Panorama Analysis of the Stablecoin Payment Ecosystem

The global financial system is undergoing profound changes. Traditional payment networks are facing a comprehensive challenge from stablecoins due to outdated infrastructure, lengthy settlement cycles, and high costs. Stablecoins are rapidly changing the patterns of value cross-border 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 underlying infrastructure for global payments. Large fintech companies, payment processors, and sovereign entities are gradually integrating stablecoins into consumer-facing applications and enterprise cash flows. 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 analyzes the stablecoin ecosystem from both technical and commercial perspectives. It studies the key players shaping this field, the core infrastructure supporting stablecoin transactions, and the dynamic demand driving its applications. Additionally, it explores how stablecoins are giving rise to new financial application scenarios and the challenges they face in being widely integrated into the global economic process.

1. Why choose stablecoin payments?

To explore the influence of stablecoins, it is essential to first examine traditional payment solutions. These traditional systems include cash, checks, debit cards, credit cards, international wire transfers (SWIFT), automated clearing houses (ACH), and peer-to-peer payments. Although they have integrated into daily life, many payment channels, such as the ACH and SWIFT infrastructure, have existed since the 1970s. While they were pioneering at the time, most of these global payment infrastructures are now outdated and highly fragmented. Overall, these payment methods are plagued by high costs, high friction, long processing times, inability to achieve round-the-clock settlement, and complex backend processes. Furthermore, they often require payment for bundled services that are unnecessary, 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 found 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 significantly lowers transaction fees, saving expenses for users.
• Global Coverage: Decentralized platforms can reach markets 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 divided into four technical stack levels:

1. First Layer: Application Layer

The application layer is mainly composed of various payment service providers (PSP), 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 Web3 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, but 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 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 domain 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 categories, thereby shaping their core products, user experience, and target market.

The developer-oriented payment gateway is designed 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 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 for seamless process integration, with a payment platform for cross-border commercial payments, as well as enterprise accounts that allow businesses to hold and trade various stablecoins and fiat currencies, along with merchant services that provide the necessary tools 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 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 enterprise 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, there is currently no operational data.

Consumer-focused payment gateways prioritize the user, providing 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 has partnered with some local channels in Latin America to achieve nearly zero withdrawal fees, with over 10,000 South American users and high ratings among Solana developers.
• Meso: Deposit and withdrawal solution, directly integrated with merchants, allowing users and businesses to easily convert between fiat currency and stablecoin with minimal friction. Meso also supports certain payments to purchase USDC, streamlining 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

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, enabling seamless transactions by automatically converting cryptocurrency assets to fiat currency at the point of sale.

The project includes:

• Reap: A card issuer in Asia, serving clients including some enterprises, selling white label solutions, primarily relying on transaction fee commissions and collaborating with banks in Hong Kong, capable of covering most areas outside the US, and supporting multi-chain deposits; by July 2024, the transaction volume reached $30M.
• Raincards: A card issuer in the Americas that supports several companies in issuing cards, with the main feature being its ability to serve users in the US and Latin America. They have issued a USDC corporate card to pay for travel expenses, office supplies, and other daily business expenses using on-chain assets (such as USDC).
• Fiat24: European card issuer + web3 bank, the business model is similar to the above two, supporting some enterprises in issuing cards; Swiss license, mainly serving European + Asian users, currently does not support full-chain transactions, only certain chains for deposits. Growth is slow with a total user base of 20,000 and a monthly revenue of $100K-150K.
• Kast: A rapidly growing U card on a certain blockchain, 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, with no data available yet.

There are many cryptocurrency card providers, and they mainly differ in the areas they serve and the currencies they support. Typically, they offer low-fee services to end users in order to enhance the 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, primarily covering two types: 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, offering 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 currencies and cryptocurrency assets, achieving the integration of traditional fiat currency and cryptocurrency payments.

b. Stablecoin Issuance & Coordination of Processors

• 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 important partnerships with the U.S. State Department and the Treasury, possessing strong compliance operational 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 all U.S. states, and partner companies must go through KYB (Know Your Business), while users need to set up an account with Brale for KYC (Know Your Customer). Brale's clients are more on-chain OGs, and compared to Bridge, the endorsement and business development from investors are somewhat less.
• Perena: The Numeraire platform from Perena lowers the issuance threshold for niche stablecoins by encouraging users to provide concentrated liquidity in a single pool. Numeraire employs a "central hub-radiating" model, with USD* serving 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 decentralized 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 facilitate seamless conversions between stablecoins.

3. Layer Three: Asset Issuer

Asset issuers are responsible for creating, maintaining, and redeeming stablecoins. Their business model typically centers around the balance sheet, similar to bank operations - accepting customer deposits and investing the funds in high-yield assets like U.S. Treasuries to earn a spread. At the asset issuer level, stablecoin innovations can be divided into three tiers: