Stablecoins Can't Scale Without Banks, Analysis Shows

Highlights

Genuine enterprise stablecoin payment volume runs at about $390 billion annualized, just 0.02% of the $208 trillion global cross-border payments market.
Cross-border payments still begin and end in bank accounts; stablecoins only replace the middle settlement leg.
Silvergate's wind-down and Signature Bank's collapse show how quickly a single banking relationship can disappear.
Stripe, Citi and Standard Chartered are responding by building deeper bank integrations rather than routing around banks.

A new analysis, reported by Decrypt, argues that stablecoins' real constraint on enterprise payments is not blockchain technology but access to banking infrastructure. Genuine, non-speculative stablecoin payment volume reached roughly $390 billion annualized in late 2025, more than double 2024 levels, yet that figure represents just 0.02% of the $208 trillion global cross-border payments market. The gap exists because most headline stablecoin volume reflects trading activity and exchange flows rather than actual commerce, and because enterprise payments fundamentally still require fiat entry and exit points that only regulated banks can provide, regardless of how efficiently blockchain rails move value in between.

Where the Bottleneck Actually Sits

Enterprise cross-border payments break down into three legs: the initial move from the payer's local currency, a middle cross-border settlement segment, and a final conversion into the payee's local currency. Stablecoins have proven genuinely useful for that middle leg, replacing slow correspondent-banking chains with near-instant blockchain settlement. But the entry and exit legs still run through traditional banks, meaning any company scaling stablecoin payments past roughly $50 million in annual volume needs multiple banking relationships, access to local payment rails across numerous corridors, and sophisticated foreign-exchange infrastructure to convert in and out of fiat reliably. B2B stablecoin payments specifically reached about $226 billion of the total $390 billion figure, growing 733% year-over-year according to data from McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, showing the segment is expanding quickly even while remaining a rounding error against traditional payment rails.

Why Banking Access, Not Adoption, Is the Ceiling

The analysis points to recent financial history to explain why single-bank dependency is an underrated operational risk for crypto payment companies. The 2023 wind-down of Silvergate Bank and the government takeover of Signature Bank demonstrated how quickly institutions can exit crypto-adjacent banking relationships, sometimes with little warning to the companies relying on them, while FDIC pause letters and other de-risking actions by regulators have shown that a company's entire payment operation can seize up the moment its sole banking partner steps back. That risk is pushing the industry's biggest players toward deeper bank integration rather than away from it. Stripe's $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, whose core product is orchestrating banking relationships for stablecoin issuers, Citi's launch of crypto custody services, and Standard Chartered's stablecoin settlement pilot in Singapore all point the same direction: scaling stablecoins now means building more banking infrastructure, not less. That dynamic is visible even in headline stablecoin growth, with Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin crossing $2 billion in market cap and Circle minting $1 billion in USDC within 24 hours on Solana, both of which depend on the issuers' underlying banking and reserve relationships as much as on-chain demand.

For the broader market, the finding reframes what stablecoin growth actually measures. Total stablecoin supply and on-chain transfer volume have both climbed sharply, but the analysis suggests those numbers overstate real-economy adoption if genuine enterprise payment flow remains capped near $390 billion. The companies best positioned to keep growing are the ones investing in banking relationships and regulatory licensing rather than treating banks as an obstacle to be engineered around, a lesson multiple stablecoin issuers appear to have already absorbed given how aggressively they are pursuing bank partnerships this year.

What to Watch

The clearest signal of whether this bottleneck loosens will be whether more banks follow Citi and Standard Chartered into direct stablecoin settlement infrastructure, and whether regulatory frameworks in the US and EU continue clarifying which banks can service stablecoin issuers without de-risking pressure. A steady rise in the $226 billion B2B stablecoin payment figure over the next few quarters would suggest banking access is genuinely expanding; a plateau would confirm banking infrastructure, not blockchain capacity, remains the real ceiling on enterprise stablecoin adoption.

FAQ

How big is the enterprise stablecoin payments market?
Genuine enterprise stablecoin payment volume reached about $390 billion annualized in late 2025, just 0.02% of the $208 trillion global cross-border payments market.

Why can't stablecoins fully replace bank-based payments?
Cross-border payments still require fiat entry and exit points at both ends of a transaction, and only regulated banks can provide that access, meaning stablecoins currently replace only the middle settlement leg.

What do Silvergate and Signature Bank have to do with this?
Their collapses in 2023 showed how quickly a crypto company's banking access can disappear if a single partner bank exits, illustrating the risk of relying on one banking relationship to scale stablecoin payments.

Are companies moving toward or away from banks to scale stablecoins?
Toward banks. Stripe's acquisition of Bridge, Citi's crypto custody launch, and Standard Chartered's stablecoin settlement pilot all show issuers building deeper banking integration rather than avoiding it.