Stablecoins at $44.7T: Signals You Cannot Ignore

Visa's data indicates that stablecoin transactions hit $44.7T over the last 12 months, and money rarely sprints that far unless it has found a faster track. I am not in the prophecy business, yet scale like this usually means a technology has crossed from novelty to infrastructure.

What does the $44.7T actually represents?

It is not a single use case, it is an aggregation of many, exchange and market maker flows, B2B supplier payments, cross border treasury sweeps, remittances, merchant settlement, on chain prime brokerage, consumer transfers, and an emerging class of agentic, API driven payments. A portion is still crypto native liquidity cycling between venues, but an increasingly meaningful slice is economic activity that used to sit on SWIFT, card settlement, and correspondent rails. Think of it as the internet’s cash ledger, always on, composable, and increasingly enterprise grade.

Why usage keeps compounding?

I see four flywheels working together.

1. Cost and speed, on corridors where intermediaries stack fees and delays, stablecoins deliver minutes, not days, and cents, not basis points that turn into dollars, this matters for merchants closing weekend cash, for SMEs juggling working capital, and for treasurers sweeping balances after cut off.

2. Dollar access, in markets where USD is scarce or rationed, dollar stablecoins act as elastic working capital and a de facto unit of account, invoices, payroll buffers, and supplier prepayments gravitate to whatever settles reliably, the digital dollar does.

3. Developer preference, settlement that is programmable wins mindshare, a single SDK can ship payouts to 50 countries without new bank integrations, every new app that toggles on stablecoin support increases acceptance, which pulls in more users, which nudges more apps to integrate, network effects are doing their quiet work.

4. Compliance maturation, custody, travel rule, KYB, chain analytics, and blacklisting capabilities have professionalized, risk teams who once said “no” can now say “yes, under these controls,” that governance scaffolding converts pilots into production.

How this shows up on the ground?

In my recent look at Sub Saharan Africa, on chain value received reached about $205B over a year, up 52%, with retail sized transfers under $10,000 accounting for 8% of value versus 6% in the rest of the world. Nigeria and South Africa drove institutional flows, and I saw regular multi million dollar stablecoin transfers tied to trade with the Middle East and Asia. That regional story rhymes with the global $44.7T headline, the top line is big because the edge cases are now everyday cases, savings, trade settlement, vendor payments, and remittances are quietly migrating.

Enterprises are not drafting stablecoin strategies for sport, they are reacting to customer pull and unit economics.

• Payment processors and PSPs want faster merchant settlement, lower scheme and cross border costs, and fewer chargeback disputes, stablecoin rails tick all three boxes.

• Banks see both defensive and offensive plays, tokenized deposits for domestic speed and control, third party stablecoin settlement for cross border reach, custody to anchor client assets, and on chain treasury services to keep big dollar flows in house.

• Platforms with multi sided markets, marketplaces, gig networks, creator economies, are adding stablecoin payouts because they clear globally and reduce payout fragmentation.

If whispers about issuers, like Tether, exploring multi billion raises at towering valuations prove directionally right, it is because markets are valuing not just token economics, but cash management businesses that sit on top of short term bills, redemptions, and transactional revenue. I am not claiming inevitability, I am simply noting that settlement volume tends to pull capital toward the pipes that carry it.

Where is the $44.7T is coming from though?

• B2B cross border, importers and distributors use stablecoins to prepay inventory and settle invoices, avoiding correspondent chains and weekend traps, treasury sees funds land in minutes, hedges can be timed to actual receipt, not hoped for value dates.

• Marketplace payouts, logistics, creator platforms, and software marketplaces push USDC or USDT to vendors and contractors, then offer auto conversion to local currency.

• Merchant settlement, acquirers pilot stablecoin settlement to move funds from acquirer to merchant faster, especially for international merchants who would otherwise wait days for cross border ACH or wire.

• Remittances and wallets, corridor operators route through stablecoins to compress cost and settlement time, then cash out into mobile money or bank rails locally, float requirements and pre funding shrink.

• Capital markets plumbing, tokenized funds and securities settle in stablecoins, investors subscribe and redeem 24/7, and administrators reconcile to a single, observable ledger.

What this means for people like us?

Payments and commerce teams can model three immediate impacts, time to cash improves by hours to days, chargeback risk reduces where push payments replace pull, and cross border cart abandonment falls when FX spreads are transparent and finality is quick.

Treasury can run always on cash positioning, codify policy limits in code, automate sweeps, and reduce idle balances locked behind cut offs, intercompany transfers move when business needs them, not when banks reopen.

Risk and compliance can instrument travel rule compliance, sanctions screening, and address blacklisting at the protocol edge, instead of retrofitting controls after settlement, the control plane moves closer to the payment.

Accounting and audit gain deterministic data, subledgers can ingest confirmed transactions with hash level evidence, month end close benefits from fewer suspense items, and external audit has richer, machine readable trails.

How to decide your posture

Not every firm should issue a coin, most should decide between three stances.

1. Accept and settle, take stablecoins in, convert to fiat instantly, and enjoy faster settlement with minimal balance sheet exposure, this is a gateway posture for merchants and PSPs.

2. Hold and operate, hold regulated stablecoins in treasury within policy limits, use them for vendor payments and intercompany transfers, treat them as cash equivalents with clear redemption processes.

3. Issue and integrate, for banks and large platforms, consider a white labeled or consortium model, or a tokenized deposit, to capture economics, keep client flow, and bake in compliance from day zero.

Each posture comes with decisions on chain selection, custody model, cold and warm wallet design, operational key controls, segregation of duties, travel rule partners, oracle risk, and incident response. The work is not exotic anymore, it is a checklist.

What could slow the curve?

There are real risks, issuer credit and liquidity risk must be governed, especially under stress, wallet and key management failures remain an operational threat, and policy can change the economics with a pen stroke. Fragmentation across chains adds complexity, bridge risk is non trivial, and user experience must abstract addresses and slippage or adoption stalls. None of this negates the trajectory, it simply determines which models scale safely.

The downside case here is that a major issuer mishandles liquidity during a stress event, policy overcorrects in a key jurisdiction, and flows pause while the market digests new rules, adoption resumes with tighter guardrails.

A brief link back to ground truth

When SSA can add $205B of on chain value in a year, up 52%, with retail intensity rising and multi million dollar stablecoin transfers moving trade, it illustrates why the $44.7T headline is not just trading churn, it is lived utility. In places where access to dollars is constrained, stablecoins fill a vacuum, in places where banking is mature, they shave days and dollars out of settlement. The same rail serves both realities.

I am not in the prophecy business, I read settlement tapes. At $44.7T, stablecoins are behaving like core payments infrastructure, available, composable, observable, and increasingly compliant. If you are a bank, a PSP, a marketplace, or a global treasury, the choice is no longer if you engage, it is where you plug in, how you control risk, and how quickly you move from pilot to production. The proliferation is not something to scoff at, it is something to harness.