Digital assets and the future of money movement: where stablecoins and tokenized deposits are creating value today

For consumers and businesses, stablecoin and tokenized deposit payments offer faster settlement, lower friction, and new financial experiences. PaymentGenes Consultant David Nunez Corona discusses where these methods create value today, focusing on the underlying infrastructure rather than the retail products themselves.

For much of the last decade, digital assets were viewed primarily as speculative instruments. Today, that framing is becoming increasingly outdated.

Stablecoin transaction volumes reached approximately USD 62 trillion in 2025. Major institutions are no longer experimenting at the margins: JPMorgan has launched deposit tokens, Citi operates Token Services, and BlackRock is tokenizing investment funds. Payment-related activity, including cross-border transfers, B2B settlement, and treasury operations, continues to accelerate.

The conversation has shifted from digital assets as an asset class to digital assets as infrastructure.

For payment executives, the question is no longer whether digital assets matter. It is where they create value, and which parts of the payments stack are most likely to change.

Figure 1. Digital assets are shifting the payment economics battleground from acceptance to infrastructure 

Two instruments, one infrastructure

Two instruments are driving adoption today: stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

Figure 2. Stablecoins and tokenized deposits serve different needs within the same infrastructure shift

Stablecoins are privately issued digital currencies pegged to fiat currencies, predominantly the US dollar. They operate on blockchain networks and enable near-instant, 24/7 value transfer across borders. It is worth noting that in the EU, MiCA regulations prohibit stablecoins from offering interest to holders, a meaningful constraint on their attractiveness as a yield-bearing instrument relative to bank deposits.

Tokenized deposits represent traditional commercial bank deposits on shared ledger infrastructure. Unlike stablecoins, they remain liabilities of regulated banks and operate within existing banking and compliance frameworks. JPMorgan's Kinexys and Citi Token Services are among the most prominent examples currently in production. In practice, tokenized deposits are permissioned and wholesale: the regulatory and liability structure of a bank deposit does not transfer to open, permissionless infrastructure, limiting access to institutional counterparties with the compliance frameworks to support it.

While they differ in issuer, regulatory treatment, and risk profile, both rely on the same underlying foundations: programmable ledgers, continuous settlement, and automated transaction execution. The strategic significance lies not in the choice of instrument, but in what both enable: programmable, always-on settlement infrastructure that operates independently of legacy banking rails.

Where adoption is actually happening

Much of the public discussion around digital assets tended to focus on consumer payments. In practice, adoption is emerging elsewhere.

Cross-border B2B payments have become one of the fastest-growing use cases because they address a clear economic problem: settlement friction.

Today, international payments often move through multiple correspondent banks, liquidity providers, and foreign exchange intermediaries. Each layer introduces cost, complexity, delay, and forces counterparties to hold liquidity buffers that tie up working capital.

Digital asset infrastructure enables a different model.

The dominant approach is often referred to as the ‘stablecoin sandwich’: local currency converts to stablecoin at origin, moves across blockchain infrastructure, and converts back to local currency at the destination. The sender and recipient transact in fiat; the stablecoin is invisible to both.

What users experience is not a new payment method, but a faster and potentially cheaper payment. Transactions that previously required multiple intermediaries and several business days can increasingly settle within minutes.

This dynamic is particularly relevant in emerging markets, where local banking infrastructure may be fragmented and foreign exchange costs remain high. MoneyGram is rebuilding its full platform around the MG USD stablecoin for cross-border remittances, and plans to offer stablecoin-denominated accounts and payroll services for remote workers.

Treasury and intercompany liquidity management represent a second major use case, with corporates using tokenized deposits and blockchain-based structures to move liquidity across entities and jurisdictions with 24/7 availability, real-time balance visibility, and lower reconciliation costs.

Digital assets are not simply accelerating existing processes. They are beginning to reshape how money moves behind the scenes.

The convergence play

The immediate challenge is fragmentation.

Multiple blockchains, stablecoin formats, tokenized deposit platforms, and regulatory frameworks create complexity for adoption at scale. Legacy banking infrastructure was never designed for continuous settlement environments.

At the same time, financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and regulators are increasingly exploring architectures that bring these ecosystems together.

Figure 3. Digital assets reduce settlement friction and unlock trapped liquidity

One increasingly discussed vision is a unified-ledger architecture, in which central bank money, commercial bank money, and tokenized assets operate on an interoperable infrastructure. A corporate treasury transfer that today moves through correspondent banks with overnight settlement and manual reconciliation could instead execute atomically on a shared ledger, with FX conversion and reconciliation embedded in the same transaction.

The efficiency benefits are compelling. Settlement becomes faster, reconciliation becomes simpler, and liquidity can be managed more dynamically. That said, atomic settlement raises unresolved questions: if a stablecoin devalues mid-transaction or a partial settlement occurs, who bears the loss? Any institution building on these rails needs clear contractual answers before going to scale.

The challenge is governance.

As settlement infrastructure consolidates, questions around control become more important. The direction of travel is toward fewer, more dominant settlement layers — mirroring card scheme economics, where network effects entrench early leaders. What is new is that these layers are commercial and global rather than nationally governed: central banks once held a near-monopoly on settlement finality; private infrastructure is now competing for that function. European policymakers have raised repeated concerns about USD-denominated stablecoin dominance and dependency on non-European rails.

For regulators, the debate extends beyond efficiency. It touches monetary sovereignty, financial stability, and long-term control over critical financial infrastructure.

The next phase of digital asset adoption may therefore be shaped as much by governance decisions as by technology itself.

What this means for payments players

Every participant in the payments ecosystem is now facing the same question: which layer of the future infrastructure stack do they intend to own?

The organisations making the most progress recognise that this is fundamentally an infrastructure decision rather than a product decision.

Infrastructure decisions, such as settlement rails, ledger architecture, custody models, and interoperability standards, are difficult to reverse. Product decisions are not.

Figure 4. Key opportunities and risks across the payments value chain

For Tier-1 banks, the direction is clear: invest in tokenized deposits while building stablecoin capability. The open question is whether institutional demand consolidates around bank-issued tokenized money, open stablecoins, or both.

Regional and mid-tier banks face growing pressure. The risk is not immediate disintermediation but the gradual migration of treasury and cross-border relationships toward more efficient platforms.

For card networks, the risk is not that stablecoins replace card payments, but that settlement flows migrate outside traditional network economics. Visa and Mastercard's investments in digital asset infrastructure signal that both recognise what is at stake.

For PSPs and acquirers, the most significant opportunities lie behind the scenes: settlement, liquidity management, and cross-border disbursement. Stripe, Worldpay, and others are already moving in this direction.

Across the ecosystem, the competitive battleground is gradually shifting from payment acceptance toward payment infrastructure.

Conclusion

Digital assets are often discussed as a new payment method. Increasingly, that misses the point.

The most significant changes are occurring below the customer interface. Whether a payment settles via stablecoin, tokenized deposit, or traditional rail, consumers will experience the outcome: faster settlement, lower friction, and new financial experiences.

As settlement infrastructure becomes more programmable and interoperable, value will accrue to those controlling the underlying rails. But like card scheme ownership, that position will consolidate around a small number of players. For most banks, PSPs, and corporates, the more immediate question is not whether to own the infrastructure, but how to build durable value on top of it.

About author

David Nunez Corona is a Consultant at PaymentGenes, advising banks, fintechs, and global corporates on strategy and M&A within the payments sector. He leads PaymentGenes’ work on the Digital Euro and broader CBDC developments, supporting the firm’s research and market perspectives on evolving payment infrastructures.

 

 

 

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