Have we forgotten the point of stablecoins? | Opinion

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Stablecoins are undeniably entering the mainstream. Visa and Mastercard have both announced stablecoin-linked cards, while Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge shows its commitment to making spending stablecoins online as easy as using fiat. Add into the mix Circle’s $1.15 billion IPO and the increasing likelihood of regulation in the U.S., and it’s easy to see how 2025 is the year of the stablecoin.

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But are these developments leading us down a path where we lose sight of what real-world utility looks like for stablecoins? Much of the momentum right now looks a lot like sticking a stablecoin label on traditional financial tools. Recent announcements seem to be aimed more at corporates trying to remain relevant rather than appealing to the end-consumer..

Take stablecoin-linked cards. The average person gets no real benefit from spending Tether (USDT) in the supermarket compared to a U.S. dollar. The end result is the same—money gets deducted electronically from their account. And you likely need to have a bank account and decent credit history in order to benefit. All this does is perpetuate the status quo, and if we reduce stablecoins to tools for corporates and crypto natives, then we risk missing their true value.

This isn’t what stablecoin adoption should look like. Stablecoins present a unique opportunity to rethink what next-generation finance could be completely. We’re already seeing how they can deliver transformational value to last-mile users, often let down by the legacy banking system.

Stablecoins ≠ TradFi

Stablecoins and blockchain technology represent the first real opportunity we’ve had in generations to take a hard look at the problems we see in payments and finance today, and apply innovative solutions to solve them. Today, 1.4 billion people worldwide are unbanked. 57% of Africans, for example, do not have any kind of bank account, including mobile money accounts. While unbanked populations tend to be concentrated in less developed markets, this is a global problem. 6% of adults in the U.S. were unbanked in 2024.

Neither stablecoin-linked cards, nor e-commerce stablecoin integration, nor Wall Street buying up Circle shares will do anything to help this group. Yet stablecoins are inherently designed to provide financial access to the unbanked. As Coinbase’s latest State of Crypto Report says:

“Anyone with a smartphone and internet connection [is able] to store value, send money, and access global financial networks without needing a traditional bank account.”

This is where stablecoin adoption should be growing. There are already small signs that this is happening. 5% of unbanked adults in the U.S. used cryptocurrency for financial transactions in 2024, up 1% from the previous year and more than double the number of banked U.S. adults using cryptocurrency for payments.

If stablecoin adoption simply mirrors traditional finance, we risk recreating the same problems we set out to solve. We need to see more innovation happening outside of traditional finance to help those who could benefit the most from stablecoins.

Cards alone won’t get us there

We live in a world where we have the technology to pay for goods peer-to-peer, without intermediaries. Yet still, cards are the go-to choice for making day-to-day payments.

This doesn’t have to be the case. There is a huge scope to innovate payments outside of the payment card ecosystem, and it is already happening. For example, in some less developed markets and increasingly in global use cases like travel and remote work, wallets like MiniPay enable people to pay bills, send money internationally, and even subscribe to music streaming services using stablecoins, without touching the traditional financial system.

In Q1 2025 alone, apps within the MiniPay ecosystem collectively generated over 50 million weekly impressions and 5 million weekly app opens with hundreds of thousands of daily interacting users, a clear sign of demand. These apps are also often developed by individuals experiencing financial pain points firsthand, meaning stablecoins are directly solving real-world problems.

A similar dynamic is unfolding with companies like Strike, which uses stablecoins to overhaul the remittance market in regions like Latin America. Strike directly solves a critical financial pain point, offering a cheaper, quicker, and therefore vastly superior alternative to the outdated legacy system.

While these solutions might originate as tools to help those underserved by traditional finance, their impact and utility can potentially be felt by all, wherever they are in the world. What might start out as a stablecoin wallet to help users bypass the high fees and slow speeds of traditional remittance services could end up being used en masse as a travel wallet. Travellers could load their stablecoin wallet to purchase local services, including mobile data, all without the need to exchange currency or incur hefty card fees.

While cards aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, stablecoins give us a unique opportunity to solve payment problems from the bottom up, creating real-world utility from which everyone can benefit.

Keeping crypto’s core premise front and centre

Stablecoins are at an inflection point. Instead of focusing on how to integrate stablecoins into our current payment rails, we should focus our collective efforts on stablecoin solutions that deliver on the core premise of crypto, to help those let down by the legacy financial system. This means delivering user-friendly ways to help underbanked populations globally access and spend stablecoins in a frictionless way.

We have the potential to upend how we think about payments and create lasting solutions that can benefit everyone, wherever they are in the world and whatever their banking status. We just need to stay focused on the destination, not just the journey.

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