The Stablecoin Landscape for 2025 and Beyond

In today’s highly interconnected economy, the need for quick, effective, and transparent payment solutions has reached an all-time high.

From corporate finance and worldwide supply chains to workers and online commerce, countless individuals rely on daily cross-border payments, which is where stablecoins have stepped up.

How Stablecoins Are Changing The Global Payments System

Stablecoins are digital assets created and stored on the blockchain, designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to a reserve asset, most commonly fiat currency, such as the US dollar or the Euro.

Due to the implied resilience from this fact, they offer greater price stability than other cryptocurrencies, making them a good entry point into the crypto universe for more risk-averse individuals or institutions.

These assets have been gaining significant traction across Web2 and Web3, and their increasing usage is further bolstered by their ability to enable more efficient cross-border payments, offer near-instant settlements, reduce costs, and be available 24/7.

Stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and RLUSD, as well as region-specific tokens, are being integrated into wallets and payments platforms worldwide, particularly in areas where the local currency experiences greater volatility.

Ripple’s New Value Report for 2025: Stablecoin Trends in Business and Beyond found that finance leaders worldwide are suggesting that stablecoins will primarily be used in international, consumer-to-business, and vendor-to-supplier payments.

Some Popular Stablecoins For Business Payouts In 2025

Fiat-pegged assets can differ in various ways, including market availability, liquidity, supported blockchains, and more, so businesses and individuals should carefully consider how they can best serve the use case they are looking for.

Here are some examples of stablecoin and cross-border payment providers reshaping the landscape of how payments are made around the world:

• Tether (USDT)
  – most widely used and largest by market cap ($163B+ at print time, as per data from CoinMarketCap)
  – popular in emerging markets where access to USD is limited
  – integrated into most major crypto exchanges and peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms
• Circle (USDC)
  – insured by cash-equivalent reserves
  – compliant and partnered with goliaths such as Visa, Stripe, and more
  – widespread use for business-to-business (B2B) payments
• Ripple (RLUSD)
  – backed by a segregated reserve of cash and cash equivalents
  – supports third-party payments globally, emerging markets included
  – integrated into a licensed cross-border payments solution – Ripple Payments

Traditional Finance and Stablecoins

A growing number of traditional finance (TradFi) transnational payment providers have begun incorporating stablecoins into their operations to provide more options for their customers and improve their internal treasury payments.

Visa has been settling transactions in stablecoins since 2023, and to date, over $225 million has been processed through this method. Moreover, they have facilitated nearly $100B in purchases of cryptocurrencies and over $25 billion in such spending.

Mastercard very recently announced an end-to-end payments system using stablecoins, and WorldPay has plans to enable payouts in this asset class to global enterprises.

Businesses are also exploring how these assets can enhance their cross-border capabilities. Sending a wire transfer across the globe via traditional methods typically takes 3-5 business days to settle, and it also incurs high fees.

By turning to stablecoins, entities using them can take advantage of precisely tracking their funds, near-instant settlement times, and reduced reliance on intermediaries. At the same time, this is possible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The growth of this asset class has been quite notable, as it has exploded from around $130 billion at the start of last year to over $265 billion as of today, according to data from DefiLlama.