DFC

Stablecoins and the New Payments Landscape Coinbase believes stablecoins represent the next major leap forward for payments and capital movement, particularly as it’s becoming easier for merchants and other entities to integrate this technology into their economic workflow – even compared to a couple years ago. Most recently, Coinbase announced a partnership with payments provider Stripe to offer USDC on Base for crypto payouts and on their fiat-to-crypto onramp, while Visa, Mastercard and PayPal have all launched their own stablecoin initiatives in recent years. Other notable mentions include Shift4, Nuvei, Worldpay and Checkout.com. That said, stablecoins require greater regulatory clarity and a smoother crypto user experience to more firmly establish the foundations for their potential.

The Future of Programmable Payments: Why CBDC and Stablecoins Need Each Other (LinkedIn) The Bank of Israel's Assaf David-Margalit posted a nice interpretation of the Bank of Canada's recently published "to tokenize or not to tokenize" working paper. Assaf argues that tokenized central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and regulated stablecoins should operate as complementary infrastructure layers rather than rivals. The Bank of Canada's paper's core insight is that a tokenized CBDC establishes a "technological floor" by offering superior collateral efficiency—eliminating default risk allows the central bank to support transaction volumes with lower collateral requirements, crowding out inefficient stablecoins through market discipline. Assaf distinguishes programmable payments infrastructure (capable of interacting with smart contracts) from programmable money (which would compromise fungibility), asserting that CBDC should provide the settlement layer while private stablecoins innovate at the application layer using CBDC as the reserve asset. [LinkedIn]