Stablecoins found product-market fit in the past year — not surprising since they are the cheapest way to send a dollar, enabling fast global payments. Stablecoins also provide more accessible platforms for entrepreneurs building new payments products: no gatekeepers, minimum balances, or proprietary SDKs. But large enterprises have not yet woken up to the substantial cost savings — and new margins — available to them by switching to these payment rails.
While we’re seeing some enterprise interest in stablecoins (and early adoption in peer-to-peer payments), I expect to see a bigger experimentation wave in 2025. Small-/medium-sized businesses with strong brands, captive audiences, and painful payment costs — like restaurants, coffee shops, corner stores — will be the first to switch from credit cards. They don’t benefit from credit card fraud protection (given in-person transactions), and are also the most hurt by transaction fees (30 cents per coffee is a lot of lost margin!).
We should also expect larger enterprises to adopt stablecoins as well. If stablecoins indeed speedrun banking history, then enterprises will attempt to disintermediate payment providers — adding 2% directly to their bottom line. Enterprises will also start seeking new solutions to problems credit card companies currently solve, like fraud protection and identity.