This Week in Stablecoins: Winning a Seat at the Banking Table

Stablecoins are arguably giving cryptocurrency mainstream legitimacy.

This is the case at least in the U.S., where during the Federal Reserve’s Payments Innovation Conference Tuesday (Oct. 21), Fed Governor Christopher Waller advanced the notion of a “skinny” or “streamlined” master account, a form of access to the Fed’s settlement system tailored for non-bank payments firms, including stablecoin issuers.

Under this proposal, firms would gain direct access to Fed payment rails, subject to tighter conditions: no discount-window borrowing, no interest on reserve balances, capped balances, and restricted operational features. Crucially, this access is limited to payment-centric activity, not full banking operations.

At the same time, stablecoin issuers like Circle Internet Group, Kraken, Bridge (Stripe) and Paxos Trust Company are racing for federal trust or bank charters under the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

Together, these developments mark a strategic pivot. Stablecoin issuers are no longer operating on the periphery of the banking system. They are seeking to become part of it. And regulators may be opening the doors, albeit cautiously.

See here: 4 Questions CFOs Need to Ask as Wall Street Embraces Stablecoins

Moving From the Crypto Sphere to the Financial Mainstream

Once the exclusive domain of crypto speculators, stablecoin instruments are increasingly attracting institutional interest for payments, settlements, treasury management and cross-border flows.

“Businesses are looking for a better type of money,” Sid Coelho-Prabhu, senior director of product at Coinbase, who is leading the charge on Coinbase Business and its suite of stablecoin solutions, told PYMNTS.

At the same time, the global dimension cannot be ignored. While the U.S. stakes its regulatory claim to configure stablecoin infrastructure, other jurisdictions are forging their own paths.

In China, for example, regulators such as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) have asked firms like JD.com and Ant Group not to proceed with stablecoin plans. The issuance of privately run stablecoins was reportedly viewed as a challenge to the bank’s digital currency project, the e-CNY.

In Europe, where the world’s first stablecoin framework was implemented, firms including Revolut, Blockchain.com and the bitcoin app Relai have all secured Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) licenses, according to a Thursday (Oct. 23) report.

Still, regulation doesn’t mean all the risks have disappeared. PYMNTS covered how Federal Reserve Governor and former Vice Chair of Supervision Michael Barr said in an Oct. 16 speech that while the U.S. policy framework, the GENIUS Act, demands full backing and monthly disclosures, the treatment of non-cash assets remains an issue. Barr flagged that under current rules, repos backed by non-cash assets, or even digital assets, could slip through — a potential vulnerability.

Read more: Making Sense of What AML Looks Like Across the Crypto Landscape

Unpacking the Marketplace Momentum

The regulatory moves are not happening in a vacuum. The establishment of global policy frameworks is becoming increasingly necessary as momentum in the private stablecoin marketplace continues building.

On Wednesday (Oct. 22), for example, Modern Treasury, a San Francisco-based payments infrastructure company, announced the acquisition of Beam, a startup specializing in stablecoin orchestration, in an all-stock deal valued at around $40 million.

What matters here is not merely the transaction, but the implication: Institutional payments are no longer marginally considering stablecoins — they are embedding them as a core tool. Modern Treasury’s public framing is that they will support instant settlement “24/7” via stablecoins, and that companies should be able to treat stablecoin flows indistinguishably from traditional rails.

Also on Wednesday, Cybrid, a payment infrastructure provider that lets businesses integrate and support stablecoin and cross-border transactions, closed a $10 million Series A.

Traditional correspondent banking remains slow, costly and opaque, especially outside the major corridors. Stablecoins promise 24/7 settlement, lower cost and FX agility. Yet the real-world usage for large enterprises has required orchestration of liquidity, mapping of off-ramps, integration with local fiat payout networks and heavy compliance work. Startups are slicing that orchestration layer rather than aiming to issue tokens themselves.

The emergence of these players suggests that the stablecoin ecosystem is entering a phase of practical plumbing build-out: treasury systems, APIs, dashboards, bank integrations — not just token issuance. This in turn puts pressure on incumbent financial infrastructure to adapt because the opportunity to move global flows faster and cheaper is becoming real. But again, speed must be matched by regulatory and supervisory clarity.