In-Depth Analysis of the Stablecoin Ecosystem: From Technology to Business

The global financial system is undergoing profound changes. Traditional payment networks are facing a comprehensive challenge from stablecoins due to outdated infrastructure, lengthy settlement periods, and high costs. These digital assets are rapidly changing the patterns of cross-border value flows, the paradigms of corporate transactions, and the ways individuals access financial services.

In recent years, stablecoins have continued to develop and have become an important infrastructure for global payments. Large technology companies, payment processors, and sovereign entities are gradually integrating stablecoins into consumer-facing applications and business capital flows. At the same time, emerging financial tools ranging from payment gateways to deposit and withdrawal channels, and programmable yield products have greatly enhanced the convenience of using stablecoins.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the stablecoin ecosystem from both technical and business perspectives. It examines the key players shaping this field, the core infrastructure supporting stablecoin transactions, and the dynamic demand driving its applications. Additionally, it explores how stablecoins give rise to new financial application scenarios and the challenges they face in being broadly integrated into the global economy.

1. Why choose stablecoin payment?

To understand the impact of stablecoins, one must first examine traditional payment solutions. These traditional systems include cash, checks, debit cards, credit cards, international wire transfers (SWIFT), Automated Clearing House (ACH), and peer-to-peer payments. While they have become integrated into daily life, many payment channels, such as ACH and the infrastructure of SWIFT, have been in existence since the 1970s. Although groundbreaking at the time, most of these global payment infrastructures are now outdated and highly fragmented. Overall, these payment methods are plagued by high fees, high friction, long processing times, inability to achieve round-the-clock settlement, and complex back-end processes. Additionally, they often come bundled with unnecessary extra services such as identity verification, lending, compliance, fraud protection, and bank integration (for a fee).

Stablecoin payments are effectively addressing these pain points. Compared to traditional payment methods, using blockchain for payment settlement greatly simplifies the payment process, reduces intermediaries, and achieves real-time visibility of cash flows, not only shortening settlement times but also lowering costs.

The main advantages of stablecoin payments can be summarized as follows:

• Real-time settlement: Transactions are completed almost instantly, eliminating delays in traditional banking systems.
• Safe and Reliable: The immutable ledger of blockchain ensures the security and transparency of transactions, providing protection for users.
• Cost reduction: Eliminating intermediaries significantly lowers transaction fees, saving users money.
• Global Coverage: Decentralized platforms can reach markets that are underserved by traditional financial services (including unbanked populations), achieving financial inclusion.

2. Landscape of the stablecoin payment industry

The stablecoin payment industry can be divided into four technical stack layers:

1. First Layer: Application Layer

The application layer is mainly composed of various payment service providers (PSP), which integrate multiple independent deposit and withdrawal payment institutions into a unified aggregation platform. These platforms provide users with convenient access to stablecoin and offer tools for developers working in the application layer, as well as credit card services for Web3 users.

a. Payment Gateway

The payment gateway is a service that facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers by securely processing payments.

Well-known companies innovating in this field include:

• Stripe: A traditional payment provider that integrates stablecoins like USDC for global payments.
• MetaMask: It does not provide direct fiat currency exchange functions; users can perform deposit and withdrawal operations through integration with its third-party services.
• Helio: 450,000 active wallets and 6,000 merchants. With the Solana Pay plugin, millions of Shopify merchants can settle payments using cryptocurrency and instantly convert USDY to other stablecoins, such as USDC, EURC, and PYUSD.
• Some payment applications also allow users to make payments using stablecoins, further expanding the application scenarios of stablecoins.

The field of payment gateway providers can be clearly divided into two categories (with some overlap).

1. Payment gateway for developers; 2) Payment gateway for consumers. Most payment gateway providers tend to focus more on one category, thereby shaping their core products, user experience, and target market.

The developer-oriented payment gateway is designed to serve businesses, fintech companies, and enterprises that need to embed stablecoin infrastructure into their workflows. They typically offer application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and developer tools for integration into existing payment systems, enabling features such as automated payments, stablecoin wallets, virtual accounts, and real-time settlements. Some emerging projects that focus on providing such developer tools include:

• BVNK: Provides enterprise-level payment infrastructure for easy integration of stablecoins. BVNK offers API solutions for seamless process integration, featuring a payment platform for cross-border commercial payments, as well as corporate accounts that allow businesses to hold and trade multiple stablecoins and fiat currencies, along with merchant services that provide the necessary tools for businesses to accept customer payments in stablecoins. Processing over $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, with a year-on-year growth rate of 200%, and a valuation of $750 million, its clients include emerging regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
• Iron: Provides an API to seamlessly integrate stablecoin trading into its existing business. It offers businesses global deposit and withdrawal channels, stablecoin payment infrastructure, wallets, and virtual accounts, supporting customized payment workflows (including recurring payments, invoicing, or on-demand payments).
• Juicyway: Provides a range of enterprise payment, payroll disbursement, and bulk payment APIs, supporting currencies including Nigerian Naira (NGN), Canadian Dollar (CAD), US Dollar (USD), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). Primarily targeting the African market, with no operational data available yet.

Consumer-oriented payment gateways are user-centric, providing an easy-to-use interface that facilitates stablecoin payments, remittances, and financial services. They typically include mobile wallets, multi-currency support, fiat currency deposit and withdrawal channels, and seamless cross-border transactions. Some well-known projects focused on providing users with this simple payment experience include:

• Decaf: An on-chain banking platform that enables personal consumption, remittances, and stablecoin transactions in over 184 countries; Decaf collaborates with local channels in Latin America, including Western Union, to achieve almost zero withdrawal fees, with over 10,000 users in South America.
• Meso: Deposit and withdrawal solution, directly integrated with merchants, allowing users and businesses to easily convert between fiat currencies and stablecoins with minimal friction. Meso also supports the purchase of USDC, simplifying the process for consumers to acquire stablecoins.
• Venmo: Venmo's stablecoin wallet feature leverages stablecoin technology, but its functionality is integrated into its existing consumer payment application, allowing users to easily send, receive, and use digital dollars without having to directly interact with blockchain infrastructure.

U Card

Cryptocurrency cards are payment cards that allow users to spend cryptocurrency or stablecoins at traditional merchants. These cards are typically integrated with traditional credit card networks (such as Visa or Mastercard), enabling seamless transactions by automatically converting cryptocurrency assets to fiat currency at the point of sale.

The project includes:

• Reap: A card issuer in Asia, with clients including Infini, Kast, Genosis pay, Redotpay, Ether.fi and over 40 other companies, selling white-label solutions, mainly relying on transaction volume commissions (e.g., Kast 85%-Reap 15%) for cooperation, covering most regions outside the United States, and supporting multi-chain deposits; transaction volume reached $30M in July 2024.
• Raincards: A card issuer in the Americas, supports card issuance for multiple companies such as Avalanche, Offramp, takenos, etc. Its biggest feature is the ability to serve users in the US and Latin America. They issued a USDC corporate card to pay for travel expenses, office supplies, and other daily business expenses using on-chain assets (such as USDC).
• Fiat24: European card issuer + web3 bank, business model similar to the above two, supports card issuance for companies like ethsign and safepal; Swiss license, mainly serving users in Europe + Asia, currently does not support full-chain transactions, only Arbitrum deposits. Slow growth with a total user base of 20,000 and monthly revenue of $100K-150K.
• Kast: A rapidly growing U card, with over 10,000 cards issued, 5-6k monthly active users, $7m in transaction volume by December 2024, and $200k in revenue.
• 1Money: A stablecoin ecosystem that recently launched a credit card supporting stablecoins and provides a software development kit for easy integration, with no data available yet.

There are many cryptocurrency card providers, which mainly differ in terms of service areas and supported currencies, and they typically offer low-fee services to end users to enhance the enthusiasm of users in using cryptocurrency cards.

2. Second Layer: Payment Processor

As a key layer in the stablecoin tech stack, payment processors are the backbone of payment channels, mainly covering two categories: 1. Deposit and withdrawal service providers 2. Stablecoin issuance service providers. They serve as a critical intermediary in the payment lifecycle, connecting Web3 payments with the traditional financial system.

a. Deposit and Withdrawal Processor

• Moonpay: Supports over 80 cryptocurrencies, providing various deposit and withdrawal methods along with token swap services to meet users' diversified cryptocurrency trading needs.
• Ramp Network: Covers over 150 countries and provides deposit and withdrawal services for more than 90 types of crypto assets. The network handles all KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and compliance requirements to ensure the compliance and security of deposit and withdrawal services.
• Alchemy Pay: A hybrid payment gateway solution that supports bidirectional conversion and payment between fiat currency and crypto assets, achieving the integration of traditional fiat currency and crypto asset payments.

b. Stablecoin Issuance & Coordination Processor

• Bridge: The core products of Bridge include the Coordination API and Issuance API. The former helps businesses integrate various stablecoin payments and exchanges, while the latter supports businesses in quickly issuing stablecoins. The platform is currently licensed in the United States and Europe and has established important partnerships with the U.S. State Department and Treasury, possessing strong compliance operational capabilities and resource advantages.
• Brale: Similar to the Bridge product, it is a regulated stablecoin issuance platform that provides stablecoin coordination and reserve management APIs. It has compliance licenses in various states across the United States, and partnering companies must undergo KYB (Know Your Business), while users need to establish accounts for KYC (Know Your Customer). Brale's clients are more often on-chain OGs (such as Etherfuse, Penera, etc.) and are slightly less endorsed by investors and business development compared to Bridge.
• Perena: The Numeraire platform by Perena lowers the issuance threshold for niche stablecoins by encouraging users to provide centralized liquidity in a single pool. Numeraire employs a "hub-and-spoke" model, with USD* as the central reserve asset, acting as the "hub" for stablecoin issuance and exchange. This mechanism allows for the efficient minting, redemption, and trading of multiple stablecoins pegged to different assets or jurisdictions, with each stablecoin connected to USD* as a similar "spoke." Through this system structure, Numeraire ensures depth liquidity and enhances capital efficiency, as smaller stablecoins can interoperate through USD* without the need to provide decentralized liquidity pools for every trading pair. The ultimate design goal of the system is not only to enhance price stability and reduce slippage but also to achieve seamless conversions between stablecoins.

3. Layer Three: Asset Issuer

Asset issuers are responsible for creating, maintaining, and redeeming stablecoins. Their business model is typically centered around the balance sheet, similar to