Stablecoins and Financial Access: Emerging Roles in a Digital Financial System

• Stablecoins are predominantly used for trading, not payments

• There is growing stablecoin adoption in emerging markets, particularly in Africa

• “I don’t see a mass exodus from the US banking system because of yield-bearing stablecoins over the next 20-30 years.” – Chris Maurice, Co-Founder and CEO, Yellow Card

Stablecoins have registered around 50% growth in 2025, pushing the total value to above $30 billion as they gained traction in cross-border payments and areas such as corporate treasury functions.

The boom was helped by the passing of the Genius Act in the U.S., which triggered a 70% rise in global stablecoin payments volume, Circle’s Stafford highlighted, adding that he expects exponential growth in the future. 

“We’re seeing tremendous traction,” he said. “There are businesses of all sizes that are now using stablecoins.” For example, Circle is working with companies like Cloudflare to help them incorporate stablecoins into agentic commerce flows, enabling publishers to monetize content by charging AI Agents and receiving payments in stablecoins.  

Stafford reported seeing the utility of stablecoins increase in major payment use cases, at least from a business-to-business standpoint, such as merchant acceptance vehicles. In capital markets, he sees value in enabling collateral management and mobility across chains within existing crypto custody offerings.

Stablecoins remained popular in emerging markets, particularly in Africa, where access to banking services is limited. Maurice of Yellow Card, an African stablecoin payment infrastructure, highlighted that six of the top 20 countries for stablecoin adoption and five of the top 10 fastest-growing digital asset economies are African. 

“This technology enables the movement of money in a system that was never built for Africa or emerging markets. The correspondent banking system was built for the US and built for Europe, and excluded much of the rest of the world,” he said. He countered the idea that stablecoins are replacing local African currencies, arguing instead that they are making the user experience of the US dollar work for the average person. 

The panel also debated the potential for yield-bearing stablecoins. Some think this is a threat to bank deposits, which are used as a balance sheet for lending. B2C2’s Restout questioned how impactful a shift to stablecoins would be for the banks and whether it would diminish the service and function they provide. He believes that the risk needs to be considered. 

When asked if he thought the demand for yield-bearing stablecoins would be such that eventually everyone would need to relent, including policymakers and regulators, Maurice agreed. However, he didn’t expect the average person to take money out of their checking account and put it into stablecoins just because a law passes. 

“I don’t see a mass exodus from the US banking system because of yield-bearing stablecoins over the next 20-30 years,” said Maurice. “It’s going to take a generational shift of people who have never used their bank account before we start seeing a shift.” In the meantime, the Genius Act is clear that stablecoin issuers can’t pay yield, he added. 

The panel also discussed the potential for large corporations like Walmart and Amazon to issue their own stablecoins, and the role that large banks could play in facilitating interoperability by holding deposits and managing stablecoins for various issuers.