payout for a weather-damaged home is received quickly following a meteorological satellite check.
This isn’t just a bullish belief. Major finance players such as Stripe, Circle, and Revolut are already deploying these rails. Every fintech company will become a stablecoin company in time, whether they embrace it or not.
The inevitable shift
Currently, $27 trillion sits idle in nostro accounts, trapped as dead capital by outdated correspondent banking rails. Stablecoins could unlock that liquidity overnight to transform global finance, drive innovation, and boost economic development globally.
This is no longer theoretical; it’s happening in real time. They’re already moving billions across borders, accelerating B2B payments, and underpinning entire remittance corridors. What began as an experiment has become infrastructure. Progress won’t come from waiting on a perfect framework or a universal rulebook. It will come from building within the clarity we already have, and improving it as we go.
Stablecoins represent the most significant upgrade money has seen in decades. Not an added value, but the bookend of the old and the inception of the next era. The firms and regulators willing to engage with that reality today, not years from now, will define the inevitable truth in global finance: if you touch money, you will eventually touch stablecoins.
