This Week in Stablecoins: Visa, Goldman and Samsung Raise the Stakes

Visa’s managed platform, Samsung Wallet’s USDC demonstration and Ramp’s business accounts show competition shifting from token issuance to control of banking relationships, software, settlement and distribution. Deposit-dependent banks fear stablecoins could drain low-cost funding, while firms such as Goldman Sachs may see opportunity in trading, custody and tokenized markets. Delayed U.S. legislation and tougher global anti-money-laundering scrutiny leave the rules unresolved. Smartphones, FinTech platforms and regional institutions could put stablecoins in front of millions of users, but consumer awareness remains low and the industry has yet to demonstrate a compelling everyday advantage over cards and bank payments.

As a result, the biggest stablecoin news this week didn’t come from crypto-native companies. Visa launched a new Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP) that gives financial institutions, FinTechs and crypto companies a single managed environment for minting, redeeming, holding and transferring stablecoins. Goldman Sachs’ CEO broke with parts of the banking lobby over pending crypto legislation while federal regulators confronted another implementation deadline and Samsung previewed stablecoin functionality inside its consumer wallet. Individually, none of those developments settles the future of digital dollars. Collectively, they show that stablecoins are no longer primarily a cryptocurrency product. They are becoming a contested layer of financial infrastructure.

The week’s developments do not suggest that one company is winning. They suggest that the competitive battleground is shifting away from who issues the token and toward who controls the software, banking relationships, settlement infrastructure and consumer distribution that make digital dollars usable at scale. That strategic tension is playing out in Washington, where a newly released draft of the text for the proposed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is revealing a financial sector fault line of banks versus banks, with each institution assessing whether stablecoins threaten its existing economics or open a new line of business. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, for example, has reportedly expressed support for advancing the Clarity Act, despite objections from banking trade groups concerned about the treatment of stablecoin rewards and the possibility of deposits migrating outside conventional banks. Goldman became a deposit-taking institution after the 2008 financial crisis. Institutions dependent on low-cost deposits have reason to resist stablecoin products that resemble interest-bearing accounts. PYMNTS covered how on Friday (July 17) the European Central Bank added its voice to banks in the United States in warning that widespread adoption of stablecoins could pull retail deposits out of traditional banks, weakening a critical source of funding for lending. Firms with large trading, custody, market-making and investment-banking businesses, however, may see more upside in the expansion of tokenized finance. The central question has shifted from whether stablecoins will be legal to what...