Stablecoin Issuance Queue Surge: AI Agent Payments and Corporate Stablecoin Narrative Rebuilding

“Stablecoins and digital assets are reshaping money itself, and this trend is still severely underestimated by the market.” In May 2026, Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley made this assessment at the Consensus conference. His confidence comes from a set of data sufficient to rewrite the competitive landscape of the stablecoin industry: since the passage of the GENIUS Act, Anchorage has won authorization to issue all major stablecoins in the market. About 20 financial institutions and major technology companies are queuing up to issue their own stablecoins through Anchorage. Almost at the same time, Anchorage launched an “Agentic Banking” platform in partnership with Google Cloud, aimed at providing regulated channels for AI agents to access funds. The combination of these two developments signals a paradigm shift in crypto financial infrastructure—from “compliance for asset issuance” to “intelligent automation for payment agents.”

Anchorage’s Layout in Its Dense Deployment Period: Three Dimensions

In early May 2026, Anchorage Digital completed a series of high-density strategic moves:

First, it announced it had obtained authorization for all major stablecoin issuances. McCauley stated clearly that Anchorage has obtained the regulatory approvals required for all large-scale stablecoin issuances in the market. Its customers include banks seeking to achieve specific objectives and stablecoin issuers that have distribution channels.

Second, it disclosed that about 20 institutions are queued to issue stablecoins. These customers include financial institutions and large technology companies, all queuing to issue their own stablecoins through Anchorage. McCauley emphasized that agency business is reshaping the industry landscape. Notably, Tether made a $100 million strategic equity investment in Anchorage Digital in February 2026, with a valuation of approximately $4.2 billion, and its “Made in the USA” stablecoin for the U.S. market, USA₮, is also issued by Anchorage Digital Bank.

Third, it launched an AI-driven “Agentic Banking” platform. The platform is built on Anchorage’s federally chartered crypto bank qualifications, providing AI agents with a compliant layer of trust, governance, and settlement—enabling enterprises to allocate funds to AI agents and execute transactions under controlled conditions. The platform has partnered with Google Cloud, which builds an “intelligence layer” to support discovery and collaboration among AI agents, while Anchorage handles fund execution and settlement.

The timing concentration of these three events indicates that the market should view them as an organic part of Anchorage’s dual-wheel strategy under the GENIUS Act framework—“compliant issuance + intelligent agent payments”—rather than isolated actions.

How the GENIUS Act Rewrites Industry Rules

Key Milestones from Legislation to Implementation

On July 18, 2025, the U.S. “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act” (GENIUS Act) was officially signed into law. Previously, it passed the Senate 68-30 and the House of Representatives 308-122. This is the first federal law in U.S. history specifically targeting digital assets.

The bill’s core institutional design can be summarized across the following dimensions:

• Issuance Access: Establish a “Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuer” system, including three pathways: subsidiaries of depository institutions (approved by federal banking regulators), federally qualified non-bank issuers (approved by the OCC), and state-qualified issuers.
• Reserve Requirements: Issuers must maintain at least 1:1 reserves of high-quality liquid assets. Acceptable assets include U.S. dollar cash, deposits at depository institutions, U.S. Treasury securities with a remaining maturity of no more than 93 days, and other liquid federal government financial instruments. The bill prohibits paying interest or any yield to stablecoin holders.
• Legal Classification: Clearly defines payment stablecoins as payment and settlement instruments—not national currency, and not securities or commodities. Stablecoins are not covered by federal deposit insurance.
• Large-Scale Issuer Upgrade Mechanism: If a state-level issuer exceeds a certain threshold size, it must upgrade to a federal regulatory framework to prevent regulatory arbitrage.
• Effective Window: The bill will fully take effect no later than January 18, 2027, or 120 days after the major federal stablecoin regulatory agencies publish implementing rules (whichever comes first).

In terms of legislative evolution, the CLARITY Act was passed by the House in July 2025, aiming to address the industry’s long-standing issue of how to classify digital assets as securities or commodities. In March 2026, the SEC and CFTC jointly issued an Interpretive Release (Interpretive Release No. 33-11412), establishing a five-category classification system for digital assets. While stablecoins are explicitly excluded from the definition of securities, algorithmic or yield-bearing stablecoins may still fall under the securities category. This provides more precise coordinates for the compliance boundaries of the stablecoin industry.

Why Anchorage

In 2021, Anchorage Digital received a federally chartered bank license approved by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), becoming the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States. Under the GENIUS Act framework, this creates a structural first-mover advantage: an institution that already holds a federal bank license naturally satisfies the bill’s qualification requirements for a “subsidiary of a depository institution,” eliminating the time and uncertainty costs of applying for a license from scratch. McCauley himself has previously stated publicly that Anchorage’s role is to become an infrastructure provider for crypto banks, with the goal that all banks become crypto banks. Anchorage precisely used the window after the GENIUS Act was enacted to upgrade its capability from being a licensed bank to a stablecoin issuance infrastructure provider.

Data and Structural Analysis: A Supply Map of Corporate Stablecoins

Key Data Highlights

All of the following information is a summary of publicly available data as of May 8, 2026:

• Queue Count: About 20 banks and tech giants are queued to issue stablecoins via Anchorage.
• License Coverage: Anchorage has obtained all major stablecoin issuance authorizations.
• Partnership Network: On April 30, 2026, Anchorage reached a partnership with M0. M0 provides modular stablecoin design and an interoperability layer. Anchorage provides a regulated backend for issuance, custody, and reserve management, forming an integrated issuance solution.
• Disclosed Issuance Cases: Western Union’s USDPT went live on Solana with Anchorage serving as the issuing bank. Tether’s USA₮ for the U.S. market is also issued by Anchorage Digital Bank. Stablecoins such as Ethena Labs’ USDtb (with Anchorage as its only issuer) and OSL’s USDGO are also issued by Anchorage Digital Bank.
• Strategic Investment Relationship: In February 2026, Tether made a $100 million strategic equity investment in Anchorage Digital, deepening cooperation in the regulated digital asset infrastructure field.
• International Business Expansion: In February 2026, Anchorage launched “Stablecoin Solutions” for international banks, supporting multiple stablecoin issuances, including Tether USA₮, Ethena Labs USDtb, OSL USDGO, and Western Union USDPT (which was slated for future issuance at that time).
• Platform Capabilities: Agentic Banking partnered with Google Cloud, covering identity verification, policy control, and settlement capabilities across both crypto and traditional finance systems.

Overall Stablecoin Market Data:

• Market Size (as of May 2026): MakerDAO’s USDS has surpassed $5 billion, becoming one of the fastest-growing stablecoins. The overall stablecoin market continues to expand, and analysts on Wall Street generally predict that, driven by regulatory certainty brought by the GENIUS Act, the market could continue inflating from a scale in the trillions to even larger levels over the next decade.
• Institutional Adoption Pace: In April 2026, PayPal expanded PYUSD to payment across more than 20,000 merchants. In its Q2 2026 earnings report, Visa disclosed that stablecoin card payment volume increased by 200% year over year; the number of card programs rose to more than 160, and the annualized stablecoin settlement volume reached $7 (the original data format is abnormal here); in April 2026, BitPay reported that stablecoins accounted for 18% of its processed payment volume and were still growing.

The Supply Structure of the Corporate Stablecoin Narrative

Based on the data above, the current corporate stablecoin issuance market can be preliminarily divided into three categories of participants:

First category: bank-based stablecoin issuers. Represented by SoFi. In December 2025, SoFi launched a fully reserved dollar stablecoin, SoFiUSD, through its national bank subsidiary SoFi Bank, N.A., becoming the first nationwide bank to issue stablecoins on a public permissionless blockchain. SoFi positions itself as a “stablecoin infrastructure provider,” offering white-label stablecoin issuance or SoFiUSD integration services for banks, fintech companies, and large enterprise platforms. In May 2026, SoFiUSD expanded to the Solana network. Ben Reynolds, head of enterprise banking, stated explicitly that the reasons for choosing Solana were “low transaction costs, extremely fast settlement speed, and strong throughput.”

Second category: licensed infrastructure-based issuers (represented by Anchorage). These institutions do not issue their own branded stablecoins. Instead, they provide regulated issuance, custody, and settlement infrastructure for third parties. Anchorage’s customers include banks with specific use cases, stablecoin projects that hold distribution channels, and payment platforms and fintech companies seeking to embed on-chain dollars. Tether’s $100 million strategic investment in Anchorage further strengthens market recognition of this model.

Third category: large enterprise-issued stablecoins and regional collaboration projects. Payment giant PayPal has launched PYUSD and continues expanding its application scenarios. Fiserv and a bank in North Dakota are collaborating to plan the launch of a state-supported stablecoin, Roughrider Coin, in 2026. It is positioned as the first stablecoin issued at the U.S. state level, targeting banks and credit unions in that state, with the goal of promoting interbank transactions and global capital flows.

Structurally, the core driving force behind the corporate stablecoin narrative lies in this: the regulatory certainty provided by the GENIUS Act lowers entry barriers for institutions, and institutions with banking licenses use their first-mover advantage to quickly occupy the infrastructure layer, forming a closed-loop service capability spanning issuance, custody, and settlement.

Media and Public Sentiment Analysis: Optimistic Narratives, Competitive Concerns, and Political Game

Around the media coverage of the corporate stablecoin issuance wave, three general orientations can be identified:

Optimistic perspective: Represented by Anchorage itself and industry researchers, this view holds that the regulatory clarity brought by the GENIUS Act will drive stablecoin market growth from today’s hundreds of billions (or so) to the over-trillion-dollar level over the next ten years. McCauley’s judgment—“agency services are reshaping the industry; stablecoins and digital assets are reshaping money itself”—reflects this stance. SoFi CEO Anthony Noto also calls blockchain a “technology supercycle,” arguing that it will fundamentally change every domain of payments and finance.

Competitive concern perspective: Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in December 2025 notes that while the GENIUS Act establishes a regulatory framework, the specific implementing details will still be under development after the law takes effect. The timelines for rule implementation and the consistency of standards across federal agencies will directly affect the industry’s pace of progress. In addition, the bill distinguishes compliance obligations between stablecoin trading in the primary market and in the secondary market, leaving uncertainty around the compliance boundary in the secondary market.

Political game dimension: When the GENIUS Act was passed, Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that it had “major loopholes,” which could allow large technology companies such as Meta to re-enter the stablecoin space with minimal regulation. On May 7, 2026, Warren again issued a public inquiry into the issues of financial stability, illegal finance, and consumer protection related to Meta integrating stablecoins, requiring companies to respond by May 20, 2026. This dynamic shows that regulatory and political controversies triggered by big tech’s entry into stablecoins are still simmering.

Industry Impact Analysis: Triple Rebuilding of the Infrastructure Layer

First Layer: Reshaping the Landscape from “Permissionless Issuance” to “Licensed Access”

Before the GENIUS Act took effect, U.S. stablecoin issuance existed in a regulatory gray area. After the law’s enactment, stablecoin issuance is explicitly brought under the federal bank regulatory track. Only licensed institutions may legally issue stablecoins. This means that industry barriers have shifted significantly from “technical capability” to “obtaining a license.” As the earliest crypto bank to receive a federal charter, Anchorage’s “license first-mover advantage” is being converted into actual customer acquisition capability.

For banks, fintech companies, and enterprise platforms that want to issue branded stablecoins, building their own issuance channels requires a long licensing-application cycle. By contrast, working with already-licensed institutions such as Anchorage enables rapid “compliance as a service” deployment. The emergence of this division of labor is giving rise to a new intermediary layer in financial infrastructure—B2B stablecoin issuance infrastructure that does not directly serve retail customers. Tether’s $100 million strategic investment in Anchorage is, in practice, recognition of the value of this infrastructure layer.

Second Layer: Cross-Border Agency Mechanisms for Non-U.S. Banks

In February 2026, Anchorage launched “Stablecoin Solutions” for international banks, providing compliant U.S. dollar stablecoin issuance, custody, and settlement services for non-U.S. institutions as a substitute for traditional correspondent banking relationships. McCauley described it as “a federally regulated USD global circulation channel provided bank-to-bank, without sacrificing custody, compliance, or operational control.”

The current global correspondent banking system faces problems such as high costs, long delays, and shrinking coverage. Data shows that the number of global correspondent bank relationships has been on a sustained downward trend over the past decade. If stablecoin-based cross-border settlement creates economies of scale, its impact on international payment infrastructure will be structural—especially for mid-sized and small non-U.S. banks operating in emerging markets that struggle to obtain U.S. dollar liquidity. Western Union’s launch of USDPT on Solana and its selection of Anchorage as the issuing bank is a typical example of traditional cross-border payment infrastructure transitioning to blockchain.

Third Layer: Financial Infrastructure Readiness for the AI Agent Economy

Anchorage’s Agentic Banking platform, together with multiple AI agent payment solutions emerging around the same time, forms a new narrative: building financial infrastructure for the AI agent economy.

On May 7, 2026, AWS, Coinbase, and Stripe jointly launched an AI agent payment track based on USDC. AWS introduced Bedrock AgentCore Payments, enabling developers to configure digital wallets and automated payment capabilities for AI agents, allowing AI agents to execute extremely small payments (even below $0.01) to automatically obtain the resources and services they need. Coinbase uses the x402 protocol to enable on-chain payment-based unlocking of paid services. Stripe’s machine payment protocol supports real-time streaming billing based on compute consumption.

Other key developments include:

• MoonPay Launches the MoonAgents Card: On May 1, 2026, the virtual Mastercard debit card was officially released. AI agents can spend stablecoins directly from self-custodied on-chain wallets, without additional fund-transfer steps. The product was launched in partnership among MoonPay, Monavate, and Mastercard, and it automatically completes real-time conversion between cryptocurrency and fiat at the time of transaction.
• RedotPay and Tempo Collaborate: Using Tempo’s Machine Payments Protocol, AI agents can complete fully automated transactions on the RedotPay platform—using stablecoins from product search through to final settlement. The first phase of payment skills is expected to go live in June 2026.
• Visa Makes AI/Agentic and Stablecoin Settlement a Strategic Focus: In its Q2 2026 earnings call, Visa explicitly identified directions such as AI, the agent economy, ecosystem interoperability, and stablecoin settlement as strategic growth priorities. CEO McInerney defined AI and the agent economy as major opportunities to expand Visa’s addressable market, with stablecoins and blockchain as significant prospects. Visa’s net income in Q2 rose 17% year over year.

The real bottleneck facing current AI agent economy activity is that traditional payment infrastructure (credit card flows, two-step verification, and manual authorization) is not suitable for autonomous machine transactions that do not involve human intervention. The programmability of stablecoins, their low fees, and near-instant settlement make them a natural payment layer for the AI agent economy. Anchorage’s Agentic Banking is positioned precisely at the hub between AI agents’ “intelligent decision-making” and “financial settlement”—when AI agents are ready to execute transactions, Agentic Banking enforces enterprise spending policies, AI agent identity standards (Know Your Agent), and real-time compliance controls, and then completes settlement through stablecoins, fiat rails, or tokenized vouchers.

Conclusion

The implementation of the GENIUS Act, in essence, provides a legal answer to the core question of “who issues U.S. dollar stablecoins and according to what standards.” The answer is: licensed financial institutions—banks and their subsidiaries, non-bank issuers approved by the OCC, and state-level issuers that meet federal standards.

Regulatory clarity is rapidly transforming into industry momentum. Around 20 of Anchorage’s queued customers, the formal issuance and expansion of SoFiUSD to Solana, Western Union’s USDPT going live on Solana, and the dense rollout of AI agent payment infrastructure such as Agentic Banking all reflect this momentum in concrete terms. Tether’s $100 million strategic investment in Anchorage, and Fiserv’s and North Dakota banks’ Roughrider Coin project, further indicate that whether they are crypto-native entities or traditional financial infrastructure providers, they are actively positioning themselves in this space.

However, the high-speed acceleration of the narrative should not obscure two fundamental issues: first, whether corporate stablecoins can truly open room in a market already dominated by USDT and USDC’s first-mover network effects depends on whether they can deliver unique scenario value beyond existing solutions—such as cross-border agency banking, closed-loop brand ecosystems, and automated AI agent settlement. The directions in these areas are already largely clear, but scaling will still need time to be validated. Second, the AI agent payments represented by Agentic Banking are still in the infrastructure build-out stage—AWS’s Bedrock AgentCore Payments has only just launched, MoonPay’s MoonAgents card has only been live for a few days, and RedotPay and Tempo’s payment skills are expected to go live in June 2026. Between “AI agents can pay” and “AI agents conduct large-scale autonomous transactions,” multiple forms of coordination are still required: technological maturity, user habits, and regulatory adaptation.

Over the next few years, construction of compliant stablecoin infrastructure will continue. The ultimate winner may not necessarily be the party with the strongest technology, but rather the one that best integrates licensing advantages, technical capabilities, and deep payment-usage scenarios. The narrative of money’s reconstruction has only just begun, and the ending has not been written yet.