The Digital Asset Primer: Stablecoin Staking for Payments Professionals

While cryptocurrency headlines often fixate on price swings and regulatory showdowns, a quieter revolution is happening under the surface: the rise of stablecoins as financial infrastructure.

As evidenced by Mastercard’s crypto-driven partnerships with OKX and Nuvei announced this week, digital assets are increasingly being integrated into mainstream finance. Mastercard’s “360-degree approach” to stablecoin use includes the merging of OKX’s expertise in crypto trading with Mastercard’s payment network, fostering broader adoption of stablecoins. At the same time, the company’s Nuvei initiative ensures that merchants can settle transactions in stablecoins, regardless of the payment method chosen by consumers.

Not to be outdone, crypto exchange Kraken introduced a solution Wednesday (April 30) to help financial institutions give clients access to crypto.

However, the story isn’t just about technology or economics. It’s also about design. How platforms use stablecoins — how they’re packaged, deployed and staked — is beginning to reshape how we interact with money itself.

Crypto-native users are already familiar with staking. You lock up your tokens in a protocol in exchange for yield. Now, platforms are adapting the concept for a broader audience and using it as part of their user acquisition strategies.

Read also: The Digital Asset Primer: Corporate Treasury Moves From HODL to Yield

Competition between stablecoin issuers such as Circle with USDC, Tether with USDT, PayPal with PYUSD and others is heating up, and staking helps create a financial incentive for people to hold and use a specific stablecoin instead of someone else’s.

Unlike traditional banks, stablecoin issuers don’t only rely on brand trust or regulation; they need user engagement. Staking can help provide that hook.

In contrast to their nominal crypto peers bitcoin or Ethereum, stablecoins aren’t bought to increase in value. Pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, their worth is designed to stay exactly where it is. In doing so, they have become the connective tissue of the crypto economy, the infrastructure layer enabling trading, payments and real-world financial access.

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 (GENIUS) Act has emerged as a beacon of hope for crypto firms seeking clarity. If passed, it would be the first comprehensive framework in the United States for regulating stablecoins.

“There’s certainly a change in how the administration views the digital assets industry,” Dan Boyle, partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, told PYMNTS this month. “This is not a confrontational posture.”

Interest in stablecoins is rising as numerous federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, begin to clarify their positions, reversing or softening previous warnings and setting the stage for greater integration of crypto assets into the mainstream financial system.

“I think the largest banks will succeed as stablecoin issuers,” former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Amias Gerety told PYMNTS in March.

See also: Keeping Stablecoins Stable is Complicated: Why CFOs Need to Pay Attention

Stablecoins can allow for rapid, borderless transfers of value without the friction of traditional banking rails. Want to move dollars from a trading desk in Singapore to one in London over the weekend? Good luck using SWIFT. With a stablecoin, it takes minutes.

“This isn’t about replacing existing systems. It’s about providing an additional option,” FV Bank CEO Miles Paschini told PYMNTS in January. “Where stablecoins offer superior benefits, customers will naturally gravitate toward them.”

As more banks integrate blockchain capabilities, customers will have greater choice in transferring value, he said

However, regulation is fragmented. The Federal Reserve’s latest stability report calls out nonbank firms, private credit and stablecoins as increasing sources of risk to the traditional banking ecosystem and potential triggers for financial shocks and runs.

Meanwhile, the British government reportedly plans to work with U.S. officials to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. As the future plays out, staking could have a key role in helping scale adoption while defining the benefits that crypto could potentially offer.

Ultimately, as stablecoins work to shed their niche status and edge toward becoming standard financial infrastructure, the question may no longer be whether they will be used — but who controls the platforms on which they move.

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