How to choose

Should your product use stablecoins? Five questions

1. Where does it land? If both sides bank in the US, ACH, RTP and FedNow (the two US instant rails) settle cheaply with remittance data and return rules, and a stablecoin adds weekends and little else. If it lands abroad where banks are slow or expensive, keep going.
2. What would a non-bank charge? Get an all-in price for the same amount and corridor. On October 13, 2026 one large non-bank provider's public price for $50,000 to Mexico was about 0.45-0.52%, and to the euro area 0.24-0.31%. A stablecoin route has to beat that from dollars in to local currency out.
3. Who needs coins? If nobody does, pass through and convert on receipt. If the recipient wants dollars because its own currency is unstable, or treasury moves cash between the company's entities over weekends, holding can make sense, and custody, accounting and freeze risk come with it.
4. Whose licence? Usually the orchestrator and the off-ramp hold the licences and the payer and payee hold none. Holding or converting money for others can make a company a money transmitter in the US. Check the destination too: Brazil treats stablecoin payments abroad as FX operations, and the Philippines stopped granting new crypto-firm licences in September 2025, according to press reports.
5. What if it goes wrong? Read the orchestrator's terms for wrong addresses, freezes, failed off-ramps and its own insolvency. There's no return code to fall back on; see Exceptions and reversals.

My defaults: ACH or RTP for every domestic invoice. Across borders, I'd start with a non-bank FX provider and use a stablecoin route where it wins on price or timing: weekends, corridors with a 24/7 local rail like Mexico's, countries where banks are slow. Pass-through by default, with coins held for minutes; a coin the orchestrator can redeem directly with its issuer; one or two chains, picked because the off-ramp partner uses them. Allowlisted addresses only, a test payment to every new address, and screening before every send. Two off-ramps per corridor once volume justifies it. An all-in quote on every payment, and a ledger that records the coin, chain, transaction ID and quote. Nothing held on the balance sheet until the auditors have agreed how to book it.