Aon May Have Found Stablecoins’ First Serious Office Job

Stablecoins have struggled to gain traction in everyday corporate finance. The obstacle is not the technology itself. It is the way most companies are built to move money.

Trying to fit digital asset on- and off-ramps into a corporate payment system that operates on traditional rails can be like the proverbial square peg and round hole.

But the Monday (March 9) news that professional services firm Aon had successfully worked to facilitate an insurance premium payment using stablecoins shows the challenge may not be insurmountable.

It indicates firms are reorganizing their finance and treasury technology stacks around the potential of stablecoin payments.

Corporate payment systems, after all, are designed around traditional banking rails. Transfers move through intermediaries, settle in batches, and often require reconciliation processes that unfold over hours or days. Simply adding stablecoins as a payment option inside existing dashboards does little to unlock their advantages.

For chief financial officers (CFOs) evaluating stablecoins, the question is increasingly not whether the technology works but whether corporate finance systems are designed to use it.

Read more: CFOs Eye Stablecoins as Capital Tool, Not a Crypto Bet

Rethinking the Plumbing of Corporate Payments

In conventional treasury operations, payment reconciliation often occurs after funds move through banking networks. Finance teams verify transfers, update internal ledgers and reconcile balances against bank statements. Stablecoins promise to compress that timeline dramatically, allowing companies to monitor settlement in near real time.

Because stablecoin transactions can settle almost instantly and operate around the clock, companies must rethink how they allocate working capital across accounts, wallets and financial platforms. For CFOs, the shift represents a move toward more dynamic financial management, where payments, reconciliation and liquidity adjustments occur continuously rather than in discrete cycles.

This type of programmability has the potential to streamline supply chain payments and other operational processes that traditionally require manual approval.

Still, an overhaul of this degree can be a lot to handle.

But the services landscape is itself responding to the emergence of stablecoins as an element of corporate finance. PwC announced in January that it is expanding its digital asset practice; while in December Visa announced the launch of its Stablecoins Advisory Practice that serves banks, FinTechs, merchants and businesses of all sizes.

“By building real-world understanding of stablecoins early, we are strengthening our ability to advise on risk, governance and resilience as digital finance evolves,” Tim Fletcher, CEO of Aon’s financial service group, said in Aon’s Monday release on settling insurance premium stablecoin payments across multiple blockchain networks.

PYMNTS also wrote recently about the role the world’s payment giants are playing in fueling the rise of stablecoins as a new payment rail. That report cites the example of Visa’s expansion of stablecoin-enabled cross-border payments via its partnership with Bridge, showing that card networks view “blockchain-based settlement not as competition, but as infrastructure.”

Read also: Behind the Stablecoin Buzz, Old-School Infrastructure Still Runs the Show

Where Stablecoins Actually Operate

Despite the attention surrounding blockchain networks, the operational center of gravity for stablecoins still sits largely off chain. That is where accountability most comfortably resides.

In this structure, the blockchain functions primarily as a settlement layer. It records the issuance and transfer of stablecoins, providing transparency and finality for transactions. The business logic that governs those transactions, however, often remains within traditional financial systems.

For corporate finance teams, embracing a hybrid approach can bring practical advantages. It may allow companies to integrate stablecoins into existing financial controls without abandoning the databases and reporting tools that underpin regulatory compliance and internal audits.

At the same time, this permissioned approach represents a departure from the early ethos of the permissionless and decentralized vision for blockchain finance. Block CEO Jack Dorsey, for example, recently referred to stablecoin payments as going from “one gatekeeper to another” in an interview with Wired.

Dorsey himself favors bitcoin’s open protocols, despite the impact those same blockchain architectures have had on bitcoin’s own struggles attempting to achieve scale as a payment tool.

See also: New Treasury Report Pushes AI, Digital Identity to Strengthen Crypto Oversight

The corporate desire for control stems from the fact that U.S. regulation is another factor shaping how CFOs approach stablecoin infrastructure. Companies adopting blockchain-based payments must still comply with anti-money-laundering rules, financial reporting requirements and internal governance standards.

U.S. banking regulators last week (March 5) confirmed in a joint statement that tokenized securities receive the same capital treatment as traditional securities if they grant the same legal rights. This could open the door to greater institutional use of stablecoin settlement across capital markets, areas which forward thinking treasury teams are already watching.

Stablecoins occupy a small niche within the broader financial landscape. But the experiments underway suggest that niche could expand, even to the inside of the corporate finance department.

After all, it was just March 3 that Kraken Financial, a Wyoming-chartered crypto bank, received a Federal Reserve master account, allowing it to directly access core U.S. payment systems like Fedwire without intermediary banks.