August 11, 2026

Three stablecoin developments bankers should know about

The Stablecoin Banker is a periodic newsletter keeping bankers on top of the stablecoin industry. I highlight top stories that are relevant to banks, with my insights and commentary to draw out the most important conclusions.

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"For years, I needed a bank with good product sense. One that grasped the possibilities of software and couldn't stand to see them stifled."

— Darragh Buckley, founder of Increase, announcing Increase Bank (July 29, 2026)

In This Issue

• Wells Fargo drops a tokenized deposit, and sixty Texas community banks push back
• Samsung, Western Union, and Remitly launched the same global dollar account in two weeks. None of them is a bank.
• A trust charter application and a $114 million bank purchase: sponsor banking is getting a new foundation

Plus, tidbits you may have missed in our Coupon Clippings section.

Sixty Texas Banks Take on the Tokenized Deposit Club

Wells Fargo will launch tokenized deposits for corporate and commercial clients, starting with a limited release this fall supporting USD-to-GBP exchange and expanding through 2027 to more clients, countries, and currencies. The product runs on the bank's proprietary blockchain, and Wells says tokenized balances carry the same protections as its other deposit products, though deposits booked at non-US branches remain outside FDIC coverage. Separately, the Independent Bankers Association of Texas named three fintech partners to build IBAT DTX, a tokenized deposit infrastructure for community banks: Rimark's Project CODA, a bank-governed settlement network; Infinant's Interlace platform for core integration and real-time settlement; and a permissioned blockchain platform from Privacy Lock. IBAT says that more than 60 community banks are supporting the initial pilot. Sources [Wells Fargo, IBAT]

My Take:

The big banks are placing multiple competing bets, and the overlap keeps getting funnier: Wells Fargo is an owner of The Clearing House which is sponsoring one of the three tokenized deposit networks with substantially overlapping membership. The Wells product leans international where Cari and Keystone lean domestic, but there is real overlap in what these networks might theoretically do. None of them is built yet, so the likeliest outcome is consolidation onto one or two after launch, with a small number of early adopters feeling the whiplash.

Wells Fargo's announcement is a nothing burger. Wells Fargo's product sounds a lot like Citi Token Services: possibly nothing more than a tokenized rebrand of an existing international branch network. The underlying problem is real. Banks with international branches often use SWIFT to move client funds on a gross basis, which means moving your deposits from the European branch to the Brazil branch of the same bank can take three days. But the root cause has nothing to do with blockchain. The banks simply never invested in the inter-branch accounting and operational agreements that would allow instant cross-border settlement. Tokenized deposits on a proprietary chain are one way to implement the fix. Well-crafted APIs sitting on top of each national branch's core ledger would do the trick as well.

Meanwhile, IBAT is trying to build the small-bank answer to all of this. That community banks have not organized a response to The Clearing House in 150 years, or to Zelle in 10, bodes poorly. But perhaps something is different now. To judge that, I look at three characteristics. First, whether the ownership model encourages adoption. Second, whether the governance model gives participants a real voice in the design and operation and defray lock-in concerns. Finally, whether the network is accessible to banks and non-banks alike, in order to bring volume and open new use cases early. Technology cuts across all three because differentiated choices on these dimensions require decentralized technology to avoid rebuilding a tokenized version of TCH or EWS.

Most tokenized deposit projects fail on at least one of these dimensions (see my writing in prior editions). In IBAT's case there are encouraging signs. Rimark appears to understand these issues more deeply than most: the published design of Solstice Protocol and Project CODA includes an ownership and governance structure that rewards early adoption with outsized influence while still protecting the voice of later participants, and an IP model that splits ownership between the company and its users. Then the press release immediately puts those benefits back in question by naming Privacy Lock as the provider of a permissioned blockchain platform. Infinant is in the mix too, and it already supplies a component of Hazel, the only other small-bank deposit token network built by Vantage Bank and Custodia. Curiously, Texas-based Vantage bank doesn't appear in DTX. The multi-vendor complexity will be hard to manage over time.

In addition, IBAT also has to contend with the reality that the payment system it intends to compete against strongly favors large banks. The hundred largest depository institutions originate more than 90% of all wires and ACH credits. A community bank's customers are overwhelmingly paying, and being paid by, customers of the largest banks. Two average community banks rarely have much to settle with each other, and the exceptions they do have — loan participations, reciprocal deposits — are already served by correspondents. A network whose founding model is community-bank-to-community-bank faces a higher hurdle than the larger banks in finding use cases that can deliver enough volume and value for the banks to integrate.

However, should IBAT find a way to build traffic on its network, DTX will be far more relevant to the average bank than Cari, Keystone, or The Clearing House. Watch what they publish on ownership, governance, and access, and treat those answers as more predictive of success than any feature list.

Everybody Is Building a Global Dollar Account - Except the Banks

Three companies launched dollar accounts paired with cards in the space of two weeks. At Galaxy Unpacked in late July, Samsung said it will add native stablecoin support to Samsung Wallet, potentially reaching more than 800 million new Galaxy handsets by default, and separately launched the Galaxy Card, a wallet-native US credit card issued by Barclays. Western Union and Rain launched Stablecard in 37 markets, expanding to more than 60 by year-end: a wallet holding USDPT, Western Union's dollar stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital, paired with a Visa card. Remitly began a phased launch of the Remitly Global Card, letting customers hold balances in dollars or USDC, with Lead Bank issuing the card and Stripe powering the wallet. Visa reported $3.7 billion of stablecoin-linked card volume over the past year. Sources [CoinDesk, PYMNTS, GeekWire, IBS]

My Take:

Remitly and Western Union are running the play I described in June when Deel and MoneyGram launched their coins. The companies built to move money around the world outside of SWIFT are now adding a global deposit product using stablecoins, with local utility supplied by the card rails.

Remitly's version is built on Stripe's stablecoin products with card issuance at US-based Lead Bank. This is important because in the past, building card products for an international user base required finding an issuing bank in every jurisdiction to serve customers. Rain broke this model with a multi-jurisdictional Visa issuing license and an appetite to serve users worldwide. It may have required an upstart like Rain to show what's possible, but the reality has always been that any bank can issue cards to global users, provided it is willing to take on the perceived risk of onboarding foreigners.

Western Union went with Rain and, like Deel and MoneyGram, is issuing its own coin. USDPT brings reserve yield to Western Union, which it can spend on incentives to acquire and hold customers. The yield prohibition in GENIUS, and the proposed extension in CLARITY, will hinder that only slightly. Western Union can still route the revenue from its coin back to customers as subsidies and bonuses.

Samsung follows the same pattern from the hardware side. The company is putting stablecoin support into a wallet that ships on hundreds of millions of handsets, and it now issues a card against that same wallet through Barclays. The two products are siloed today — the card is US-only and appears to run off of a traditional deposit account — but Samsung is one step away from a dollar stablecoin balance plus a card, internationally, on a device that ships with the wallet already installed.

Stepping back, I want to point out a dramatic shift in financial market structure that stablecoins are bringing about. Ten years ago, a dollar balance for a customer in Buenos Aires or Manila would have been created by a local bank as a eurodollar: a dollar liability of a local bank, backed by the bank's balance sheet, which might hold some or no US dollar assets. Stablecoins invert this structure. The balance the customer holds is issued against reserves that sit in US bank deposits and US Treasuries, onshore and inside the perimeter. The offshore dollar market is measured in trillions, and every dollar of it that converts into a stablecoin balance is a dollar of funding and assets repatriated. That is a large part of why US policymakers are so enthusiastic about a product whose demand is almost entirely foreign - they essentially convert foreign USD deposit balances, backed only by the balance sheet of the issuing bank, into balances that are 100% backed by true US dollar assets.

For bankers: most US bankers will read this as more international use cases that ring hollow at home. Look instead at where the money actually lands. Remitly's choice of Lead brings the international use case back to a US bank balance sheet, which is a template any bank could copy. USDPT brings deposits to its reserve banks, and I've written about how few banks can credibly bid for that business. The customer-facing half of this is a different matter. Being the institution that converts dollars to stablecoins and back, for people and businesses that need both, is open to any bank that decides to offer it.

The New Fintech Sponsor Bank Model Emerges

Two companies that build banking infrastructure for fintechs moved to hold their own licenses. Dakota, a money services business applied for a national trust bank charter covering digital asset custody and stablecoin issuance. The charter permits no deposit-taking, and Dakota continues to rely on Lead Bank for insured deposits. Separately, Increase launched Increase Bank, built on $114 million Twin City Bank of Longview, Washington which founder Darragh Buckley bought in 2025. Sources [Banking Dive, American Banker, Increase]

My Take:

Sponsor banking is getting a new foundation, and the companies pouring it used to rent the foundation of BaaS 1.0.

Dakota's application looks like many of the digital asset trust charters that came before it. The difference is in how the company is positioned to use it. Dakota's website lists use cases for launching a neobank, managing agentic payments, global payments, and embedded finance, a very different list from what you see from other trust charter applicants, who mostly talk about digital assets activities for the crypto industry. Combine a trust charter with the new regulatory structures now under construction, including the Fed's proposed payments account, and you get a fintech foundation that competes directly with the traditional pairing of a depository sponsor bank and a middleware provider.

Increase went the other direction and bought the license rather than applying for one. Buckley was blunt about why: he wanted "a bank with good product sense. One that grasped the possibilities of software and couldn't stand to see them stifled." Apparently, he did not get that from the company's existing sponsor banks, Grasshopper, Core, or First Internet Bank of Indiana. Incidentally, Grasshopper announced its stablecoin product with Increase in July, so Increase must have a strategy for managing the conflict of interest presented by owning its own BaaS bank while trying to serve others with middleware.

Increase is already doing things differently. Unlike most of its competitors, Increase publishes a rate card — $15 wires, $2.50 for RTP and FedNow, $0.50 next-day ACH — with the monthly platform fee and a handful of other items reserved for a sales call. Banks almost never do this. Increase and Dakota are pursuing similar strategies on different infrastructure, with Dakota leaning into the possibilities of novel regulatory structures. Knowing Increase's price schedule leads me to wonder whether Dakota can offer competitive economics on its own new stack which will rely on tokenized money for many of its products instead of a traditional bank.

In the last issue I wrote that stablecoin reserve banking is the business every bank wants and only a few can realistically serve. This is the same story one stage further along. Many sponsor banks still treat the business as an easy way to pick up deposits, but competition is already compressing those margins. Fintechs have wised up. They are skeptical of their sponsor's commitment to the business, they discriminate on ease of use, and they want features that most banks have not built. A bank that expects to win in sponsor banking with ACH and a savings account is misreading the market. Buckley stated his terms plainly: Increase is competing on product. Sponsor banks that can't compete on product (i.e. most of them) will be left competing on price. Fixing that means confronting why it's true, and Buckley named it: banks stifle the possibilities of software because they lack product sense. Technology and regulation add drag, but the root cause is cultural, and culture is the hardest thing to change. It's also not abstract: simply track the number of weeks it takes to onboard a partner or to give them a concrete answer when they request a new feature. Those numbers are the whole strategy.

Coupon Clippings

CLARITY Gets Its Procedural Foot in the Door

As expected, CLARITY missed the deadline for Senate consideration before the body left on its summer recess. But early on Saturday, August 8, after an overnight voting marathon, majority leader John Thune filed a motion to proceed on the bill, starting the cloture process and teeing up an initial procedural vote almost immediately after the Senate returns in September. The bill still needs 60 votes, which means at least ten Democrats, and stablecoin rewards remain one of several unresolved disagreements, alongside a revised government-ethics proposal that has sat unanswered at the White House for more than a week. The practical read for anyone sequencing a digital asset roadmap is that the September window just got wider, not narrower: the Senate returns on September 14, and senators need only a handful of days across their three weeks in session to finish the voting process. Until it passes, GENIUS remains the law and stablecoin rewards programs remain a green light. Sources [CoinDesk, CoinDesk]

The OCC Says No, Out Loud

In a letter dated July 22, the OCC denied Wise's application for a national trust bank charter, citing deficiencies in the company's BSA/AML program, prior consent orders, weak management, and more. It appears to be the first publicized denial of the current charter wave, and Wise says it will reapply under a GENIUS Act framework. This is proof the OCC is not rubber-stamping, and it is the agency making good on the commitment it published on June 17 to make all denial decisions public "in order to provide the industry and all applicable stakeholders awareness of how the OCC has applied the decision criteria." Banking regulation still rests on substantial regulator judgment, and letters like this one are how applicants learn not just the letter of the law but the intent behind it and the expectations of the examiner. [Full Story]

The Bank of England Draws the Line the Senate Can't

The Bank of England finalized its regime for systemic sterling stablecoins with a temporary cap of £40 billion per coin, backing assets split 70% short-term gilts and 30% unremunerated deposits at the central bank. They backed off the prior individual and business holding limits. On yield, the BoE aligned with existing industry practice: systemic stablecoins may not pay interest to holders, but "activity-based rewards and other benefits or incentives that are consistent with the use of a stablecoin as a means of payment" are permitted. Unlike the US GENIUS framework, the BoE specifically requires issuers to hold reserves in non-interest bearing accounts at the Bank. This removes bank risk from the liquid deposit portion of the reserve, at the cost of yield. The US doesn't currently permit issuers to hold reserves at the Fed, but the Fed's proposed Payments Master Account, which has a proposed $500 million limit and would not pay interest, could allow a similar outcome. The bottom line is that policymakers are increasingly supportive of the industry's approach to yield, and are weaving stablecoins into the foundational infrastructure of the fiat economy. [Full Story]

Cloudflare Issues the Account Numbers Now

On August 4 Cloudflare launched Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay: any account can claim a human-readable handle backed by an Account Wallet holding stablecoins, and can issue spend-capped Virtual Wallets to individual AI agents that pay per request over the x402 protocol. In July I covered Cloudflare's Monetization Gateway, which put a toll booth in front of roughly a fifth of the web's servers. This is the other half of the machine: the wallet that pays the toll, the identity attached to it, and the spending controls that make an account owner willing to let software transact on their behalf. The company originally supported x402 as a means to collect payment from AI-powered scrapers, but the increased investment in both buy and sell-side infrastructure begs the question of whether Cloudflare will expand into a full-fledged merchant payments servicing business by leveraging its existing commercial relationships to add user-facing payment flows. Once again, I want to point out how the infrastructure for stablecoin commerce is quietly being rolled out everywhere: digital wallets, payments companies, ecommerce platforms. This is the build out that could be the gunpowder that fires to create exponential adoption. Of course, banks have largely sat out so far while companies like Cloudflare, Stripe, Visa/Mastercard, and PayPal are prepared to take over the flows that currently run through the banking layer. [Full Story]

Thanks for reading. If you don't hear from us for a bit, don't worry—we'll be back when there's something important to share.

Omnia is a provider of stablecoin infrastructure for banks that want to capture growing demand for stablecoins. If you're interested in learning more about us, please get in touch.

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