FXC Intelligence: The Current State of Stablecoin Cross-Border Payments in 2025

2025 is the “year of the stablecoin” for cross-border payments, with new announcements being released almost daily, and milestone regulatory documents officially pushing stablecoins into traditional financial terminals. “We are reaching a ‘tipping point’ where everyone realizes this is a brand new upgraded payment technology, and real businesses and practical use cases are emerging. It’s not some kind of cryptocurrency frenzy, but real applications,” said Chris Harmse, co-founder of enterprise-grade stablecoin infrastructure BVNK.

But enthusiasm also brings bubbles. Eric Barbier, founder of Triple-A, reminds us: “On LinkedIn and at conferences, stablecoins seem to be seen as a panacea, as if they could end world hunger, poverty, and cure cancer by tomorrow—this is clearly an overstatement.”

Stablecoins and blockchain technology are evolving rapidly, and the landscape of the financial payment market is changing momentarily, leading to a shift in the positioning of business cooperation. The FXC Intelligence report, a hundred-page document titled The State of Stablecoin in Cross Border Payments (The 2025 Industry Primer), serves as a valuable practical manual for stablecoin payments, integrating FXC Intelligence’s cross-border payment data, extensive research, and insights from 14 industry frontline experts.

Therefore, we compile this document in an effort to provide the industry with a concise, solid, and practical stablecoin payment guide, including the current state of cross-border payments using stablecoins, operational mechanisms, potential market size, application scenarios, challenges to overcome, potential opportunities, and the future.

The full text is 27,000 words, enjoy below.

1. Stablecoin Ecosystem

Although stablecoins are still an emerging technology, they have completed the leap from marginal experimentation to mainstream visibility in just a few years.

“The changes in the past 18 months have been particularly drastic,” said Chris Mason, co-founder and CEO of B2B stablecoin payment company Orbital. “The first to embrace stablecoins are often high-risk, high-growth emerging industry players; now, the second wave has arrived - payment service providers and traditional banks are collectively awakening.”

Iana Dimitrova, CEO of OpenPayd (a fiat financial infrastructure provider), added: “The current explosion is not an overnight success, but rather the result of more than 15 years of trial and error and iteration. The market has finally reached a consensus on the practical value of stablecoins, and the technology itself has reached a critical point for scalable commercial use.”

The foundation of the industry started in the field of cryptocurrency trading: that’s where it began. Soon after, we began exploring new use cases for stablecoins. — Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Circle

1.1 A Brief History of Stablecoins

Stablecoins originated with the launch of cryptocurrency in 2008: a tokenized, decentralized, and tamper-proof digital currency that operates on a blockchain based on distributed ledger technology. Stablecoins were initially born alongside Bitcoin, which was introduced to the world in October 2008 by an anonymous researcher (pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto) in a paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

From the very beginning, Bitcoin was positioned as an online payment method that does not require financial intermediaries. Although early adopters conducted some limited payment experiments, it became widely popular among internet natives and tech-savvy individuals speculating with cryptocurrencies. As interest in Bitcoin grew in the coming years, some began to experiment with its underlying technology for cross-border payments. However, due to the extreme volatility of cryptocurrency prices, lack of regulation, and some associations with black market activities, many found it difficult to regard it as a payment technology.

With the emergence of stablecoins, the situation has changed: stablecoins represent a crucial moment in the development of blockchain technology, and we are currently witnessing its transition from the early days of the internet into the beginning of the modern digital age.

Stablecoins are like the birth of the P2P file-sharing platform Napster. — Teymour Farman-Farmaian, Co-founder & CEO of Higlobe, a company that provides USD collection accounts for emerging market businesses.

The first digital currency issued in the form of a stablecoin is BitUSD, which introduced the concept of a 1:1 peg between cryptocurrency and fiat currency (in this case, the US dollar) in 2014. However, since it is backed by cryptocurrency, it does not fully conform to the definition of stablecoins as we understand them today.

Other companies quickly followed suit, but it was Tether that truly introduced the concept of fiat currency reserves, launching USDT later that year. In the following years, the popularity and attention on USDT continued to grow, but it also faced questions regarding transparency and regulation, ultimately leading Tether to take significant steps to address these issues.

In the early development of stablecoins, developers were gradually understanding the meaning of stablecoins and how to use them. In 2018, more regulated stablecoins began to emerge, with Paxos launching the current Pax Dollar (USDP) and Circle launching USD Coin (USDC) through a partnership with Coinbase. These regulated stablecoins, headquartered in the United States, began to gain popularity not only in the cryptocurrency space but also attracted interest from the mainstream financial industry. At the same time, participants in the financial infrastructure built on stablecoins also began to emerge, including Fireblocks in 2018 and BVNK in 2021.

However, in 2022 and early 2023, stablecoins faced a significant trust crisis due to several shocking events in the industry. The first was the sudden collapse of TerraUSD (UST). This is an unconventional algorithmic stablecoin, whose support mechanism is not cash reserves but an algorithm-based mechanism. After its value significantly dropped from the pegged rate of 1 dollar, panic trading triggered by the “death spiral” also caused the values of several other stablecoins to fluctuate briefly in major markets. Although UST is not a stablecoin in the traditional sense and companies like Circle, Paxos, and others have tried to distance themselves from algorithmic stablecoins, the damage to the reputation of the entire industry remains significant.

Despite many participants claiming that their asset reserves can protect them from the aforementioned issues and provide them with peace of mind, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in early 2023 raised new concerns. At the time of the collapse, Circle’s reserves at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) were approximately $3.3 billion, and there was uncertainty about whether these deposits would be guaranteed. This sparked what is known as a “shadow bank run,” as holders were worried they could not redeem the stablecoin at a 1:1 ratio, causing its trading value to plummet to historical lows. Although the U.S. government ultimately did guarantee the reserves of Silicon Valley Bank, and Circle never faced the real risk of being unable to redeem the USDC it held, the reputational damage was more severe, especially for institutions that need to have U.S. reserves and strong backing for their stablecoins.

In this crisis, the adoption rate of USDT overseas continues to rise, while the circulation of USDC in the United States has steadily declined during 2023. Because of this, a streamlined and more robust version of the industry is slowly rising from the ashes of this crisis. Driven by real demand in key channels and vertical industries, the trading volume and adoption rate of infrastructure companies are constantly increasing, and products are being improved accordingly; while other companies are launching products focused on the true utility of their technology. In the second half of 2023, PayPal launched PayPal USD (PYUSD), casting a crucial vote of confidence for the industry; while other companies are committed to educating those who are uncertain about stablecoins to build a regulatory framework and increase adoption rates. Orbital CEO Mason stated, “Education is indeed very challenging, but people are really starting to understand it.”

Starting from early 2024, the circulation of USDC tokens has risen again, with a continued increase in the number of newly issued tokens focused on payments. Recently, Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency has also increased institutional support for this technology, accompanied by regulatory measures such as the “GENIUS Act.”

Since the change of the U.S. government, major financial institutions have been seeking help from companies like ours to understand where and with whom they can collaborate to conduct stablecoin business in a compliant manner. —Guillaume C, EMEA Business Development Director, stablecoin issuer Paxos

Nowadays, with the rapid increase in adoption rates, the cross-border payment industry has also shown strong interest, and there is still room for further growth in the future. However, the fundamental principles of stablecoins are roughly the same as the premises originally set by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

We are solving the cash problem on the internet. — Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Circle

1.2 Growing Interest in Stablecoins in the Cross-Border Payment Sector

With the rise of stablecoin technology, its application cases in the cross-border payment field are gradually increasing. As Kendall from Paxos explained, although stablecoin usage is still mainly concentrated on “cryptocurrency-related activities”, interest in this area is continuously growing, largely driven by the most fundamental needs of end users.

The development of stablecoins began in the trading and investment sector, and then gradually established a foothold in the cross-border payment field during 2022 and 2023. — Michael Shaulov, Co-Founder & CEO, digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks

This experience is reflected in many companies in the field, including Conduit, which focuses on B2B inter-company payments. However, the situation has begun to change in the past year or two.

Initially, it was mainly those crypto-native payment companies that helped their terminal businesses transfer funds more efficiently between these channels. Today, I see a significant shift, with many companies, especially large multinational enterprises, starting to venture into this space. They want to understand how to use stablecoins, particularly in challenging regions like Africa, Latin America, and Asia. — Kirill Gertman, Founder and CEO of Conduit, a B2B stablecoin payment company.

This has also prompted some cross-border payment infrastructure providers that previously focused on fiat currency to enter the market, such as OpenPayd, which added stablecoin functionality earlier this year.

“For us, this evolution is completely natural, as we already have some existing clients using us for cross-border fiat payments, who come to us saying, ‘We already accept stablecoin payments through other providers. Can we incorporate these assets into your platform?’” said Dimitrova from OpenPayd. “Over the past 18 months, we have been receiving such requests continuously. We realized that without providing this interoperability, we would not be able to meet the growing demands of these clients.”

Such requests primarily come from companies with global trade needs, but the adoption of stablecoins is also increasing in other aspects of cross-border payments, including MoneyGram, which has begun offering stablecoin payment functionality. In 2022, MoneyGram started sending remittances in USDC, and since then, its business capabilities in this area have continued to expand, including the launch of the white-label digital wallet’s deposit and withdrawal solution MoneyGram Ramps, as well as meeting its own cross-border fund management needs.

MoneyGram is a fintech company with a global digital and cash network. Stablecoins will play a very important role in the future of MoneyGram. They help in every aspect of our business, from B2B backend to B2C service delivery, to how we serve consumers. — Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and CEO, MoneyGram

Currently, although stablecoins占 market share is very small, their attention has clearly increased. In the first half of 2025, the number of press releases related to stablecoins and payments increased by 186% compared to the same period last year, a growth rate that surpasses the previous overall growth rate of stablecoin press releases, and the number of press releases involving cross-border payments and stablecoins has surged by over 1000%. Moreover, this is only for companies that have publicly launched stablecoin solutions.

According to BVNK Harmse, the vast majority of companies in the payment industry have recognized the opportunities brought by this technology, even if they have not publicly discussed it. “I believe 95% of companies have seen this,” he said, “Based on the conversations we are having and potential collaborations, there are indeed many traditional payment companies that are actively investing, including some you wouldn’t originally think would invest.”

1.3 stablecoin payment investment surge

Except for established companies.