Stablecoins are growing in cross-border payments, but the real-payment slice is still tiny compared with the overall market.
- $135 billion in non-wholesale cross-border payments in 2025
- 0.31% of a $44 trillion market
- IMF warns local-currency stablecoins could increase demand for dollar tokens
- Much of stablecoin volume still looks crypto-native, not everyday commerce
That’s the tension in the numbers: stablecoins are getting more useful, but the industry still loves to blur the line between transaction volume and actual payments. Those are not the same thing. A lot of on-chain churn is just that, churn.
FXC Intelligence, using Allium’s data, estimated that stablecoins were used for $135 billion in non-wholesale cross-border payments in 2025, up from $82 billion in 2024. The estimate is based on retail and business cross-border activity, not large institutional transfers.
That $135 billion figure works out to 0.31% of a $44 trillion market. In 2024, the comparable share was 0.2% of a $40.5 trillion market. So yes, the line is moving up. No, that does not mean stablecoins are about to replace SWIFT and send the old banking stack off with a victory lap and a hand wave.
The category breakdown gives a better sense of where stablecoins are actually getting traction. Business-to-business payments still dominate traditional cross-border flows, accounting for 79% of them, compared with 49% in stablecoins. Consumer-to-consumer transfers make up 15% of stablecoin volumes versus 5% in traditional currency payments. Business-to-consumer payments account for 14% of stablecoin transactions versus 5% in traditional flows, while consumer-to-business payments are 22% of stablecoin volume compared with 11% in traditional currency flows.
That pattern matters. Stablecoins are showing relatively more presence where speed, access, and low friction matter most: remittances, payouts, merchant payments, and other corners of the system where traditional rails can be slow, clunky, or expensive. That’s usually how real adoption starts, not with grand speeches, but with annoying payments that people are glad to escape.
Asian Banking and Finance reported the figures on August 10, giving the numbers a timely backdrop as stablecoin payment use keeps edging out of pure crypto circles and into more practical use cases.
Still, there’s a big asterisk hanging over all of this.
At the University of Cape Town in South Africa, IMF First Deputy Managing Director Dan Katz made clear that headline stablecoin activity and actual payment usage are not the same metric. According to Katz, stablecoin market capitalization nearly tripled between 2021 and 2025 and has remained around $300 billion over the last year. Over 99% of stablecoins are denominated in U.S. dollars, and reserves are largely held in short-term Treasury bills and reverse repos.
That makes stablecoins look less like neutral “crypto cash” and more like a digital delivery system for the dollar. Which is not a bug, strictly speaking, it is a big part of why they work. The dollar already sits at the center of global trade, reserves, and settlement. Stablecoins simply make it easier to move that liquidity across borders at internet speed.
Katz said total stablecoin transaction volume exceeded $30 trillion in 2025, with $6.1 trillion of that cross-border. But he also warned that much of the activity remains inside the crypto ecosystem and is driven by bots and algorithmic arbitrage, automated trading that exploits price differences across venues.
That caution matters. Huge on-chain volume can look impressive on a slide deck, but if a lot of it is trading churn, settlement loops, or bot-driven arbitrage, it tells you very little about how much real commerce is happening. Not every trillion on a dashboard is somebody paying a supplier or sending money home to family.
Katz also cited the Bank for International Settlements, which estimated payment-related stablecoin flows at $390 billion in 2025. That figure is a much better proxy for actual payment use than raw transaction volume, and it lands in the same uncomfortable place: stablecoins are real, but the clean payments slice is still far smaller than the noise around it.
One of the most interesting parts of Katz’s remarks was his warning about local-currency stablecoins. The common policy hope is simple: if a country issues a stablecoin pegged to its own currency, people will use that instead of dollar tokens. The IMF says it may not be that neat.
Here’s the first warning from Katz:
“In this way, local-currency stablecoins might even accelerate the adoption of FX stablecoins.”
And here’s the mechanism he described:
“Once a local-currency stablecoin exists on the same blockchain infrastructure as dollar stablecoins, conversion between the two becomes an on-chain transaction, meaning that depending on the use case, there may be a diminished need for traditional financial intermediaries.”
In plain English: if local and dollar stablecoins live on the same rails, swapping between them can become cheap, instant, and frictionless. That sounds convenient, and it is, but it also means the local token could end up being a bridge to dollarization rather than a shield against it. Better rails can also mean easier escape hatches.
Katz framed the effect of FX stablecoins on emerging markets as highly conditional. In his view, the impact depends on the strength of macroeconomic frameworks, whether currency substitution is already common and in what form, the structure of financial markets, and whether local-currency stablecoins are even available.
That is the right way to think about it. There is no universal stablecoin outcome, no magic regulatory button, and no guarantee that a local token will save a weak currency from capital flight or dollar demand. Money is not impressed by slogans.
He also pointed to South Africa as an example, saying dollar-pegged stablecoins have seen limited success there, while rand-linked stablecoins have gathered even less demand. That does not prove the same pattern everywhere, but it does reinforce a basic truth: people do not adopt new money because a whitepaper tells them to. They adopt it when it is useful, trusted, and easy to access.
For regulators and central bankers, this is where the unease comes in. Stablecoins can reduce payment costs and speed up transfers, but they can also weaken capital controls, reduce the effectiveness of domestic monetary policy, and shift demand toward foreign-currency instruments in countries already under pressure.
That is why policymakers are wary. Stablecoins are not just a prettier payments rail. They are a money distribution mechanism that can route around older bottlenecks. Sometimes that looks like financial freedom. Sometimes it looks like a headache with a blockchain logo.
The bullish case is still straightforward. Stablecoins are already pressuring incumbents to move faster, charge less, and clean up the user experience. Even if adoption stays modest for years, that kind of competitive pressure can still change how cross-border payments work.
The bearish case is just as important. If much of stablecoin activity remains crypto-native, and if payment-related flows stay a small fraction of the total, then the industry still has a long way to go before it can claim to have fixed global payments. Right now, stablecoins look more like a wedge than a replacement.
Related Stablecoins and Their Impact on Emerging Markets: Risks and matter a lot here, because the upside for payments comes with very real macro risks when weak currencies and dollar dominance collide.
Anchoring Trust in Money: Innovation Beyond Stablecoins also makes the broader point that the payments race is not just about token wrappers; it is about trust, settlement design, and who gets to define money in the first place.
For a more technical look at why some cross-border use cases work better than others, the BIS’s empirical analysis is a useful counterweight to the usual hype machines and their fairy tales.
And if you want a basic primer on what a Stablecoin actually is, that definition still matters before people start pretending every dollar token is a new monetary civilization.
For a concrete example of where the money is heading, Tether-Backed Mansa Raises $10M to Revolutionize shows how capital is already flowing into payment-focused stablecoin infrastructure instead of just speculative casino plumbing.
The same theme shows up in other regions too, including APAC Cross-Border Payments Turn to Stablecoins, QR Codes, where practical payment rails, not ideological purity, are driving adoption.
And for a reminder that crypto is becoming embedded in formal financial reporting, IMF’s BPM7 Integrates Bitcoin into Global Finance, Signals is a useful snapshot of how the old gatekeepers are slowly being forced to acknowledge the new reality.
Key questions and takeaways
-
Are stablecoins becoming meaningful in cross-border payments?
Yes, but slowly. FXC Intelligence’s estimate of $135 billion in 2025 shows real growth, yet that still amounts to only 0.31% of the cross-border market. -
Does high stablecoin volume mean real payment adoption?
Not necessarily. Dan Katz said a lot of the volume is driven by bots, algorithmic arbitrage, and other crypto-native activity rather than ordinary payments. -
Will local-currency stablecoins weaken dollar dominance?
Not automatically. Katz warned they could even make dollar stablecoins easier to access by reducing conversion friction on shared blockchain rails. -
Why does the U.S. dollar still dominate stablecoins?
Because over 99% of stablecoins are dollar-denominated, and the dollar already dominates global reserves, trade settlement, and liquidity. -
What’s the real risk for emerging markets?
Currency substitution. If people can move easily into dollar stablecoins, weaker local currencies can lose more ground, especially where monetary credibility is already shaky.
Stablecoins are not vaporware, and they are not a full-blown revolution either. They are useful financial infrastructure growing in the cracks of the old system, especially where banking is slow, expensive, or just plain lousy.
The honest takeaway is simple: stablecoins are becoming real for payments that are painful to make, but most of the current volume still isn’t the same thing as everyday commerce.
