Stablecoins move into the mainstream

Stablecoins are moving beyond the crypto ecosystem to become an increasingly important consideration for banks, payment providers and corporates.

Greater regulatory clarity, institutional investment and practical commercial applications are changing perceptions of their role in financial services.

For Leila Foulon, Chief of Staff at Velocity, the shift is being driven by recognition that stablecoins can address longstanding inefficiencies in how money moves across markets.

"What's changed is that traditional financial institutions are recognising their potential to solve longstanding problems within payments and treasury," she explains.

Rather than focusing on blockchain technology itself, institutions are increasingly interested in reducing settlement times, improving liquidity and lowering the cost of international payments.

While payments offer a natural starting point, Foulon believes treasury and liquidity management present an even greater opportunity.

Large financial institutions and payment companies often hold significant amounts of capital across different currencies and jurisdictions to meet settlement obligations. Stablecoins could reduce the need to prefund accounts across multiple markets, freeing up working capital.

One of the biggest inefficiencies in existing payments infrastructure is the disconnect between payment authorisation and settlement.

Card payments operate around the clock, while traditional banking infrastructure remains constrained by operating hours. This can require payment companies to position capital days in advance.

"Stablecoins allow liquidity to move continuously, including outside traditional banking hours," she says.

"The value isn't just faster settlement. It's reducing prefunding requirements, improving FX efficiency and freeing up capital that could otherwise be deployed back into the business."

Looking ahead, Foulon expects treasury operations to become increasingly real-time and automated. Programmable rules could allow businesses to move funds according to settlement requirements, liquidity thresholds and predefined conditions.

Greater integration between stablecoin wallets and existing treasury management systems could also enable organisations to manage fiat and on-chain liquidity as part of a single treasury position.

However, regulatory clarity and institutional confidence remain essential.

Frameworks including Europe's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the US GENIUS Act have helped establish clearer expectations around stablecoin issuance, reserves and oversight.

Institutions must also have confidence in custody, identity verification, transaction monitoring and the regulatory status of their counterparties.

At Velocity, Foulon says the priority is ensuring stablecoins operate within the existing financial and regulatory system, rather than outside it. Compliance must be built into the infrastructure from the outset.

Recent partnerships demonstrate how institutional adoption is developing in practice.

Velocity's work with Visa and MVB is enabling what the company describes as the first US use case of stablecoin settlement for eligible Visa Direct push-to-card flows. Its partnership with Thredd is also bringing stablecoin funding and settlement capabilities into the card issuing ecosystem.

Both initiatives aim to address payment inefficiencies, including settlement delays, prefunding requirements and capital tied up across markets.

Foulon also points to Velocity's investment from Visa, alongside Capital One and Circle Ventures, as evidence of growing institutional interest in the infrastructure supporting stablecoin adoption.

"Financial institutions aren't necessarily looking to introduce new digital asset products. They're looking to improve the economics of their existing businesses," she says.

Interoperability between traditional financial infrastructure and on-chain networks will be central to this.

Rather than replacing the existing financial system, Foulon believes the opportunity lies in connecting banks, payment networks and local clearing systems with on-chain settlement infrastructure.

In some cases, neither the sender nor recipient needs to hold a stablecoin. It can simply act as the underlying mechanism for moving liquidity between two traditional financial endpoints.

Mainstream adoption will depend on integrating these capabilities into existing financial workflows, without requiring businesses to rebuild their operations around blockchain technology.

Beyond stablecoins, Foulon identifies programmable payments as a particularly promising development, especially across B2B payments and treasury operations.

Stablecoins could automate supplier payments, intercompany settlements and liquidity rebalancing, allowing funds to move according to predefined conditions without traditional banking-hour restrictions.

Agentic commerce could take this further, as AI agents increasingly initiate transactions and manage financial workflows.

However, this raises questions around identity, authorisation and liability. Institutions will need to establish who is responsible for transactions, what agents are permitted to do and which controls are required.

Tokenisation could also transform how businesses manage idle liquidity, enabling more efficient movement between settlement assets and yield-bearing instruments.

Foulon expects these developments to become increasingly interconnected, with stablecoins providing settlement infrastructure, programmability enabling automation, and identity and compliance supporting institutional adoption.

Foulon expects the industry to move beyond headline transaction volumes and partnership announcements to focus on the measurable commercial impact of stablecoin adoption.

The defining questions will be how much capital payment companies can release by reducing prefunding requirements, how efficiently networks can settle across markets and how existing financial services businesses can improve their economics.

She also expects the sources of value across the digital asset ecosystem to evolve.

As stablecoin settlement becomes more widely available, access to the technology itself may become less of a differentiator. Instead, value will increasingly sit in the infrastructure connecting currencies, networks and financial institutions, and making those capabilities commercially viable at scale.

Ultimately, Foulon believes one of the biggest misconceptions is that stablecoins are fundamentally a crypto product, or that adoption requires businesses to overhaul their existing financial infrastructure.

Most institutions are looking to solve traditional financial challenges: reducing settlement delays, improving liquidity, lowering FX costs and managing capital more efficiently.

The most successful applications may therefore be those where the technology is almost invisible.

"The business gets better financial infrastructure, and the end customer doesn't need to know that stablecoins were involved at all."