One of the most animated conversations we heard at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego was about stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure.
Stablecoins processed more than $33 trillion in transactions in 2025, more than the combined volume of Visa and Mastercard, according to research from Payments & Market Intelligence. Since 2020, stablecoin supply has grown at a 67% compound annual rate, and roughly $27 trillion remains trapped in dormant nostro and vostro accounts across the global banking system, capital that faster, programmable payment rails could unlock. Banks still charge anywhere from $14 to $150 per $1,000 on cross-border transfers. We’re seeing a system under pressure to change.
This was my fourth Finovate conference, and I have observed the defining question at each event has shifted over that span of time. Generative AI commanded the main stage, and then agentic AI took over at last year's conference, with session after session exploring what it means for financial institutions to deploy autonomous agents at scale. But the storyline that surprised me most this year was the one that came back around. A few years ago, stablecoins and blockchain felt like a conversation the industry was still figuring out whether to have. At FinovateSpring 2026, that question had been answered. The conversation now is about deployment.
Clarity arrived, and it changed everything
In the past, ambiguity held the stablecoin conversation back, but the GENIUS Act changed that. Its passage into law, combined with the EU's MiCA framework and converging regulatory guidance across Asia, gave financial institutions a clear enough signal to act. As Lindsay Lehr, Managing Director at PCMI, framed it in her Stablecoin 101 keynote, regulatory clarity means new entrants are coming in droves. Now everyone needs a stablecoin strategy.
Lehr outlined six monetization models for financial institutions, ranging from custody and wallet services to treasury and liquidity solutions, to compliance-as-a-service for stablecoin issuers. The point was that the infrastructure shift is already underway, and positioning decisions made in the next 12 to 24 months will matter.
The coming shakeup in payments
The panel that crystallized this best was "The Coming Shakeup in Payments," which brought together voices from across the payments stack. Neha Naidu, Director of Commercial Product Management at SVB, a division of First Citizens Bank, noted that while clients are not yet asking for stablecoin solutions by name, banks must anticipate what demand is coming and build before they are behind. Scott Meadows, Head of Business Development at Coinbase, offered a perspective that reframed the entire conversation: stablecoins are not replacing the payments system, they are becoming another rail within it, one that sits alongside ACH, wires, and card networks but offers real-time global settlement and programmability that existing infrastructure simply cannot match. The use cases already in production include cross-border payments, treasury management, global disbursement, and increasingly, micro payments tied to agentic AI.
Kyle Rosen, Head of Americas at Thunes, offered perhaps the most grounded take. Stablecoins are not Thunes' core proposition. But customers asked for USDT settlements, so Thunes built for it.
The value is direct: real-time global payments with instant settlement alleviate the liquidity pressures that have long plagued cross-border transactions. Rosen also noted that in markets experiencing hyperinflation, demand for USD-denominated stablecoin transactions is already accelerating. Payments, he observed, reflect culture. In more markets than most institutions realize, stablecoins are already the preferred form of that reflection.
The demo stage was paying attention
The thesis playing out in the panel sessions was visible on the demo floor as well. Crebit Pay, a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2025, demoed a stablecoin-powered foreign exchange platform purpose-built for international students and credit unions. Crebit Pay delivers near-instant settlement at 4% to 10% lower cost than traditional FX, with stablecoin infrastructure running invisibly beneath a familiar fiat-in, fiat-out experience. It is a direct answer to what the panel was describing: real consumer need, practical infrastructure, no crypto complexity for the end user.
AlphaPoint demoed a solution designed for smaller financial institutions, helping community banks and credit unions adopt stablecoin payments and treasury capabilities quickly, without the cost or complexity of in-house builds.
The message from both demos was consistent: this infrastructure is no longer reserved for large institutions with deep engineering resources. The competitive window is narrowing for everyone.
The market is already voting
The signals beyond the conference floor reinforce the urgency. In April, Capital One completed its acquisition of Brex, an AI-native platform built around intelligent corporate cards, real-time payments, and automated financial workflows. The same month, Slash, a business banking platform with stablecoin support built into its core offering, raised $100 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, led by Ribbit Capital and Khosla Ventures. These are late-stage commitments to a specific vision of what business banking infrastructure looks like when stablecoins are assumed, not optional.
The conversation is just getting started
Coming back from my fourth Finovate, what stands out most is momentum. The serious players are already here. Capital One’s acquisition of Brex, Slash’s $1.4 billion valuation, and Thunes and Coinbase building stablecoin support directly into their core offerings are not exploratory moves.
Startups like Crebit Pay and AlphaPoint are pushing the innovation even further, bringing stablecoin infrastructure to credit unions, community banks, and corridors that traditional payments have long overlooked. This is a trend worth watching closely. Soon, stablecoins will be viewed as simply another alternative payments infrastructure, as familiar as the rails that came before them.