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:

• Ten Global Banks Explore Reserve-Backed Digital Money for G7 Currencies
• Money Code Ep 5: From Checkout to Cross-Border: Stablecoins for E-Commerce w/ Eric Barbier
• Product launches, partnerships and regulatory news from Anchorage, Bridge, BVNK, Chainlink, Circle, Crown, Ethena, Lemon, Lumx, ODDO BHF, Routefusion, S&P Global, Societe Generale-FORGE and more.

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🏆 Top Stories

Ten Global Banks Explore Reserve-Backed Digital Money for G7 Currencies

Ten of the world’s largest banks — including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Santander, BNP Paribas, MUFG, TD Bank, and UBS — are jointly exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money available on public blockchains and focused on G7 currencies. The initiative seeks to determine whether a new, industry-wide standard could enhance competition and settlement efficiency while maintaining full regulatory compliance. The group is in active dialogue with regulators and supervisors across key markets.

Why it matters:
This is the largest coordinated bank effort yet to bring fiat-backed money on-chain—and it tilts closer to a central-bank-adjacent model than a private stablecoin.

• Design distinction: Unlike deposit-backed tokens such as JPM Coin, this form is fully reserve-backed, implying assets held directly in central-bank or equivalent liquid reserves, positioning it conceptually closer to a CBDC proxy.
• Scope question: The statement references “G7 currencies,” suggesting multiple currency tokens, though details remain open.
• Strategic motive: Banks are moving to reassert control of digital settlement before private issuers like Circle and Tether consolidate institutional flows.
• Market impact: Since most cross-border value moves through wholesale and interbank payments, this initiative could shift trillions in settlement flows to blockchain rails—modernizing the financial plumbing itself. Retail users and businesses may never touch these tokens directly, but they’ll benefit through faster, cheaper global transactions.

This is an ambitious effort, but one worth trying. Transforming the global payment infrastructure will take years, and the only way to find the right model is to start experimenting now. The banks see the writing on the wall: stablecoins, fintech challengers, and even other banks are moving fast. By collaborating early, they can define the boundaries, uncover the constraints, and shape the standards that will govern digital money. Progress will be slow, but the institutions that start now, and stay open to collaboration, could be the ones setting the pace later.

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Want to learn more?

Banks of all sizes are responding to the opportunities and threats of stablecoins in different ways. The role a GSIB plays vs a community bank or credit union in the transition onchain will vary on their business model, customer base and willingness to engage and innovate.

So, where should banks start?

By understanding the technology, where they fit in this new stack and how to best meet their client demand.

Next week, Oct 23rd at 11am ET, Paxos alum Davis Hart, CEO of Omnia, is hosting a webinar on The Stablecoin Opportunity for Banks, covering:

• How stablecoins are upgrading money
• The threat and opportunity for banks
• Practical steps for banks to take now
• Deposit tokens

If you’re in banking, payments or treasury, it’s worth your hour. Register here.

📺 Money Code Podcast 

Ep 5: From Checkout to Cross-Border: Stablecoins for E-Commerce w/ Eric Barbier

The future of cross-border isn’t necessarily “stablecoins everywhere.” It’s stablecoins where they help most, stitched into fiat rails that merchants already trust.

In Episode 5 of Money Code, we chat with Triple-A founder and CEO Eric Barbier who explains how web2 merchants accept crypto/stablecoins without touching them, why B2B payouts are exploding, and what really unlocks global scale: bank relationships, licenses, and compliance.

We cover:

• How Triple-A enables web2 merchants like Grab to accept crypto and stablecoins while settling instantly in fiat.
• Why stablecoins now drive nearly all real payment volume, especially for B2B transactions.
• The merchant segments seeing the most traction: luxury, travel, and digital goods/gaming.
• How compliance and licensing make crypto-fiat payments bankable.
• Why stablecoins cut pre-funding costs and unlock faster, cheaper cross-border payouts.
• What still limits scale: bank caution, capital controls, and UX friction.

Key takeaways

• Stablecoins dominate utility. BTC/ETH show up for high-ticket “reward myself” moments; stablecoins are ~80%+ of consumer flows and ~99% in B2B.
• Chargebacks matter. For riskier categories like travel, no-chargeback stablecoin payments are materially more merchant-friendly than cards.
• Micropayouts become viable. Network fees near zero mean creators can be paid on demand (even every few minutes).
• Treasury efficiency is the quiet superpower. Stablecoins reduce trapped capital and FX inventory losses inherent in pre-funded fiat models.
• Compliance is a product. Licenses, travel-rule data exchange, sanctions checks, and on-chain forensics are table stakes to keep bank accounts.

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

Bernstein Forecasts USDC Supply to Triple by 2027, Capturing 1/3 of Stablecoin Market (read more)

Stablecoins Will Disrupt Cross-Border Payments, Investment Bank William Blair Says (read more)

Anchorage Digital Bank selects US Bank to custody reserves backing its payment stablecoins (read more)

Ethena integrates with Copper.co, enabling native minting and redemption of USDe and USDtb directly in custody (read more)

French Banking Giant ODDO BHF Enters Crypto With Euro-Backed Stablecoin EUROD (read more)

Group of leading international banks explores issuance of a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money (read more)

S&P Global brings stablecoin risk ratings onchain via Chainlink (read more)

Safe partners with Circle to establish USDC as the stablecoin standard across the Safe ecosystem (read more)

Societe Generale-FORGE & Bitpanda Partner to Introduce Regulated Stablecoins into DeFi (read more)

Stripe launches stablecoin payments for subscriptions (read more)

💸 Fundraises and M&A

Routefusion raises $27M Series A led by PeakSpan Capital (read more)

Lemon raises $20 million in Series B to accelerate its expansion in Latin America (read more)

Lumx raises $3.4 million to accelerate stablecoin and digital payment infrastructure in Latin America (read more)

Coinbase and Mastercard said to be in bidding war for UK stablecoin firm BVNK for $1.5bn to $2.5bn range (read more)

Crown raises $8.1M to launch BRLV, a Brazilian real-backed stablecoin (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

Crypto Bank Erebor Approved for Conditional Federal Bank Charter by OCC (read more)

Stablecoin Issuers Race for US Bank Charters as Stripe’s Bridge Joins the Queue (read more)

ECB publishes assessment of digital euro CBDC holding limits on financial stability (read more)

China Tests RMB Stablecoins in Hong Kong to Advance Global Trade and Reduce Dollar Dependence (read more)

Legend Trading Gains MiCA License in Ireland, Launches Legend FXN for Regulated Stablecoin Settlements (read more)

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage touts plans for crypto deregulation (read more)

Russia Eyes Bank Integration of Crypto as Stablecoins Gain Traction Among 20M Users (read more)

SEC Chair Atkins charts pro-innovation path for crypto and tokenization regulation (read more)

How Singapore and Japan are pioneering stablecoins in Asia (read more)

🍻 Upcoming Events

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

📖 Reads of the Week

Freda Duan’s Agentic Deep Dive breaks down the foundations of “agentic commerce” by examining the history and mechanics of 3P e-commerce models, why Google and Meta failed, and how OpenAI and Perplexity are taking fundamentally different paths.

Stablecoins Don’t Win by Minting. They Win by Moving describes how network effects, distribution, and real transaction utility (not just supply or brand) determine which stablecoins succeed, introducing a key lens: transacting vs. holding dollars and the orchestration layers needed to connect them.