Stablecoins in Cross-Border B2B Settlement: Beyond the Hype, Into the Treasury

Cross-border business payments have long been slow, expensive and opaque by the standards of domestic payments. A supplier in one country paying another may wait days for funds that pass through several correspondent banks, each taking fees, with limited visibility into where the payment is at any moment. Initiatives such as SWIFT's ISO 20022 migration and the G20's cross-border roadmap have made progress, but frictions remain, particularly in corridors involving smaller currencies.

Fiat-backed stablecoins offer a different model: a token redeemable one-for-one for a fiat currency, transferable on a blockchain in minutes, at any time of day. For years they were used mainly for trading on crypto markets. What has changed is regulation.

The regulatory turn

Three frameworks have given businesses and banks more confidence that stablecoins can be used without unmanageable legal risk.

• European Union: MiCA introduced rules for e-money tokens and asset-referenced tokens, with the stablecoin provisions applying from mid-2024 and the regulation fully applicable from 30 December 2024. Issuers must be authorized and hold reserves, and holders have redemption rights.
• United States: the GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, established a federal framework for payment stablecoins, requiring issuers to hold one-for-one reserves in specified high-quality assets, publish reserve composition regularly and meet anti-money-laundering obligations. Implementing regulations were still being developed through 2026.
• Hong Kong: a licensing regime for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers took effect in August 2025.

Other jurisdictions, including Singapore and the UK, have developed or are developing their own approaches. None of these frameworks make stablecoins risk-free, but they establish issuer accountability, reserve requirements and supervisory oversight that did not previously exist in many markets.

How B2B settlement actually works

In most business use cases, neither sender nor recipient wants to hold stablecoins. The model that is emerging looks like this.

• The sender pays fiat to a regulated provider, often through ordinary bank transfer.
• The provider converts to a stablecoin, transfers it on-chain to a partner or its own entity in the destination market, and redeems it into local currency.
• The recipient receives a domestic payment, often over a local instant rail.

The stablecoin leg replaces the chain of correspondent banks. The on-chain transfer settles in minutes, around the clock, and its status is verifiable. Liquidity can be managed with prefunded balances rather than nostro accounts in every currency.

For most companies, the best stablecoin payment is one they never notice: fiat in, fiat out, with the blockchain doing the work in between.

Where the benefits are real

The case is strongest in corridors where traditional options are slow or expensive: currencies with thin correspondent networks, markets with capital-flow frictions, and payments that must move outside banking hours. Treasury teams also value programmability: settlement can be tied to conditions, and funds can move between entities on weekends when a supplier needs paying.

The case is weakest where domestic and cross-border rails already work well. Between major currencies with deep liquidity, the savings may not justify added operational complexity.

The hard questions

• Compliance: on-chain transfers must meet the same sanctions and anti-money-laundering standards as any payment. Providers screen wallets, apply travel-rule data exchange and monitor for exposure to illicit activity. These are solvable problems, but they require investment.
• On- and off-ramps: the fiat conversion at each end is often where cost and delay concentrate. A fast on-chain leg does not help if local payout takes two days.
• Accounting and tax: treatment varies by jurisdiction, and finance teams need clarity before holding balances.
• Counterparty risk: stablecoin holders are exposed to the issuer's reserve management and redemption processes, even under regulation.
• Reconciliation: blockchain transaction hashes must be linked to invoices and payment references. Providers that return ISO 20022-style data make adoption far easier.

Banks are not standing still

Banks have responded with tokenized deposits, digital representations of commercial bank deposits that settle on shared ledgers, and with participation in wholesale settlement experiments involving central banks. Whether businesses end up using stablecoins, tokenized deposits or faster traditional rails may depend less on technology than on who offers the best combination of cost, compliance and integration.

A measured view

Stablecoins are unlikely to replace correspondent banking wholesale in the near term. But in specific corridors and use cases, they already provide a credible alternative, and regulatory clarity has shifted the conversation from whether to use them to how to use them safely. For treasury teams, the practical question is no longer ideological. It is whether a given provider can deliver fiat in, fiat out, with controls a bank examiner and an auditor will accept.