Slowly, slowly: then all at once – Hemingway’s ‘law of motion’ explains how big changes often unfold.  

It’s a familiar story in fintech. Consider digital wallets or contactless payments: what began as cautious, incremental adoption eventually reached a tipping point, changing the way many of us pay. In 2024, stablecoins have reached this inflection point. 

Why?

1. They’ve found their killer use case in payments, away from the casino culture of crypto. What started as a tool for trading, is now a mainstream payment rail, bringing speed, transparency, and accessibility that traditional systems can’t match. There were $5 trillion stablecoin transactions in the past year – discounting usage for trading. To put that number into perspective, it’s over a third of the volume processed by Visa, a global payments network that’s been around for 60 years.
2. They’ve found product-market fit beyond crypto-native businesses, and they’re being adopted by some of the world’s largest financial institutions. PayPal launched their own. Stripe bought a stablecoin company. Visa is helping banks to launch stablecoins.
3. New regulation is legitimizing their place in global financial services. Regulators in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are bringing stronger safeguards to protect the businesses and consumers that use stablecoins; while the leading tokens continue to prove their resilience.

As if all at once, stablecoins have emerged as a new core payment rail for fintechs.