Why Banks Suddenly Want Stablecoins, And Why It May Matter For You

What Happened

The lobbying has not deterred new entrants. Visa, BlackRock, Google, and DoorDash have lined up behind Open USD, a stablecoin set to launch this year, in a market that Tether and Circle still dominate.

The consortium is not alone. SoFi Bank opened its stablecoin, SoFiUSD, to nearly 15 million members inside its app in May, five months after launching it for enterprise clients. JPMorgan, absent from the 21, runs its JPMD deposit token on Base.

In Hong Kong, HSBC plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar (HKD) denominated stablecoin in the second half of 2026. Something shifted this year to make the trouble of issuing a stablecoin worth taking on.

Market Context

“In 2025, global B2B stablecoin payments surged 733% year-on-year to $226 billion, proving that corporate treasurers are actively bypassing legacy correspondent banking networks to avoid multi-day settlement delays and high FX friction. This represents an immediate threat of deposit flight: Recent numbers show that up to $1 trillion in emerging-market bank deposits could migrate into stablecoins over the next three years.”

According to Urwicz, traditional banks are realizing that staying on the sidelines means surrendering their most valuable corporate liquidity pools, treasury relationships, and transactional fee revenues to regulated on-chain innovators.

“The law changed. The GENIUS Act gave banks a rulebook where there was previously only uncertainty, defining what a stablecoin is and what is required before issuing one…The second reason is volume. Stablecoin transaction volume passed $28 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, settling on networks where banks have historically had limited control or participation. When money moves at that scale outside a bank’s control, it becomes difficult to ignore.”

“GENIUS gave banks a federal perimeter to issue inside, and the market showed them the cost of waiting…The threat is the spread. Stablecoins exposed how fragile the zero-yield deposit model is, which is why the CLARITY yield fight was never about consumer protection.”

Why It Matters

For most of their first decade, stablecoins lived inside crypto, sitting on exchanges as dry powder between trades. Supply rose from $27 billion at the end of 2020 to more than $300 billion today.

A significant portion of that growth now occurs outside the order book. Cross-border flows into the US alone total nearly $127 billion a month, and businesses settled $226 billion in B2B payments in stablecoins last year, according to Artemis Analytics.

Details

The expansion has caught the attention of the institutions it threatened. Banking groups pressed Congress to stop crypto firms from paying rewards on stablecoin balances, arguing that a token paying interest is a deposit in disguise.

So banks have begun asking a different question: whether they need a coin of their own, if only to defend the ground they already hold.

BeInCrypto spoke with experts from Triple-A, ChangeNOW, Infinia, StraitsX, and others about what changed in 2026 and whether a bank coin is actually worth it for customers.

The Banks Stopped Watching

The shift is visible in recent initiatives. On September 1, 21 financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank, committed to setting up a new company in the second half of 2026 to issue a stablecoin.

The group plans a dollar token for the first half of 2027, with a euro version to follow, and says the product will be compliant with the GENIUS Act and MiCA.

Tianwei Liu, CEO and co-founder of StraitsX, a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), says 2026 has been an inflection point for stablecoins, with regulatory clarity and institutional adoption making the cost of sitting out harder to ignore.

“For banks, issuing a stablecoin is a way to stay on the rails as the underlying infrastructure evolves.”

Liu explained that the stablecoin sandwich illustrates this opportunity well. Essentially, a stablecoin effectively sits between two fiat payment systems, connecting them.

The user and merchant don’t necessarily need to hold or interact with the stablecoin directly; it can operate behind the scenes as the settlement asset, making the transaction faster and cheaper.

He added that does put pressure on traditional banking revenues, particularly cross-border payment economics. However, it is not necessarily a major threat to banks themselves.

Ianai Urwicz, co-founder and CEO of Infinia, puts a number on what banks stand to lose.

Two other experts traced the change to the GENIUS Act.

Vincent Chok, CEO and co-founder of First Digital, says banks were waiting for regulators to open the doors for them to participate.

Alex Witt, founding general partner at Verda Ventures, agrees that the act opened the door.