Stablecoins as a Treasury and Settlement Question

This is the third of seven follow-ups, each taking one trend from our 2026 outlook and pushing past the headline into the part that actually changes how an operator runs. Trend #3 was that stablecoins have stopped being a thing your trading desk worries about and become a thing your treasurer and your head of settlement have to form a view on. The headline - "they are growing fast" - is true and almost useless. The honest test is narrower, and it has two halves: where does a fiat-referenced token genuinely beat the rail you already use, and where does it quietly break if you skip the controls around it? Run the claim through both and you get a verdict you can act on.

For years stablecoins sat in the same mental bucket as the rest of crypto: volatile, speculative, somebody else's risk. That framing is now out of date. A well-run, fiat-referenced token is not a bet on price; it is a way to hold and move value that settles in minutes, around the clock, without waiting on a correspondent bank's cut-off.

The volumes are no longer a rounding error. Industry on-chain analysis puts adjusted stablecoin settlement well into the trillions of dollars a year - Visa's public on-chain analytics dashboard, built with Allium, tracks the figure and it now rivals the throughput of established card networks once automated and bot activity is stripped out. Whatever the precise number, the slope is the point: this is settlement volume, not trading froth, and businesses are using it to move dollars and euros between parties.

So the claim on the table is not "stablecoins are big." It is sharper: a compliant stablecoin is a settlement rail, and like any rail it earns its place only where it beats the alternative. The rest of this piece puts that claim on trial from both sides - where it wins, and where it quietly fails.

Start with the case for. Stablecoins do not beat everything - SEPA inside the euro area is already fast and cheap, and a stablecoin adds little there. The advantage shows up at the edges of the legacy system, and it is worth naming the four places we see it land for clients.

Cross-border treasury movement. Moving value between your own entities across borders on correspondent rails is slow, opaque on timing, and priced unpredictably. A stablecoin transfer between two controlled wallets settles in minutes and is final, which is a genuine treasury improvement for a group operating in several jurisdictions.

Payout corridors into slower markets. Where the receiving banking system is the bottleneck, the World Bank still puts the global average cost of sending a remittance at over 6% - far above the 3% target. For payout businesses serving those corridors, settling the cross-border leg in a stablecoin and converting locally can cut both cost and the days money sits in transit.

Merchant and platform settlement. A marketplace or PSP settling to sellers across time zones runs into banking hours and weekends. Stablecoin settlement is indifferent to both, which matters when your obligation to a counterparty does not pause for a public holiday.

Liquidity routing and weekend cover. Treasuries that need to rebalance when banks are closed have, until now, simply waited. A stablecoin leg gives a 24/7 option to move working capital, which changes how much idle buffer you have to hold.

In each case the win is the same shape: speed, finality and continuous availability. Where your existing rail already has those, the case is weak. Where it does not, it is strong - and that is the first half of the verdict.

That is the half the pitch decks show. Here is the half they skip: the same rail turns into a liability the moment the controls around it are missing. Five questions decide which way it goes.

Custody. Who holds the keys, and how are client and corporate balances segregated? Holding a stablecoin balance for a client is custody, with all the safekeeping that implies. This is where a white-label crypto-fiat wallet earns its place - it gives you a controlled environment for balances and movement rather than a spreadsheet and a hot wallet.

Wallet and account design. A stablecoin balance has to live next to fiat accounts in your ledger, with conversion, reconciliation and a clean audit trail between them. If the crypto leg lives in a separate silo from your core, you have built a reconciliation problem, not a settlement improvement.

Monitoring and the Travel Rule. On-chain transactions still have to pass the same AML and sanctions scrutiny as any other, plus crypto-specific obligations such as the Travel Rule. Your monitoring has to cover chain analytics, not just SWIFT message fields.

Accounting and treasury policy. Someone has to own the policy on how much you hold, in which token, with which issuer, and how that exposure is reported. A stablecoin balance is a counterparty exposure to the issuer and its reserve, and it should be governed as one.

Licensing scope. Whether you can offer this at all depends on your authorization. If your model means custody or exchange of crypto-assets on behalf of clients, you are likely inside CASP / MiCA territory, not just your existing payment license. Map the activity to the permission before you build the product.

Miss any one of these and you have not built a settlement improvement - you have built a reconciliation problem, a monitoring gap, or an unlicensed activity. That is the second half of the verdict: the corridor has to be right *and* the control layer has to be there.

There is one more input to the verdict, and in Europe it is no longer a gray area. Under MiCA - Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 - fiat-referenced stablecoins are regulated, and the regime splits them into two categories that operators must not blur. An e-money token (EMT) references a single official currency; an asset-referenced token (ART) references a basket or anything that is not a single fiat currency. The single-currency dollar and euro tokens most businesses care about for settlement are EMTs.

That distinction is not academic. EMT issuance is reserved for authorized credit institutions and e-money institutions, and the European Banking Authority has issued the detailed standards that sit under MiCA's stablecoin titles. The headline for an operator is this: using a compliant stablecoin as a settlement rail is now a defensible, regulated activity in the EU - but issuing one, or holding client positions in one, pulls you into a defined perimeter with reserve, redemption and safeguarding obligations attached.

For most fintechs the relevant question is not "should we issue a token" - it is "can we use one inside our regulated stack, and what does our EMI or payment license let us do with it." That is a far more answerable question, and the answer increasingly is yes, with controls.

Put the two halves together and the same verdict reads differently depending on what you run.

For payment institutions and EMIs, stablecoins are a settlement and treasury tool that sits beside your existing rails - strongest on cross-border legs and payout corridors. The question is integration into your ledger and safeguarding, not speculation.

For crypto businesses, VASPs and CASPs, this is closer to home, but the discipline is the same: custody, monitoring and the VASP-to-CASP transition all apply to stablecoin balances exactly as they do to other crypto-assets.

For merchants, marketplaces and PSPs, the draw is continuous settlement to counterparties across time zones - useful, provided the conversion and reconciliation back to fiat are clean.

For founders, the trap is treating a stablecoin rail as a feature to bolt on. It is a regulated, custody-bearing capability. Decide the licensing scope and the controls first.

So here is the verdict, stated as two rules you can apply on Monday. First, use a stablecoin rail where the corridor is genuinely slow, opaque or closed when you need it - cross-border treasury between your own entities, payout legs into slower markets, settlement that cannot pause for a weekend. Do not reach for it where your existing rail is already fast, cheap and final; SEPA inside the euro area earns nothing from it. Second, in either case, do not route a client payment until custody, monitoring, reconciliation and licensing scope are in place. Stablecoins are not a bet you place; they are a rail you either operate properly or not at all. The rail is the easy part. The control layer is the product.

This is the third in a seven-part series expanding on our 2026 fintech trends. If you are weighing where a stablecoin rail fits inside a regulated stack, talk to our crypto team - we have done it across 100+ licensing and platform builds.

*Maxim Ivanchenko, CEO at Advapay*

• Read the 2026 shift as a verdict, not a hype line: a compliant stablecoin is a settlement rail, worth using only where it beats the alternative - and only with the controls in place.
• Where it wins (the first half): cross-border treasury movement, payout corridors into slower markets, merchant/platform settlement, and 24/7 liquidity routing. Where your rail is already fast and cheap (e.g. SEPA), the case is weak.
• Where it breaks (the second half): the same rail becomes a liability if you skip the five controls - custody, wallet/account design, monitoring and the Travel Rule, accounting/treasury policy, and licensing scope.
• MiCA settles the perimeter: single-currency tokens are e-money tokens (EMTs), baskets are asset-referenced tokens (ARTs); issuance is reserved for credit and e-money institutions. Using a compliant token is defensible; issuing or holding client positions triggers obligations.
• The verdict reads differently by business type - settlement tool for EMIs/PIs, core territory for VASPs/CASPs, continuous settlement for merchants - but the control bar is identical.
• Two rules to apply: use it where the corridor is genuinely slow, opaque or closed; and never route a client payment until custody, monitoring, reconciliation and licensing scope are in place.