Stablecoins and the quiet rewiring of cross-border settlement

For years, digital assets sat at the edge of serious payments strategy: interesting, volatile, and largely beside the point for institutions focused on moving money reliably. That position is no longer tenable. The relevant developments are now happening at the settlement layers beneath the consumer interface, where stablecoins and tokenised deposits are beginning to change how value moves between banks, corporates, and borders.

For payment executives, the useful question is no longer whether these instruments matter. It is narrower and more practical: which parts of the payments stack are most exposed to change, where does the economic case hold, and what decisions are difficult to reverse once made.

In a new expert view for The Paypers, PaymentGenes Consultant David Nunez Corona examines where stablecoins and tokenised deposits are creating value today, concentrating on the infrastructure rather than the retail story, and on the strategic choices facing banks, PSPs, card networks, and corporate treasuries as settlement increasingly moves toward programmable, always-on rails.

Key takeaways from the article:  

• From asset class to infrastructure: why the speculative framing of digital assets no longer holds

• Two instruments, one shift: how stablecoins and tokenized deposits differ, yet share the same programmable foundations

• Where adoption is actually happening: the use cases quietly scaling, from cross-border B2B settlement to treasury liquidity

• The convergence play: the unified-ledger vision, and the unresolved questions it raises

• Governance and sovereignty: who controls settlement as the infrastructure consolidates

• What it means for each player: the strategic stakes for banks, card networks, PSPs, and acquirers

The full article is available on The Paypers. Click here to read.

Continuing the conversation

The same themes carry into a live discussion hosted by The Paypers on 30 June, where PaymentGenes Consultancy joins a panel examining stablecoins in cross-border payment flows. The session brings together specialists with experience not only across Europe and the US, but also Latin America, Africa, and Asian markets, where the friction and the opportunity in cross-border payments look very different. The discussion will focus on real-world use cases, where adoption is genuinely scaling, and how regulation is likely to shape the path ahead.

Registration is open.