stable coins
By Pankaj K
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Five Friction Points, One Big Obstacle. The WTO study lays out five areas where stablecoins could genuinely move the needle in trade…
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Mastercard and Western Union Move Anyway. Major payment processors aren't waiting around for regulators to sort it out globally.
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The Regulatory Gap Nobody's Fixed. The WTO's core argument is that a coordinated global approach to stablecoin regulation could…
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Stablecoins aren't going anywhere. But they're not really going everywhere either — not yet.
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Juan Marchetti, director of the trade in services and investment division at the WTO, made that point directly during a speech in Geneva at the launch of the WTO's study on…
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The WTO report leans on data from the Financial Stability Board to make the case. An FSB report from October 2025 found that only 39% of 28 surveyed jurisdictions had actually…
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The WTO study lays out five areas where stablecoins could genuinely move the needle in trade finance: high costs, slow transaction speeds, limited access to financial services,…
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But those benefits aren't being fully captured. And probably won't be, until the regulatory picture clears up.
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What's frustrating is the growth numbers are there. The WTO report tracked a 35-fold increase in stablecoin transactions used for cross-border payments between 2020 and mid-2024.
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Developing economies sit at a strange crossroads here. They'd probably benefit the most from stablecoin adoption — lower remittance fees alone could free up meaningful amounts of…
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Major payment processors aren't waiting around for regulators to sort it out globally. Mastercard partnered with Borderless in August to pilot cross-border stablecoin transfers…
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Related: Bitcoin Stalls at $76K as 86.5% Rate Hike Odds Keep Traders on Edge
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Western Union moved too. It partnered with Rain, a stablecoin infrastructure provider, also in August, to roll out a digital wallet and a Visa-branded card.
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So there's clearly appetite at the institutional level. These aren't small players testing a fringe idea — Mastercard and Western Union are among the most established names in…
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The WTO's core argument is that a coordinated global approach to stablecoin regulation could unlock a lot of what's currently sitting dormant. It's not a radical claim.
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