The Current Status of Stablecoin Cross-Border Payments in 2025

Although stablecoins are still an emerging technology, they have completed the leap from marginal experiments to mainstream visibility in just a few years.

"The changes over the past 18 months have been particularly dramatic," said Chris Mason, co-founder and CEO of B2B stablecoin payment company Orbital. "Those who were quick to embrace stablecoins were often players in high-risk, high-growth emerging industries; now, the second wave has arrived — payment service providers and traditional banks are collectively waking up."

Iana Dimitrova, CEO of OpenPayd (a fiat financial infrastructure provider), added: "The current explosion is not an overnight success, but rather the result of over 15 years of trial and error and gradual accumulation. The market has finally reached a consensus on the practical value of stablecoins, and the technology itself has reached a critical point for scalable commercial use."

The foundation of the industry starts in the cryptocurrency trading field: that is where it began. Soon after, we started exploring new use cases for stablecoins.

1. Stablecoin Ecosystem

1.1 A Brief History of Stablecoins

Stablecoins originated with the launch of cryptocurrency in 2008: a tokenized, decentralized, and tamper-proof digital currency that operates on a blockchain based on distributed ledger technology. Stablecoins were initially born alongside Bitcoin, which was introduced to the world in October 2008 by an anonymous researcher (pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto) in a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."

From the beginning, Bitcoin has been positioned as an online payment method that does not require financial intermediaries. Although early adopters conducted some limited payment experiments, it became popular among internet natives and technologists who speculated with cryptocurrencies. As interest in Bitcoin grew in the coming years, some people began to experiment with its underlying technology for cross-border payments. However, due to the extreme volatility of cryptocurrency prices, lack of regulation, and some associations with black market activities, many found it difficult to view it as a payment technology.

With the emergence of stablecoins, the situation has changed: stablecoins are a key moment in the development of blockchain technology, and we are currently witnessing its transition from the early internet era to the beginning of the modern digital age.

Stablecoins are like the birth of the P2P file sharing platform Napster.

The first digital currency issued in the form of a stablecoin is BitUSD, which introduced the concept of a 1:1 peg between cryptocurrency and fiat currency (in this case, the US dollar) in 2014. However, because it is backed by cryptocurrency, it does not fully conform to the definition of stablecoin as we understand it today.

Other companies quickly followed suit, but it was Tether that truly introduced the concept of fiat currency reserves, launching USDT later that year. In the following years, the popularity and attention on USDT continued to grow, but it also faced questions regarding transparency and regulation, ultimately prompting Tether to take significant measures to address these issues.

In the early development of stablecoins, developers were gradually understanding the meaning and usage of stablecoins. In 2018, more regulated stablecoins began to emerge, with Paxos launching the current Pax Dollar (USDP) and Circle introducing USD Coin (USDC) through a partnership with Coinbase. These regulated, US-based stablecoins started to gain popularity not only in the cryptocurrency space but also attracted interest from the mainstream financial industry. Meanwhile, participants in the financial infrastructure built on stablecoins also began to emerge, including Fireblocks in 2018 and BVNK in 2021.

However, in 2022 and early 2023, stablecoins faced a significant trust crisis, marked by several shocking events in the industry. The first was the sudden collapse of TerraUSD (UST). This is an unconventional algorithmic stablecoin, whose support mechanism is not cash reserves, but rather an algorithm-based mechanism. After its value plummeted significantly from the pegged rate of 1 dollar, panic selling triggered by the "death spiral" also caused the values of other stablecoins to fluctuate briefly in major markets. Although UST is not a stablecoin in the traditional sense, and companies like Circle, Paxos, and others tried to distance themselves from algorithmic stablecoins, the damage it caused to the reputation of the entire industry was still significant.

Despite many participants claiming that their asset reserves can protect them from the aforementioned issues, providing them with peace of mind, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in early 2023 raised new concerns. At the time of the collapse, Circle had approximately $3.3 billion in reserves at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and there was uncertainty about whether these deposits would be guaranteed. This triggered what is known as a "shadow bank run," as holders feared they could not redeem the stablecoin at a 1:1 price, causing its trading value to plummet to historic lows. Although the U.S. government ultimately did guarantee the reserves of Silicon Valley Bank, and Circle never faced the real risk of being unable to redeem its held USDC, the damage to its reputation was more severe, especially for institutions that need to have U.S. reserves and a strong backing for their stablecoins.

During this crisis, the adoption rate of overseas USDT has continued to rise, while the circulating supply of USDC in the United States has steadily declined throughout 2023. As a result, a streamlined and more robust version of the industry is slowly emerging from the ashes of this crisis. Driven by genuine demand in key channels and vertical industries, the transaction volume and adoption rate of infrastructure companies have been continuously increasing, and their products have been improved accordingly; while other companies have launched products focused on the actual utility of their technology. In the second half of 2023, PayPal launched PayPal USD (PYUSD), which cast a crucial vote of confidence for the industry; while other companies are dedicated to educating those who are uncertain about stablecoins to establish a regulatory framework and increase adoption rates. Orbital CEO Mason stated: "Educating people is indeed challenging, but they are really starting to understand it."

Starting from early 2024, the circulating supply of USDC tokens has risen again, and the number of newly issued tokens focused on payments continues to grow. Recently, Trump's return to the presidency has also increased institutional support for the technology, and regulatory measures such as the "GENIUS Act" have been introduced.

Since the change of the U.S. government, major financial institutions have been seeking help from companies like ours to understand where and with whom they can collaborate to conduct stablecoin business in a compliant manner.

Today, with the rapid increase in adoption, the cross-border payment industry has also shown a strong interest, and there is still further growth potential in the future. However, the fundamental principles of stablecoins are roughly the same as the premises initially set by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

We are solving the cash problem on the internet.

1.2 Interest in stablecoins in the field of cross-border payments is growing.

With the rise of stablecoin technology, its application cases in the field of cross-border payments are gradually increasing. As Kendall from Paxos explained, although the current use of stablecoins is still primarily concentrated on "crypto-native activities", interest in this area is continuously growing, largely driven by the most fundamental needs of end users.

The development of stablecoins began in the trading and investment sectors, and then gradually established a foothold in the cross-border payment field during 2022 and 2023.

This experience is reflected in many companies in the field, including Conduit, which focuses on B2B inter-company payments. However, in the past year or two, things have started to change.

Initially, it was primarily those companies in the native crypto payment sector that helped their terminal businesses transfer funds more efficiently between these channels. Today, I see a significant shift, as many companies, especially large multinational corporations, are starting to venture into this space. They want to understand how to use stablecoins, especially in difficult regions like Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

This has also prompted some cross-border payment infrastructure providers that previously focused on fiat currency to enter the market, such as OpenPayd, which added stablecoin functionality earlier this year.

"For us, this evolution is completely natural, as we already have some existing clients using us for cross-border fiat currency payments, who come to us saying, 'We have been accepting stablecoin payments through other providers. Can we incorporate these assets into your platform?'" said Dimitrova of OpenPayd. "Over the past 18 months, we have been receiving such requests continuously. We realized that without providing this interoperability, we would not be able to meet the growing needs of these clients."

Such requests mainly come from businesses with global trade needs, but the adoption of stablecoins is also increasing in other aspects of cross-border payments, including MoneyGram, which has begun offering stablecoin payment functionality. In 2022, MoneyGram started sending remittances using USDC, and since then, its business capabilities in this area have continued to expand, including the launch of white-label digital wallet deposit and withdrawal solutions MoneyGram Ramps, as well as meeting its own cross-border fund management needs.

MoneyGram is a fintech company with a global digital and cash network. Stablecoins will play a very important role in MoneyGram's future. They assist in every aspect of our business, from B2B backend to B2C service delivery, and how we provide services to consumers.

Today, although stablecoins have a small market share, their attention has clearly increased. In the first half of 2025, the number of press releases related to stablecoins and payments increased by 186% compared to the same period last year, a growth rate that surpassed the previous overall growth rate of stablecoin press releases. Furthermore, the number of press releases involving cross-border payments and stablecoins surged by more than 1000%. And this is only for companies that have publicly launched stablecoin solutions.

According to BVNK Harmse, the vast majority of companies in the payment industry have recognized the opportunities brought by this technology, even if they have not publicly discussed it. "I think 95% of companies see this," he said, "Based on the conversations we're having and potential collaborations, there are indeed many traditional payment companies actively getting involved, even some you might not expect to be involved."

1.3 stablecoin payment investment surge

In addition to the strong interest from established companies, capital continues to increase. Despite the overall venture capital environment cooling down, the stablecoin sector continues to attract investment, with a large number of projects announcing financing in the past year.

Gertman of Conduit said: "What investors are primarily looking at is the return potential. When they see how quickly our revenue growth and business volume curves are rising, they are convinced that we have the opportunity to capture a market much larger than today." The company completed a $36 million Series A funding round in May this year.

At the same time, a series of mergers and acquisitions are accelerating: traditional giants hope to quickly fill their capabilities in this field through acquisitions. Despite the frequent actions, the acquisition of the stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, which Stripe announced in 2024 and completed in early 2025, is still widely regarded as a catalyst for the entire industry to "take this technology seriously."

BVNK's Harmse stated: "It forces everyone to rethink this track. We were already in talks with several top global payment companies, and this acquisition has directly accelerated the pace of those discussions several times over."

According to Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex, the significance of Stripe's action goes beyond this: "Stripe is a master of narrative. They used this acquisition to create a super brand story, truly pushing stablecoins.