The largest market for stablecoins is not cross-border payments.

Written by: Prathik Desai

Edited and compiled by: BitpushNews

Everyone believes stablecoins are growing. In just two years, their circulating supply has more than doubled, and adjusted transaction volume has tripled. Last month, the monthly adjusted trading volume for stablecoins hit a record high. Some dismiss these numbers, while crypto Twitter (CT) celebrates.

But numbers alone don’t fully explain the nature of this growth. Equally important is the context in which it occurs—who is using stablecoins, for what purposes, and whether usage patterns are changing. Allium has provided a preview of their latest report on stablecoin infrastructure—“Stablecoins: The Rise of a New Payment Trajectory.” This is a very important report because the charts show that stablecoin use is shifting from enabling low-cost cross-border remittances to supporting general commercial and vendor payments between businesses.

Most current debates about stablecoins focus on whether they are financial products (like banks, bond wrappers, yield carriers) or simply payment infrastructure. Policy discussions about stablecoin interest often assume they are primarily financial instruments. But the data in the report offers a different answer: recent stablecoin activity increasingly resembles a payment trajectory rather than a savings product.

This mirrors the evolution pattern of the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network: from initially replacing paper checks for payroll to becoming the backbone for general business, B2B payments, and consumer bill payments.

This article will use data from Allium’s stablecoin infrastructure report to explain why this shift changes our view of the future of stablecoins.

Divergence in Speed

Since January 2024, the circulating supply of stablecoins (total supply minus non-circulating supply) has grown by over 100%. During the same period, adjusted transaction volume (excluding wash trades, internal transfers, and circular transactions) increased by 317%.

In any new asset’s accumulation phase, supply growth usually outpaces usage. As the asset matures, usage growth surpasses supply growth because holders are spending the asset more. Here, the fact that adjusted transaction volume is growing much faster than the circulating supply indicates stablecoins are evolving from a store of value into a more popular medium of exchange or transfer of value.

This shift is reflected in the velocity of stablecoins, calculated as adjusted transaction volume divided by circulating supply.

The velocity of stablecoins has increased from 2.6 times to over 6 times in the past two years, meaning each dollar of stablecoin supply now turns over 2.3 times more actively than in January. Comparing this to traditional payment trajectories highlights how mature stablecoin usage has become.

Another key indicator of stablecoin maturity is the number of transactions. This metric is less affected by large-value noise. When the number of payment transactions grows faster than the total transaction value, it suggests the average transaction size is decreasing. This behavior is typical of a payment trajectory gaining traction, rather than an experimental tool shuttling between exchanges.

This raises a question: who is making these payments, and what are they paying for?

By 2025, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) remains the largest category, ahead of consumer-to-business (C2B), business-to-business (B2B), and business-to-consumer (B2C). However, its growth rate is the slowest among the four.

The slowdown in C2C growth further confirms the maturing of stablecoin use, as peer-to-peer transfers are the simplest use case. They don’t require merchant integration, invoicing tools, APIs, or complex onboarding. This is the typical starting point for any new payment technology.

Ten years ago, when India launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), retail users led the way driven by cashback and other customer acquisition strategies. I remember using Google Pay (initially launched in India as Tez) to transfer between my two accounts just because it offered me a dollar cashback. Only after business tools, reporting, and dedicated payment confirmation audio devices (like smart speakers) were introduced did stores and institutions start adopting it.

As infrastructure matures, commercial use cases begin to take market share. This transition appears to be happening now.

The high growth in C2B indicates more users are using stablecoins for general business, subscriptions, and merchant payments. Meanwhile, B2B growth suggests commercial counterparties are adopting stablecoins for invoicing, supply chain payments, and financial operations. These two growth rates (C2B at 131%, B2B at 87%) both exceed the overall payment growth rate of 76%, indicating a rising share of commercial payments.

When you combine the increasing C2B transaction volume with the declining average transaction size (from $456 to $256), it suggests a trend toward frequent, smaller purchases using stablecoins.

Although P2P remains dominant in absolute terms, it is quickly ceding ground. Quarterly share data makes this shift even more apparent.

After falling below 50% in Q1 2025, C2C’s share of total payments has never exceeded 50% again.

The world seems to be moving beyond the experimental phase of using stablecoins for low-risk, low-frequency P2P transfers, toward consistent use for high-frequency payments.

When I first tracked stablecoin adoption, one of the mainstream narratives was how they could enable cross-border remittances, potentially disrupting Western Union by allowing workers in developed economies to send money home without the 7-8% fees charged by intermediaries. That story still holds, but perhaps it’s no longer the main focus.

Interestingly, the narrative around domestic consumer use has quietly overtaken all others. The C2C (person-to-person) market share has not returned to 50% for over a year, and this metric has rarely been discussed in crypto circles. But it’s precisely this indicator that signals stablecoins’ transition from a “cryptocurrency product” to “financial infrastructure”—making transactions between consumers and businesses, or between businesses, possible.

Another point worth noting is that Allium’s reported payment transaction volume is based on their ability to cover, identify, and tag wallets. While this data shows that payments account for only 2-3% of the adjusted total stablecoin transaction volume, this is likely a lower bound—many wallets are probably not covered by Allium’s analysis.

Moving forward, I will focus on two areas: whether the share of C2B (person-to-business) and B2B (business-to-business) transactions continues to rise, and whether the average transaction size can stay low over the next few quarters. If these trends persist even amid a downturn in the crypto market, it would indicate that stablecoin payment infrastructure is truly breaking free from the speculative cycle of crypto markets.