U.S. Payment Rails Aren’t Ready For The Stablecoin Surge

As the GENIUS, Clarity and PACE Acts pave the way for tokenised payments at scale, Dave Scola, US CEO at Form3, explores whether U.S. payment systems are operationally ready to support this.

When the first stablecoins emerged in the early 2010s, with BitUSD leading the way followed by Tether’s USDT, these digital assets primarily functioned as ‘parking spots’ used by traders to escape the volatility of Bitcoin but remain within the crypto ecosystem. In the years since, perceptions of stablecoins have gone through the motions. No longer viewed as a niche crypto innovation exclusively for those within that system, these fiat-backed digital assets are now seen by many as a viable payment method within a multi-rail treasury world. But with regulation catching up, seeking to bring stablecoins into payments systems that we rely upon every day, are we really ready?

A B2B boom

Much of the attention that stablecoins get comes down to the fact that these digital assets have the potential to solve many of the longstanding issues associated with cross-border payments for businesses, particularly SMEs. Historically, making payments with traditional banks internationally has involved high fees and painfully slow processing speeds as funds make their way from bank to bank.

Stablecoins represent the beginning of a solution. By tying their value to fiat currency and existing on the blockchain, stablecoins can facilitate faster and cheaper cross-border payments, with no need for the multiple intermediaries often involved in traditional international payment methods. Reported stablecoin transaction volumes run as high as $35 trillion annually, but most of this is trading and automated on-chain activity rather than genuine payments. McKinsey and Artemis put actual stablecoin payments at around $390 billion in 2025, and roughly 60% of these payment volumes are B2B. As a result, stablecoins could become core infrastructure for payments in the U.S, with many of the major players moving first: Stripe has acquired stablecoin infrastructure Bridge; Mastercard bought BVNK to connect on-chain payments and fiat rails; and J.P. Morgan has explored its own stablecoin to allow its clients to facilitate instant global payments on the blockchain.

Regulatory recognition

Recognition of the growing role of stablecoins is happening at the highest level in the U.S with the first federal frameworks – the GENIUS and Clarity Acts – in the works to legitimise the use of these assets at scale and end regulatory uncertainty. The GENIUS Act was signed into law in July 2025, with its rules due to take effect in early 2027, marking the first framework for stablecoins to be used as a means of payment or settlement. The Clarity Act, making its way through the Senate at the moment, seeks to address the longstanding question of whether a digital asset is a commodity, regulated by the CFTC, or a security to be regulated by the SEC. By drawing a clear line on this, they remove the regulatory uncertainty that has long acted as a barrier to institutional adoption of digital assets.

With stablecoins on the rise, non-bank providers are eyeing up access to payment rails. Introduced in April 2026, the Payments Access and Consumer Efficiency (PACE) Act is a bipartisan bill that seeks to give qualified and regulated non-bank payment firms direct access to Federal Reserve payment rails such as FedNow, FedWire and FedACH. At present, non-bank payment firms have to route transactions through legacy bank middlemen, a process that raises costs and significantly slows down processing speeds.

When eventually passed into law, the GENIUS, Clarity and PACE Acts will create the conditions for banks and fintechs to more confidently explore stablecoin and blockchain-based payment rails, and it is expected that use will surge as a result. However, the remaining question is whether payment infrastructure in the U.S. is ready to support this.

The missing piece of the puzzle

Legislation might be driving growth, but in its current state, legacy banking infrastructure in the U.S. is unable to support digital asset payments at scale – whether these be stablecoins or tokenised central bank money. This is because this infrastructure, built in the 1980s and 90s for batch processing, simply cannot accommodate the processing, monitoring and reconciliation speeds that are needed for faster always-on payments. Any attempt to layer stablecoins on top of this infrastructure will simply compound these existing problems.

Project Agora, the public-private collaboration led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to explore new approaches to cross-border payments using tokenisation, has recognised this problem and is exploring the use of a new shared platform that can support cross-border payments around the clock. The message is therefore clear. If U.S. banks and fintechs are to capitalise on the incoming stablecoin boom and deliver tangible benefits to their customers, they need to follow Project Agora’s lead and make infrastructure upgrades a priority.

In practice, this means investing in resilient cloud-based payment infrastructure that can support speedy, always-on payments at scale.

This was a contributed piece by Dave Scola, US CEO at Form3.