Why Stablecoins are Reshaping B2B X-Border Payments

This story was originally published on LinkedIn.

Hey LinkedIn friends,

Welcome to my new, monthly newsletter. While the topics will span many segments of our commerce focus, I’m excited to start with stablecoins. More specifically, we’ll discuss stablecoin-enabled B2B payments, one of the fastest growing parts of FinTech as we enter 2025. But before we dive into stablecoins, let’s start with some background on the broader market opportunity.

The Business-to-Business (B2B) cross-border payments sector has been growing relatively quickly for some time, driven by increased global trade, adoption of new tech-based innovations, and broader advancements in payments infrastructure. In 2024, this market accounted for approximately $32 trillion of payment volume, and it is projected to reach $50 trillion by 2032, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 5.9%.

The tech innovations underpinning this market’s expansion include the adoption of real-time payment networks (e.g. UPI in India, Pix in Brazil), proliferation of digitally-native payment processors and facilitators, blockchain-related / cryptocurrency innovations, and the adoption of software-embedded finance solutions. The rise of B2B e-commerce has also played a pivotal role, as businesses increasingly engage in international online transactions, necessitating efficient and secure cross-border settlement mechanisms.

What are Stablecoins and Why Are They Important to This Market?

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to an asset like the U.S. dollar, gold, or a basket of currencies. Unlike volatile cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are backed by reserves or algorithms that help keep their price steady (relative to their associated asset), making them an attractive potential medium of exchange and store of value. Today’s most popular stablecoins are USDC (by Circle) and USDT (by Tether), both of which are pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The adoption of stablecoins in B2B cross-border payments is accelerating, driven by fundamental advantages in terms of lower cost, faster (and persistent) settlement time, pricing transparency, and software programmability. Legacy bank transfers are the status quo, but they are substantially slower (days vs. minutes), more expensive ($10s of dollars per transaction), and often price-obfuscated (F/X rates often hide extra profit-taking by the financial institution or payment processor).

The stablecoin market currently exceeds $140 billion in circulating supply and is projected to grow to $2.8 trillion by 2028. Cross-border payments are one of the leading use cases driving their B2B adoption today, followed by treasury management, and other financial settlement transactions. To underscore this point, we have seen numerous, relatively young startups (months since launch) which are scaling at an astronomical pace and already processing very large volume across different layers of the eco-system (wallet providers/financial apps, stablecoin orchestrators, local settlement infrastructure providers) — below is a chart showing one example of each and their respective growth in 2024.

Illustrative example of 3 cross-border, stablecoin-enabled payments businesses growing explosively

As the chart highlights, these businesses are supporting the movement of $10s of billions of annualized volume. More importantly, they have grown to this level in just just a few months since their respective launches. Having invested in the payments space for many years (including category-leading startups like BILL, Forter, Marqeta, etc), we recognize that this pace of volume growth is almost without precedent…which makes the associated opportunities very attractive.

Exciting Investment Opportunities Ahead

As stablecoin-related regulatory clarity improves and demand for these capabilities continues to rise, investment opportunities in stablecoin-related innovators are attracting a lot of VC interest. Early pioneers like Circle and Tether (who currently dominate stablecoin issuance), Bridge (who was recently acquired by Stripe for $1B+) and BVNK (who recently announced their $50M Series B) have demonstrated the exciting opportunities for providing core capabilities in this space.

We also see a bunch of other opportunities in this emerging eco-system, including enablers of stablecoin issuance and custody (e.g. Paxos, Brale, m0), providers of distributed settlement liquidity (e.g. StableSea, RedEnvelope), stablecoin-related corporate treasury innovators (e.g. Dakota), cross-border stablecoin orchestrators (e.g. BVNK, Bridge, Conduit), analytics players (e.g. Artemis) and related financial app providers (e.g. global payroll, cross-border disbursements, stable wallets) like DolarApp, Felix Pago, Rise, Belo and others.

As stablecoin adoption continues to accelerate in B2B cross-border payments, we believe this sector represents one of the most compelling investment opportunities in FinTech today. The rapid scaling of stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure, combined with the inefficiencies of legacy banking rails, creates an enormous market ripe for disruption. While regulatory frameworks are still evolving, the fundamental advantages of stablecoin-based transactions — speed, cost efficiency, transparency, and programmability — are too significant to ignore. Investors who recognize this shift early have the potential to back the next wave of category-defining companies.

Stay tuned for our deep dive analysis on this theme (to be published shortly) and more posts to come from the Commerce Ventures team!

Thanks for reading!

Dan

Footnotes

• FXC Intelligence. “How Big is the B2B Cross-Border Payments Market?” Link
• “Stablecoin Market Cap Hits $200B Milestone, Could Double in 2025 as Adoption Accelerates,” CoinDesk, December 11, 2024. Link
• “Stablecoin Market to Soar to Almost $3T in Next 5 Years: Bernstein,” CoinDesk, August 9, 2023. Link
• “Tether’s USDT Surges to $140 Billion, Driving Stablecoin Market to New Heights,” AInvest, January 2025. Link