Stablecoins are moving deeper into mainstream finance, but the market is splitting into separate systems that rarely communicate with one another. Visa, Stripe, Société Générale, Revolut and other major companies are developing their own infrastructure. According to Anton Titov, CEO of Plexo, this growing fragmentation has left the industry in a position similar to banking before SWIFT was created.
A joint analysis by McKinsey and Artemis estimated that businesses, consumers and institutions made about $390 billion in genuine stablecoin payments in 2025. That represented only 0.02% of global payment volume. The calculation excluded exchange trading, internal transfers and other on-chain activity, focusing instead on payments with an identifiable economic purpose.
The small share does not mean the technology lacks momentum. The harder problem is that stablecoins live on different blockchains, come from different issuers and operate under different rules. Banks and payment companies cannot automatically transfer value between those systems. A payment may begin in USDC on Solana and need to arrive as USDT on Ethereum, with separate liquidity, compliance and settlement requirements at every step.
Why the Biggest Stablecoin Players Stay Apart
Titov argues that the largest companies have little economic reason to make their networks fully interoperable. Visa has built its own stablecoin platform, while Stripe and Paradigm developed the Tempo blockchain. Société Générale, Revolut, AllUnity, Western Union and the Qivalis consortium are also pursuing their own products.
Each project can improve payments inside its own ecosystem. The difficulty begins when money must leave that ecosystem. FORECK.INFO previously covered how the Visa platform gives banks easier access to custody, conversion and transfers. That distribution is useful, but it does not create a common layer between every issuer, chain and regulated financial institution.
Plexo is trying to build such a neutral coordination layer for banks, payment service providers and on/off ramps. Participants would be able to find counterparties, reuse compliance attestations and coordinate a payment without Plexo holding customer funds. The institutions would still verify one another and settle through the blockchain, fiat rail or liquidity provider they choose.
Tempo describes itself as neutral and permissionless and includes a decentralized exchange for stablecoins. Yet an exchange inside one blockchain does not solve market-wide interoperability across independent networks, issuers, fiat systems and compliance regimes.
Tether and Circle Have Little Reason to Cooperate
The rivalry between Tether and Circle shows why a neutral layer is difficult to build from inside a single issuer. USDT and USDC both track the US dollar, but their distribution differs. USDT has a strong position in emerging markets, while USDC has focused more heavily on regulated institutions.
If Circle wants to reach a market where USDT is already dominant, Tether has little reason to make that expansion easier. The same logic works in reverse. Even an open technical system can strengthen an incumbent by letting users reach other networks without changing their preferred stablecoin or infrastructure. Smaller providers then face an expensive choice: support many separate connections or commit to one dominant network.
Stablecoins Are Still in a Pre-SWIFT Era
Before 1973, international banks relied on Telex messages, manual checks and inconsistent formats. A group of 239 banks from 15 countries then created SWIFT. The organization did not move the money itself; it supplied a shared, secure and standardized messaging system.
Stablecoins still lack an equivalent coordination standard. Different chains use different liquidity pools and compliance processes. Rules for KYC, anti-money-laundering checks and reporting also vary by institution and jurisdiction. Titov describes the result as skyscrapers without roads: impressive systems have been built, but the connections between them remain weak.
Western Union or Qivalis may be able to settle transfers quickly inside their own environments. That does not mean either system can exchange value smoothly with Circle, Visa or an unrelated bank network. Internal speed should therefore be separated from genuine interoperability across the wider market.
Fewer Correspondent Banks, More Demand for Alternatives
The problem matters most where traditional cross-border payments are expensive or difficult to access. BIS data show that the number of active correspondent banking relationships has declined since 2011. Stablecoins increasingly offer an alternative in emerging markets, where sending money through conventional banking channels can involve high fees and long delays.
Visa launched its stablecoin platform in July 2026 for a limited group of clients. Its main advantage may be the company's distribution, trust and compliance experience rather than a new technical breakthrough. Banks can use a familiar provider instead of connecting separately to infrastructure companies and individual issuers. That can speed adoption, although it may also create another closed system.
Banks Could Manage Dozens of Digital Euros
If every bank, fintech and payment company issues a separate token, treasury teams may eventually have to manage dozens of digital euros or dollars, each with its own liquidity and settlement point. The operational burden could resemble the fragmented payment landscape that existed before common banking standards.
The market is therefore approaching a choice. Proprietary networks can continue expanding on their own, or neutral coordination standards can connect them without forcing participants to give up their commercial relationships. Stablecoins have already proved that money can move quickly on-chain. Their next challenge is making that movement work reliably across the entire financial system.
