Corporate CFOs explore stablecoins for faster payments and liquidity, but face challenges in compliance, governance, and regulatory uncertainty.
More and more companies are turning to stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies—to reduce settlement friction, compress working capital cycles, and lower transaction costs. Some are even considering launching their own. But for CFOs and corporate treasurers, their adoption raises issues concerning capital allocation, compliance, liquidity, and governance.
The migration is still in its infancy but gaining considerable steam, according to research from global professional services firm EY. In a study involving 250 non-financial corporations and 100 financial institutions, 8% of non-financial respondents have already used stablecoins to make or receive payments. Although a small percentage, more than half of respondents that have not used stablecoins in their business (54%) expect to use them in the next six to 12 months.
The study, published last September, covers a range of industry verticals, from manufacturing, technology, and health/life sciences to retail, transportation and logistics, and professional services, according to the authors.
Among the companies that have dipped their toes into stablecoins, professional service firms tend to have a higher adoption rate than the overall universe of respondents, notes Prashant Kher, managing director and leader of the digital assets strategy and transaction practice at EY and one of the study’s authors: “That is not surprising in the sense that consulting firms, law firms, and accounting firms have clients in this space who want to pay or be paid in stablecoins.”
According to the report’s authors, the top three use cases are payment for supplies, accepting payments, and cross-border cash management.
Not surprisingly, the main economic case for stablecoins centers on cross-border transactions. Stablecoins enable near-real-time point-to-point settlement, potentially reducing foreign exchange spreads, correspondent banking fees, and multi-day clearing delays.
For domestic transactions, the competitive advantage is less clear. Existing real-time payment systems like SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, FedNow, and Pix already provide efficient settlement rails.
“Whether it’s the US or Europe, they have a well-functioning payment system, and there is no need for new technologies,” says Peter Bofinger, senior professor at the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Economics.
Several CFO-relevant scenarios are emerging in live environments. Rebecca Carvatt, partner and co-lead of EY’s digital asset strategy consulting business, cites M&A, settlement, and the avoidance of port demurrage charges over weekends—costs that can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars—as practical examples. The underlying value proposition is liquidity timing: compressing settlement cycles to avoid operational penalties and reduce idle cash buffers.
Stablecoins have yet to exploit one cryptocurrency characteristic: the ability to program them with self-executing instructions, or smart contracts.
“Say I’m a supplier, and I’ve tracked my shipment to my client’s warehouse gate,” says Roy Ben-Hur, managing director, head of Digital Asset Financial Services at Deloitte & Touche. “Once the shipment is checked in and the payment is validated, payment can be issued automatically.”
This would create greater vendor-supplier alignment, he adds, since vendor payments are received faster when they are automatically credited to the supplier’s account than they are when the vendor uses traditional payments methods.
Corporates Take The Plunge
In recent months, several global corporates have announced they are dipping their toes into the stablecoin waters.
In December, Sony Bank, a subsidiary of Sony Financial Group, announced plans for a US-regulated, dollar-pegged stablecoin ecosystem in conjunction with Bastion Platforms, a portfolio company of the Sony Innovation Fund. The new offering targets Sony anime and gaming customers.
“Together, they will bring stablecoins to the mass market and set the tone for enterprise adoption of digital assets,” Kazuhito Hadano, CEO of Sony Ventures Corporation, said in a prepared statement.
Two weeks later, Intuit inked a multi-year agreement with Circle Internet Group to establish “a framework for Intuit to leverage Circle’s comprehensive stablecoin infrastructure and USDC across the Intuit platform.”
Reports that Amazon.com and Walmart are mulling their own stablecoin offerings have been surfacing since mid-2025, but declined to comment on their respective activities.
Driving much of the conversation, according to EY’s Carvatt, is the modernization of the back office, as many businesses look to move their enterprise platforms from on-premises to the cloud. Since enterprise platforms can last seven to 15 years, she notes, the migration has CFOs asking what their business will look like in 2035 and what structures, systems, and AI capabilities they will need over that time period.
“One thing I’m seeing from some of our clients, which we know are in the process of doing RFPs with new treasury management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, or payment service providers, is that they are now including as part of the questions what their capabilities are for stablecoins and blockchain payments,” says EY’s Kher. The easy plug-and-play capabilities provided by payments and treasury providers and core banking providers will be the big “unlock for these corporates and small to medium-sized businesses.”
To Build Or Buy?
The market capitalization of fiat-backed stablecoins reached approximately $365 billion in mid-February, according to CoinMarketCap.
Issuers Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) have reached market capitalizations of roughly $183 billion and $74 billion, respectively, tempting some companies to issue their own stablecoins. The business model is relatively simple: issue non-interest-bearing stablecoins pegged to a fiat currency and invest in highly liquid, safe assets.
However, the business model faces risks during a prolonged period of low, zero, or negative interest rates that erode the issuer’s capital, University of Würzburg’s Bofinger noted in his 2025 paper, “Stablecoins and the Future of Money: Economic Principles and Policy Implications,” published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research: “It could even create a vicious circle, as negative interest rates make stablecoins a more attractive store of value.”
The highest hurdle companies may face when considering issuing their own stablecoin is the regulatory uncertainty worldwide. In its Global Crypto Policy Review & Outlook 2025/2026, blockchain analytics provider TRM Labs found that among the 30 jurisdictions that represent 70% of crypto exposure, 70% are advancing stablecoin regulatory frameworks.
New technologies, like stablecoins, bring new risks to consider, says Carvatt.
“When we’re working with our banking clients and corporate clients, we focus closely on the benefits but also the new and novel risks with this technology, such as financial crime compliance considerations and the required onchain investigation capabilities that most banks don’t have today,” she says. “There are new risks associated with digital assets, but also new data analytics tools available to investigate potentially suspicious activity on-chain. As more retail and institutional users continue to adopt stablecoins and other assets onchain, it is essential to mobilize robust compliance capabilities and a comprehensive view of activity on and offchain.”
The US enacted the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act last July, and it goes into effect in January. The new regulations aim to create a secure framework for stablecoins and their issuers.
The law limits who can issue “payment stablecoins” to subsidiaries of insured depository institutions, federal-qualified nonbank institutions, and state-qualified institutions and requires issuers to maintain reserves backing stablecoins pegged 1:1 to the US dollar or similar liquid assets like US Treasuries. Additionally, digital asset service providers that the US Treasury Department deems subject to comparable foreign regulations can offer, sell, or make foreign-issued stablecoins available in the US.
The most widely circulated stablecoin, Tether’s USDT, is not GENIUS-compliant, because a portion of its reserves is in precious metals and Bitcoin and it doesn’t operate under the required federal oversight. To address the issue, Tether introduced a GENIUS-compliant USAT designed for the American market in late January. Circle’s USDC meets the Act’s initial requirements.
As corporates consider launching their own stablecoins, they “have to weigh the cost of all the effort around standing up for stablecoin, which means getting the licensing, compliance, establishing liquidity, doing all the reporting, following what will be enacted with the GENIUS Act—and that costs money,” says Kher.
Until regulatory frameworks mature, most corporates appear inclined to integrate with established issuers rather than build their own.