Stablecoin payment illusion! McKinsey reveals $3.5 trillion transaction data, 98% is an illusion

McKinsey and Artemis Analytics analysis reveal the illusion of stablecoin payments, with the vast majority of the $35 trillion annual trading volume coming from exchange reallocations, arbitrage, and smart contract cycles. After removing noise, the true payments in 2025 amount to only $390 billion, accounting for 0.02% of global payments, but doubling year-over-year. Asia accounts for 60%, concentrated in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Data Bubble Behind the $35 Trillion Trading Volume

Stablecoins are increasingly gaining attention as a faster, cheaper, and programmable payment solution. According to reports from Artemis Analytics, Allium, RWA.xyz, and Dune Analytics, their annual trading volume reaches up to $35 trillion. ARK Invest’s 2026 Big Ideas data shows that as of December 2025, the 30-day moving average of stablecoin trading volume is $3.5 trillion, 2.3 times the combined volume of Visa, PayPal, and remittance services.

However, these dazzling figures mask a key fact: the vast majority of transactions are not actual end-user payments. We are often misled by sensational headlines about stablecoin trading volumes, immersed in the excitement of surpassing Visa/Mastercard volumes, dreaming of overtaking SWIFT. But comparing stablecoin trading volume to Visa/Mastercard is like comparing securities settlement amounts to those of Visa/Mastercard—completely incomparable.

Although blockchain data shows enormous stablecoin trading volumes, most of these are not real-world payments. Currently, most stablecoin trading volume stems from four main non-payment activities: first, fund balancing by trading platforms and custodians. Large exchanges like Binance and Coinbase frequently transfer stablecoins between cold and hot wallets to meet user withdrawal demands, generating huge on-chain transaction volumes.

Second, trading, arbitrage, and liquidity cycling. When traders arbitrage across different exchanges or DEXs, the same stablecoin may be traded dozens of times within a day. Market-making activities on platforms like Uniswap and Curve also produce large inflows and outflows of stablecoins. Third, smart contract mechanisms cause automated interactions. For example, a DeFi lending operation may trigger collateralization, lending, interest accumulation, and auto-compounding, each leaving on-chain transaction records but representing a single economic activity implemented through multiple technical steps.

Fourth, financial adjustments and technical operations. Protocol governance votes, liquidity migrations, and contract upgrades also involve stablecoin transfers, but these are unrelated to daily payments. Blockchain only shows value transfers, not the reasons behind them. Therefore, we need to clarify the actual payment-related fund flows behind stablecoins and the statistical logic.

McKinsey’s Noise-Filtered $390 Billion True Payments Emerge

To more accurately assess stablecoin payment volume by eliminating interference, McKinsey collaborated with leading blockchain analytics provider Artemis Analytics for an in-depth analysis. The methodology focused on identifying transaction patterns characteristic of payments, including business fund transfers, settlements, payroll, and cross-border remittances, while excluding data dominated by trading, internal fund rebalancing, and automated smart contract cycles.

Results show that, based on current transaction speeds (annualized figures based on December 2025 stablecoin payment activity), the actual stablecoin payment volume is approximately $390 billion per year, about 0.02% of total global payments. Compared to the original $35 trillion trading volume, this is only about 1.1%, indicating that over 98% of on-chain transactions are non-payment activities.

This highlights the need for more nuanced interpretation of blockchain-recorded data. For financial institutions evaluating stablecoins, the clear takeaway is: raw transaction scale data is only a starting point for analysis. It should not be equated with the adoption level of stablecoin payments nor seen as the actual revenue potential of stablecoin businesses. Any business plan based on the $35 trillion figure could grossly overestimate the market size.

However, $390 billion is not a disappointing figure. Doubling from 2024, it demonstrates that stablecoin payments are real, growing, and expanding rapidly. For a relatively new payment method with only a few years of history, reaching nearly $400 billion in annualized scale is quite impressive. It proves that stablecoins have established genuine and continuously growing application demand in certain scenarios.

It is important to clarify that actual stablecoin payments are far below conventional estimates, but this does not diminish their long-term potential as a payment channel. On the contrary, it provides a clearer benchmark for assessing market status and the conditions needed for scalable development. We can also see clearly: stablecoins are real, growing, and still in early stages in the payments domain. Opportunities are enormous, but require accurate measurement of these figures.

B2B Payments and Asia Market as Two Main Drivers

McKinsey and Artemis’s analysis yields three notable insights. First is a clear value proposition. Stablecoins are becoming more popular because they offer advantages over existing payment channels, such as faster settlement, better liquidity management, and lower user friction. For example, by 2026, bank card spending linked to stablecoins is projected to grow to $4.5 billion, a 673% increase from 2024.

Second, B2B leads growth. B2B payments dominate, totaling about $226 billion, accounting for 60% of the total stablecoin payment volume. Cross-border payments and international trade have long suffered from high fees and slow settlement cycles, which stablecoins can address. Forward-looking companies are leveraging stablecoins to optimize supply chain payments and improve liquidity management, especially benefiting small and micro-enterprises. According to McKinsey’s global payments data, the overall global inter-company payment volume is about $1.6 trillion, with stablecoins accounting for only about 0.01%, but B2B payments are growing at 733% YoY, indicating rapid growth expected by 2026.

Third, Asia is the most active region. Transaction activity varies across regions and cross-border channels, indicating that transaction scale depends on local market structures and constraints. Stablecoin payments from Asia are the largest, with about $245 billion, accounting for 60%. North America follows with $95 billion, and Europe ranks third with $50 billion. Latin America and Africa each have less than $1 billion in transactions.

Currently, almost all stablecoin activity in Asia is driven by payments from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. These financial centers share features such as relatively clear regulation, advanced financial infrastructure, and high acceptance of new technology. Singapore has introduced a stablecoin regulatory framework, Hong Kong is preparing a stablecoin license, and Japan allows compliant stablecoins for payments. This regulatory clarity provides legal assurance for enterprise adoption.

In contrast, Latin America and Africa, despite theoretically needing low-cost cross-border solutions more, have not yet seen scale due to regulatory uncertainty, weak financial infrastructure, and lower awareness of cryptocurrencies. This uneven distribution suggests that expansion of stablecoin payments heavily depends on regulatory environment and infrastructure maturity.

Three Major Real-World Use Cases and Growth Potential

When filtering behaviors similar to payments, a very different picture emerges—adoption is uneven but concentrated in three typical scenarios.

The largest are global payroll and cross-border remittances. Stablecoins offer an attractive alternative to traditional remittance channels, enabling near-instant cross-border transfers at very low cost. According to McKinsey’s global payments data, the annualized payment volume in this area is about $90 billion. The total transaction size in this sector reaches $1.2 trillion, with stablecoins accounting for less than 1%, but growing rapidly. Remittance-dependent countries like the Philippines and Mexico are quickly adopting stablecoins as a payment method.

Second is B2B corporate payments. As mentioned, the annualized scale in this area is about $226 billion, representing 60% of actual stablecoin payments. The rapid growth (YoY 733%) indicates rising corporate recognition of stablecoin value propositions. Multinational companies use stablecoins to pay suppliers, bypassing bank settlement cycles of 3-5 days for real-time settlement. Small and micro-enterprises can save up to 5% on cross-border fees, significantly improving profit margins.

Third is capital market settlement. Stablecoins are reshaping settlement processes by reducing counterparty risk and shortening settlement cycles. Some tokenized funds issued by asset managers have automated dividend distribution to investors via stablecoins or reinvested dividends directly into funds without bank transfers. Data shows stablecoins’ annualized settlement transaction volume in capital markets is about $8 billion, while the global capital markets’ total settlement volume reaches $200 trillion, with stablecoins accounting for less than 0.01%.

Overall, stablecoin applications are gradually taking root in proven scenarios. Whether they can achieve broader scale depends on whether these mature models can be successfully promoted and replicated in other regions.

Rational Perspective on the Future of Stablecoin Payments

In recent years, the stablecoin market has expanded rapidly, with circulating supply surpassing $300 billion, up from less than $30 billion in 2020. Public forecasts show strong expectations for continued growth. In November 2023, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated at a government bond market conference that stablecoin supply could reach $3 trillion by 2030. Leading financial institutions have similar forecasts, estimating stablecoin supply between $2 trillion and $4 trillion in the same period.

This growth outlook has significantly increased financial institutions’ attention to stablecoins, with many exploring their applications in various payment and settlement scenarios. However, plans based on the original $35 trillion trading volume would grossly overestimate market size, risking resource misallocation and investment errors. The correct approach is to use the true payment scale of $390 billion as a baseline and understand its structural distribution.

Stablecoins have substantial potential to reshape the payment system, but unlocking this potential depends on ongoing technological development, regulatory improvement, and market implementation. Scaled application requires more precise data analysis, rational investment strategies, and the ability to identify valid signals and filter out noise from public transaction data. For financial institutions, the key is to maintain ambitious development goals while objectively understanding the current stablecoin transaction scale, steadily positioning for future opportunities, and leading industry development.

McKinsey’s analysis does not deny the prospects of stablecoins but aims to provide a more realistic benchmark. While $390 billion is far below $35 trillion, it still represents a rapidly growing emerging market. The key is not current scale but the growth rate and potential ceiling. Given the doubling annual growth rate, stablecoin payments are indeed on the verge of an explosion—yet this explosion must be based on genuine demand, not a bubble of false data.