For decades, cross-border payments have been defined by friction. Transfers move through correspondent banks and intermediaries, settle on batch schedules, and incur fees that are often opaque until the transaction is cleared. It works, but it is slow, expensive, and structurally constrained by banking cut-off times and legacy rails.
Stablecoins are now chipping away at that model. What began as a crypto market utility is increasingly being used as a dollar-denominated settlement layer that can move value 24/7, including on weekends and across time zones, with far fewer operational bottlenecks.
That shift was a recurring theme at Binance Blockchain Week’s “Digital Money at Scale” panel, where industry leaders described cross-border payments that no longer depend on correspondent networks or batch processing. Tether co-founder Reeve Collins summarized the appeal bluntly: “Stablecoins are simply a better way to move money—globally, instantly, and for free.”
Stablecoins Change the Global Payments Game
The scale of the transition is no longer theoretical. The total stablecoin market capitalization reached approximately $300 billion in September, representing a 75% year-over-year increase. Analysts at Citi now forecast that stablecoin issuance could reach between $1.9 trillion and $4 trillion by 2030. This explicitly ties the upside to expansion beyond trading, into commerce and real-world settlement.
What sets this cycle apart is usage. Payment processors, payroll firms, and treasury teams are testing stablecoins for settlement, cross-border wages, and liquidity management because they function as programmable dollars that move 24/7. At Binance Blockchain Week, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, noted “Stablecoin transactions eclipsed Visa and Mastercard last year—and that was with less advanced technology than we have today.”
The panel agreed that a further scaling up is inevitable, but what will unlock that institutional scale is trust rooted in regulation. Regulatory progress, like the passage of the U.S. GENIUS Act, is already spurring the institutional shift. Stablecoins are also becoming the preferred settlement layer for tokenized real-world assets.
For emerging markets, the impact is even more direct. Reeve Collins’ point is that stablecoins have become a practical way to access dollars outside traditional banking and move value with fewer intermediaries. In his words: “Hundreds of millions now access the dollar outside traditional banking. Stablecoins have changed how people live and transact, and it’s only getting better.”
Tokenized Deposits Pull Banks Into the 24/7 Money System
As stablecoins gain traction for cross-border settlement and round-the-clock payments, banks are moving to defend their role at the core of the financial system by developing tokenized deposits. These tokenized deposits are digital representations of commercial bank money issued and settled on distributed ledgers, but fully contained within regulated balance sheets. Unlike stablecoins, which typically require users to move funds outside the traditional banking system, tokenized deposits aim to preserve existing account relationships while delivering the speed, programmability, and continuous settlement that on-chain infrastructure enables.
The institutional appeal is straightforward; real-time, 24/7 settlement without the operational friction of correspondent banking or the compliance complexities of off-balance-sheet instruments. JPMorgan’s JPM Coin is an early example of this model in production, enabling wholesale clients to move value across the bank’s network with near-instant settlement. For banks, these systems offer a way to modernize internal settlement rails without ceding deposit flows or liquidity management to external stablecoin issuers.
In the near term, adoption is expected to concentrate among large financial institutions, multinational corporations, and treasury functions where intraday liquidity management and cross-border efficiency deliver immediate value. Stablecoins, by contrast, are likely to remain the preferred rail for consumer payments and global B2B transactions, particularly in markets where access to dollar banking is limited or costly.
Over time, however, the boundary between tokenized deposits and stablecoins is likely to narrow. Banks are exploring ways to extend tokenized deposit infrastructure to interact with other on-chain assets, while stablecoin issuers continue to adopt bank-like safeguards around reserves, transparency, and capital efficiency. The result may be a converging monetary stack rather than a fragmented one.
This perspective surfaced repeatedly at Binance Blockchain Week, where panelists framed the shift as a structural re-architecture of money rather than a zero-sum contest between incumbents and crypto-native players. As Aptos Labs CEO Avery Ching noted, “What will onboard people is product experience, not chain choice. Crypto will fade into the background like a better version of SWIFT.” In that view, tokenized deposits are less about defending turf and more about ensuring banks remain relevant in an always-on financial system increasingly shaped by on-chain standards.
Digital Dollars Flatten the World’s Payment System
The cross-border payments system that has powered global commerce for decades is being reworked in real-time. Stablecoins are enabling near-instant value transfer across time zones, while tokenized bank deposits are bringing that same 24/7 settlement logic onto regulated bank balance sheets.
Together, they are reducing the practical importance of geography, cut-off times, and legacy intermediaries that have traditionally shaped international money movement.
What began as a niche crypto use case has broadened into a structural shift from batch-based payments to always-on, programmable dollars, with blockchain rails and traditional finance increasingly converging.
As Reeve Collins put it, “Stablecoins have changed how people live and transact, and it’s only getting better.” In that world, payments do not “close” at the end of the day. They run continuously, and they are becoming core infrastructure for the digital economy.
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