2025 Stablecoin Cross-Border Payment Status Report

2025 will be the "year of stablecoin cross-border payments", with new announcements being released almost daily, and milestone regulatory documents officially pushing stablecoins into traditional financial terminals. "We are reaching a 'tipping point', where everyone realizes this is a whole new upgraded payment technology, and real business and practical use cases are emerging. It's not some sort of cryptocurrency frenzy, but real applications," said Chris Harmse, co-founder of enterprise-grade stablecoin infrastructure BVNK.

But enthusiasm also brings bubbles. Eric Barbier, founder of Triple-A, reminds us: "On LinkedIn and at events, stablecoins seem to be treated as a panacea, as if they could end world hunger, poverty, and cure cancer tomorrow – this is clearly an exaggeration."

Stablecoins and blockchain technology are evolving rapidly, and the landscape of the financial payment market is changing moment by moment, leading to a shift in the positioning of business collaborations. FXC Intelligence's comprehensive stablecoin payment market report, The State of Stablecoin in Cross Board Payments (The 2025 Industry Primer), is a valuable practical guide for stablecoin payments, integrating FXC Intelligence's cross-border payment data, extensive research, and insights from 14 industry experts.

Therefore, we will compile this into a document, striving to provide the industry with a concise, solid, and practical stablecoin payment guide, which includes the current status of using stablecoins for cross-border payments, operating mechanisms, potential market size, application scenarios, challenges to be overcome, potential opportunities, and the future.

The full text is 27,000 words, enjoy below.

1. Stablecoin Ecosystem

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

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

Iana Dimitrova, CEO of OpenPayd (a fiat financial infrastructure provider), added: "The current explosion is not an overnight success, but rather the accumulation of over 15 years of trial and error and iteration. 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 begins in the field of cryptocurrency trading: that’s where it started. Shortly thereafter, we began to explore new use cases for stablecoins. — Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Circle

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) through a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."

From the very beginning, Bitcoin was positioned as an online payment method that does not require financial intermediaries. Although early adopters conducted some limited payment experiments, it gained popularity among internet natives and technologists speculating with cryptocurrency. As interest in Bitcoin grew over the coming years, some 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 regard 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 their transition from the early days of the internet to the dawn of the modern digital age.

Stablecoins are like the birth of the P2P file-sharing platform Napster. — Teymour Farman-Farmaian, Co-founder & CEO of Higlobe, a company providing dollar collection accounts for emerging market businesses.

The first digital currency issued in the form of a stablecoin is BitUSD, which introduced the concept of 1:1 pegging of cryptocurrency to fiat currency (referring to the US dollar) in 2014. However, since it is backed by cryptocurrency, it does not fully align with the definition of stablecoins 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 towards USDT continued to rise, but it also faced questions regarding transparency and regulation, ultimately prompting Tether to take significant steps 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 its 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. At the same time, 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, during which several shocking events occurred 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. When its value significantly dropped from the pegged rate of 1 dollar, the panic trading triggered by the "death spiral" also caused the values of some other stablecoins to fluctuate briefly in major markets. Although UST is not a stablecoin in the traditional sense, and Circle, Paxos, and other companies attempted to distance themselves from algorithmic stablecoins, the damage to the reputation of the entire industry remains significant.

Despite many participants claiming that their asset reserves could protect them from the aforementioned issues, giving them a sense of security, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in early 2023 raised new concerns. At the time of the collapse, Circle's reserves at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) were approximately $3.3 billion, and there was uncertainty about whether these deposits would be guaranteed. This led to what is known as a "shadow run" as holders worried that they could not redeem the stablecoin at a 1:1 price, causing its trading value to plummet to historical 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 USDC, the reputational damage was more severe, especially for institutions that require stablecoins to have U.S. reserves and strong backing.

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 during 2023. As a result, a streamlined and more robust industry version has begun to emerge slowly from the ashes of this crisis. Driven by real demand in key channels and vertical industries, the trading volume and adoption rates of infrastructure companies continue to climb, improving products accordingly; while other companies launch products focused on the actual utility of their technology. In the second half of 2023, PayPal launched PayPal USD (PYUSD), casting a crucial vote of confidence for the industry; while other companies are committed to educating those uncertain about stablecoins to establish a regulatory framework and increase adoption rates. Orbital CEO Mason stated: "Education is indeed challenging, but people are really starting to understand it."

Starting from early 2024, the circulating supply of USDC has risen again, and the number of newly issued tokens focused on payments continues to grow. Recently, Trump's return to the U.S. 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 operate stablecoin businesses in a compliant manner. --Guillaume C, Managing Director of Business Development, EMEA, stablecoin issuer Paxos

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

We are solving the cash problem on the internet. — Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Circle

Interest in stablecoins is gradually increasing in the field of cross-border payments.

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 mainly concentrated on "cryptocurrency activities", the 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. — Michael Shaulov, Co-founder & CEO of digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks

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, the situation has begun to change.

Initially, it was mainly those cryptocurrency-native payment companies that helped their terminal businesses transfer funds more efficiently between these channels. Today, I see a significant shift, with many companies, especially large multinational corporations, beginning to venture into this area. They want to understand how to use stablecoins, particularly in difficult regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia. — Kirill Gertman, Founder and CEO of Conduit, a B2B stablecoin payment company.

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 payments, who come to us and say, 'We are already accepting stablecoin payments through other providers. Can you incorporate these assets into your platform?'" said OpenPayd's Dimitrova. "In 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 demands of these clients."

Such requests mainly come from businesses with global trade demands, but the adoption of stablecoins is also increasing in other aspects of cross-border payments, including MoneyGram, which has started to offer stablecoin payment functionalities. In 2022, MoneyGram began sending remittances using USDC, and since then, its business capabilities in this field have continuously expanded, including the launch of the white-label digital wallet's deposit and withdrawal solution MoneyGram Ramps, as well as meeting its own cross-border fund management needs.

MoneyGram is a financial technology company with a global digital and cash network. Stablecoins will play a very important role in the future of MoneyGram. They help in every aspect of our business, from B2B backend to B2C service delivery methods, and how we provide services to consumers. — Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and CEO, MoneyGram

Today, although stablecoins occupy a small share of the market, their attention has noticeably increased. In the first half of 2025, the number of press releases related to stablecoins and payments grew by 186% compared to the same period last year, a growth rate that exceeded the previous overall growth rate of stablecoin press releases, with the number of press releases concerning cross-border payments and stablecoins surging by over 1000%. And this is only from companies that have publicly launched stablecoin solutions.

According to BVNK Harmse, the vast majority of companies in the payment industry