Payments made with stablecoins (coins pegged 1-to-1 to a government-issued currency such as the dollar) reached $482 billion from January to September this year, up 45% from a year earlier, according to a report released Oct. 15 by blockchain data firm Allium. The same report says the total stablecoin supply at the end of September was about $305 billion, up only 0.4% since the start of the year.
Looking at supply alone, stablecoin growth seems to have stalled this year. It is natural to assume that with so little new money, usage must have stood still too.
But the key point lies elsewhere. What grew was not the amount of money but the number of times the same money changed hands. And in the past week alone, Visa, Mastercard and Stripe each announced plans to attach that money to card payments and cross-border transfers.
- Payments could grow without more money because of frequency
From January to September this year, the number of payments rose 71% to 1.04 billion. The average amount per payment fell from $544 to $462. Allium summarized that the growth came from more frequent, smaller payments.
Think of a neighborhood gift voucher. If a KRW 100,000 voucher is used once at a bakery and then goes into a drawer, payments total KRW 100,000. If the same voucher goes from the bakery to the florist and from the florist to the butcher, three times, payments total KRW 300,000. The number of vouchers printed stays the same, but the payment total triples.
It is not only payments, either. All stablecoins moved by real users also grew 48% from January to September. That means that while the supply held steady, the same coins were kept far busier.
- The $482 billion counts only payments, after filtering out movements inside the ledger
Adding up all stablecoin transfer records from January to September gives $97.9 trillion. Allium filtered out flows such as moves inside exchanges, DeFi (financial services that run on code instead of banks), automated transfers, and issuance and burning, and kept only $2.4 trillion, or 2.5%, as real user activity. Payments are one-fifth of that.
Put simply, it is a number that leaves out most of the movement recorded in the ledger and counts only money that someone actually paid for something.
Stablecoins have mostly served as chips held briefly while buying and selling coins. In Allium's August count, 49.6% of real-use transfers of USDC (the stablecoin issued by Circle) were still trading. Payments are the share of those chips used outside trading, and that share grew regardless of the supply.
- The new channel is cards, especially small payments under $50
Spending on cards linked to stablecoins reached $3.9 billion through September, ten times the level a year earlier. Of the growth in card transactions, 84% came from small payments under $50. In other words, frequent small payments, like coffee or lunch, are what increased.
Still, it is small so far. Stablecoin card payments in the second quarter were 0.03% of the $4 trillion Visa handled over the same period. Cards are a channel that has only just opened, and most of the $482 billion in payments still moves outside cards.
- Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are linking coins to regular money
Last Thursday (Oct. 15), Mastercard launched a "Global Money Platform" with BVNK, a stablecoin company it acquired in August. It is a service that lets banks and fintechs handle regular currency accounts, stablecoin balances, currency exchange, card payments and bank transfers through a single connection.
Stripe (a U.S. online payments company) is building a card with Plasma, a blockchain-based financial services firm, that holds balances in dollars, euros, Brazilian reais, Mexican pesos and Colombian pesos, plus stablecoins. The plan is to cut unnecessary currency exchange by letting people spend from the balance that matches the currency they are paying in. Visa said its "Visa Direct" service, which pre-funds cross-border payouts with USDC, has its first commercial user: Inyo Global, a firm that connects payments for fintechs and money transmitters.
Patrick Mollard, CEO of Paris-based stablecoin business payments company Fipto, said businesses do not want a separate coin-only system sitting alongside their existing financial operations, and want to move between regular money and stablecoins within the same payments and treasury environment.
- Companies that earn on piled-up money differ from those after money in motion
Stablecoin issuers earn from the total supply. In the second quarter, 94% of Circle's revenue was interest on the reserves backing USDC (U.S. short-term Treasurys), so revenue moves with the USDC supply. USDC peaked at $79.2 billion on March 17, then fell 9.4% to $71.8 billion in early August. Supply at Tether (issuer of USDT) and Circle, which together held 85% of all stablecoins as of August, and at Ethena fell this year, while other issuers added a net $6.9 billion that held the total up.
Payments companies go after money in motion. What Visa, Mastercard and Stripe, which are attaching stablecoins to cards and transfers, are watching is not the $305 billion piled up but the $482 billion in payments and the 71% rise in their number.
- BITPRESS Insight
The figure showing stablecoin supply stalled means that the pile of money did not grow, not that usage stopped. This year's payments grew not from new money but because existing money was used more often and in smaller amounts.
That is why the same news reaches each company differently. If the supply falls, the revenue of issuers that earn on reserve interest falls with it, but if payments grow, the market targeted by the payments companies that built that road gets bigger.
When looking at a company tied to stablecoins, there is one test. Decide first whether it earns from the size of the pile of money or from the number of times that money turns over, and you will see whether supply news or payments news is the one about that company.
Sources
https://www.allium.so/reports/state-of-stablecoins-and-payments-q3-2026
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/10/18/stablecoin-supply-stalls-but-payments-jump-45-as-visa-mastercard-and-stripe-connect-crypto-to-cash
https://www.allium.so/reports/circle-q2-2026-usdc-revenue
https://www.allium.so/reports/state-of-stablecoins-and-payments-september-2026
Glossary
Stablecoin — A coin designed to keep its value pegged 1 to 1 to a fiat currency such as the dollar.
Total supply (amount issued) — The combined amount of all stablecoins currently in circulation, showing how much money has piled up.
Real-use transfers — Transfers that Allium counts as actual users moving money, after filtering out movements inside exchanges, DeFi and automated transfers.
Reserve income — Interest earned on the short-term U.S. Treasuries and other assets an issuer holds to back its stablecoin, which makes up most of Circle's revenue.
DeFi — A financial service where lending and trading run on blockchain code instead of through an intermediary such as a bank.
BITPRESS articles are information to help your investment decisions, not a recommendation to buy or sell any stock or coin. Investment decisions and their results are your own responsibility.
