Stablecoins five years ago represented a new form of money looking for a reason to exist. This week offered a different picture. The reason for stablecoins as a cash alternative is emerging precisely as the technology itself becomes harder to see.
Across payroll, merchant acquiring, card networks, creator payouts and corporate treasury, stablecoins are being inserted into payment flows without necessarily requiring the payer or recipient to behave like a crypto user. At the same time, U.S. regulators are moving toward a framework that could make the issuers behind those tokens look more like supervised financial institutions.
While much of the early stablecoin debate assumed adoption depended on persuading merchants to accept a new…
