The Stablecoin Revolution in Progress: Resonance of Technology Architecture and Business Ecology

The global financial system is undergoing a profound wave of transformation. Traditional payment networks are facing comprehensive challenges from emerging alternatives - stablecoins - due to outdated infrastructure, lengthy settlement cycles, and high costs. These digital assets are rapidly innovating the models of value cross-border flows, the paradigms of corporate transactions, and the ways individuals access financial services.

In recent years, stablecoins have continued to develop and have become an important underlying infrastructure for global payments. Large fintech companies, payment processors, and sovereign entities are gradually integrating stablecoins into consumer-facing applications and corporate capital flows. Meanwhile, a series of emerging financial tools, from payment gateways to deposit and withdrawal channels, to programmable yield products, have greatly enhanced the convenience of using stablecoins.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the stablecoin ecosystem from both technical and commercial perspectives. It examines the key players shaping this field, the core infrastructure supporting stablecoin transactions, and the dynamic demand driving its applications. Additionally, it explores how stablecoins are giving rise to new financial application scenarios and the challenges they face in being widely integrated into the global economic process.

1. Why choose stablecoin payments?

To explore the influence of stablecoins, we must first examine traditional payment solutions. These traditional systems encompass cash, checks, debit cards, credit cards, international wire transfers, Automated Clearing Houses, and peer-to-peer payments. Although they have been integrated into daily life, many payment channels, such as ACH and SWIFT, have existed since the 1970s. While they were groundbreaking at the time, most of these global payment infrastructures are now outdated and highly fragmented. Overall, these payment methods are plagued by high costs, high friction, long processing times, inability to achieve 24/7 settlement, and complex backend processes. Moreover, they often bundle unnecessary additional services such as identity verification, lending, compliance, fraud protection, and banking integration, which require fees.

Stablecoin payments are effectively addressing these pain points. Compared to traditional payment methods, using blockchain for payment settlement significantly simplifies the payment process, reduces intermediaries, and achieves real-time visibility of fund flows, not only shortening settlement times but also lowering costs.

The main advantages of stablecoin payments can be summarized as follows:

• Real-time settlement: Transactions are completed almost instantaneously, eliminating delays present in traditional banking systems.
• Safe and Reliable: The immutable ledger of blockchain ensures the security and transparency of transactions, providing protection for users.
• Cost reduction: Eliminating intermediaries significantly lowers transaction fees, saving users money.
• Global Coverage: Decentralized platforms can reach markets underserved by traditional financial services (including unbanked populations), achieving financial inclusion.

2. The Landscape of the Stablecoin Payment Industry

The stablecoin payment industry can be subdivided into four technical stack levels:

1. Layer One: Application Layer

The application layer is mainly composed of various payment service providers (PSPs), which integrate multiple independent deposit and withdrawal payment institutions into a unified aggregation platform. These platforms provide users with convenient access to stablecoins, offer tools for developers working in the application layer, and provide credit card services for Web3 users.

a. Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is a service that securely processes payments to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers.

Well-known companies innovating in this field include:

• A certain payment provider: Traditional payment providers integrate certain stablecoins for global payments.
• Certain wallets: do not provide direct fiat currency exchange functions; users can perform deposit and withdrawal operations through integration with third-party services.
• A certain company: 450,000 active wallets and 6,000 merchants. With the help of a certain payment plugin, millions of merchants can settle payments using cryptocurrency and instantly convert a certain stablecoin into other stablecoins.
• Some Web2 payment applications also allow users to make payments with stablecoins, further broadening the application scenarios for stablecoins.

The field of payment gateway providers can be clearly divided into two categories (with some overlap).

1. Payment gateway for developers; 2) Payment gateway for consumers. Most payment gateway providers tend to focus more on one of these types, thereby shaping their core products, user experience, and target market.

The developer-oriented payment gateway is designed to serve businesses, fintech companies, and enterprises that need to integrate stablecoin infrastructure into their workflows. They typically provide application programming interfaces (APIs), software development kits (SDKs), and developer tools for integration into existing payment systems, enabling features such as automated payments, stablecoin wallets, virtual accounts, and real-time settlements. Some emerging projects focused on providing such developer tools include:

• A company: Provides enterprise-level payment infrastructure for easy integration of stablecoins. The company offers API solutions that ensure seamless processes, has a payment platform for cross-border commercial payments, and allows enterprises to hold and trade various stablecoins and fiat currencies through corporate accounts, along with merchant services that provide the necessary tools for businesses to accept customer payments in stablecoins. Processing an annual transaction volume over a certain scale, with a high annual growth rate and a high valuation, clients include emerging regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
• A certain company (beta): Provides APIs to seamlessly integrate stablecoin trading into its existing business. It offers businesses global deposit and withdrawal channels, stablecoin payment infrastructure, wallets, and virtual accounts, supporting customized payment workflows (including recurring payments, invoicing, or on-demand payments).
• A certain company: Provides a range of enterprise payment, payroll distribution, and bulk payment APIs, supporting currencies including certain fiat currencies and stablecoins. Primarily targeting a specific regional market, with no operational data available yet.

Consumer-oriented payment gateways focus on the user, providing an easy-to-use interface that facilitates stablecoin payments, remittances, and financial services. They typically include mobile wallets, multi-currency support, fiat deposit and withdrawal channels, and seamless cross-border transactions. Notable projects that focus on providing this simple payment experience for users include:

• A certain company: an on-chain banking platform that enables personal consumption, remittances, and stablecoin transactions across multiple countries; the company collaborates with local channels, including a certain company, in a certain region to achieve almost zero withdrawal fees, has a certain user scale, and is highly rated among certain ecosystem developers.
• A certain company: Deposit and withdrawal solutions, directly integrated with merchants, enabling users and businesses to easily convert between fiat currency and stablecoins with minimal friction. The company also supports certain payments for purchasing certain stablecoins, simplifying the process for consumers to obtain stablecoins.
• A certain company: The stablecoin wallet feature of this company utilizes stablecoin technology, but its functionality is integrated into its existing consumer payment application, allowing users to easily send, receive, and use digital dollars without directly interacting with the blockchain infrastructure.

b. U Card

Cryptocurrency cards are payment cards that allow users to spend cryptocurrency or stablecoins at traditional merchants. These cards are typically integrated with traditional credit card networks, enabling seamless transactions by automatically converting cryptocurrency assets to fiat currency at the point of sale.

The project includes:

• A certain company: A card issuer in a certain region, with clients including multiple enterprises, sells white-label solutions, primarily relying on transaction volume commissions in cooperation with local banks, covering most areas outside of a certain region, and supports multi-chain deposits; at a certain point in time, the transaction volume reaches a certain scale.
• A certain company: A card issuer in a certain region, supporting multiple companies to issue cards, with the main feature being the ability to serve users in certain areas. It issued a corporate card for a certain stablecoin to pay for travel expenses, office supplies, and other daily business expenses.
• A certain company: A card issuer in a certain region + a web3 bank, the business model is similar to the above two, supporting certain enterprises to issue cards; A license in a certain region, mainly serving users in certain areas, does not yet support full-chain transactions and can only recharge on a certain chain. Growth is slow with a certain scale of total users and a certain scale of monthly revenue.
• A certain company: A U card that is growing rapidly on a certain blockchain, currently has issued a certain scale of cards, a certain scale of monthly active users, a certain scale of transaction volume at a certain point in time, and a certain scale of revenue.
• A certain company: stablecoin ecosystem has recently launched a credit card that supports stablecoins and provides a software development kit for easier integration, with no data available yet in testing.

There are many cryptocurrency card providers, which mainly differ in terms of service areas and supported currencies, and they usually offer low-fee services to end users to enhance the enthusiasm for using cryptocurrency cards.

2. Second Layer: Payment Processor

As a key layer of the stablecoin technology stack, payment processors are the backbone of payment channels, mainly covering two categories: 1. Deposit and withdrawal service providers 2. Stablecoin issuance service providers. They act as a crucial intermediary in the payment lifecycle, connecting Web3 payments with traditional financial systems.

a. Deposit and Withdrawal Processor

• A certain company: supports multiple cryptocurrencies, offers various deposit and withdrawal methods and token swap services, meeting users' diverse cryptocurrency trading needs.
• A certain company: Covers multiple countries and provides deposit and withdrawal services for various cryptocurrency assets. The network handles all KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and compliance requirements, ensuring the compliance and security of deposit and withdrawal services.
• A company: A hybrid payment gateway solution that supports bidirectional exchange and payment between fiat currency and crypto assets, achieving the integration of traditional fiat currency and crypto asset payments.

b. Stablecoin Issuance & Coordination Processors

• A certain company: The company's core products include a coordination API and an issuance API. The former helps enterprises integrate various stablecoin payments and exchanges, while the latter supports enterprises in quickly issuing stablecoins. The platform is currently licensed in certain regions and has established significant partnerships with certain institutions, possessing strong compliance operation capabilities and resource advantages.
• Some Company (beta): Similar to some company products, it is a regulated stablecoin issuance platform that provides stablecoin coordination and reserve management APIs. It has compliance licenses in certain regions, and partner enterprises are required to undergo KYB (Know Your Business) verification, while users need to establish accounts with the company for KYC (Know Your Customer). The company's clients are mostly certain enterprises, which have slightly poorer investment backing and business development compared to some companies.
• Certain Company (beta): The company's platform reduces the issuance threshold for niche stablecoins by encouraging users to provide concentrated liquidity in a single pool. The platform adopts a "central hub-radiating" model, where a certain asset acts as the central reserve asset, serving as the "hub" for the issuance and exchange of stablecoins. This mechanism allows for the efficient minting, redemption, and trading of multiple stablecoins linked to different assets or jurisdictions, with each stablecoin connected to the certain asset as a similar "spoke." Through this system structure, the platform ensures deep liquidity and enhances capital efficiency, as small stablecoins can interoperate through the certain asset without needing to provide separate liquidity pools for each trading pair. The ultimate design goal of the system is not only to enhance price stability and reduce slippage but also to achieve seamless conversion between stablecoins.

3. Layer Three: Asset Issuers

Asset issuers are responsible for creating, maintaining, and redeeming stablecoins. Their business model is typically centered around the balance sheet, similar to bank operations - accepting customer deposits and investing the funds in certain high-yield assets to earn a spread. At the asset issuer level, stablecoin innovations can be divided into three tiers: statically reserved supported stablecoins, interest-bearing stablecoins, and revenue-sharing stablecoins.

**1. Static Reserve Fund