What 450+ Fintech Executives Told Us About Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments

The debate about whether stablecoins have a future in business payments is largely settled.

We surveyed more than 450 fintech executives on how their companies use — or plan to use — stablecoins for international payments. The results are published in a 24-page report: The State of International Stablecoin Transactions in 2026. Here’s a preview.

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The market has split into four groups

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The data clustered into four archetypes almost immediately.

42% of respondents are Stablecoiners — actively using stablecoin rails for real cross-border payments today. Another 15% are Experimenters running live pilots. 41% are Future Experimenters planning to adopt within 12 months. Just 2% are Traditionalists committed to existing payment rails.

That means 98% of the executives we surveyed are either already using stablecoins or plan to within the year.

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Adoption is being pulled, not pushed

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One of the more interesting findings: 57% of stablecoin users say they receive supplier payments via stablecoins. Only 46% say they actively send vendor payments that way.

The gap suggests stablecoin adoption in B2B payments is less driven by companies innovating on their own terms and more by the demand of their customers and counterparties. The old adage applies: companies are willing to take a customer’s money however they want to pay.

That’s a meaningful dynamic. Adoption tied to real commercial relationships is stickier than adoption driven by internal technology bets.

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The savings are real, and they scale

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Companies using stablecoins for cross-border payments report an average of 35% savings on payment costs versus traditional rails. For companies moving more than $100M per month, that figure climbs to 47%.

Savings scale linearly with volume. The more you move, the more the cost difference compounds. For any treasury team looking at the numbers, the math is straightforward.

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88% of businesses plan to use stablecoins within 12 months

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Even among companies not yet active on stablecoin rails, intent is high. 86% of all respondents rate real-time or near-instant settlement as critical or very important to the future of their payments. The top use cases driving that: real-time global payroll, instant supplier payments, and reducing FX costs.

The main barrier is not belief in the technology. 71% of respondents say more regulatory clarity would increase their confidence in scaling stablecoin use — ahead of trusted infrastructure partners (55%) and integrations with existing systems (44%).

The Future Experimenters are not skeptical. They’re waiting for clearer rules.

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Read the full report

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This is a preview of a handful of data points. The full 24-page report goes deeper: the complete archetype breakdown, what each segment is prioritizing, the barriers to adoption by segment, and what the infrastructure layer needs to look like for adoption to reach the next level.

Download The State of International Stablecoin Transactions in 2026 →

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Building on stablecoin rails and need the compliance layer already in place? Book a demo with Cybrid.

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