Stablecoins are now processing $33 trillion, surpassing the volume of Visa and Mastercard. Discover how the growth of this market is displacing traditional banking.
The dominance of traditional credit cards is under threat now that the stablecoin market has evolved from a crypto niche to a cornerstone of the global financial infrastructure.
At the close of 2025, this market reached a historic milestone with $33 trillion in transaction volumeofficially surpassing the combined figures for Visa and Mastercard in the same period. The data, revealed by Morph in its report “The States of Stablecoins” They point out that this growth, backed by a capitalization of more than $320.000 billion and a year-on-year increase of 49%, reflects a shift in corporate capital, which is beginning to prioritize operational efficiency.
Companies are accelerating the real-world use of stablecoins
The growth of stablecoins has found its biggest boost in the business-to-business (B2B) paymentsIn just two years, the volume of these payments has gone from negligible levels in 2023 to exceeding 6.000 million dollars monthly in mid-2025.
Currently, B2B activity accounts for approximately 60% of the identifiable volume of stablecoins in the productive economy. This shift towards corporate use of stablecoins demonstrates that companies are no longer seeking a safe haven, but rather... programmability of money to manage international suppliers and payroll without the frictions of traditional bank delays.
Colin GoltraMorph CEO, [name omitted], emphasized that organizations adopting these capabilities by 2026 will gain an insurmountable competitive advantage. From his perspective, organizations developing stablecoin capabilities will have a structural advantage in terms of cost and speed compared to those still tied to legacy systems. His statements underscore that it's no longer just about moving money, but about automating it.
Goltra's vision is realized thanks to infrastructures like Layer 2 on Ethereum, which allow stablecoins to offer a scalability and immediate purpose which the SWIFT system cannot currently match. With a 53% increase in active portfolios, around approximately 30 million users According to the report, the market has validated a model where automation through smart contracts is the standard.
Regulatory clarity is redefining the use of digital money
The consolidation of stablecoins as financial infrastructure is not accidental, but the result of a global legal framework that has neutralized counterparty risk.
According to the report, the ratification of the GENIUS Act in the United States It marked a milestone by granting these digital assets the same status and trustworthiness as fiat currency. This advancement, coupled with the maturity of MiCA in Europe and Stablecoins Ordinance in Hong Kong, has created a regulatory corridor that guarantees unprecedented safety standards.
In this new ecosystem, institutional adoption of stablecoins has gone from optional to mandatory. With transparent reserves audited by law, on-chain settlement volume already exceeds the capacity of traditional networks like Visa and Mastercard. By providing the sector with a robust compliance structure, regulation has transformed market perception: stablecoins are no longer a risky alternative, but a superior payment technology in terms of speed, cost, and purpose.
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Projections for 2027: Programmable money and AI agents
The outlook that analysts foresee for the remainder of 2026 and 2027 is one of even more accelerated change. Estimates suggest that the annual liquidation volume could climb to $50 trillion before the end of this year; growth that will be driven by the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) agents in the transaction cycle. Furthermore, experts predict that by 2027, autonomous agents will be the main initiators of transactions, using stablecoins as their native currency due to their ability to be fractionalized and programmed without the need for human intermediaries.
In this sense, stablecoins are seen as more than just a form of digital money; they now function as an adaptable infrastructure that connects systems and automates processes.
Faced with this competitive pressure, the SWIFT system finds itself at a crossroads. Morph's report suggests that the banking consortium may be forced to launch its own stablecoin settlement layer by 2027 to avoid becoming obsolete in the face of blockchain efficiency.
With an estimated market capitalization of $1,9 trillion by 2030, stablecoins will capture 10% of global cross-border payments, so the competition is no longer between cryptocurrency protocols, but between 20th-century financial architecture and the efficiency of 21st-century distributed ledgers.
In short, experts suggest that 2026 marks the year in which, for any company, integrating stablecoins into its technology stack is simply a matter of survival.
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