Stablecoins are finally reaching product market fit in the West. While stablecoins have found considerable usage and impact throughout the developing world, the US, UK, and Europe have lagged behind in terms of true market adoption due to unclear regulations and the strength of the existing digital payments infrastructure, especially in Europe and the UK.
The new law installs the first federal license regime for dollar-pegged tokens, and Stripe’s partner Paradigm describes Tempo as a stablecoin-first network designed for payroll, remittances, marketplace payouts, and machine-to-machine use cases.
If 5 percent of that spend migrates to stablecoin checkout at a 10-basis-point all-in cost, annual merchant savings approach $8.8 billion. Under a lighter 2-basis-point network fee, 10 percent migration would free more than $17 billion annually. These figures ignore latency and FX benefits, which matter for cross-border.
Because issuers cannot pay interest directly, that yield funds compliance, operations, and partner incentives, while “rewards” programs at exchanges test how much, if any, gets shared with end users. The net interest margin captured by issuers, therefore, ranges widely, but even a 25 to 50 percent capture implies $20 to $40 billion annually if the float reaches two trillion.
Throughput projections anchor the network side. At $250 billion per day by 2028, annualized settlement volume would exceed $90 trillion.
That gap leaves room for value capture to accrue through account abstraction, fraud controls, and compliance services rather than raw transaction fees.
Winners and losers will depend on regulatory fit, fiat coverage, and enterprise integrations. USDC and EURC stand to gain from network and card-scheme settlement hooks that already exist, with PYUSD positioned at the wallet edge for consumer payouts.
Bank-issued tokens could attract B2B settlement where treasury teams want same-day cash accounting with bank guarantees, although cross-border coverage and developer tooling remain hurdles.
A near-term constraint is fragmentation, which Chainalysis tracks across hundreds of stablecoins, even as top-down flows concentrate in USDT and USDC. Visa and Mastercard continue building integrations.
Macro context points to a larger float even without consumer yield. TBAC’s July briefing modeled stablecoin reserve demand, adding to the front-end Treasury buyer base, and the GENIUS reserve rules lock most assets into cash and sub-93-day bills.
Superpriority for holders in bankruptcy reduces run risk for users yet may harden issuer resolution costs, raising barriers to entry. Compliance for sanctions and AML will add fixed overhead that favors scaled issuers and networks.
Those constraints reinforce why take-rates modeled above should be treated as ranges that compress as competition increases and why enterprise integrations, not raw throughput, will decide margins. Unintended consequences could box out smaller issuers.
The near-term watchlist is straightforward: Visa and Mastercard production rollouts for stablecoin settlement beyond pilots, the first Tempo-driven merchant and payroll flows, and Treasury’s implementing guidance under GENIUS on licensing, disclosures, and reserve composition.
If the McKinsey throughput path holds, the fee math and float math together explain why stablecoins are now competing directly with cards and bank wires on speed and cost, with $250 billion a day in settlement volume squarely in scope by 2028.
