Many companies are dealing with blockchain and cryptocurrencies. However, one use case is often overlooked: stablecoins.

Stablecoins are evolving from a niche product into infrastructure. Anyone who wants to participate in payments, treasury or the tokenisation of assets today can no longer ignore regulated stablecoins. They directly affect revenues, the deposit base and the role of traditional financial service providers in the digital financial system.

While Bitcoin, Ethereum and smaller cryptocurrencies (altcoins) are known for price fluctuations and are used as high-risk/high-reward investments because of this characteristic, stablecoins pursue a different goal: digital stability on the blockchain. They combine the technological characteristics of cryptocurrencies with the price stability of fiat currencies and can thus develop into an operational financial infrastructure for the blockchain economy.

Stablecoins have long ceased to be a marginal phenomenon in the crypto scene, with a market capitalisation of over USD 300 billion. Regulatory clarity has also long been established (MiCA). Many financial service providers and companies are therefore asking themselves how they can use stablecoins themselves.

What Are Stablecoins?

Stablecoins are digital tokens on a blockchain that, unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, are intended to maintain a stable exchange rate. Stablecoins therefore link their value to a stable reference – usually a fiat currency such as USD or EUR.

Example:

USD Coin (USDC) is designed so that 1 token corresponds to approximately 1 US dollar.

They combine:

Stability of traditional currencies (1 euro is always worth 1 euro)
Speed and programmability of blockchain
24/7 availability

They can be thought of as programmable digital cash.

How Do Stablecoins Differ from Traditional Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Altcoins)?

Feature	Bitcoin & Other Cryptocurrencies	Stablecoins
Volatility	High	Low
Use case	Investment-focused	Payments and settlement-focused
Mechanism	Market-driven	Stabilised mechanically or through reserves
Narrative	Digital gold	Digital dollar/euro

→ Stablecoins are not speculative assets – they are infrastructure!

Characteristics and Types of Stablecoins

For stablecoins to maintain their value, they need a stabilisation mechanism. Broadly speaking, two categories can be distinguished:

Asset-backed Stablecoins:

Here, real or digital assets are deposited as collateral. These include:

Fiat-backed stablecoins (e.g. USDC, USDT), which are backed by bank balances and government bonds
Commodity-backed stablecoins (e.g. gold-backed tokens such as PAXG)
Crypto-backed stablecoins, where other cryptocurrencies serve as collateral and are usually overcollateralised to absorb volatility (e.g. DAI)

Algorithmic Stablecoins:

In contrast, algorithmic stablecoins attempt to achieve price stability purely through protocol mechanisms – for example, by dynamically expanding or contracting the supply of tokens (e.g. USDe, AMPL).

In practice, asset-backed models, particularly fiat-backed stablecoins, dominate.

Stablecoins and Other Types of Programmable Money and Assets – Where Are the Differences?

In addition to stablecoins, there are other types of digital and programmable money and assets. Assets such as shares, real estate or other real-life assets (e.g. art) are represented through digital tokens (so-called "Tokenized Assets"), and central bank money (keyword: digital euro) can also be issued digitally (CBDC).

Tokenized Assets

Examples: Real estate, shares or art as digital tokens

Issuer: Varies (companies, platforms)
What is it? Digital representation of a real asset
Value: Depends on the underlying asset
Purpose: Trading, fractional ownership, efficiency

Simply put: Digital representation of assets

CBDC

CBDC stands for Central Bank Digital Currency, i.e. a digital currency issued directly by a central bank.

Example: The planned digital euro of the European Central Bank

Issuer: Central bank
What is it? Digital state money
Value: 1:1 identical to the official currency (e.g. euro)
Legal status: Legal tender (planned)
Purpose: Digitally complement cash

Simply put: Digital cash

CBMT

CBMT stands for Commercial Bank Money Token and is a tokenised form of commercial bank money on the blockchain, provided by commercial banks.

Issuer: Commercial bank
What is it? Digital, tokenised commercial bank money
Value: 1:1 identical to the official currency (e.g. euro)
Areas of application: E.g. Industry 4.0 (machines paying machines), smart contracts (automatic payment triggering upon contract fulfilment)
Purpose: Secure, efficient payment flows around the clock / interoperability between traditional banking systems and programmable, decentralised networks

Simply put: Digital commercial bank money

Stablecoins

Examples: USDC, EURC, Qivalis, Tether

Issuer: Commercial banks
What is it? Cryptocurrencies with a stable value
Value: Pegged to a real asset (currency) (e.g. 1 USDT ≈ 1 USD) or algorithmically secured
Backing: Reserves (bank balances, bonds, etc.)
Risk: Depends on trust in the issuer

Simply put: Private "digital money" that is intended to remain stable

Excursus: "Project Agora" – The Shared Ledger

Project "Agora" is a joint initiative of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Institute of International Finance (IIF) for tokenised, cross-border wholesale payments.

What is behind it?

The project addresses the traditional weaknesses of international payments by closing the technological gap between central banks and commercial banks. It combines tokenised central bank money (CBDC) and tokenised commercial bank money (CBMT) on a single programmable platform (unified ledger), thus creating a shared infrastructure.

Because both forms of money are based on the same technical foundation, payments can be processed extremely quickly, securely and automatically through smart contracts. This drastically increases efficiency in international payments, as the intermediate steps and time delays common in foreign exchange transactions are eliminated (atomic settlement).

How Can Stablecoins Be Used?

Thanks to their technological characteristics, stablecoins enable a range of concrete use cases that extend directly into the core business of banks and companies. In payment transactions, they enable near-real-time transfers across national borders – 24/7, without cut-off times and often at significantly lower costs than traditional methods.

In trading and capital markets, stablecoins can serve as a digital settlement asset, for example for crypto or tokenised assets, and reduce counterparty risks, settlement times (keyword: Delivery-vs-Payment on-chain), and even in the case of ransomware attacks, they enable rapid action.

In treasury and liquidity management, they allow companies to park excess liquidity in programmable form and integrate it automatically into workflows and smart contracts.

For banks, this creates a mixed picture:

New revenue streams: E.g. issuing their own stablecoins, custody, payment services, on/off-ramp services
Competitive risks: Those who use stablecoins for cross-border payments or crypto clearing require fewer traditional financial services

Stablecoins are therefore much more than technological experimentation. They are developing into a widely applicable infrastructure for payments, capital markets, liquidity management and an emerging AI-agent economy.

AI agents are increasingly making autonomous decisions and interacting with one another. For example, they need to:

Purchase data (e.g. current weather data via a data marketplace)
Pay for APIs (e.g. a travel agent retrieves flight prices from flight data providers via a pay-per-request model)
Rent computing power (Compute-as-a-Service)
Pay other agents for services (e.g. a marketing agent needs a translation service from a translation agent)

Stablecoins are an important prerequisite for a functioning AI-agent economy because they enable agents to transfer value independently, without the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies or the limitations of existing payment systems. While LLMs exchange information, stablecoins enable the exchange of money.

Use Case	Target Customers	Added Value of Stablecoins	Relevance for Banks / Role of Banks
Cross-Border Payments / Remittances	Private customers, businesses, FinTechs	Faster, cheaper international transfers, 24/7, without correspondent banks	Traditional payment and FX margins under pressure, or opportunity to establish proprietary stablecoin payment rails
B2B Payments & Trade Finance	Businesses, merchants, platforms	Fewer intermediaries, lower settlement and FX costs, just-in-time payments	Integration into cash management/transaction banking; offering on/off-ramps and cash management APIs
Crypto & Tokenised Asset Settlement	Exchanges, brokers, asset managers	Faster delivery-versus-payment settlement, reduced counterparty risk, less pre-funding	Banks as on/off-ramp, custody provider and settlement infrastructure for tokenised assets
Treasury & Liquidity Management	Corporates, FinTechs	Programmable liquidity, automated sweeps, 24/7 availability	Development of stablecoin cash accounts; integration into treasury systems and API-based services
DeFi Integration / Yield Products	High-net-worth individuals, private clients, family offices, FinTechs	Access to on-chain liquidity pools, lending and investment products based on stablecoins	Curated, regulated access offerings (white-label DeFi, fund-of-funds, custody and risk management)
E-Commerce & Micropayments	Merchants, marketplaces, platforms	Lower payment fees, global reach, economically viable micropayments	Banks as acquirers/PSPs with stablecoin acceptance, card and wallet integration
Programmable Payments / Smart Contracts	Businesses, platform operators	Automated, conditional payments (e.g. escrow, supply chain, revenue sharing)	Provision of regulated stablecoins as settlement assets for smart-contract-based business models
AI-Agent Economy	AI agents	Automated money transfers without exchange-rate risk; regulated payments and micropayments	Provision of payment infrastructure: accounts and wallets for agents, including identity verification, transaction monitoring and secure custody

Overall, these use cases make it clear that stablecoins directly affect established value chains in several areas while simultaneously opening up new roles for financial service providers: from pure payment processors to providers of regulated digital settlement infrastructure.

What Should Financial Service Providers Pay Attention to Now?

Stablecoins therefore directly affect several revenue and functional areas of banks and financial service providers.

In payment transactions, they undermine traditional correspondent banking models: cross-border payments, card transactions or remittances can be processed faster and significantly more cheaply through stablecoins. Payment transaction fees and FX margins come under pressure.
On the liabilities side, an alternative to traditional demand deposits is emerging: if customers and companies hold relevant amounts in regulated stablecoins, this could influence the deposit base and refinancing costs in the medium term.
On the assets side, stablecoins open up new business models such as on/off-ramp services, custody, tokenisation settlement and stablecoin issuance, allowing banks to develop additional revenue streams.
Operationally, processes are shifting from batch-based legacy systems towards 24/7 on-chain settlement, which changes IT architecture, risk management (e.g. intraday liquidity) and compliance (KYC/AML on-chain).
The AI-agent economy requires stablecoins for automated money transfers. Banks can provide the payment infrastructure for this.

The digitalisation and tokenisation of money and assets are progressing in great strides. The foundations for programmable and highly automated payment processing are already a reality today, not a vision of the future. Groundbreaking examples such as Deutsche Bank, Börse Stuttgart or Qivalis are already actively driving this topic forward. Financial service providers must therefore now engage with stablecoins and operational payment infrastructure based on blockchain and position themselves strategically:

Either they become issuers, custodians or infrastructure providers for programmable money – or they leave payment flows and customer interfaces to crypto and payment platforms.