Stablecoins Are Shifting From “Crypto” to “Payments”

For years, stablecoins were framed primarily as tools for crypto trading and decentralised finance. That framing limited institutional adoption.

What is changing now is who is issuing them and under what regulatory conditions.

A stablecoin issued by a regulated bank:

• Operates under capital, liquidity, and governance requirements
  
• Is subject to supervisory oversight
  
• Can be integrated into traditional payment and treasury systems
  
• Carries a different trust profile than non-bank issuers
  

According to McKinsey, institutional interest in stablecoins increases significantly when issuance and custody are aligned with banking regulation rather than operating outside it. This is why SoFi’s announcement resonated far beyond the crypto ecosystem.

Why SoFi’s Move Is Structurally Important

SoFi is not positioning SoFiUSD as a speculative asset. It is positioning it as settlement infrastructure.

This matters for three reasons.

1. Settlement Speed and Availability

Traditional payment systems are constrained by batch processing, cut-off times, and correspondent networks. Stablecoins operate 24/7 and settle near-instantly. For treasury, liquidity management, and cross-border use cases, this is not incremental improvement, it is a structural shift.

2. Programmability

Stablecoins enable payments to be linked to logic conditional release, automated reconciliation, or integration with smart contracts. While many banks explore programmability conceptually, few have production-ready rails. A bank-issued stablecoin closes that gap.

3. Cost Structure

By reducing reliance on intermediaries, stablecoins have the potential to lower transaction and reconciliation costs, particularly for cross-border flows. BCG notes that payment innovations which reduce intermediated settlement layers tend to deliver the largest cost advantages when scaled institutionally.

Regulation as the Enabler — Not the Barrier

One reason this launch is generating so much engagement is regulatory signalling. For years, the question was whether regulators would tolerate stablecoins at all. The question is now how they are governed.

SoFi’s approach suggests:

• Stablecoins can exist within banking supervision
  
• Public blockchains and regulated entities can coexist
  
• Digital money does not have to sit outside the financial system
  

This aligns with a broader global trend. Regulators in the US, Europe, and Asia are increasingly shifting from reaction to framework-building creating controlled environments for digital asset experimentation.

What This Means for Banks

SoFi’s launch raises a direct strategic question for traditional banks: If regulated peers can issue stablecoins, what prevents stablecoins from becoming another mainstream settlement rail?

Banks now need to evaluate:

• Whether stablecoins complement or compete with real-time payment systems
  
• How treasury and liquidity models adapt to tokenised money
  
• Whether existing core and payments architecture can support programmable settlement
  

Ignoring stablecoins is no longer a neutral choice. Even banks that choose not to issue will need to interoperate.

What This Means for Payments and Fintech Platforms

For payment service providers and fintech platforms, SoFiUSD accelerates an inevitable shift toward multi-rail payments. Future payment stacks will increasingly need to orchestrate across:

• Cards
  
• Real-time payments
  
• Account-to-account rails
  
• Stablecoins and tokenised deposits
  

Platforms that hard-code assumptions around a single rail will struggle. Flexibility and orchestration will define competitiveness.

The Real Challenge: Integration, Not Issuance

Issuing a stablecoin is the visible milestone. Integrating it safely is the harder problem.

Institutions must address:

• AML and sanctions screening on-chain and off-chain
  
• Reconciliation between tokenised and traditional ledgers
  
• Liquidity management across rails
  
• Auditability and reporting for regulators
  

McKinsey highlights that operational readiness, not blockchain technology, is now the primary bottleneck to institutional stablecoin adoption.

How FT Interprets SoFi’s Stablecoin Launch

At FT, we see SoFiUSD as confirmation that digital money is moving into the banking core. The future will not be “stablecoins vs banks”. It will be banks operating across multiple forms of money, fiat, tokenised, and programmable, within unified, governed architectures.

The institutions that succeed will not be the fastest issuers, but the ones that design:

• Vendor-agnostic orchestration layers
  
• Clear separation between business logic and settlement rails
  
• Strong governance, monitoring, and audit controls
  

Preparing for a Tokenised Payments Future

SoFi’s move is unlikely to be the last. As more regulated entities explore stablecoins, the pressure on legacy payment architecture will grow.

Institutions need to ask now: Is our payments and treasury stack designed to absorb new rails, or will each addition increase complexity? At FT, we help banks and fintechs design composable, multi-rail payment architectures that can support stablecoins, real-time payments, and traditional networks without fragmentation.

Book a strategy call to explore how your organisation can prepare for the next phase of regulated digital money.