Why the next phase of stablecoin payments is all about user relationships and distribution

You can’t have missed the stablecoin vibe. While bitcoin BTC$66,820.85 and the rest of the crypto market are in the doldrums after falling from record highs in October, everyone else is talking about issuing tokens whose value is fixed, pegged to a real-world asset. Mostly the dollar.

Not only the dollar, of course. This week alone, AllUnity, a German joint venture between DWS, Galaxy, and Flow Trader, issued a Swiss franc-based token (CHFAU) and SBI Holdings and Startale Group introduced a yen version (JPYSC). Earlier this month, Agant said it’s working on a pound stablecoin, and Hong Kong said it plans to start handing out stablecoin licenses in March.

Then there’s the revelation that Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta (META) is looking to add stablecoin-based payment capabilities early in the second half of the year. The company famously tried and failed to introduce the Libra stablecoin, renamed Diem in 2019, in the face of stiff opposition from lawmakers and regulators.

But Meta’s proposed return to stablecoin-based payments later this year bears little comparison with Libra/Diem, according to the co-creator of Libra, Christian Catalini, who is now a professor at MIT and the founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab.

What’s different now, says Catalini, is that stablecoins are fading into the background, offered by multiple providers and becoming part of the payments infrastructure. The once-hyped businesses of stablecoin issuance and orchestration, or the coordination of payments across different blockchains and conversion between token and fiat for payment purposes, are becoming a commodity, he said.

“Not just Meta, but also Google, Apple, all of them will be using multiple providers, as is the case when they do disbursements of payments,” Catalini said in an interview with CoinDesk. “So I would expect the market to be commodified in the future, rather than a branded stablecoin. In a sense, it’s a sign that the market has matured.”

This sentiment was also voiced by Meta’s VP of communications, Andy Stone, who said the move to bring stablecoin payments back was simply “about enabling people and businesses to make payments on our platforms using their preferred method.”

Billions of users

The real competitive advantage in stablecoins, the moat that holds competitors at bay, now lies in distribution, said Catalini. Whoever owns the direct relationship with the end user will capture the most value. And Meta has billions of users across Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, almost 3.6 billion according to its most recent earnings report.

The focus on contacts and reach is a marked change from accruing value by delivering stablecoins to a wallet, or going from fiat to crypto and then back to fiat — the so-called stablecoin sandwich required for regular payment transactions.

This change has started to play out recently, with news about companies walking away from acquiring stablecoin orchestration companies.

It’s also good news for incumbents such as the card networks, fintechs, neobanks and some wallet firms who have an advantage because they actually own the touch point with the end user, Catalini pointed out. Stablecoin payments threaten to cut the lucrative interchange fees payment networks like Visa and Mastercard claim, but the card networks have a significant advantage when it comes to distribution.

“If [the card networks] can commoditize the rails and commoditize the assets, they will be able to defend their business,” Catalini said. “The commoditization of the assets is inevitable — there’s going to be many stablecoins and many banks will want their own — so the rails are where things will get interesting.”

Also in the fray is Stripe, Meta’s long-time payment partner whose CEO Patrick Collison joined Meta’s board of directors a year ago and is a potential vendor that Meta might enlist for its stablecoin project.

The payments giant’s aggressive crypto power plays are not to be underestimated: Stripe bought stablecoin specialist Bridge for $1.1 billion last year, and has built its own blockchain called Tempo.

Still, Catalini questioned whether other firms will flock to a competitor’s blockchain, even if it’s purportedly a public network.

“If you are another big payment service provider, would you want to build on Stripe’s Tempo? Probably not,” Catalini said. “It goes back to the key challenge of making these networks truly open and neutral, which is the entire point of crypto. But of course, it’s a hard one to actually deliver on from a practical perspective, unless you’re building on something already established like Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Solana.”