#StablecoinPayments
a16zcrypto
follow us
menu
about
portfolio
posts
policy
research
accelerator
crypto index
Newsletter sign up
sign up
How stablecoins will eat payments, and what happens next
Sam Broner
business strategy
company building
stablecoins
tech trends
12.12.24
share
Today’s payment landscape is dominated by gatekeepers that charge high fees that cut into the profitability of every business they touch, and justify those fees in the name of ubiquity and convenience — while they stifle competition and limit the creativity of builders.
Stablecoins can do better.
Stablecoins offer lower fees, more payment provider competition, and wider accessibility. Because stablecoins reduce the cost of transactions to nearly zero, they can free businesses from the friction of existing alternatives. Adoption will start with the businesses that are most harmed by the current payment options, a process that would disrupt the payments industry.
Stablecoins are already the cheapest way to send a dollar. In the last month, 28.5M unique stablecoin users sent over 600M transactions. Stablecoin users live in nearly every country and use stablecoins because they provide a safe, cheap, and inflation-resistant way to save and spend. Besides cash and gold, stablecoins are the only widely adopted payment rail that operates without gatekeepers like banks, payment networks, or central banks. At the same time, stablecoins are permissionlessly programmable, extensible, and integrable — anyone can help build the stablecoin payments platform on top of stablecoin payment rails.
This disruption may take time — but it is likely to happen more quickly than many expect. Businesses like restaurants, retailers, enterprises, and payment processors would benefit most from the stablecoin platform, seeing radical improvements to their margins. That demand will drive adoption, and as stablecoin adoption grows, the other benefits of stablecoins — permissionless composability and improved programmability — will bring still more users, businesses, and products onchain.