PYMNTS Flags Four Stablecoins CFOs Are Testing for Liquidity at Speed

The corporate treasury dashboard in 2025 is starting to look like something out of science fiction.

Artificial intelligence can help finance teams sift through torrents of transaction data to flag risks and opportunities and is increasingly starting to act autonomously. Stablecoins and tokenized deposits promise to settle cross-border payments in seconds instead of days, while real-time market feeds, cash flow forecasts and compliance alerts can stream across sleek, customizable screens.

What was once a static, backward-looking department is evolving into a predictive, always-on nerve center for managing global cash, risk and liquidity.

At least, that’s the promise of these innovations. The reality, however, can be a little more complicated, and arguably more defined by inertia. That’s why one question remains. Is the office of the chief financial officer actually turning to and deploying next-generation solutions like stablecoins and AI for everyday operations?

Chainlink’s new Runtime Environment (CRE), announced Tuesday (Sept. 30), is hoping to answer that question and accelerate the digital momentum of the enterprise back office. The solution lets banks run digital asset workflows directly from their existing Swift systems, enabling the integration of blockchain solutions with no need to rip out or replace infrastructure.

The stablecoin market now exceeds $290 billion in total value, and its footprint is creeping beyond cryptocurrency rails into mainstream payments and institutional finance. The next few years will reveal whether the marketplace’s flurry of launches marks the beginning of a structural shift or simply the latest chapter in stablecoins’ long courtship of the enterprise.

Read also: Stablecoins Target ‘Network of Networks’ Effect Across Global B2B Payments

How Stablecoins Could Rewrite Back-Office Optimization

Over the past decade, global banks have run blockchain pilots for remittances, trade finance and treasury cash management. What derailed most was the sheer effort required to rip out decades-old systems or build parallel ones. CRE sidesteps that issue by acting as a secure adapter. It can execute smart-contract-based instructions while keeping transaction initiation, compliance logging and reporting within existing Swift workflows.

For corporate finance teams responsible for liquidity management, cross-border settlement and treasury optimization, the CRE launch intersects with a handful of other headline-grabbing moves.

Cloudflare’s NET Dollar, Circle’s experimental transaction-reversal features on its Arc blockchain, Visa’s stablecoin prefunding rails and Google’s AI-driven payments protocol each come with a particular vision for how stablecoins could evolve from crypto-trading instruments into core corporate tools.

Cloudflare’s U.S.-dollar-backed NET Dollar, announced Thursday (Sept. 25), is designed to mesh with the company’s edge-network infrastructure. The aim is to support machine-to-machine and AI-driven payments, like real-time micro-settlements for API calls or content-delivery transactions across a distributed internet backbone.

Also Thursday, PYMNTS covered how Circle is reportedly exploring ways to reverse transactions involving its stablecoins. For treasurers used to clawbacks and recalls in conventional wire systems, reversibility could reduce operational risk.

At the same time, Visa is adding stablecoins to its corporate money movement playbook, piloting a way for businesses to prefund cross-border payouts on Visa Direct without tying up cash in traditional accounts.

Meanwhile, Google is launching a new protocol, co-developed with partners like Coinbase and American Express, that aims to standardize how AI models request and execute payments. It’s a nod to the coming wave of autonomous agents managing everything from ad buys to supply chain replenishment. Google is including stablecoin support at launch, which signals that the company sees tokenized dollars not just as a speculative asset but as a potential unit of account for digital-first commerce.

For corporate treasuries, the protocol’s promise lies in interoperability. If AI-driven services can transact seamlessly using stablecoins across platforms, companies could, in theory, automate more of their payables and receivables processes.

See also: Stablecoins Face Liquidity Shakeout That Could Upend Payment Strategies

The Timeline for Real-World Impact

The convergence of integration middleware like CRE, internet-scale platforms like Cloudflare and Google, and incumbent financial networks like Visa and bank-issued tokens suggests that the long-standing barriers to testing stablecoins in production are potentially starting to erode.

Still, large corporations tend to move in multiyear planning cycles. Most will wait to see not only technical reliability but also regulatory clarity and ecosystem depth before committing material flows.

“The real opportunity isn’t about chasing the buzzwords, but it’s more about being disciplined, identifying where stablecoins truly outperform a so-called legacy payment system,” Bryce Jurss, vice president, head of Americas, digital assets at Nuvei, told PYMNTS this month.

“We’ve started with settlement as a big layer,” Jurss said, adding that the challenge, as always in payments, is the chicken-and-egg problem. Merchants don’t want to adopt unless networks are ready, and networks won’t scale until merchants adopt.

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