June 20, 2025

4.5 Stablecoin developments bankers should know about

Welcome to the latest edition of The Stablecoin Banker, a periodic newsletter from the team at Omnia to help the banking community stay on top of the most relevant stories in the stablecoin industry. We highlight top stories that are relevant to banks, with our insights and commentary to draw out the most important conclusions.

If you have questions about stablecoins for your bank, simply hit reply. Omnia is a provider of stablecoin services for banks that want to capture growing demand for stablecoins.

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Before we get to the top stories, let’s check in on the public market’s view of the stablecoin space. Circle, which IPO’ed at $31 on June 4 has touched $211.87 in aftermarket trading on the 18th, up 40% on the day following passage of the GENIUS bill (see below). Coinbase was up 16%.

In other news, our CEO, Davis Hart, appeared this week on Visa’s Tokenized podcast to discuss recent news with Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, and the founder of stablecoin offramp provider Beam, Dan Mottice.

That was the 1/2 development promised in the byline. Now, here are your four top stories…

⚖️ GENIUS Act Clears Senate

The Senate passed the GENIUS Act on Tuesday, June 17, with a 68-30 bipartisan vote, establishing the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoins. The legislation creates federal and state licensing requirements for stablecoin issuers, mandates complete backing with dollar reserves, and grants oversight powers to the Federal Reserve and OCC. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans despite some concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Key provisions include disclosure requirements for government officials with stablecoin holdings over $5,000 and enhanced bankruptcy protections for bank depositors. The bill now moves to the House, with supporters targeting passage before the August recess. [Full Story]

Our Take: After two years of legislative development, we finally see federal stablecoin clarity taking shape. While the House passage and presidential signature appear likely, the real work begins with regulatory implementation. While the bill restricts stablecoin construction in many ways, by serving a broad base of constituents and pushing off details to regulators, "Payments Stablecoins" will not all be equal, requiring banks to carefully analyze which stablecoins they engage with. Each stablecoin will require individual risk assessment. Omnia will help banks with this analysis, drawing on our experience with stablecoin issuance and regulation.

📈 From Walmart to Wall Street: Every Major Institution Wants Its Own Digital Currency

Major institutions are launching stablecoin initiatives to control payment infrastructure and reduce transaction costs. Societe Generale became the first major bank to issue a dollar stablecoin, while retail giants like Amazon and Walmart explore similar moves to cut billions in payment fees. The DTCC's institutional stablecoin exploration signals mainstream acceptance of digital currency infrastructure for core market operations. All initiatives await final regulatory clarity, as market reactions indicate both opportunity and potential disruption for traditional payment networks (Coinbase and Circle up strongly on the GENIUS Act news, while Visa and Mastercard stocks fell).

[Full Stories: SocGen Launches Stablecoin, DTCC Explores Stablecoin, Walmart and Amazon Explore Stablecoins]

Our Take: Early regulatory wins are accelerating institutional stablecoin strategies. Rather than adopting existing stablecoins, major players want to issue their own—likely driven by Circle and Tether's impressive economics. It feels increasingly likely that we are entering a Cambrian explosion of private stablecoins, where major institutions will try to leverage their consumer/commercial distribution to drive adoption.

The challenge: stablecoins derive value from network effects of both payors and payees. Without traditional coordinating forces, the market will fragment across multiple competing tokens, each pushed by their respective distributor-turned-issuer. We suspect that the next few years will feel very chaotic to outside observers. However, the open infrastructure nature of stablecoins means convergence will eventually occur - what Circle's Jeremy Allaire calls the "iPhone moment" - and will surprise those that have been sitting on the sidelines.

Banks face a strategic choice: wait for clarity or build foundational capabilities now. Those who establish stablecoin infrastructure today can capture growth from the current market and will be positioned to capitalize when market convergence arrives.

📈 JPMorgan's Public Blockchain Debut Signals New Era for Bank-Issued Digital Assets

JPMorgan's launch of the JPMD deposit token on Coinbase's Base network marks a pivotal moment in banking's digital asset evolution, representing the first major bank to deploy deposit tokens on public blockchain infrastructure. The bank announced a pilot allowing institutional clients to transact with each other on a permissionless network, while trademark filings for JPMD suggest broader trading and payments services ahead. This strategic positioning enables JPM to compete directly with crypto exchanges and fintech providers by offering institutional clients blockchain-based payment solutions that combine traditional banking stability with crypto-native efficiency. [Full Story]

Our Take:  JPMorgan's internal blockchain team has quietly built substantial infrastructure—Kynexis now settles $2 billion daily using blockchain technology for 24x7 settlement within the bank. The move onto Base is historic, though the permissioned deposit token limits utility to JPM clients only. The real opportunity emerges when deposit tokens combine with other tokenized assets, enabling 24x7 trading and bilateral settlement across asset classes.

This development highlights a critical strategic distinction. Deposit tokens serve institutional clients well but require bank customer relationships, limiting broader adoption. Stablecoins, by contrast, are permissionless—enabling universal access for payments and treasury management. Both serve different use cases and can be complementary.

With $250 billion outstanding and trillions in annual payment volume, stablecoins have become well-understood and demonstrate commercial demand that banks can serve today. Deposit tokens remain where stablecoins were 3-5 years ago in terms of the market understanding of use cases, regulatory implications, and business models. With the new regulatory environment, we are seeing banks tread into this space to explore what deposit tokens can do uniquely well.

Banks entering stablecoins now gain the technical foundation, operational experience, and market understanding essential for future deposit token opportunities while addressing proven customer demand immediately.

🔮 Stablecoin Payments Arrive for US Merchants

Payment infrastructure providers are positioning themselves for the emerging stablecoin payments market. Shopify's partnership with Coinbase demonstrates how stablecoins integrate into e-commerce while maintaining merchants' preference for local currency settlement. Meanwhile, Fiserv's infrastructure investments signal that traditional processors view stablecoins as a genuine threat to credit card interchange revenue. [Full Stories: Shopify, FiServ]

Our Take:

While major payment companies integrate stablecoins for settlements, domestic commerce transactions are rarely completed with stablecoins end-to-end. The moves by Shopify and FiServ make it easier for merchants to accept stablecoins, but what about enabling consumers to pay with them?

The Shopify/Coinbase partnership focuses on using Coinbase's Base network but remains silent on consumer enablement. Coinbase hasn't leveraged its 100M consumer accounts to promote blockchain payments for competitive reasons. However, if Coinbase eventually enables users to pay at stablecoin-accepting merchants directly from their Coinbase balance, these transactions would resemble account-to-account (A2A) payments—a method Plaid and others are aggressively promoting, and projected to reach $1 trillion by 2030 using existing settlement infrastructure.

With, A2A flows would be supercharged by underlying settlement that is instant and risk-free, significantly expanding the opportunity for A2A payments. With merchants moving purchases from card rails to A2A bank rails, their willingness-to-pay is substantially higher than what banks receive for supporting these flows on ACH.

Thanks for reading.

We focus only on the most relevant news for bankers, and so we only send updates when the news is material and relevant. If you don't hear from us, don't worry, we'll be back when there is something important to read, though at the current pace of developments, we might need to increase our newsletter frequency!

Best, Davis

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