Stripe · Artemis Program · Decrypt
Stablecoins Won't Scale Without Banks
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 source. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
★ Tier-1 Source
Stablecoins were supposed to route around the banking system.
Key facts
- Pix, the country's instant payment system, moved more than R$35 trillion in 2025, roughly $6.3 trillion, and B2B transactions made up 47% of that value by the central bank's own breakdown
- Genuine stablecoin payments ran at roughly $390 billion annualized as of late 2025, per McKinsey and Artemis, which works out to about 0.02% of global payment volume across both cross-border
- The cross-border payments market reached $208 trillion in 2025, according to FXC Intelligence
- In March 2026, the FTC sent formal warning letters to PayPal, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard over debanking practices, part of a broader federal effort that traces back to an August 2025 executive order
Summary
Genuine stablecoin payments ran at about $390 billion annualized in late 2025, roughly 0.02% of a cross-border market worth $208 trillion. Enterprise flows begin and end in fiat, leaving stablecoins to settle only the middle leg that once ran through correspondent banking. Single-bank dependency is the sector's most underrated operational risk, with Silvergate, Signature, and the FDIC pause letters as precedent. Stripe paid $1.1 billion for Bridge, whose core product is orchestrating banks. An enterprise cross-border payment has three legs.