As stablecoins move beyond crypto trading into mainstream payments, their role in cross-border commerce, remittances, and decentralised finance is coming into sharper focus. Whilst it is clear that they speed up transactions and improve liquidity, they also carry regulatory, operational, and corridor-specific risks that deserve closer attention. In this interview, we spoke with Chris Mason, Co-Founder and CEO of Orbital, about where stablecoins are delivering real efficiency gains, where their impact is more limited, and how regulation will shape their adoption across different markets.
CHRIS MASON (CM): Stablecoins help address a major headache in cross-border e-commerce. They provide a single currency via a single integration, enabling merchants to sell into 180+ countries, with near real-time settlement, no traditional card chargebacks, and dispute risk compared to cards, without the need for card-style rolling reserves. That is a powerful unlock and is likely one of the key drivers of cross-border e-commerce accelerating faster than domestic.
CM: Stablecoins can address many of these challenges in cross-border remittances, but not in every corridor or use case. Where they provide real efficiency gains is quite nuanced and varies significantly by country and by direction of flow.
In some markets, local pricing for stablecoins and other digital assets trades at a premium to offshore benchmarks. In those corridors, using stablecoins as part of the payout flow can, in practice, improve effective FX rates and reduce costs versus certain traditional routes. In others, access to offshore dollars or hard currency to pay international suppliers is very constrained, and regulated stablecoin rails can offer an additional, programmable source of liquidity.
The key point is that the benefits are highly corridor-specific and depend on local regulation, market structure, the quality of the compliance, and FX and liquidity frameworks behind the solution. When these are done properly, stablecoins can be a powerful tool within a broader remittance and treasury strategy – but they are not a universal silver bullet.
CM: We see two related but distinct concerns: dollarisation and capital flight. In practice, much of the risk policymakers focus on is about unmanaged capital flows rather than the technology itself. Policymakers are right to be cautious, particularly in more fragile economies.
From my perspective, the key question is how to bring these activities within a clear regulatory perimeter, rather than leaving it in the grey market. Public blockchains are open infrastructure, which makes it challenging to rely solely on prohibition. In many cases, a more effective approach might be to establish a clear regulatory framework for both foreign-currency and local-currency stablecoins, with clear rules for issuance, reserves, AML/CTF and consumer protection.
Done well, this could increase transparency and supervisory visibility overflows, while enabling legitimate businesses and households to access an efficient cross-border payment alternative under appropriate safeguards.
CM: In many markets, the core liquidity challenge isn’t demand for dollars, but restricted or uneven access to them through official channels. When that happens, alternative FX channels tend to emerge, often at a significant premium to official rates.
Regulated stablecoin solutions do not magically create new dollars, but they can connect users to pools of liquidity that sit outside traditional correspondent banking routes, via supervised exchanges, market makers, and payment providers. In some corridors, this can make access to hard currency more predictable and, in practice, more efficient than certain legacy routes. The aim is not to replace official FX markets, but to provide an additional, transparent rail that can help ease frictions in accessing liquidity in the recipient country.
CM: In the first two months of Q4, retail stablecoin activity has returned to peak levels, suggesting the dip we saw in Q3 was temporary.
CM: DeFi today is in many ways a testing ground for building financial products on permissionless blockchains. Within that ecosystem, stablecoins play a central role because participants generally prefer to take market risk in the underlying assets, not in the unit of account itself. As a result, USD-denominated stablecoins are often used as the base currency rather than more volatile assets like Bitcoin or Ether.
In terms of use cases that appear to have the most traction so far, we see:
– Yield-bearing products, where users earn yield funded by other users paying interest on over-collateralised loans secured by their crypto holdings; and
– Decentralised trading venues, ranging from spot exchanges to derivatives platforms.
In both cases, stablecoins are typically the core settlement and collateral asset.
Important: The views and information shared here are for general informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, legal, or other professional advice. Authors do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the content. Products and services mentioned may not be available in all jurisdictions and are subject to applicable regulations. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult with a qualified advisor before making any financial decisions.
While stablecoins offer significant efficiencies, they carry risks related to issuer solvency, reserve adequacy, and evolving regulatory frameworks. Businesses should assess these factors when considering stablecoin adoption.
You can read more on how global trade is changing in our interview with Masha Cilliers, where she discusses the rise of B2B marketplaces.
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