Blockchain & Stablecoins are Rebuilding the Payment Stack

TL;DR

• Stablecoins already move real money, mostly behind the scenes: crypto trading pays issuers such as SG-FORGE, while B2B cross-border payments run at production scale in PSP back ends.
• Fragmentation is permanent: expect hundreds of stablecoins and issuer margins close to zero, which favours banks.
• Rollout order: B2B cross-border payments first, treasury management next, retail checkout last.
• Bank projects take about three years to reach clients, so the panellists urged incumbents to start now, with partners.
• There is no best form of digital money: stablecoins, tokenized deposits and central bank money trade counterparty risk against accessibility, and bank-by-bank tokenized deposits risk rebuilding walled gardens.
• The end state is open, but Kraken expects 24/7 US equity trading within 12 months to push market makers onto stablecoin settlement.

Speakers

Panel 1: Stablecoins in Practice: Where They Actually Move Money Today

• Stéphanie Cabossioras, Chief Strategy at Société Générale Forge
• Clarisse Hagège, Founder & CEO at DFNS
• Mark Greenberg, Chief Commercial Officer at Payward Services (Kraken)

Panel 2: Build or Buy: Should You Launch Your Own Stablecoin, or Just Use One?

• Severin Kranz, Head of Business Development at 21X
• Julien Clausse, Head of AssetFoundry at BNP Paribas
• Thibault Pelé, Head of Innovation & New Products at Worldline

Both panels were moderated by Raphaël Bloch, CEO of The Big Whale.

Panel 1 · Crypto trading pays the bills; B2B payments are where stablecoins scale

SG-FORGE came to stablecoins after tokenizing bonds whose cash leg still settled two days late. Of its three use cases (crypto trading, cross-border payments with Société Générale, and securities settlement with infrastructures such as Euroclear, DTCC and SWIFT), Stéphanie Cabossioras said only crypto trading makes money today, and an issuer without a business “at some point dies”.

Payments are catching up fast:

• Kraken signs a new PSP almost every week for cross-border payments over crypto rails, where most PSPs were reluctant a year ago (Mark Greenberg)
• At DFNS, PSPs are the largest client group and are switching rails in their back end without telling clients, while cutting prices (Clarisse Hagège)
• Banks run a three-year cycle (budget, suppliers, production), so the many RFPs DFNS received over 18 months should turn into bank offerings within about two years

Panel 1 · Fragmentation is permanent, and issuer margins are heading to zero

Almost all volume is still in dollars. Mark Greenberg, “a big fan of banks launching stablecoins”, prefers them to tokenized deposits, which cannot stop deposit flight from inside a walled garden. His reading:

• Issuer economics will drop to zero as stablecoins become interchangeable, rewarding those who earn on ancillary businesses, such as banks
• Payment providers should plan for hundreds of stablecoins in many currencies: “we only work in USDC” will not hold

Panel 1 · Infrastructure comes before adoption

Institutions arriving now want digital-asset rails integrated into their existing systems, not a separate stack, which is why DFNS repositioned itself as a core banking system. Clarisse Hagège compared the moment to the early internet, when standards battles and closed ecosystems such as AOL delayed adoption until the infrastructure worked. Stéphanie Cabossioras illustrated the effort with a Europe–Japan flow Société Générale is building, which needs wallets in each entity and a euro-to-yen conversion through fiat or a yen stablecoin: “if you are starting in two years, it will be too late.”

Panel 1 · B2B first, treasury next, checkout last

• B2B cross-border payments come first, because the counterparty does not need to know a stablecoin was used
• Treasury management waits for banks, since few treasurers will self-custody, although TMS providers are starting to add stablecoin rails and tokenized money market funds. Clarisse Hagège expects treasury to drive non-dollar stablecoins
• Checkout comes last: it needs wallets in consumers' hands, and “that part of the process actually kind of works” (Mark Greenberg)

Mark Greenberg added that users will never care how a payment travels, so POCs built on customers choosing “my stablecoin” inside a walled garden will fail: interoperability is the real task. Stéphanie Cabossioras noted that innovation now flows from retail to wholesale, the reverse of past decades.

Panel 1 · Start now and build with partners, because 24/7 equities will force the move

Mark Greenberg's advice to incumbents: start now, launch a live stablecoin rather than tokenized deposits that remain “mostly ethereal”, and work with partners, planning for components that do not exist yet, because “what you have written in your RFPs today will not be the end state”. His forecast: US equities will trade 24/7 within 12 months, and since banks cannot settle at weekends, market makers are already moving to stablecoins. Stéphanie Cabossioras expects the bigger gain to come from automated allocation of liquidity, freeing the capital now held as collateral.

Panel 2 · There is no best form of digital money

Julien Clausse, head of BNP Paribas CIB's AssetFoundry, framed the choice as a trade-off between counterparty risk and accessibility: stablecoins (private issuer, high accessibility), central bank money (no counterparty risk, lower accessibility), and tokenized deposits in between. They can be combined, with tokenized deposits along the value chain and a stablecoin for the last mile, but a €1 million bond would not settle in stablecoins. In wholesale markets, the stablecoin segment is still small and mostly crypto.

Panel 2 · Merchants want stablecoins for payouts and treasury, not checkout

Worldline sees demand for stablecoins rather than tokenized deposits, which Thibault Pelé regards as a bank's internal ledger. European merchants want stablecoins for payouts and B2B payments to suppliers, while acceptance at checkout interests mainly gaming, gambling and luxury. A global hotel group, for instance, prefers stablecoin settlement in some countries so it can move treasury out easily.

Panel 2 · Tokenized deposits risk rebuilding walled gardens

Severin Kranz warned that every bank is building “their own little garden”, while stablecoins move freely: the fix is a shared technology layer and standards. Thibault Pelé added that linking private chains through HTLCs is little different from connecting systems through APIs, so Worldline stays agnostic and routes each payment the best way. Julien Clausse's caveats:

• Settlement needs the security leg and the cash leg on the same network, and the tokenized security leg is still nascent: “we're not there yet”
• What happens before and after a transfer (accounting, KYC, tax) limits where stablecoins fit, and tokenized money market funds are the bridge for treasurers because they pay yield

21X, licensed under the EU DLT pilot regime, can settle in stablecoins, tokenized deposits or central bank money, and expects stablecoins to prevail as the most liquid option. Severin Kranz criticised European wholesale designs that keep balances on TARGET2: the market needs central bank money with the utility of a stablecoin.

Panel 2 · The perfect monetary stack, and the fragmentation debate

• Julien Clausse: “today it's fiat”, and tokenizing securities, then cash, “will take years”
• Severin Kranz: tokenized money market funds will become the way to settle, with participants staying invested 24/7
• Thibault Pelé: a global layer along the lines of the Finternet described by the BIS, and a Tesla lesson: build the charging stations, meaning bring the use cases along with the stablecoin

On bank stablecoins, Julien Clausse expects an explosion followed by consolidation, and sees bank consortia as suited to institutional markets. Severin Kranz warned that each private issuer fragments liquidity, taking the market “back in time, where a dollar wasn't a dollar”, and expects standards that carry trust and liquidity to emerge.

Conclusion

Miami showed a market that has moved from whether stablecoins work to how to build around them. Money already moves in crypto trading and B2B cross-border payments; treasury management waits for banks, and checkout comes last. Build or buy has no single answer, and bank-by-bank options risk recreating the walled gardens the technology was meant to remove. Both panels agreed on the key constraint, interoperability, and on the timing: bank projects take years, while 24/7 US equities could force stablecoin settlement within twelve months. The institutions that start now, with partners, will set the standards.