# New Payment Stablecoin Landscape After Genius Act: Cross-Competitive Dynamics Between FinTech and Blockchain

According to industry analysis, after the Genius Act bill passes in mid-2025, the cryptocurrency market will face a new turning point. Yield-bearing stablecoins are being fully rejected by traditional banking, while payment stablecoins unexpectedly gain unprecedented attention. This shift reflects deep changes in the financial market: the old payment systems are regaining focus, and Agent and stablecoins are playing out the complex relationship between blockchain and FinTech.

The End of the Yield Era and the Beginning of the Payment Era

As the popularity of yield-bearing stablecoins wanes, payment stablecoins are becoming the new market focus. This change is not accidental but the result of multiple forces working together.

Meta announced a renewed focus on payment stablecoins, Google partnered with over 60 companies to form the AP2 alliance, and Stripe also views payment stablecoins and Agent as future directions. In contrast, PayPal, which has issued PYUSD, and Coinbase, proposing the x402 protocol, see their stock prices decline. Behind this contradictory phenomenon lie two urgent issues: first, where will the new wave of payment sources come from in the next competition? second, do Agent and payment stablecoins truly represent the next big trend?

The core reason for the decline of yield-bearing stablecoins is the changing regulatory environment. After the Genius Act bill was introduced, the Federal Reserve, OCC, CFTC, and SEC all took action. These regulators, on one hand, facilitate payment stablecoins, but on the other, they strip away the foundation of yield-bearing stablecoins to respond to the “loss of time deposits” crisis in traditional banks. Under this regulatory framework, payment stablecoins are deliberately guided back into the existing financial system.

The True Dilemma of FinTech: Why It Is More Fragile Than the Crypto Industry

Some believe cryptocurrencies face difficulties, but this overlooks a more severe reality: FinTech companies are under survival threat.

Although the value of blockchain technology remains debated, it is undeniable that traditional financial institutions are blocking the development space of emerging payment companies through various alliances and policies. Over the past 20+ years, efforts by FinTech to establish independent payment channels outside banks have ultimately failed. Only those FinTech firms capable of protecting or converting user funds hold real value—Wise’s remittance services and Stripe’s payment aggregation, for example, do not create truly differentiated value.

Valuation logic makes this dilemma even clearer. After Stripe’s valuation surpasses $15.9 billion, evaluation standards have shifted profoundly. Tracking Peter Thiel’s investment flow shows that buying Wise stock, investing in new broker projects like Trade Republic, or focusing on Revolut (Europe’s highest-valued new bank at about $7.5 billion) all indicate that the valuation logic of FinTech is being rewritten.

Stripe’s valuation at $15.9 billion is five times that of Adyen’s $3.5 billion, and about 13 times that of Checkout.com’s $1.2 billion, yet Stripe’s business volume is not five times larger than Adyen’s. This valuation leverage stems from the imagination premium around payment stablecoins and the Agent concept.

By 2026, the entire FinTech industry will face more direct pressure than the crypto sector. The reason is that “public chain + stablecoin” itself forms a complete ecosystem, while DeFi represents a genuine alternative threat. The current so-called “payment new war” is essentially a fire ignited by FinTech companies to boost their valuations. FinTech currently holds a first-mover advantage, but the future belongs to the crypto industry.

According to Forbes data, it takes an average of 8.1 years for FinTech payment service companies to enter the top 50 industry rankings, while crypto projects only need 6.2 years. This data reflects the different development speeds of the two industries.

Long-term competitors like Stripe need to tell a new story to the capital markets, even explaining why they should go public. Capital deployment must be reorganized to fit newer or grander future visions. This new story has two directions: larger scale—Agent will exponentially increase payment transaction volume, and Stripe founders Collison brothers believe a blockchain capable of 1 billion TPS (transactions per second) is needed; updated technology—combining stablecoins with existing payment tech stacks represents the biggest technological leap since the API-first era.

But to realize this grand vision, FinTech companies must not only prove they are better than crypto firms but also face heavy resistance from banking systems and internet super-platforms. Many participants, market structures are chaotic. Compared to “frog platforms” like Trade Republic, super-platforms like Meta/Google are much larger. They have trillion-dollar valuations and billions of users—this is just normal. These platforms mainly want to participate as channel partners sharing profits; or they see opportunities to develop their own stablecoins or payment protocols, or they leverage existing advantages to demand higher transit fees.

USDT and USDC: Two Different Business Paths

In the competition for payment stablecoins, Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC represent two completely different strategies.

USDT is being surrounded by third-world markets extending into the first world, while USDC is gaining on-chain dominance. But this “compliance” is only superficial bank replacement. Blockchain theoretically can bypass the financial system, creating an independent asset layer based on underground economies. Over ten years, Ethereum has demonstrated capital efficiency advantages over traditional finance. Interestingly, this competitive pressure is unrelated to capital scale: with $23.6 billion in ETH, $30 billion in stablecoins, and $1.32 trillion in BTC, the total still does not surpass JPMorgan Chase’s $2.5 trillion in deposits.

The advantage of blockchain lies in the fact that banks respond to FinTech and PSP (third-party payment service providers) disruptions through alliances and blockades because they cannot manage electronic dollar flows without banking involvement; but blockchain can. Even the most challenged stablecoin companies can bypass banking system flaws. This advantage becomes more evident amid successive bank failures (from Silicon Valley Bank to Lead Bank).

On the policy front, attitudes are contradictory. Post-2008 financial crisis, big banks were stigmatized, yet the crypto industry’s threat to financial order may be greater than Wall Street’s. The classic political wisdom of “surrounding with three sides and opening one” has been repeatedly used by many bureaucratic systems.

USDC and USDT actually embody two different approaches. USDC follows the “DeFi + B2B + stablecoin” logic, while USDT tells the story of “CEX + P2P + stablecoin.” It may seem odd, but USDC is more widely used in DeFi, surpassing USDT in core scenarios like DEX and lending; meanwhile, most CEXs still quote liquidity primarily in USDT.

In traditional finance, USDC is recognized as the standard stablecoin, and tools like Circle’s CCTP are becoming portals for institutional participants entering the on-chain world. But USDT shows enough resilience: $8 billion USDT on Tron meets global personal transfer needs. Currency dollarization in Argentina and Nigeria is essentially a shift toward USDT.

According to joint research by Artemis and McKinsey, the global stablecoin transaction volume of $35 trillion sounds unreal, but in reality, it only accounts for about $39 billion (roughly 1%) of actual stablecoin payments, representing just 0.02% of total global payments (over $20 trillion). The distribution is as follows:

• B2B payments: $22.6 billion (mainly used, about 60%, with 733% annual growth), only 0.01% of global B2B payments (~$1.6 trillion)
• Cross-border salary transfers: $9 billion (<1% of global)
• Clearing and settlement: $800 million (<0.01%)
• U-card spending: $450 million

These figures seem more realistic. The trend of stablecoin adoption may be more important than raw transaction volume numbers.

Rebuilding Payment Infrastructure: From FinTech to On-Chain Settlement

Discussions about the decline of SaaS and aging channel partners seem to assume that decades of FinTech accumulation will change overnight. Of course not. Especially since USDC’s B2B institutional acceptance still takes time, and Tether’s continued reliance on USDT and old channels may not reach the future.

The only useful perspective to follow the payment story in crypto is how to handle the relationship between payments and yields. The current landscape is very clear:

• Yield effects can only stay within on-chain DeFi, unable to enter broader consumer systems, like MetaMask U-card combined with Aave entering the US market
• Applying for bank licenses via OCC to issue compliant stablecoins that do not generate yields, thus entering the broader financial derivatives regulated by CFTC and SEC
• Asian institutional stablecoins like BitGo’s FYUSD and European stablecoins like Circle’s EURC have already cornered themselves

B2B is fundamentally about pipelines; C2C about scale; B2C about ecosystems. In the history of payment stablecoins, blockchain/L2 channels are expected to replace credit card networks, but the advantage of FinTech over banks should be offering a new product: high-yield, efficient payment functions akin to a combination of MMF and payment.

Peter Thiel supports new banks and brokerages, while Vitalik advocates for ETH-backed yield stablecoins. At this point, Vitalik’s perspective is actually clearer: ETH-based yield stablecoins, without risk diversification, should at least consider diversified yield sources based on RWA (real-world assets). In short, payment functions without on-chain yield support cannot escape dollar asset dominance and will ultimately be transformed into traditional banking by OCC; those trying to give up freedom for security will lose both.

Applications based on USDC for B2B and cross-border USDT transfers cannot achieve true global recognition for stablecoins; these are only temporary understandings and will not become the next-generation main force.

Conclusion: Uncertainty of the Future

From the perspective of FinTech, we look forward to the crypto industry creating a different future. Four forces are sparking new competition in payments: companies like Stripe chasing IPO narratives; Meta/Google seeking negotiation advantages as channel partners; banks guarding channel fees and cheap assets; Tether investing heavily in payment companies to encircle Circle.

Two new stories are packaged into future dreams. Payment stablecoins seem to become the default payment tool for Agents, but no one asks whether Agents are truly necessary. Let’s continue this question in subsequent discussions.