The End of the Correspondent Bank

How Blockchain Is Rebuilding Cross-Border Payments, Corridor by Corridor

Sending a remittance still costs 6.36% on the global average corridor and takes days. This report maps the live infrastructure replacing that model, from $27.6 trillion in annual stablecoin volume to the SWIFT ledger's first live bank pilots, and the corridors where the economics have already flipped. Current as of September 2026 (Q3 2026).

1. Executive Summary

Cross-border payments are expensive, slow and opaque by design. The traditional correspondent banking model, a chain of intermediary banks, each taking a cut, each operating on its own schedule, was built for a world before real-time global connectivity, and it has not changed much. The average cross-border payment still takes three to five business days, and on the retail side the World Bank puts the global average cost of sending a remittance at 6.36% of the amount sent, rising to 8.46% in sub-Saharan Africa, with banks, the most expensive channel, averaging 14.99%. Blockchain does not patch this system. It replaces the architecture.

1.1 The Problem Is Structural, Not Technical

The inefficiency of cross-border payments is not a software bug to be patched. It comes from a model built around bilateral correspondent bank relationships, mismatched operating hours, manual compliance checks and currency conversion at each hop. Every intermediary adds cost, delay and opacity. A payment from a Nigerian business to a supplier in Singapore might pass through three correspondent banks, take four days and cost 7% of its value, with limited visibility into where it is at any given moment. Blockchain replaces the chain of intermediaries with a shared ledger, cutting the intermediary hops to zero and the settlement time to minutes. Even SWIFT has stopped trying to patch the old model: its answer, a blockchain-based shared ledger announced in September 2025, was declared ready for initial use in July 2026, with 17 banks from six continents preparing live pilot transactions using tokenized deposits.

1.2 Stablecoins Are the Payment Rail That Is Scaling Fastest

Total stablecoin transfer volume reached $27.6 trillion in 2024, surpassing the combined annual transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard, with payment-specific stablecoin volumes estimated at $5.7 trillion on Visa data. Fees on stablecoin rails are typically under 1%, against the 6.36% global average for traditional remittances. The stablecoin supply has grown from $5 billion in 2020 to more than $300 billion. This is not speculative volume. It is commerce, remittances and institutional settlement moving to a faster and cheaper rail, and the institutions have now followed: on 1 September 2026, twenty-one financial institutions committed to form a joint company to issue a US dollar stablecoin, targeting launch in the first half of 2027.

1.3 Mature Markets Are Fixing Wholesale Inefficiency; Emerging Markets Are Fixing Access

The problems blockchain solves are different depending on where you sit. In mature markets, the US, UK and EU, the opportunity is wholesale efficiency: cutting the cost of institutional cross-border settlement, eliminating prefunding requirements, enabling 24/7 FX settlement and freeing up trapped working capital. JPMorgan's Kinexys platform has processed more than $1.5 trillion since 2020, with volumes reported up around thirtyfold year on year in early 2026. In emerging markets, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the opportunity is access: getting money to people who do not have bank accounts, reducing the 8.46% average remittance cost that drains the $685 billion in annual migrant transfers to low- and middle-income countries, and providing dollar stability in countries with volatile currencies.

1.4 The Regulatory Frameworks Have Arrived

The US GENIUS Act (enacted July 2025, with implementing rules being finalized through 2026) established the first federal framework for stablecoins, requiring 1:1 reserves and monthly reserve disclosures. The EU's MiCA requires stablecoin issuers to be licensed with capital, liquidity and reserve requirements. Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance came into force in August 2025, and the UAE's Payment Token Services Regulation has already licensed multiple dirham stablecoins. Together these frameworks cover the dominant stablecoin markets and provide the regulatory confidence institutions need to build on stablecoin rails at scale. The question is no longer whether regulated stablecoins are legally viable. It is how quickly institutions integrate them, and the 21-institution joint issuer, Fidelity's FIDD stablecoin (January 2026) and the nine-bank euro stablecoin consortium targeting first issuance in late 2026 show the integration is already underway.

1.5 The Corridor-Level Case Is Already Proven

Bitso's stablecoin corridor between the US and Mexico processes cross-border transfers at near-zero cost in minutes. Onafriq's USDC integration spans 40 African markets covering a billion mobile money wallets. Ripple Payments' integration with Chipper Cash processes transactions in three to five seconds across Africa. Visa expanded stablecoin settlement across CEMEA with Yellow Card in June 2025. These are not proofs of concept. They are live payment infrastructure serving real users at scale.

2. Scope and Methodology

What This Report Covers

This report covers blockchain-based payments with a specific focus on cross-border payment improvements: how blockchain changes the speed, cost and accessibility of moving money internationally. It addresses the question “what is blockchain for payments?” from the perspective of enterprise finance and investment decision-makers. The geographic frame distinguishes between mature markets (US, UK, EU), where the opportunity is primarily wholesale efficiency, and remittance-heavy regions (Africa, Latin America), where the opportunity is primarily financial inclusion and access. The analysis covers developments through Q3 2026.

Where the Data Comes From

Cross-border payments market data draws on Grand View Research, Allied Market Research and industry statistics. Stablecoin volume and supply data references Visa, RWA.xyz and Ripple published figures. Remittance cost data is sourced from the World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide survey (the Q3 2025 issue is the latest published) and Stripe published analysis. Institutional case data references JPMorgan Kinexys disclosures, SWIFT ledger announcements, the Onafriq and Circle partnership, Ripple press releases and Visa's CEMEA expansion. Deloitte cost reduction estimates are sourced from published research.

A Note on the Numbers

Cross-border payments market sizing varies significantly across sources due to different scope definitions: some measure revenue in fees, others measure transaction volume flows. This report uses the $212.55 billion market size figure (Grand View Research, 2024) as the primary reference for the payments services revenue market, and notes transaction flow figures separately (the $200-plus trillion annual cross-border flow figure). Stablecoin volumes include all transfer activity; payment-specific volumes are noted separately at $5.7 trillion. Remittance cost averages are World Bank figures for sending $200 and vary materially by corridor: they describe the retail remittance market, not wholesale institutional flows, which are far cheaper per unit but carry their own costs in prefunding, FX layering and settlement delay.

3. Key Findings

Finding 1: Traditional Remittances Cost 6.36% on Average, and Blockchain Cuts That to Under 1%

The World Bank's latest Remittance Prices Worldwide survey (Q3 2025) puts the global average cost of sending a remittance at 6.36% of the amount sent, down from 6.49% the previous quarter but still more than double the UN Sustainable Development Goal target of 3%. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most expensive region at 8.46%, and banks remain the most expensive channel at an average of 14.99%. Blockchain-based stablecoin rails reduce fees to under 1%, and to under $0.01 in network costs on low-fee chains such as Solana or Polygon. Deloitte estimates that blockchain can reduce cross-border payment costs by 40 to 80%, representing $12 to 24 billion in annual savings. The cost case is not theoretical. It has been demonstrated across live payment corridors.

Finding 2: Stablecoin Transfer Volumes Are Larger Than Visa and Mastercard Combined

Total stablecoin transfer volume reached $27.6 trillion in 2024, exceeding the combined annual volume of Visa and Mastercard, with payment-specific volumes estimated at $5.7 trillion. Stablecoin supply grew from $5 billion to more than $300 billion between 2020 and 2025, and monthly transaction volumes hit $710 billion in February 2025, up from $521 billion a year earlier. The stablecoin market is a real payment rail already operating at global scale, not a niche instrument, and the wave of bank-issued stablecoins now in the pipeline for 2026 and 2027 will add regulated, deposit-backed supply on top of it.

Finding 3: JPMorgan's Kinexys Has Processed More Than $1.5 Trillion in Blockchain Payments

JPMorgan's Kinexys platform (formerly Onyx) has processed more than $1.5 trillion in cross-border payments and intraday repos since 2020, with platform volumes reported up around thirtyfold year on year in early 2026. It enables 24/7 cross-border transactions in minutes, eliminates prefunding requirements, and integrates with J.P. Morgan FX Services for on-chain USD and EUR settlement. Users include Siemens, BlackRock and Ant International. The platform demonstrates what institutional blockchain payments look like at production scale: not consumer-facing, but infrastructure-level, rewiring how major corporates and institutions settle across borders.

Finding 4: 80% of Intra-African Payments Route Through Banks Outside the Continent, Costing $5 Billion Annually

The fragmentation of African payment infrastructure is the clearest example of how the traditional correspondent banking model fails emerging markets. An estimated 80% of intra-African payments route through banks in Europe or the US before reaching their destination on the same continent, adding cost, time and currency conversion at every step, at a total cost of approximately $5 billion in fees annually. Onafriq's USDC integration, covering 40 African markets and a billion mobile money wallets, directly attacks this problem by providing a stablecoin rail that routes payments continent-internally without the offshore hop.

Finding 5: In Countries With Volatile Currencies, Stablecoins Provide Dollar Stability, Not Just Speed

In Argentina, where annual inflation ran deep into triple digits during 2024, stablecoins account for a disproportionately large share of all crypto transactions, running about 17 percentage points above the global average. In Nigeria, where the naira's dollar exchange rate more than doubled over 2024, stablecoins accounted for 43% of all crypto transactions in sub-Saharan Africa by October of that year. For users in high-inflation economies, stablecoins are not primarily a faster payment method. They are a store of value and a hedge against currency risk, a use case that is structurally different from mature-market adoption and one that traditional financial infrastructure does not serve.

4. Data and Evidence

4.1 Adoption

Adoption in blockchain payments is bifurcated: institutional adoption in mature markets, and retail and SME adoption in emerging markets. Both are growing, but through different mechanisms and for different reasons.

Institutional: JPMorgan Kinexys processes multi-billion-dollar daily volumes. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2025 to integrate stablecoin settlement infrastructure, and has since backed Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain developed with Paradigm. A 2025 Gartner survey found 38% of Fortune 500 companies using crypto for at least some international transactions. SWIFT's shared ledger reached ready-for-use status in July 2026 with 17 banks preparing live tokenized deposit pilots, and 21 institutions committed in September 2026 to a joint bank stablecoin issuer.

Emerging market: 26% of US remittance users had adopted stablecoins by April 2025. Cryptocurrency remittances in the Philippines jumped 217% in 2024. Onafriq covers 40 African markets and a billion mobile money wallets. Yellow Card serves as a stablecoin settlement rail across Africa and CEMEA. Ripple's African expansion includes Chipper Cash (5 million users), VALR and Yellow Card. Stablecoins account for 43% of sub-Saharan African crypto transactions.

Metric

Value

Source

Total stablecoin transfer volume (2024)

$27.6 trillion

Ripple / Stripe

Payment-specific stablecoin volumes

$5.7 trillion

Visa data

Stablecoin supply

>$300 billion

BVNK / RWA.xyz (2025)

Monthly stablecoin volume (Feb 2025)

$710 billion

CoinLaw

Kinexys cumulative transactions

>$1.5 trillion, volumes up ~30x YoY in early 2026

JPMorgan / Markets Media

Broadridge DLR monthly repo settlement

$7.5 trillion (June 2026)

Broadridge

Global avg remittance cost (Q3 2025)

6.36%

World Bank RPW

Sub-Saharan Africa remittance cost

8.46%

World Bank RPW

Average cost via banks

14.99%

World Bank RPW

Blockchain payments cost reduction

40 to 80% vs traditional

Deloitte

Migrants' remittances to LMICs (2024)

$685 billion

World Bank

Fortune 500 using crypto for payments

38%

Gartner, 2025

North America remains the largest cross-border payments market at 38.6% of global revenue ($76.6 billion in 2024). Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region, and emerging markets in Africa and South America are growing at CAGRs of around 15%, roughly double the global average, driven by remittance demand, mobile penetration and the absence of established banking alternatives.

4.2 Performance

The performance gap between blockchain-based payments and traditional correspondent banking is large and well documented. The comparison below reflects live deployment data across institutional and retail use cases.

Metric

Blockchain vs Traditional

Settlement time (institutional)

Minutes on Kinexys, stablecoin rails and the SWIFT shared ledger pilots, against 3 to 5 business days via correspondent banking

Settlement time (remittances)

3 to 5 seconds (Ripple and Chipper Cash) against 2 to 5 days (Western Union or bank transfer)

Transaction cost (stablecoin)

Under $0.01 in network fees on Solana or Polygon against a 6.36% global average remittance cost

Operating hours

24/7/365 on blockchain against banking hours plus settlement windows

FX conversion cost

Near-zero stablecoin-to-stablecoin against a 1 to 5% FX markup per correspondent hop

Prefunding requirement

Eliminated on blockchain rails against mandatory prefunding for correspondent banks

Transparency

Real-time on-chain tracking against limited messaging visibility

Accessibility

A smartphone only, against a bank account required in both countries

The performance advantage is clearest in high-fee corridors: US to Latin America, UK to West Africa, and intra-African. In low-fee corridors within the EU (SEPA transfers) or domestic real-time payment systems, the cost differential is smaller, but blockchain's structural advantage persists in 24/7 availability, programmability and the elimination of prefunding.

The remaining performance gap is on the last mile: converting stablecoins to local cash in markets without mature on-ramp infrastructure. In rural Nigeria or Guatemala, a recipient who receives USDC still needs a local agent or kiosk to cash out, which can add 3 to 5% of fees back. The blockchain rail is cheap; the off-ramp may not be.

4.3 Cost

The cost picture for blockchain payments is the most compelling of any blockchain use case in financial services, because the traditional alternative is so visibly expensive. But the full cost picture includes both what blockchain saves and what it costs to run.

The Savings Are Documented and Substantial

Deloitte estimates blockchain reduces cross-border payment costs by 40 to 80%, representing $12 to 24 billion in annual potential savings. World Bank data puts the global average remittance cost at 6.36%; stablecoin rails deliver under 1%. A one-percentage-point reduction in global remittance fees alone would save senders over $6 billion annually. For institutional treasury operations, the elimination of correspondent bank fees, FX markups and prefunding requirements represents millions per year for large multinationals. A manufacturing company cited by BVNK saved over $8,000 in fees in six months by switching from traditional wire transfers to USDC for a Singapore supplier payment corridor.

The Costs of Running Blockchain Payment Infrastructure

Operating a compliant stablecoin payment infrastructure requires licensing in each jurisdiction of operation, KYC and AML integration, Travel Rule compliance (data sharing obligations for transfers over €1,000 in the EU and equivalent thresholds elsewhere) and on- and off-ramp infrastructure in each target market. A 2025 Yellow Card survey found that 63% of businesses cited regulatory compliance as their biggest hurdle, not technology cost and not transaction fees. The compliance cost scales with the number of jurisdictions, not with the volume of transactions.

The GENIUS Act and MiCA Change the Cost Calculus

Prior to the GENIUS Act (July 2025) and MiCA (December 2024), stablecoin compliance was a patchwork of national interpretations. Both frameworks require 1:1 reserves, mandated disclosures and licensing, but they provide legal clarity that significantly reduces the risk premium institutions previously required. Stripe's $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge reflects the market's verdict on the value of compliant stablecoin infrastructure, and the 21-institution joint issuer shows the banks now agree: shared, regulated stablecoin infrastructure is worth building at industry scale.

4.4 Trends

Stablecoins Are Becoming the Settlement Layer for Institutional Treasury

The most significant near-term trend is the movement of institutional treasury operations onto tokenized money. JPMorgan's Kinexys, the SWIFT shared ledger (built around tokenized bank deposits) and Partior (the interbank settlement network backed by JPMorgan, DBS and Standard Chartered) are all targeting the same problem: correspondent bank prefunding requirements that lock up working capital in transit. For a multinational with $10 billion in annual cross-border flows, eliminating three days of prefunding across dozens of corridors frees up hundreds of millions in working capital. That is the institutional payments opportunity, and the SWIFT ledger's 17-bank pilot cohort shows the industry's core utility now shares the diagnosis.

Africa Is the Proving Ground for Stablecoin Remittances at Scale

Africa is simultaneously the highest-fee region for remittances and the region with the lowest banking infrastructure density. That combination makes it the natural proving ground for stablecoin remittance corridors. Onafriq's USDC integration, Ripple's RLUSD expansion with Chipper Cash and Yellow Card, and Nigeria's launch of Africa's first regulated naira-backed stablecoin (cNGN) in February 2025 are all building the infrastructure for a stablecoin-native payment economy in the continent's largest markets. The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade (February 2024) provides the continental framework for interoperability.

Latin America's Currency Instability Is Driving Structural Stablecoin Adoption

In Latin America, stablecoin adoption is driven less by payment efficiency and more by currency hedging. Argentina's triple-digit 2024 inflation, combined with stablecoin usage running about 17 percentage points above the global average, tells the story clearly. Bitso's USDC-based US-Mexico corridor and Brazil's Virtual Assets Law (which regulates stablecoin providers) are building the legal and infrastructure foundation for a stablecoin-native payments ecosystem across the region. Remittances into Mexico, the world's second-largest remittance recipient, are a specific high-volume corridor where blockchain cost savings directly benefit low-income households.

CBDCs and Tokenized Deposits Are the Institutional-Grade Competitors to Private Stablecoins

The multi-CBDC settlement platform mBridge, which reached minimum viable product status in 2024, is now run by its five member central banks, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, following the BIS's withdrawal in October 2024. The BIS-convened Project Agorá, which brings G7-aligned central banks together with more than 40 private institutions including JPMorgan, Citi, HSBC and SWIFT, is the competing track, with testing findings expected during 2026. SWIFT's own shared ledger, meanwhile, treats tokenized commercial bank deposits as the primary settlement asset, with CBDCs and stablecoins to be accommodated over time. For institutions, the practical implication is that the choice between private stablecoin rails, tokenized deposits and CBDC infrastructure will be decided corridor by corridor, by whichever delivers the better combination of cost, speed and regulatory acceptance.

5. Case Examples

5.1 JPMorgan Kinexys: Rewiring Institutional Cross-Border Settlement

JPMorgan's Kinexys platform (rebranded from Onyx in November 2024) has become the reference implementation for institutional blockchain payments. Since its 2020 launch it has processed more than $1.5 trillion in transactions, with volumes up around thirtyfold year on year in early 2026. Clients including Siemens, BlackRock and Ant International use it for 24/7 cross-border transactions in minutes, intraday repo settlement and, since early 2025, on-chain FX settlement in USD and EUR. In November 2025, JPMorgan launched its JPMD deposit token on Base (Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2), moving from a private permissioned chain to a public blockchain for the first time, driven by client demand, with B2C2, Coinbase and Mastercard among early transactors. Native issuance of JPMD on the Canton Network began rolling out in phases from January 2026, and JPMorgan has secured the JPME trademark for a euro deposit token. The platform eliminates prefunding requirements, settles on banking holidays and enables programmable multi-party payment flows.

What this tells you: institutional blockchain payments are production infrastructure, not pilots. JPMorgan's move to public blockchains signals that the private-versus-public chain distinction that previously defined institutional blockchain is dissolving, driven by client demand for interoperability with the broader digital asset ecosystem.

5.2 Onafriq and USDC: A Billion Mobile Wallets and the Intra-African Routing Problem

On 30 April 2025, Onafriq (formerly MFS Africa) partnered with Circle to integrate USDC across its network spanning 40 African markets. The scale is significant: Onafriq's network connects a billion mobile money wallets and 500 million bank accounts across the continent. The integration directly targets the statistic that 80% of intra-African payments route through banks outside Africa, costing approximately $5 billion in fees annually. By providing a USDC rail that routes payments continent-internally, Onafriq eliminates the offshore correspondent bank hop that has historically been the primary cost driver for intra-African transfers. The naira's collapse over 2024, when its dollar exchange rate more than doubled, provides additional urgency: USDC offers dollar stability for senders who want to protect the value of remittances in transit.

What this tells you: the infrastructure gap in intra-African payments is being addressed at scale by stablecoin rails, not by expanding traditional banking. For enterprises with supply chains, staff or commercial relationships across Africa, the payment infrastructure is improving faster than the banking infrastructure.

5.3 Bitso: Building the US-Mexico Stablecoin Corridor at Scale

Bitso has leveraged USDC to build a low-cost cross-border payment corridor between the US and Mexico, the world's second-largest remittance corridor. Mexico received just under $65 billion in remittances in 2024, the majority from the US, and traditional remittance providers charge 4 to 7% of the transferred amount on this corridor. Bitso's stablecoin rail bypasses legacy financial rails and enables near-instant settlement with significantly reduced fees. Wise's launch of services in Mexico in January 2025 signals that the corridor is attracting serious fintech infrastructure investment across multiple providers, which is exactly what you would expect of the largest single proving ground for the model.

What this tells you: remittance corridors are being rebuilt from the ground up on stablecoin rails, not upgraded on top of legacy systems. The US-Mexico corridor is showing that the economics work at volume.

6. Implications

For Finance and Treasury Teams at Multinationals

The institutional case for blockchain payments is now an operational question, not a strategic one. If your treasury processes more than $1 billion in annual cross-border flows, the working capital freed by eliminating three-day correspondent bank settlement cycles is material. JPMorgan's Kinexys, Partior and BVNK's institutional stablecoin infrastructure all offer production-grade routes to 24/7 settlement without correspondent bank prefunding, and if your banks are among the SWIFT ledger's early adopters, tokenized deposit settlement will reach you through infrastructure you already use. The practical step is mapping your highest-volume cross-border corridors, identifying which have coverage, and running a cost comparison against your current correspondent bank fees. The maths will likely be compelling.

For the Two Types of Market: Mature and Emerging

Market Type

Strategic Implication

Mature markets (US, UK, EU)

The opportunity is wholesale efficiency: eliminating correspondent bank costs, FX markup layering and prefunding requirements. The GENIUS Act and MiCA have created the regulatory certainty institutions need to commit, the SWIFT ledger is running live pilots, and 21 institutions are forming a joint stablecoin issuer. Stripe's $1.1B Bridge acquisition signals that stablecoin settlement infrastructure is now a core fintech asset, not an experiment. For enterprises in these markets, the question is which stablecoin or tokenized deposit infrastructure and which blockchain network best fits their existing payment stack, not whether to engage.

Emerging markets (Africa, LATAM)

The opportunity is access and stability: reaching unbanked populations, reducing 8.46% average remittance fees to under 1%, and providing dollar-denominated stores of value in high-inflation economies. Onafriq's USDC integration, Ripple's African expansion and Nigeria's cNGN stablecoin are building the regional infrastructure. For enterprises with commercial relationships or supply chains across Africa or Latin America, the relevant question is whether their payment providers are integrated into these stablecoin rails, or whether they are still routing through the costly correspondent banking chains that add 5 to 8% to every cross-border transaction.

For Investors in Payments Infrastructure

The stablecoin payments stack is being built in layers: issuance (Circle, Tether, Ripple RLUSD, and now the bank-owned issuers, Fidelity's FIDD, the 21-institution company and the euro consortium), settlement infrastructure (Kinexys, BVNK, Partior, the SWIFT ledger), on- and off-ramp networks (Yellow Card, Onafriq, Chipper Cash) and compliance tooling (KYC and AML platforms integrated with stablecoin rails). Stripe's $1.1 billion Bridge acquisition established the valuation benchmark for compliant stablecoin infrastructure. The next layer, on- and off-ramp networks in high-fee emerging market corridors, is less capitalized and represents the bottleneck for scaling the last-mile impact. The infrastructure is being built at both ends, issuance and compliance; the middle layer, corridor-specific liquidity and off-ramp access, is where the infrastructure gap remains largest.

The One Thing That Matters Most for Payment-Heavy Enterprises Right Now

The traditional correspondent banking model is losing share to blockchain-based payment rails in every high-fee corridor globally, and in 2026 the incumbents joined the migration rather than resisting it: SWIFT's ledger is live for pilots and the largest banks in the world are forming a joint stablecoin issuer. The transition is measured not in years but in the accumulation of live deployments: $27.6 trillion in stablecoin volumes, more than $1.5 trillion through Kinexys, $685 billion in migrant remittances now being disrupted by stablecoin providers. For any enterprise that moves significant money across borders, payroll, supplier payments, intercompany transfers or remittance disbursement, the payment infrastructure you use today will cost more than the alternatives available to you. The question is not whether to migrate some payment flows to blockchain rails. It is which corridors to start with.

Appendix: Key Platforms and Corridors Reference

The platforms, networks and regulatory frameworks below represent the active operational landscape in blockchain payments as of Q3 2026.

Platform / Network

Function

Geography

JPMorgan Kinexys

Multi-billion-dollar daily institutional cross-border settlement; 24/7 on-chain FX

US / Global

JPMD (JPM deposit token)

Tokenized bank deposit live on Base since November 2025 and issuing natively on Canton from 2026; JPME euro token planned

US / Global

SWIFT Shared Ledger

Blockchain ledger for 24/7 cross-border payments; ready for use July 2026; 17 banks piloting live tokenized deposit transactions

Global

21-Institution Stablecoin Company

Joint bank issuer forming H2 2026; USD stablecoin targeted H1 2027, euro next

Global

Partior

Interbank blockchain settlement network (JPMorgan, DBS, Standard Chartered)

US / Singapore / Global

BVNK

Institutional stablecoin payment infrastructure; Citi-backed

UK / Europe / Global

Onafriq + USDC (Circle)

40 African markets; 1B mobile wallets; intra-African stablecoin rail

Africa

Yellow Card

Stablecoin on- and off-ramp across Africa and CEMEA; Visa partner

Africa / CEMEA

Chipper Cash + Ripple

5M users; 3-to-5-second cross-border settlement via Ripple Payments

Africa

Bitso + USDC

US-Mexico and US-LATAM stablecoin remittance corridor

US / Mexico / LATAM

Ripple RLUSD

Compliance-focused dollar stablecoin; cross-border and humanitarian use

Global

cNGN (Nigeria)

Africa's first regulated naira-backed stablecoin (February 2025)

Nigeria

mBridge

Multi-CBDC cross-border settlement run by the central banks of China, HK, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia; BIS withdrew October 2024

Asia / Middle East

Project Agorá

BIS-convened tokenized cross-border settlement; seven central banks and 40+ private institutions; findings expected 2026

Global (G7-aligned)

GENIUS Act (US)

Federal stablecoin framework: 1:1 reserves, monthly disclosures (July 2025; rules finalized through 2026)

United States

MiCA (EU)

Stablecoin licensing, reserves, redemption rights (fully in force December 2024)

European Union

Stablecoins Ordinance (HK)

HKMA licensing regime for fiat-referenced stablecoins (in force August 2025)

Hong Kong

References

World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, Issue for Q3 2025 (latest published; global average 6.36%)

SWIFT, Blockchain Ledger Ready for Use as 17 Banks Set to Pioneer Tokenized Cross-Border Payments (9 July 2026)

Reuters / PRNewswire, 21-Institution Bank Stablecoin Company Announcement (1 September 2026)

Ripple, New Value Report 2025 and RLUSD Africa Expansion documentation

Grand View Research, Cross-Border Payments Market Report (2024 to 2030)

Deloitte, Blockchain Cost Reduction in Cross-Border Payments

JPMorgan, Kinexys Platform Disclosures; Markets Media, Volumes on J.P. Morgan Blockchain Platforms Grow Thirtyfold (April 2026)

Digital Asset and Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, JPMD Native Issuance on Canton Network (January 2026)

Stripe, Stablecoin Remittances Explained (October 2025)

BVNK, Blockchain in Cross-Border Payments Guide (October 2025)

Onafriq / Circle, USDC Integration Press Release (April 2025)

Tech in Africa, Blockchain's Role in African Remittances (December 2025)

IMF, How Stablecoins Can Improve Payments and Global Finance (December 2025)