The Stablecoin Revolution in Progress: Resonance of Technical Architecture and Business Ecosystem

The global financial system is undergoing profound changes. Traditional payment networks are facing a comprehensive challenge from stablecoins due to outdated infrastructure, long settlement periods, and high costs. Stablecoins are rapidly transforming the patterns of cross-border value flow, the paradigms of corporate transactions, and the ways individuals access financial services.

In recent years, stablecoins have continued to develop and have become an important 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, a series of emerging financial tools, from payment gateways to deposit and withdrawal channels, and to 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 players shaping this field, the core infrastructure supporting stablecoin transactions, and the dynamic demand driving its applications. Additionally, it explores how stablecoins give rise to new financial application scenarios and the challenges they face as they become widely integrated into the global economy.

1. Why choose stablecoin payments?

To understand the impact of stablecoins, one must first examine traditional payment solutions. These traditional systems include cash, checks, debit cards, credit cards, international wire transfers (SWIFT), automated clearing house (ACH), and peer-to-peer payments, among others. While they have become integrated into daily life, many payment channels like ACH and SWIFT have existed since the 1970s. Although they were groundbreaking at the time, most of these global payment infrastructures are now outdated and highly fragmented. Overall, these payment methods suffer from high costs, high friction, long processing times, inability to settle around the clock, and complex back-end processes. Additionally, they often bundle unnecessary extra services such as identity verification, lending, compliance, fraud protection, and bank integration, which come at a cost.

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 instantly, eliminating delays in traditional banking systems.
• Secure and reliable: The immutable ledger of blockchain ensures the security and transparency of transactions, providing protection for users.
• Reduced costs: Eliminating intermediaries significantly lowers transaction fees, saving users money.
• Global coverage: Decentralized platforms can reach markets that are underserved by traditional financial services (including unbanked populations), achieving financial inclusion.

2. The Landscape of the Stablecoin Payment Industry

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

1. Layer One: 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 working in the application layer, and provide credit card services for Web3 users.

a. Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is a service that securely processes payments to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers.

Well-known 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 functionality 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 using cryptocurrency and instantly convert USDY to other stablecoins, such as USDC, EURC, and PYUSD.
• Web2 payment applications such as Apple Pay, PayPal, Cash App, Nubank, and Revolut also allow users to make payments using stablecoins, further expanding the application scenarios for 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 of these types, thereby shaping their core products, user experience, and target market.

The developer-oriented payment gateway aims to serve businesses, fintech companies, and enterprises that need to integrate 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 to enable features such as automated payments, stablecoin wallets, virtual accounts, and real-time settlement. Some emerging projects focused on providing such developer tools include:

• BVNK: Provides enterprise-level payment infrastructure for easy integration of stablecoins. BVNK offers API solutions that seamlessly connect processes, featuring a payment platform for cross-border business payments, as well as corporate accounts that allow businesses to hold and trade multiple stablecoins and fiat currencies. It also provides merchant services with the tools necessary 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 (in beta): Provides an API to seamlessly integrate stablecoin trading into existing businesses. It offers enterprises global deposit and withdrawal channels, stablecoin payment infrastructure, wallets, and virtual accounts, supporting customized payment workflows (including recurring payments, invoicing, or on-demand payments).
• Juicyway: Provides a range of corporate payment, payroll, and bulk payment APIs, supporting currencies including Nigerian Naira (NGN), Canadian Dollar (CAD), US Dollar (USD), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). Primarily targeting the African market, and there is currently no operational data.

Consumer-focused payment gateways prioritize users, providing a simple and user-friendly interface to facilitate stablecoin payments, remittances, and financial services. They typically include mobile wallets, multi-currency support, fiat currency 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 including MoneyGram in Latin America, achieving nearly zero withdrawal fees, with over 10,000 South American users and high ratings among Solana developers.
• Meso: A deposit and withdrawal solution, directly integrated with merchants, enabling users and businesses to easily convert between fiat currency and stablecoins with minimal friction. Meso also supports Apple Pay to purchase USDC, simplifying the process for consumers to obtain stablecoins.
• Venmo: Venmo's stablecoin wallet feature utilizes 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 the blockchain infrastructure.

b. U Card

Cryptocurrency cards are payment cards that allow users to spend cryptocurrency or stablecoins at traditional merchants. These cards are typically integrated with traditional credit card networks (such as Visa or Mastercard) and enable seamless transactions by automatically converting cryptocurrency assets to fiat currency at the point of sale.

The project includes:

• Reap: A payment service provider in Asia, with clients including Infini, Kast, Genosis pay, Redotpay, Ether.fi and over 40 other companies, selling white-label solutions, primarily relying on transaction fee sharing (for example, Kast 85%-Reap 15%) cooperating with Hong Kong banks, able to cover most areas outside the United States, supporting multi-chain deposits; by July 2024, the transaction volume reached $30M.
• Raincards: A card issuer in the Americas that supports card issuance for companies such as Avalanche, Offramp, takenos, and others, with the main feature being the ability to serve users in the US and Latin America. Issued a USDC corporate card to pay for travel expenses, office supplies, and other everyday business expenses using on-chain assets (such as USDC).
• Fiat24: European card issuer + web3 bank, business model similar to the above two, supports card issuance for companies like ethsign, safepal; Swiss license, mainly serving European + Asian users, does not yet support full-chain transactions, only allows Arbitrum deposits. Slow growth with a total of 20,000 users, monthly revenue of $100K-150K.
• Kast: A rapidly growing U card on Solana, currently issued over 10,000 cards, with 5-6k monthly active users, projected transaction volume of $7m in December 2024, and revenue of $200k.
• 1Money: A stablecoin ecosystem that recently launched a credit card supporting stablecoins and provides a software development kit for easy L1 and L2 integration, currently in beta with no data available.

There are many cryptocurrency card providers, and they mainly differ in terms of service areas and supported currencies, typically offering low fees to end users to enhance their enthusiasm for using cryptocurrency cards.

2. Second Layer: Payment Processor

As a key layer in the stablecoin technology stack, payment processors are the backbone of payment channels and mainly cover two categories: 1. Deposit and withdrawal service providers 2. Stablecoin issuance service providers. They act as a crucial intermediary layer in the payment lifecycle, connecting Web3 payments with traditional financial systems.

a. Deposit and Withdrawal Processor

• Moonpay: Supports over 80 cryptocurrencies, provides various deposit and withdrawal methods, and 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 crypto assets. 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 of Processors

• Bridge: The core products of Bridge include the Coordination API and the Issuance API. The former assists enterprises in integrating various stablecoin payments and exchanges, while the latter supports enterprises in quickly issuing stablecoins. The platform is currently licensed in the United States and Europe and has established important partnerships with the U.S. State Department and the Treasury, possessing strong compliance operation capabilities and resource advantages.
• Brale ( in beta): 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 United States, and partner enterprises need to undergo KYB (Know Your Business), while users need to establish an account with Brale for KYC. Brale's clients are mostly on-chain OGs (such as Etherfuse, Penera, etc.) and are somewhat less backed by investors and BD compared to Bridge.
• Perena ( in beta ): Perena's Numeraire platform lowers the issuance threshold for 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 pegged to different assets or jurisdictions, each stablecoin connecting to USD* as similar "spokes." Through this system structure, Numeraire ensures deep liquidity and enhances capital efficiency, as small stablecoins can interoperate through USD*, eliminating 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,