Stablecoin issuance seems to be the next growth engine for fintech companies, but in reality, it could be a money-burning trap for most enterprises. This article delves into PayPal’s PYUSD, Klarna’s strategic shift, and Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge, revealing why “issuing your own coin” is not a wise choice for 99% of companies—true value lies in infrastructure, not in token issuance itself. This article is based on Mario Stefanidis, compiled, edited, and written by BitpushNews.

(Background: Stripe’s acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge sparks a new chapter in fintech and blockchain integration)

(Additional context: PayPal launches PYUSD stablecoin rewards program with an annual yield of up to 3.7%)

Table of Contents

• Why stablecoins are favored in traditional finance
  • 1. Lower settlement costs
  • 2. Global reach
  • 3. Real-time settlement
• How traditional companies should approach stablecoins
  • Supply trajectory
• Case studies
  • PayPal: defending core business while testing new avenues
  • Klarna: reducing payment friction
  • Stripe: building settlement layer, not issuing tokens
• Merchant pain points: simplicity is justice
• Why this really matters
• Conclusion

Stablecoins are permeating traditional finance in a patchwork yet undeniable manner. Klarna just launched KlarnaUSD on Stripe’s dedicated payment network Tempo; PayPal’s ETH-based PYUSD has doubled in market cap over three months, surpassing 1% of the stablecoin market share, with supply approaching $4 billion; Stripe is now paying merchants with USDC; Cash App has expanded from Bitcoin to stablecoins in early 2026, allowing its 58 million users to seamlessly send and receive stablecoins within their fiat balances.

Despite different entry points, all are responding to the same trend: stablecoins make capital flow extremely simple.

Data source: Artemis Analytics

Market narratives often jump straight to “everyone will issue their own stablecoin.” But this outcome is unreasonable. A world with dozens of widely used stablecoins is manageable, but if there are thousands, chaos ensues. Users do not want their dollar (Yes, dollars, with over 99% ) dominance scattered across a long tail of branded tokens, each on its own chain, with different liquidity, fees, and exchange paths. Market makers profit from spreads, cross-chain bridges charge fees—this layered “taking a cut” is precisely the problem stablecoins aim to solve.

Fortune 500 companies should realize that stablecoins are extremely useful, but issuing one is not a guaranteed win. A few select companies will leverage this to gain distribution channels, reduce costs, and strengthen their ecosystems. Many others may bear operational burdens without clear returns.

The real competitive advantage comes from embedding stablecoins as a “payment track” within products, rather than merely branding tokens with their own label.

Why stablecoins are favored in traditional finance

Stablecoins address specific operational issues that legacy payment rails fail to solve for traditional companies. The benefits are straightforward: lower settlement costs, faster fund availability, broader cross-border coverage, and fewer intermediaries. When a platform processes millions of transactions daily, with a total annual transaction volume (TPV) reaching tens or hundreds of billions, small improvements compound into significant economic benefits.

1. Lower settlement costs

Most consumer platforms accept card payments and pay interchange fees per transaction. In the US, these fees can be about 1%-3% of the transaction amount, plus fixed fees of around $0.10-$0.60 per transaction for major card networks (American Express, Visa, Mastercard). If payments are on-chain, stablecoin settlement can reduce these costs to just a few cents. For high-volume, low-margin companies, this is an attractive leverage point. Note that they do not need to replace card payments entirely with stablecoins—covering a portion of transactions can already yield cost savings.

Data source: a16z Crypto

Some companies choose to partner with service providers like Stripe to accept stablecoin payments settled in USD. While not mandatory, most businesses prefer zero volatility and instant fiat settlement. Merchants typically want USD to flow into their bank accounts, not manage crypto custody, private keys, or reconciliation issues. Even with Stripe’s 1.5% floating fee, this is significantly lower than credit card alternatives.

It’s easy to imagine large enterprises initially collaborating with stablecoin solutions for settlement, then later weighing capital expenditure for building their own infrastructure. Ultimately, for small and medium businesses aiming to retain nearly all economic benefits, this trade-off becomes reasonable.

2. Global reach

Stablecoins can move across borders without negotiations with each country’s banks. This advantage appeals to consumer apps, marketplaces, gig platforms, and remittance services. Stablecoins enable access for users in markets where formal financial relationships are not yet established.

Foreign exchange costs for credit card end-users (FX) are typically an additional 1%-3% per transaction unless using fee-free cards. Stablecoins incur no cross-border fees because their payment layer does not recognize borders; USDC sent from a wallet in New York to Europe arrives just as it would locally.

For European merchants, the only extra step is deciding how to handle USD-denominated assets. If they want to receive euros in their bank accounts, they must convert. If they are willing to hold USD on their balance sheet, no conversion is needed—and even idle balances on exchanges like Coinbase can earn yields.

3. Real-time settlement

Stablecoins settle within minutes, often seconds, whereas traditional payment transfers can take days. Additionally, stablecoin networks operate 24/7, unaffected by bank holidays, cut-off times, or other inherent limitations of traditional banking systems. This removes these constraints, greatly reducing operational friction for companies managing high-frequency payments or tight operational cash cycles.

How traditional companies should approach stablecoins

Stablecoins create opportunities but also exert pressure. Some companies can leverage them to expand product coverage or cut costs, while others risk losing economic benefits if users shift to cheaper or faster rails. The right strategy depends on the company’s revenue model, geographic footprint, and reliance on legacy payment infrastructure.

Some firms benefit from adding stablecoin rails because it reinforces their core products. Platforms serving cross-border users can settle faster and avoid friction with local banks. If they process hundreds of millions of transactions, keeping payments on-chain can lower settlement costs.

Many large platforms operate with razor-thin profit margins. If stablecoins allow them to bypass 1-3 basis points of costs on some funds flows, the savings can be substantial. On a $1 trillion annual transaction volume, reducing costs by 1 basis point is worth $1 billion. Leading companies adopting this approach include fintech-native, capital-light payment rails like PayPal, Stripe, and Cash App.

Other companies adopt stablecoins because competitors might use them to bypass parts of their business model. For example, banks and custodians face significant risks from stablecoins; stablecoins could take market share from traditional deposits, threatening low-cost funding sources. Issuing tokenized deposits or offering custody services may serve as early defenses against new entrants.

Stablecoins also lower cross-border remittance costs, posing a threat to remittance businesses. Defensive adoption is more about protecting existing revenue rather than growth. The array of companies in this camp ranges from Visa and Mastercard, which earn interchange and settlement fees, to Western Union, MoneyGram, and low-cost deposit banks of various sizes.

Given that in payments, whether on offense or defense, slow adoption of stablecoins can threaten survival, the question for Fortune 500 companies shifts to: should they issue their own stablecoin or integrate existing tokens? Which makes more sense?

Data source: Artemis Analytics

Issuing a stablecoin is not a sustainable equilibrium for every company. Users want frictionless stablecoin experiences; if they have to pick from dozens of branded tokens in their wallets, even if all are denominated in the same currency, they may prefer fiat.

Supply trajectory

Companies should assume only a small fraction of stablecoins can maintain deep liquidity and broad acceptance. But this is not a “winner-takes-all” industry. For example, Tether’s USDT was the first fiat-backed stablecoin, debuting on the Bitcoin Omni Layer in October 2014. Despite competitors like Circle’s USDC launched in 2018, Tether’s dominance peaked in early 2024, capturing over 71% of the stablecoin market share.

As of December 2025, USDT’s dominance in total stablecoin supply is 60%, with USDC at 26%. This means other alternatives control about 14% of the roughly $430 billion total market cap (out of approximately $430 billion). While this seems small compared to trillions in equities or fixed income markets, the total stablecoin supply has grown 11.5x from $26.9 billion in January 2021, with a five-year CAGR of 63%.

Even at a more conservative 40% annual growth rate, stablecoin supply could reach about $1.6 trillion by 2030, over five times current value. 2025 will be a pivotal year, driven by the clarity brought by the Genius Act and large-scale institutional adoption spurred by clear use cases.

By then, the combined dominance of USDT and USDC may decline. With a current quarterly decline rate of 50 basis points, by 2030, other stablecoins could account for 25% of the market, roughly $400 billion based on our supply forecasts. This is a significant figure but clearly insufficient to support tokens of the scale of Tether or USDC.

When there is clear product-market fit, adoption can happen rapidly and benefit from broader stablecoin supply growth, potentially capturing market share from current dominant players. Otherwise, newly issued stablecoins may get lost in a “big mix” of low supply and unclear growth stories.

Note that among the 90 stablecoins tracked by Artemis, only 10 have a supply exceeding $1 billion.

Case studies

Companies experimenting with stablecoins are not following a single script. Each responds to its own business pain points, and these differences are more significant than their similarities.

PayPal: defending core business while testing new avenues

PYUSD is primarily a defensive product, with growth as a secondary goal. PayPal’s core business still relies on card and bank transfers, which generate most of its revenue. Branded checkout and cross-border transaction fees are significantly higher.

Stablecoins threaten this stack by offering cheaper settlement and faster cross-border movement. PYUSD enables PayPal to participate in this shift without losing control over user relationships. As of Q3 2025, the company reports 438 million active accounts—defined as users who transacted within the past 12 months.

PayPal already holds user balances, manages compliance, and operates a closed-loop ecosystem. Issuing a stablecoin naturally fits this structure. The challenge is adoption, as PYUSD competes with USDC and USDT, which already have deeper liquidity and broader acceptance. PayPal’s advantage lies in distribution, not price. PYUSD only works if PayPal can embed it into its workflows on PayPal and Venmo.

Data source: Artemis Analytics

PYUSD and Venmo are both growth vehicles for PayPal but are not direct revenue generators. In 2025, Venmo will generate about $1.7 billion, roughly 5% of its parent’s total revenue. However, monetization is already underway through Venmo debit cards and “Pay with Venmo” products.

PYUSD currently offers a 3.7% annualized reward rate for users holding the stablecoin in PayPal or Venmo wallets, meaning PayPal’s net interest margin (holding US Treasuries as collateral for supply) is only breakeven at best. The real opportunity lies in capital flows, not idle funds. If PYUSD reduces PayPal’s reliance on external rails, cuts settlement costs for certain transactions, and keeps users within its ecosystem rather than flowing outside, PayPal stands to benefit.

Additionally, PYUSD supports a defensive economy. The “decentralization” of open stablecoins like USDC poses a real risk; by issuing its own stablecoin, PayPal reduces the chance that its services become a paid or bypassed external layer.

Klarna: reducing payment friction

Klarna’s focus on stablecoins is on control and cost. As a “buy now, pay later” provider, Klarna sits between merchants, consumers, and card networks. It pays interchange and processing fees on both ends. Stablecoins offer a way to compress these costs and simplify settlement.

Klarna helps consumers finance short- and long-term purchases. For payment plans within a few months, Klarna typically charges 3-6% per transaction plus about $0.30. This is its largest revenue source, compensating for payment processing, credit risk, and increased merchant sales. Klarna also offers longer installment plans (such as 6, 12, 24 months), with interest rates similar to credit cards.

In both cases, Klarna’s focus is not on becoming a payment network but on managing internal cash flows. Faster, cheaper settlement with merchants improves margins and strengthens relationships.

The risk is fragmentation—unless Klarna-branded tokens are widely accepted outside its platform, long-term holding of token balances offers no benefit to Klarna. In short, stablecoins are a tool, not a product, for Klarna.

Stripe: building settlement layer, not issuing tokens

Stripe’s approach is arguably the most disciplined. It chooses not to issue stablecoins but focuses on leveraging existing stablecoins for payments and collections. This distinction is crucial because Stripe does not need to win liquidity; it needs to win fund flows.

Stripe’s annual transaction volume in 2024 grew 38% year-over-year to $1.4 trillion; at this rate, despite being founded over a decade later, it could surpass PayPal’s $1.8 trillion in annual transaction volume. Its recent valuation of $106.7 billion reflects this growth.

Stripe’s support for stablecoin payments indicates clear customer demand. Merchants want faster settlement, fewer banking restrictions, and global coverage. Stablecoins address these needs. By supporting assets like USDC, Stripe improves its product without requiring merchants to manage another balance or bear issuer risk.

Earlier this year, Stripe acquired Bridge Network for $1.1 billion to reinforce this strategy. Bridge focuses on native stablecoin payment infrastructure, including deposit/withdrawal channels, compliance tools, and global settlement rails. Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge is not for issuing tokens but for internalizing the pipeline. This gives Stripe more control over its stablecoin strategy and improves integration with existing merchant workflows.

Data source: PolyFlow

Stripe wins by acting as the interface for stablecoins. Its strategy reflects its market position, handling trillions in transaction volume with double-digit annual growth. Regardless of which token dominates, Stripe remains neutral and charges fees per transaction. Given the extremely low underlying costs of stablecoin transactions, any fixed fee it charges in this new market will boost its margins.

Merchant pain points: simplicity is justice

Merchants’ concern with stablecoins is simple: high costs and obvious expenses.

In 2024, US merchants paid $187.2 billion in processing fees to accept $11.9 trillion in customer payments. For many small and medium enterprises, these fees are the third-largest operating expense after labor and rent. Stablecoins offer a viable way to alleviate this burden in specific use cases.

Beyond lower costs, stablecoins provide predictable settlement and faster fund availability. On-chain transactions are final, whereas credit card or traditional payment solutions may involve refunds or disputes. Merchants also prefer not to hold cryptocurrencies or manage wallets, which is why early pilots look like “stablecoin in, dollars out.”

According to Artemis’s August 2025 survey, merchants are already processing $6.4 billion in B2B stablecoin payments, ten times the volume in December 2023.

Data source: Artemis Analytics

This dynamic also explains why merchant adoption tends to concentrate quickly. Merchants do not want to support dozens of tokens, each with different liquidity, conversion costs, and operational features. Every additional stablecoin introduces complexity and reconciliation challenges from market makers or bridges, undermining the original value proposition.

Therefore, merchant adoption favors stablecoins with clear product-market fit. Stablecoins lacking features that make transactions easier than fiat will gradually fade away. From a merchant’s perspective, accepting a long-tail stablecoin offers no significant advantage over not accepting any stablecoin at all.

Artemis’s stablecoin map illustrates how chaotic the current landscape is. Merchants are unlikely to deal with dozens of deposit/withdrawal channels, wallets, and infrastructure providers just to convert revenue into fiat.

Data source: Artemis (stablecoinsmap.com)

Merchants reinforce this outcome by standardizing on effective solutions. Payment processors strengthen this by supporting only assets their customers actually use. Over time, the ecosystem will consolidate around a limited set of tokens that are worth the integration effort.

Why this really matters

All these effects are unsettling for a large part of the stablecoin ecosystem: simply “issuing” is not a sustainable business model.

A company whose main product is “we mint stablecoins” is betting that liquidity, distribution, and usage will naturally generate themselves. In reality, these things only appear when a token is embedded into real payment flows. The “if you mint it, they will come” mentality does not apply here, because consumers face hundreds of issuers offering options.

That’s why companies like Agora or M0, which only do issuance, struggle to justify long-term advantages unless they significantly expand into minting. Without control over wallets, merchants, platforms, or settlement rails, they are downstream from where value is captured. If users can just as easily hold USDC or USDT, liquidity will not be incentivized to disperse into another branded dollar token.

In contrast, companies that control distribution, fund flows, or integration points become more powerful. Stripe benefits without issuing stablecoins; it is directly on the merchant settlement path, earning revenue regardless of which token dominates. PayPal can demonstrate the viability of PYUSD because it owns wallets, user relationships, and checkout experiences. Cash App can integrate stablecoins because it already aggregates balances and controls user experience. These companies leverage their position through usage.

The key insight is that if you are upstream in the stack but only have a bare token, you are in a highly integrated market.

Stablecoins reward your position in the architecture, not novelty.

Conclusion

Stablecoins change how money flows, not what money is. Their value comes from reducing settlement friction, not creating new financial instruments. This fundamental distinction explains why stablecoins are adopted within existing platforms rather than alongside them. Companies use stablecoins to optimize existing processes, not to disrupt their business models.

This also explains why issuing stablecoins should not be the default choice. Liquidity, acceptance, and integration capabilities matter far more than branding. Without ongoing use cases and clear demand, new tokens only add operational burdens without creating advantages. For most companies, integrating existing stablecoins is more scalable—markets naturally favor a few assets that can be used everywhere, rather than many tokens suited only for narrow scenarios. Before minting a doomed stablecoin, strategic positioning—offensive or defensive—must be clear.

Merchant behavior further reinforces this trend. Merchants always prioritize simplicity and reliability. They will adopt only payment methods that reduce costs and do not add complexity. Stablecoins that can seamlessly embed into existing workflows will be favored; those requiring extra reconciliation, conversion steps, or wallet management will be phased out. Over time, the ecosystem will filter out stablecoins lacking clear product-market fit.

In payments, simplicity determines adoption: only stablecoins that facilitate smoother capital flows will survive; others will be forgotten.
As an industry insider put it: “Issuing stablecoins is like opening a new airline—sounds cool, but 99% of the time, you’d be better off just buying a ticket.”