Don't Bet Against Stablecoins | The Public Ledger

Hello, Fintech Friends!

I have been in the financial services industry long enough to remember when people doubted fintechs had legs.

The arguments went like this. Enterprises would never run their payments through Stripe. Nubank and Revolut were picking up the customers real banks did not want. Affirm and Klarna were not real lenders.

To be intellectually honest, sometimes I was one of those people.

But look where those companies are now. Businesses on Stripe processed $1.9 trillion last year, worth about 1.6% of global GDP. Nubank has 140 million customers and is in talks to buy Monzo, which has itself become one of Britain's ten largest banks. Affirm Card had 4.4 million cardholders and is on its way to becoming the Amex of a new generation.

Make something cheaper, faster or easier to use, and, as it turns out, the demand arrives.

What I realized recently is that stablecoins are going through the same phase of doubt. "They solve niche problems. They are an emerging markets story. No merchant has a reason to accept them."

Open USD went live today. Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Coinbase are its founding partners. Zach Abrams, who founded Bridge before Stripe bought it, leads the company as CEO. More than 100 companies have signed on, including PayPal, American Express, Adyen, Klarna, Affirm and Chime, along with BNY, U.S. Bank, Citizens and Lead Bank.

Now think about what that means. Stripe, Nubank and Affirm each started with no customers and no distribution, and took over a decade to scale and prove the doubters wrong. Open USD starts with two card networks, one of the biggest acquirers, one of the largest commerce platforms and one of the largest crypto companies in the world.

So I would expect this one to go a lot faster.

And it goes beyond Open USD. Twenty-one banks including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citi are launching a dollar stablecoin, and a separate group of 37 institutions formed Qivalis to issue a euro one this year. It will take some time, but imagine how quickly stablecoins scale once they reach corporates through their own banks.

Yes, plenty is still unresolved, don't get me wrong. Most stablecoin payments end at an offramp. Few merchants have any way to accept one at checkout. And stablecoins are still mostly dollar denominated.

But those are the problems that Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, Coinbase and more than 100 other companies signed up to solve.

So bet against stablecoins at your own risk.

Jevgenijs Kazanins

p.s. Have feeback? Reach out on X or LinkedIn!

Nubank has opened early talks to buy Monzo at between £8bn and £10bn, Sky News reported on Saturday. Monzo has hired Morgan Stanley and Qatalyst, and bankers expect a cash-and-stock deal. Its board is weighing the offer against a funding round above £8bn to pay for European expansion. Monzo was last valued at £4.5bn in a secondary sale in October 2024. Revenue grew 39% YoY to £1.7bn in its last financial year, and adjusted pre-tax profit grew 20% YoY to £172.6m.

Nubank launched in the US and 35 other countries this month, the US in a partnership with Lead Bank and the rest through a Swiss entity that holds customer money in stablecoins rather than deposits. David Vélez said in early 2025 that becoming a primary bank account means getting licences and connecting to local parties, which is why internationalisation had been slow. Monzo would give Nubank one of Britain's ten largest banks with 16 million customers, plus an EU licence in Ireland.

Read more: Monzo in talks about multibillion pound sale to Brazil's Nubank

Stablecoin settlement went live across SoFi Bank's debit and credit card program last week, six months after SoFi and Mastercard announced the partnership. SoFi is migrating the whole program, more than $25 billion in annualized volume, onto SoFiUSD, a stablecoin SoFi Bank issues itself. Merchants do not have to hold stablecoins or change how they operate. Settlement funds arrive in a SoFi Bank account through its Big Business Banking platform, and merchants can withdraw cash around the clock at no cost.

Visa had more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs live in its fiscal second quarter, and stablecoin settlement volume passed a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times higher than a year ago. SoFi is putting $25 billion of card volume through stablecoin settlement in one program. Its cardholders never touch a stablecoin, because only the settlement leg between the bank, Mastercard and the merchant moved onchain, and SoFi says it is talking to large US retailers about doing the same.

Read more: SoFi Becomes First National Bank to Go Live with Stablecoin Settlement

Affirm partnered with Amazon UK last week, offering a 0% APR pay-in-3 and an interest-bearing installment loan running up to 48 months. Amazon is the credit broker rather than the lender, and it names Affirm as one of a small panel of lenders. The FCA started regulating UK buy now, pay later on 15 July, and both Affirm products are regulated credit agreements. Amazon will offer Affirm to all eligible UK shoppers over the next few weeks.

Affirm has been a payment option on Amazon in the US since 2021, and it is now following that relationship abroad. It did the same with Shopify, entering the UK last December and Australia in August. Affirm is expanding through merchants it already has rather than signing local ones, and Amazon alone runs stores in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Australia. Affirm still tells investors that business outside North America will not contribute materially to its fiscal 2027 guidance of more than $64 billion in GMV.

Read more: Amazon and Affirm partner to offer UK customers new instalment options