What are stablecoins used for?

Companies use stablecoins to pay suppliers and affiliates abroad. Payments between businesses (B2B) are the largest payment use. Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, put cross-border business-to-business payments at "around 60% of stablecoin payment volume", a volume that "amounts to just 0.01 % of global business-to-business flows". She added that converting into and out of stablecoins "incurs costs that can erode those gains" (ECB, May 8, 2026).

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) sees the demand where dollar access is hard: "Individuals and firms that face restrictions on accessing dollar-based international payment networks may find stablecoins particularly appealing for cross-border payments and trade settlement" (BIS, June 29, 2025).

In stablecoin settlement the stablecoin is the cash leg of a trade on a blockchain, and the asset and the payment change hands in one transaction. The ECB calls stablecoins "the default cash leg for so-called atomic settlement": either both sides settle or neither does, which removes settlement risk. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) adds a cost: smart contracts for atomic settlement may require participants to keep liquidity available at all times.

For banks the ECB sees a limit. Stablecoins can lose their peg under stress, so they lack the finality of central bank money. Tokenized commercial bank deposits "may in time prove preferable to stablecoins for many wholesale use cases", Lagarde said in May 2026. She also said the Eurosystem would offer settlement in central bank money from September through its Pontes project, which links DLT platforms to TARGET. For wholesale settlement, banks can compare stablecoins with tokenized deposits.

Stablecoins are used for cross-border payments, but the evidence for remittances is thin. The IMF puts stablecoin cross-border flows at about USD 1.5 trillion in 2024, a small fraction of a cross-border payment market that "approached a value of about one quadrillion dollars in 2024". Flows between emerging market and developing economies account for the largest share by value (IMF, December 4, 2025).

The ECB finds that over 70 percent of stablecoin flows are cross-regional, yet sees "a lack of concrete evidence that stablecoins are used systematically for remittances". The BIS names the users who gain most: people in countries with high inflation, capital controls or limited access to dollar accounts.

In crypto markets stablecoins are the preferred unit for trading and the way in and out. Around 80 percent of all trades on centralized crypto trading platforms involve stablecoins, and only around 0.5 percent of stablecoin volumes are organic retail-sized transfers (ECB, November 2025). The IMF estimates that approximately 80 percent of stablecoin transactions are made by bots and automated systems for arbitrage and rebalancing. The page what are stablecoins? covers how the tokens work.

In Germany and Austria a company that pays with an e-money token pays with electronic money: Article 48(2) of MiCA deems e-money tokens to be electronic money. The holder has a claim against the issuer and can redeem at par at any time (Article 49). Neither the issuer nor a crypto-asset service provider may pay interest on the token (Article 50), so a treasury gets no interest on stablecoin balances from either of them. BaFin supervises under the KMAG and, for e-money tokens, the ZAG; the FMA supervises in Austria. Euro-denominated stablecoins authorized under MiCA totaled around 395 million euros (ECB, November 2025).

In Frankfurt, Deutsche Börse Group and Circle announced on September 30, 2025, that they will bring the stablecoins EURC and USDC into Deutsche Börse infrastructure: listing and trading on 3DX, the digital exchange of 360T, and custody at Clearstream. The group expects lower settlement risk and costs for banks and asset managers (Deutsche Börse Group, September 30, 2025).

Switzerland is outside the EU. FINMA writes that the Anti-Money Laundering Act "is almost always applicable" to stablecoins. For stablecoins issued by supervised institutions, it requires "contractual and technological transfer restrictions" (FINMA, July 26, 2024). In Switzerland, stablecoins for businesses therefore come with identity checks on each holder.

This page gives no legal advice.