Stablecoins could reshape B2B payments, but adoption depends on trusted infrastructure, interoperability, and regulatory clarity.
Business payments are still more complex than they should be.
Despite most mid- to large-sized organisations already having critical components in place – think Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, payment gateways, approval workflows and reconciliation tools – this mismatch of systems, rails and manual processes invites opacity, error and fragmentation.
This matters because slower payments mean slower business. Cash flow is impacted, capital reporting stymied, and supply chain relationships tested.
In a bid to modernise, many are looking at stablecoins.
From concept to commerce
For years, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Tether have stolen the limelight, at times showing incredible growth. Yet their volatility makes them wholly unsuitable for business payment infrastructure.
Enter stablecoins. Growing interest in these digital assets as a payment instrument stems from their design. By pegging to a fiat currency, such as the US dollar, they maintain a stable value, while retaining the agility and cost efficiency of their cryptocurrency cousins: faster settlement, lower processing fees and, crucially, lower operational friction compared to traditional payment rails. Their distributed nature also supports both trust and security.
Stablecoins are already big business among early adopters. Recent analysis from McKinsey & Company and blockchain analytics firm Artemis estimates that payment-related stablecoin activity – including critical B2B requirements such as supplier payments and remittances – reached around $390 billion in 2025. It found that “early adopters are using stablecoins to streamline supply chain payments and improve liquidity management” and estimates that B2B stablecoin payments account for about $226 billion a year. This may sound high, but it remains just 0.01% of global B2B payment volumes.
The scale of today’s stablecoin payment flows isn’t important. Their potential for growth is. Juniper Research suggests that cross-border B2B stablecoin flows could exceed $5 trillion by 2035, as the infrastructure for delivering them in business environments evolves.
Emphasis on ‘could’.
Here’s what needs to happen before B2B stablecoin payments can reach these levels:
Regulatory clarity
In Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework has created a structured regime for stablecoin issuance, reserve backing and operational oversight, providing much-needed certainty for issuers and financial institutions. In the United States, the GENIUS Act has moved the market forward by establishing a federal framework that requires full reserve backing and regular disclosures, helping to formalise stablecoins as a regulated financial instrument rather than an experimental asset class.
Taken together, these frameworks are doing more than just defining rules; they are creating the conditions for institutional adoption. By reducing regulatory ambiguity, they enable banks, payment providers, and corporates to explore stablecoins in controlled environments such as cross-border settlement, treasury management, and closed-loop ecosystems.
Regulation alone is not enough. For stablecoins to operate effectively at scale in the B2B world, important gaps remain to address—particularly around interoperability across jurisdictions, consistency in compliance standards, and alignment between traditional financial regulation and emerging digital asset infrastructure. Without this, fragmentation risks emerging across markets, limiting the efficiency gains stablecoins are designed to deliver.
Trusted infrastructure
To truly understand stablecoins’ momentum, look at the behaviours of established payment networks: Visa has expanded its stablecoin settlement capabilities across multiple blockchains and digital assets. Mastercard has invested heavily in frameworks for integrating stablecoins into payment flows, including issuance, settlement and merchant acceptance.
Meanwhile, Klarna has begun launching stablecoin-based initiatives within its ecosystem (such as KlarnaUSD) to reduce settlement friction and improve cross-border payment efficiency.
These developments signal an important shift: stablecoins are coming in from the cold. They’re no longer the sole reserve of crypto-natives; they’re now being integrated into mainstream payment infrastructure.
Will they sweep the board? Possibly. Success will depend on whether this infrastructure evolves in a coordinated way, ensuring interoperability between networks, consistent standards across issuers, and seamless integration with existing enterprise systems such as ERP and treasury platforms.
On one hand, stablecoins offer a compelling route to faster settlement, reduced intermediaries, improved liquidity management, and lower operational friction—particularly in cross-border and supply chain payments where traditional rails remain slow and fragmented.
On the other hand, they introduce a new layer of complexity into an already crowded payments landscape. Without clear standards and interoperability with existing enterprise systems, stablecoins could add yet another rail, exacerbating the fragmentation problem rather than bypassing it.
The outcome will ultimately depend on execution. If regulation, infrastructure, and enterprise adoption evolve in step, stablecoins could become a foundational layer of modern B2B payments—enabling near-instant, programmable, and globally interoperable value transfer. If not, they risk becoming just another parallel system that adds optionality, but not simplicity.
