Stablecoins Fuel $36 Billion in B2B Payments as Issuers Eye Mature Markets

Stablecoins are tokenized assets on the blockchain designed to simplify crypto transactions.

B2B payments are traditionally manual, paper-based and friction-filled.

Could one solve the other’s problems?

Stablecoin issuers and their partners aren’t waiting around to find out. As the Wednesday (June 4) news that BVNK and LianLian Global partnered to enable merchants to use major stablecoins to fund cross-border transactions illustrates, crypto continues pushing forward with innovations designed to streamline corporate spending.

However, B2B stablecoin payments are no odd-couple pairing. They represent an emerging reality across emerging markets. Annualized at $36 billion as of February, per an Artemis report, B2B transactions are no longer just theoretical experiments but are serving as critical plumbing for modern financial flows.

The total stablecoin volume over that same period was $94 billion, according to the report, meaning that B2B transactions now make up the largest segment of stablecoin payment volumes, surpassing even peer-to-peer transfers and card-linked spending.

The core appeal of stablecoins in the B2B context is a mix of speed, cost-efficiency and dollar-denomination, however, corporate treasurers are not known for betting on emerging technologies. Stablecoin issuers and traditional FinTech players like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others are focused on solving that problem.

See also: Making Stablecoins ‘Grandma-Friendly’

The reliability of SWIFT transfers, treasury management tools and banking infrastructure provides the foundation for trillions of dollars in daily commerce. But where stablecoin B2B payments are thriving is where banking can often fail. Latin America and Africa, in particular, are hubs of real-world adoption. In Brazil and Colombia, platforms like Bitso and Conduit have enabled faster euro and U.S. dollar settlement, replacing clunky wire networks. In Kenya and Ghana, businesses use stablecoins to sidestep currency devaluation and cross-border delays.

“Stablecoins are a great way to transfer value,” Conduit CEO Kirill Gertman told PYMNTS this month.

“There are advantages in instant settlement,” he added. “You don’t need as much working capital. You’re not exposed to FX gain/loss.”

For businesses, stablecoins can help to solve settlement time, cost and dollar access. Traditional cross-border transfers can take up to five business days and involve a daisy chain of correspondent banks, each clipping a fee. With stablecoins, money moves globally with internet speed and without intermediaries. Settlement costs can ultimately fall from $30 wires to sub-dollar fees.

PayPal, for example, used its own native stablecoin to pay EY, while the President Donald Trump family’s new stablecoin was reportedly used for a $2 billion investment into Binance by Abu Dhabi’s MGX.

Still, for all the promise, stablecoin-based B2B payments remain a small slice of global transaction volume. Three core challenges, alongside the regulatory gorilla in the room, prevent widespread adoption in mature markets: compliance, interoperability and supplier enablement.

Read also: Going From Zero to Crypto: How Banks and PSPs Can Approach Stablecoins

For all their advantages, stablecoins remain in regulatory limbo in many jurisdictions. In the United States, lawmakers are still hammering out stablecoin legislation, with debate centered on reserve requirements, licensing models and systemic risk. In the meantime, firms operate under a patchwork of money transmission licenses, often via intermediaries.

Corporate users demand high-trust environments. In traditional finance, know your business (KYB) processes and banking relationships provide a safeguard against counterparty risk and regulatory non-compliance. In the stablecoin world, such infrastructure is fragmented.

“We sell trust,” Conduit’s Gertman told PYMNTS. “We take your money and send it somewhere else. You need to trust us that it’s going to land where we say it will.”

Yet questions linger. Who is the ultimate beneficiary of a payment? What happens in the event of fraud or dispute? Without robust auditability, corporate treasurers may remain cautious.

Stablecoins also don’t move on a single network. USDC alone exists across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and more. This leads to the growing operational headache of how to settle a transaction when a sender and recipient prefer different chains or tokens.

Here, the industry has improvised the stablecoin sandwich solution. A business may send USDC on Ethereum, bridge it to Tron, and then swap it into USDT for the recipient. Each step involves risk — bridge failures, slippage, liquidity constraints — and friction. To scale, interoperability must be abstracted away.

At the same time, like many B2B advances, supplier enablement represents a thorny challenge to tackle. Even when a buyer is eager to pay in stablecoins, the supplier must be equipped to receive them. Today, many vendors lack the wallets, regulatory clarity or accounting systems to accept stablecoin payments.

For stablecoins to reach their full potential, the industry must resolve questions around compliance, interoperability and user experience.

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