A new campaign is taking shape across the global payments industry. Its goal is simple but bold. It wants every bank and every major fintech app to offer stablecoin accounts to their customers. Leaders in the crypto world, including US President Donald Trump's crypto czar David Sacks, Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong and founders of crypto start-ups, have all coalesced on this new frontier in crypto adoption advocacy.
The idea is not to replace banks. It is to plug stablecoins directly into the banking system, allowing all customers to hold, send, receive, and spend digital dollars from the same app where they already keep their money.
In a recent episode of the Tokenize podcast, Chris Harmse, co-founder of BVNK, explained that stablecoins are no longer a niche crypto tool. “Customers are starting to see this as money,” Harmse said. That one sentence captures the shift now happening.
The podcast, popular with people who work and build crypto infrastructure, is hosted by Andrew Van Aken, stablecoin lead at Artemis, and Anthony Yim, co-founder at Artemis.
David Adubiina
Stablecoins as a New Payment Rail Inside Banks
Banks already support multiple payment methods. They support cards, domestic bank transfers, and sometimes buy now, pay later options. Stablecoins can become another rail inside that stack.
Harmse described how enterprises are thinking about this shift. He said many now view stablecoins “as another alternative payment method.” Instead of asking what stablecoins are, companies are now asking how to use them.
In 2025, he explained that many companies issued requests for information and formal proposals. “2025 was really a year of RFPs,” he said. The focus has now shifted to implementation. “2026 is about going live.”
This underscores that stablecoin adoption is entering an execution phase. Large enterprises are hiring stablecoin strategy leads. They are selecting specific use cases. They are planning launches in targeted regions.
And importantly, they are not starting from zero. Stablecoins already process hundreds of billions of dollars monthly across blockchains. The infrastructure exists. The demand exists. What is changing is institutional participation.
Why Emerging Markets Lead and Developed Markets Must Follow
Stablecoin growth has been strongest in emerging markets. In countries facing inflation or currency volatility, digital dollars provide stability. Developers in Argentina, freelancers in Africa, and remote workers in Southeast Asia often prefer to be paid in dollar stablecoins.
Harmse illustrated this with a simple life example. “A developer in Argentina gets paid out in stablecoins. He needs to use that stablecoin to pay his rent, so maybe he sells it for local currency. He’s got a stablecoin-linked card attached to that wallet, so he spends it on goods and services," he said.
This comes only months after Sacks declared in an interview with CNBC that a time for both the crypto and banking industries to begin collaborating closely had come.
“We’re not going to have a separate banking industry and crypto industry. It’s going to be one digital assets industry,” he said in the CNBC interview.
“I bet you over time the banks will like the idea of paying yield because they’re going to be in the stablecoin business.”
The Infrastructure Challenge Behind the Campaign
Integrating stablecoins is not just about adding a button in an app. It requires secure wallet infrastructure, compliance systems, and connections to blockchains.
Harmse warned against shortcuts. Some companies tried to build stablecoin services by stitching together third-party tools quickly. But he stressed that a serious scale requires building a robust infrastructure. “There’s actually just no shortcuts to this,” he said.
Banks must handle know-your-customer rules, anti-money laundering checks, and regulatory reporting. They must ensure secure custody of digital assets. They must choose blockchains that are fast and low-cost.
Harmse also noted that blockchains must support high throughput if stablecoins are to compete with card networks. Gas fees must remain low. Settlement must be near instant.
The campaign to integrate every bank with stablecoin accounts, therefore, depends on strong back-end systems. Without them, trust could be damaged.
David Adubiina
