3 Things Businesses Should Know About Issuing a Branded Stablecoin

Stablecoins are no longer just cryptocurrency-native tools.

FinTechs from PayPal to Visa and beyond are experimenting with stablecoin infrastructure or token issuance, and often both.

With a market cap now north of $300 billion, stablecoins are increasingly looking to prove their mettle as a programmable settlement medium that any business might deploy for reasons ranging from loyalty incentives to cross-border B2B payments.

Stripe and Bridge last month launched Open Issuance, a new platform that lets businesses mint and manage their own stablecoins, highlighting that the barriers to entry for this new money movement ecosystem have never been lower.

The rise of corporate stablecoins could point to a future where payment rails, loyalty programs and treasury operations blend into a single layer of programmable money.

Yet as alluring as this vision may be, the road to issuing a stablecoin is strewn with challenges. The decision to launch one is not simply a marketing or product development choice; it’s a strategic move that forces businesses to grapple with the realities of blockchain infrastructure, liquidity economics and regulatory risk.

Understanding these dimensions is essential for any company considering a stablecoin strategy, which now potentially ranges from your local credit union to retail titans like Amazon and Walmart to consortia of global banking giants to software firms like Cloudflare’s NET Dollar to Main Street merchants.

The hype around the technology often obscures how much work is required behind the scenes to keep a token secure, fully backed and compliant. Stripe and Bridge’s Open Issuance makes the technical first step easier, but it doesn’t absolve issuers from ongoing responsibilities.

Read also: PYMNTS Flags Four Stablecoins CFOs Are Testing for Liquidity at Speed

At the heart of any stablecoin is a ledger, most commonly a public blockchain, where every token issued and redeemed is recorded. Choosing and integrating with the right blockchain infrastructure is the first decisive step for issuers. Stripe and Bridge’s Open Issuance may help by providing a standardized interface for minting and burning tokens, but companies still need to decide whether to issue on a single chain, such as Ethereum or Solana, or to go multichain.

This choice isn’t merely technical. A chain’s security model, transaction costs and developer ecosystem shape the user experience and influence adoption. A retail giant might prioritize a chain with high throughput and low fees to support millions of micro-transactions. A B2B FinTech firm may prefer a chain with mature smart contract frameworks for programmable settlement.

Finally, issuing a stablecoin means managing custody and reserves in a way that interfaces cleanly with the blockchain. For fiat-backed stablecoins, the underlying dollars or euros must be safeguarded by banks or trust companies and reconciled continuously with the circulating token supply.

For corporates new to crypto, this hybrid integration can be more complex than the front-end branding suggests.

See also: Are Closed-Loop Financial Instruments the Future of Institutional Stablecoins?

Launching a stablecoin is not just about spinning up smart contracts; it’s about sustaining a currency-like instrument whose credibility hinges on liquidity. In short, a stablecoin is only as strong as the confidence users have in redeeming it for something of equal value, whether that’s fiat currency or goods and services.

Building and maintaining that confidence requires ongoing capital allocation and risk management, not just smart contract deployment. Only about half a dozen stablecoins have surpassed $1 billion in circulation, while the remaining tokens linger at subscale levels, potentially putting their future in peril as they fail to generate enough yield to keep the lights on.

At the same time, compliance touches almost every aspect of stablecoin operations, including know your customer (KYC) procedures for buyers and redeemers, anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring of transfers, disclosures of reserve composition, and audit requirements for on-chain and off-chain activity. For firms used to traditional eCommerce or FinTech payments, this dual layer of financial and crypto-specific compliance can feel daunting. Yet it’s becoming the price of admission for playing at scale.

For merchants, stablecoins can reduce payment processing fees, enable instant settlement and create new loyalty ecosystems. For financial institutions, they open doors to embedded finance, such as providing yield products or credit lines directly in token form. But every benefit comes with counterpart obligations, like technical resilience, liquidity provisioning and compliance readiness.

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