Field Guide
B2B payments: stablecoins and blockchain payments
10
Glossary and sources
5 min read · Chapter 10 of 10
Words that mean something else here
| Term | What you'd assume | What it means here |
|---|---|---|
| Stablecoin volume | Payments | Mostly trading; real payments were about 1% of on-chain volume in 2025 |
| Run rate, annualized | A year of data | A month or a 30-day window multiplied up |
| Settlement (card networks) | Merchants paid in coins | Banks settling with Visa or Mastercard |
| Redeemable 1:1 | Anyone gets $1 back | Only approved direct customers; everyone else sells on a market |
| Final | Nobody can touch it | The chain won't reverse it, and the issuer can still freeze it |
| Attested | Audited | An accountant's report on one claim at one point in time |
| Regulated stablecoin | Licensed under US law | No US permitted issuer existed as of October 2026 |
| No yield | Nobody earns interest | The issuer keeps the interest; distributors may pay rewards |
| Bank stablecoin | A tokenized deposit | A stablecoin under stablecoin law; a tokenized deposit is a deposit |
| Insured | Covered by the FDIC | Not for holders, under the FDIC's proposal |
What surprised me
Placeholders in your voice, drafted from the research and the earlier guides. Rewrite each with your own moment.
"The chain is the hard part." Coming from cross-border payouts, I thought the new rail was where the risk would live. It's the cheapest, fastest piece, and the cost and the holds sit at the two ramps, much like prefunding and local partners did there.
"Nobody can freeze a blockchain payment." Issuers freeze all the time, on orders and on their own judgment, and a business can end up holding coins it can't move after doing nothing wrong.
"The issuer earns on every payment." On my $50,000 example it earned under 20 cents; the money is in coins that sit still.
"Banks will answer with deposit tokens." They did, and then 21 of them committed to issuing a stablecoin as well.
Sources
Undated entries were read on October 13, 2026; "search result" means seen only as a search snippet or summary. Company figures are self-reported unless they come from a filing or a regulator. The stablecoin costs in the deep dive are the author's assumptions, not published prices.
Laws, regulators and standard setters
- US: Federal Register, GENIUS Act documents; Treasury, interim final rule on state certifications (Sep 2026), section 3 proposal (Aug 2026) and press release; CRS, GENIUS Act overview and FOMC statement (Sep 16, 2026); OCC, conditional trust charters (Dec 2025); ICBA, OCC final rule timing (Aug 2026)
- FDIC, GENIUS proposal (Apr 2026, search result); FinCEN, CVC guidance and the travel rule (2019)
- Accounting and tax: Journal of Accountancy, FASB proposal on cash equivalents (Aug 2026); KPMG, stablecoins under IFRS (Jun 2026); McGuireWoods, digital asset tax bills (Sep 2026); AFP, 2026 liquidity survey (Jun 2026)
- EU: ESMA, MiCA Article 23 (search result) and end of the transition period (Jun 2026, search result); EBA, response on the MiCA review (Sep 2026); Cointelegraph, ESMA on non-compliant stablecoins and Finance Magnates, Binance's EU delisting of USDT (search results)
- UK and elsewhere: Bank of England, systemic stablecoins (Jun 2026); CoinDesk, holding limits dropped (Jun 2026); A&O Shearman, FCA final rules (search result); Department of Finance Canada, stablecoin framework (Mar 2026); Elliptic, Hong Kong's first licences (search result); Cointelegraph, Brazil's FX rules (search result); Regulation Tomorrow, UAE payment token rules (2024, search result)
- FATF: Walkers, report on stablecoins and unhosted wallets (Apr 2026); financialcrime.lu, seventh targeted update (Jul 2026)
- Market-structure bill and state law: DeFiRate, CLARITY Act fact sheet; Morrison Foerster, California update (Jul 2026); Orrick, CFPB withdraws its EFT interpretation (May 2025, search result); Willkie Farr, UCC Article 12 (Aug 2024, search result); Hogan Lovells, GENIUS and the Bankruptcy Code (search result)
Issuers: filings, terms and disclosures
- Circle: 10-K FY2025; 10-Q Q2 2026; Q2 2026 results (Aug 2026); an 8-K on the payments acquisition (Sep 2026), plus an 8-K on the Binance deal (Sep 17, 2026, cited without a link); USDC terms (Dec 2025); MiCA redemption policy (Sep 2026); transparency; Circle Mint rails; CCTP and fees; Circle Payments Network
- Tether: terms (Feb 2026) and fees; freeze with OFAC (Apr 2026); Decrypt, Q2 2026 profit (Jul 2026); ForkLog, Q2 2026 reserves (Aug 2026); CoinDesk, Iran wallets frozen (Jul 2026); The Block, Anchorage and USAT (search result)
- Paxos, PYUSD transparency; Fortune, Ripple's valuation (Mar 2026, search result); SoFi, SoFiUSD launch (search result)
- Bank-issued coins and Open USD: Blockhead, 21-bank stablecoin venture (Sep 2026) and Open USD goes live (Oct 2026); Ledger Insights, ZelleUSD (2026)
Market data and research
- DefiLlama, stablecoin supply and by chain (aggregator); McKinsey, stablecoins in payments (search result); CoinDesk, only 1% of volume is payments (Jan 2026)
- Prices: a large non-bank provider's public price for $50,000 to Mexico (Oct 13, 2026, vendor); Stripe, pricing and stablecoin payments docs; a payout vendor's USDC to MXN routes (vendor)
- Compliance data: The Block, Chainalysis crime report (search result); TRM Labs, sanctions-evasion research (search result); Tsuchiya et al., address poisoning (USENIX Security 2025)
Payment companies, networks and banks
- Stripe, 2025 annual update (Feb 2026) and stablecoin financial accounts; Decrypt, Stripe and Bridge (Feb 2026); Bridge, user terms (May 2026)
- Visa, US stablecoin settlement (Dec 2025) and five more blockchains (Apr 2026); The Block, Visa passes $20 billion (Sep 2026) and Mastercard's settlement options (Jun 2026); Mastercard, BVNK agreement (Mar 2026); BVNK, acquisition completed (Aug 2026); The Block, Zero Hash and Mastercard (search result)
- Coinbase, 10-Q Q2 2026; Fortune, Meta's stablecoin payouts (Apr 2026); Crunchbase News, a stablecoin card startup's round (Jan 2026, search result)
- Off-ramps: Bitso, business release (Dec 2025); PDAX, release (Nov 2025, search result); BitPinas, Coins.ph (search result); CryptoSlate, Philippines VASP rules (search result)
- Custody: The Block, Fireblocks' payments network (search result); BitGo, S-1 (search result)
- Banks: CoinDesk, Kinexys (Jun 2026); J.P. Morgan, Kinexys; The Block, JPMD deposit token; Citi, 24/7 USD clearing and Token Services (Jul 2026); Bloomberg Law, HSBC's US launch (search result); The Block, Swift ledger pilot (Jul 2026); ABA Banking Journal, The Clearing House's tokenized deposits (Jun 2026)
Chains
- Tempo, FAQ; CoinDesk, Tempo goes live (search result); The Block, Arc mainnet (Sep 2026)
- Ethereum, finality; Solana, fees (search result); Cointelegraph, Base outages (Jun 2026); a wallet vendor on Tron fees (vendor, search result)
Incidents, insolvencies and enforcement
- Freezes and exploits: AMLBot, Circle's 16-wallet freeze (Mar 2026, vendor); The Defiant, Circle and the Drift exploit (Apr 2026); The Block, PYUSD mis-mint (Oct 2025, search result); FBI, Bybit PSA (Feb 2025, search result)
- Failures: Fortune, USDC and Silicon Valley Bank (Mar 2023); Morrison Foerster, Celsius ruling (Jan 2023, search result); Blockworks, Prime Trust (2023, search result)
- Enforcement: CFTC, Tether settlement (Oct 2021, search result); Willkie, NYDFS and Coinbase (Jan 2023, search result); Bloomberg Law, Terraform settlement (Jun 2024, search result); NYDFS, Paxos settlement (Aug 2025, search result); BetaKit, FINTRAC's record penalty (Oct 2025, search result); S&P Global, crypto insurance capacity (Aug 2022, search result)
Reused from earlier guides on this site
- Domestic rail costs (ACH, RTP, FedNow, wires, card interchange), Stripe's stablecoin pricing and limits, the AFP survey and the McKinsey and Artemis estimate: B2B payments: order to cash; wire fees, the FSB's cost data, SPEI and Brazil's and the Philippines' payout rules: B2B payments: cross-border payouts
Field Guides are learning notes, not legal or compliance advice. Rules and fees change; check the cited primary sources before you act on anything here.