Welcome to another edition of The Weekly Stable, the essential source of stablecoin news coverage for global fintech professionals, brought to you by This Week in Fintech.

This week we cover:

• Fed Governor Floats “Skinny” Master Accounts for Non-Banks
• Wise is finally moving into stablecoins, but not for the reason you think
• Money Code Ep 6: Building a stablecoin-first chain w/ Paul Faecks (Plasma)
• Product launches, partnerships and regulatory news from Alipay, B2C2, Beam, Borderless.xyz, Coinbase, Kotani Pay, Modern Treasury, Ripple, Tesser, Tether, Tempo, TRM Labs, Zepz and more.

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🏆 Top Stories

Fed Governor Floats “Skinny” Master Accounts for Non-Banks

At the Payments Innovation Conference in Washington, Fed Governor Christopher Waller unveiled plans for a new “payment account”, a limited-access or “skinny” master account available to all legally eligible institutions. The model would grant direct access to Fedwire and ACH without requiring a commercial bank intermediary.

These accounts would carry strict limits: no interest, no overdrafts, capped balances, and no discount-window access. The goal is to enable faster, lower-risk participation for payment-focused firms.

The proposal remains conceptual and would require careful design around reserve composition, supervision, and settlement finality.

Why it matters

This is a potential breakthrough for U.S. stablecoin and digital asset infrastructure, opening the door for non-banks to hold Fed settlement accounts for the first time, bridging crypto and traditional rails.

• A fed master account has significant advantages
  • Removes the need for commercial bank intermediaries, enabling faster, cheaper operations
  • Direct Fedwire access could eliminate “debanking” risk for licensed stablecoin issuers.
  • Reduces risk for stablecoin issuers who no longer need to manage the liability and liquidity risk of commercial bank deposits, helping prevent situations like the USDC depeg during SVB's collapse
• Driving competition in payments: The US has no federal payments charter, non-banks must navigate 50 state money transmitter licences or rely on bank partnerships, but ultimately a bank is involved. This new account would provide non-bank access to core money movement infrastructure and drive payments innovation while keeping the Fed as the trusted settlement layer. 
• Faster access to the Fed: Companies like Custodia have been trying to get a Fed Master account for years and even took the Fed to court on this issue. A skinny version could allow them to start with basic operations first before expanding to a full service account later. It could also speed access for the various companies that have applied for OCC Trust Charters such as Circle, Paxos, Ripple and Anchorage.

If implemented, Waller’s plan would mark the first structural reform enabling tokenized money to interact directly with the U.S. payment core and create a new class of payment company in the US, driving a separation of credit activities from payment activities in the US banking landscape. This is a significant move for US financial innovation and is a concrete example of the reforms and private sector partnerships the Fed is seeking to make, as discussed during the conference: 

“Innovation in payments isn’t optional for the United States. It’s how we preserve both efficiency and trust in the next era of money.”

Payments innovation is taking center-stage with the Fed now framing DeFi and tokenized money as integral to the payments ecosystem, not fringe experiments. These initiatives, along with the GENIUS Act and upcoming market structure bill are laying the groundwork, providing fintechs, investors and startups with the clarity they need to build in the US.

For a summary of the Federal Reserve Payments Innovation Conference, check out this briefing doc.

Wise is finally moving into stablecoins, but not for the reason you think

Wise recently posted a job for a Product Lead – Digital Assets, and it's flying under the radar.

Wise is an efficient mover of money across borders - low fees, smart routing, and deep banking relationships. They’ve long questioned whether stablecoins could actually improve what they already do exceptionally well.

So when Wise quietly posted the role it raised eyebrows. The description?

"Enable customers to hold and use digital assets within their Wise account"

That’s not a treasury or settlement efficiency play. It's not about faster payments. It’s a wallet strategy, the financial super-app play. Here’s the pattern:

• Western Union, MoneyGram, Remitly and Zepz (WorldRemit & Sendwave) have all launched or announced digital wallets.
• For some, treasury operations is a draw, but for all of them, monetizing the recipients is the 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗲.
• Once users hold money inside your app, you can offer them savings, credit, investments, and new assets.

Wise already runs one of the world’s largest multi-currency wallets supporting 40 currencies. Adding stablecoins and digital assets is the next logical step. Not to reduce pre-funding, but to expand what customers can hold and do within Wise.

This is what many people miss about stablecoins:

They’re not just a better way to move money.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗴𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀.

And anyone with distribution is racing to capture more of the customer’s wallet.

📺 Money Code Podcast 

Ep 6: From DeFi to Payments: Building a stablecoin-first chain w/ Paul Faecks (Plasma)

“Stablecoins are money 2.0… but only if they’re highly usable.”

In episode 6 of Money Code, we sat down with Paul Faecks, Founder and CEO of Plasma on launching a stablecoin-first payments chain and why distribution beats raw TPS. We cover Tron’s cost creep, pulling USDT into DeFi, token incentives that taper, and Plasma One’s “earn, spend, save” neobank play.

We cover:

• Why a dedicated “payments chain” exists and how Plasma’s thesis differs from general-purpose L1s/L2s.
• Tron’s dominance in P2P payments, its cost creep, and where Plasma sees the opening.
• USDT vs USDC: distribution, usage patterns, and why Plasma is pushing USDT into DeFi.
• Product: Plasma One (yield via DeFi, cards, global on/off-ramps), gasless USD transfers, confidentiality.
• Go-to-market: distribution, network effects, and why omnipresence on CEXs matters.

Key takeaways

• Focus beats generality: Building only for stablecoins lets Plasma optimize fees, finality, distribution, and product without serving gaming or memecoins.
• DeFi underpins payments: Deep, reliable lending and swapping markets are prerequisite to payments at scale; idle balances must earn while remaining liquid.
• USDT is the payments rail today: USDT dominates real-world flows; Plasma is pulling that liquidity into DeFi to close the gap with USDC’s DeFi lead.
• Distribution > raw TPS: Sub-second finality and low fees are table stakes. Omnipresence on CEXs and partner funnels is the real moat.
• Verticalization matters: Plasma One is a distribution wedge that also dogfoods Plasma, signaling confidence to third-party builders.

Give it a listen and share your feedback by sending me a DM or replying to this email. 

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Read on for a round up of this week’s news:

🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships

Alipay owner Ant Group launches Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain (read more)

Borderless.xyz launches first industry-wide stablecoin FX rate benchmark (read more)

Coinbase is building private transactions for Base (read more)

Japan’s big banks join forces on stablecoins to speed corporate payments (read more)

Siemens and B2C2 adopt JPMorgan’s blockchain-based FX platform (read more)

Zepz launches Sendwave Wallet to give customers the power of stablecoins in everyday transactions (read more)

📊 Market Trends

Tether reaches 500M verified users as stablecoin market nears $316B (read more)

TRM Labs observes growing stablecoin adoption trend in US and India (read more)

Wall Street bank Citi sees stablecoins powering crypto’s next growth phase (read more)

💸 Fundraises and M&A

Modern Treasury acquired stablecoin platform Beam for $40M (read more)

Pave Bank Raises $39 Million to Scale World’s First Programmable Bank for Digital Assets (read more)

Ripple breaks into corporate treasury with $1B GTreasury acquisition (read more)

Stripe-backed blockchain startup Tempo raises $500M in Series A round (read more)

Tesser raises $4.5M Seed Round to bring instant cross-border payments to banks and PSPs (read more)

Tether invests in Kotani Pay to revolutionize Africa’s digital asset infrastructure and cross-border payments (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

Brussels backs stablecoin issuers, rejecting ECB’s call for tighter rules (read more)

Chinese tech giants pause stablecoin plans after Beijing steps in (read more)

Desjardins warns Canada is falling behind U.S. on stablecoins, risking dollar dominance (read more)

ESRB warns of stablecoin risks, calls for tighter regulation of multi-issuer schemes (read more)

Fed Governor Waller proposes 'skinny' master accounts for stablecoin issuers (read more)

Former World Bank president David Malpass endorses stablecoins as key to global financial growth (read more)

Kenya enacts landmark crypto regulation law, CMA to oversee digital asset firms (read more)

Monetary Authority of Singapore launches BLOOM Initiative to extend settlement capabilities (read more)

Nigerian Central Bank forms task force to explore official stablecoin as eNaira falters (read more)

OCC Chief plays down stablecoin 'bank run' fears (read more)

Russia to legalize cryptocurrency for international trade payments (read more)

Sony Bank subsidiary Connectia Trust applies for US Crypto Trust Charter, plans stablecoin launch (read more)

“UK can do better”: Kraken urges regulators to move faster on stablecoin and tokenization rules (read more)

Sen. Warren blasts ‘light-touch’ stablecoin law, presses Treasury on Trump conflicts and financial risks (read more)

Revolut Secures MiCA License in Cyprus, Expanding Regulated Crypto Services Across EU (read more)

🍻 Upcoming Events

Monday 27 October, Las Vegas: Roadshow to Stablecon: Stablecoin Day

💬 Posts of the Week

📖 Reads of the Week

Report: a16z State of Crypto Report 2025 

Report: Visa Stablecoins beyond payments: The onchain lending opportunity

In Stablecoins Will Change Payments, But Will Change Banking Even More, David G.W. Birch offers a policy-minded opinion piece arguing that properly regulated non-bank stablecoins pose less systemic risk than fractional-reserve banks and could decouple payments from credit creation. This is good to pair with Linda Jeng’s A ‘Skinny’ Fed Master Account Could Bring Back Narrow Banking, which provides a policy analysis arguing that Fed Governor Chris Waller’s proposed “payments account” for nonbanks could revive the concept of narrow banking by granting payment firms direct but limited access to Fed rails.

In Why Stablecoins Matter: Because Five Banks in New York Still Gate Global Trade, Berhan Kongel, founder of Keyrails, provides a strategic analysis arguing that the real significance of stablecoins isn’t cheaper or faster payments but the structural shift they enable—from liquidity trapped in New York-controlled nostro accounts to programmable, yield-earning dollars that can settle anywhere on demand.