Welcome to another edition of the Money Code newsletter (fka The Weekly Stable), the essential source of stablecoin news coverage for global fintech professionals, brought to you by This Week in Fintech and Stablecon.

This week we cover:

• Modern Treasury Becomes A PSP For Fiat And Stablecoins
• Bridge Gets Conditional OCC Trust Charter, Joins The Regulated Cohort
• Payoneer Embeds Stablecoin Rails for 2M Cross-Border SMBs
• Money Code Ep 20: Stablecoins Are Becoming Everyday Money w/ Chris Harmse and Anthony Yim
• Product launches, partnerships and funding news from Agant, Banxa, BVNK, dLocal, Dragonfly, Figure, Fireblocks, Lightspark, OSL, Omnia, Privy, Quantoz, Wirex and more.

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For feedback or suggestions, reply to this email, find Chuk and Stablecon online, or join the Stablecon community on Telegram. P.S. Get your tickets for Stablecon 2026 

📊 Report

The State of Stables Report

Today, Stablecon and Artemis released "The State of Stables," our quarterly report on the trends driving the fast-moving stablecoin ecosystem.

The goal of The State of Stables is to track the paradigm shift as it unfolds. Each quarter, we’ll unpack the trends, the entrepreneurs and the new product types driving the ecosystems.

The trend for Q1 2026? Stablecoin-linked Cards. Click the image for a link to the report for:

• Key data and trends prepared by Artemis
• Our profile of Farooq Malik, CEO & Co-Founder of Rain
• Policy and Regulatory update
• Stablecoin-linked cards overview (by yours truly)

🏆 Top Stories

Modern Treasury Becomes A PSP

Modern Treasury launched Modern Treasury Payments, an integrated payment service provider that lets companies programmatically open payment accounts and move money over ACH, wires, RTP/FedNow, push-to-card, and stablecoins via a single API. At launch it supports USDG, USDP, and USDC, with USDT coming soon.

Why it matters

Modern Treasury is moving from the payments control plane (orchestration, ledger, reconciliation) into the execution layer (accounts plus rails), which is where take-rate and switching costs live

• Product velocity upgrade: MT collapses the “form bank relationships first” step. Customers can launch on MT’s PSP-backed rails in days/weeks, then add their own bank partners later without changing the integration, since it stays on the same API and ops layer. 
• Market structure: After integrating their Beam acquisition, MT now competes as a “payments OS” that can own end-to-end money movement for platforms, positioning it against other key players like Bridge.
• Stablecoins go mainstream in treasury: MT makes stablecoin settlement a default routing option alongside ACH and RTP, so “stablecoins” stops being a crypto product decision and becomes an ops decision about speed, availability, and corridor fit.

Bridge Gets Conditional OCC Trust Charter, Joins The Regulated Cohort

Stripe-owned Bridge received conditional approval from the OCC to organize a federally chartered national trust bank. If finalized, Bridge can offer digital asset custody, stablecoin issuance and orchestration, and stablecoin reserve management under direct federal oversight.

Why it matters

This is “permission to play” for the biggest customers, and a signal about where competition is going.

• Big-league posture, not unique: Bridge joins a growing set of crypto firms pursuing OCC trust structures. Anchorage is the standout with a full trust bank charter, while multiple others have conditional approvals.
• Conditional means work and constraints: Conditional approval kicks off a heavy execution program (governance, capital, risk controls). That can slow product velocity and raise rollout risk before the upside shows up.
• Differentiation shifts to product and distribution: Once regulatory posture converges, the fight moves to time-to-launch, bundled features, and reducing total cost of ownership. If Bridge pairs OCC credibility with a developer-first issuance stack and Stripe distribution, it can win the segment that values “compliant stablecoins shipped fast.”

Payoneer Embeds Stablecoin Rails for 2M Cross-Border SMBs

Payoneer announced it will add stablecoin capabilities directly inside its platform, powered by Bridge (a Stripe company). The product is slated to launch in select markets in Q2 2026, then expand through 2026 as coverage grows. Businesses will be able to receive, hold, send stablecoins, and withdraw to local bank accounts when needed.

Why it matters

• Mainstream B2B distribution validation: Payoneer is turning stablecoins into a native, 24/7 option inside one familiar workflow for ~2M SMBs. That shifts adoption from “crypto onboarding” to “feature rollout” in the exact corridors where bank cutoffs and multi-hop correspondent friction hurt most.
• Compliance-first is a signaling move: The language is aimed at banking partners, regulators, and finance teams who still associate stablecoins with compliance risk. Payoneer is framing this as an extension of its existing controls and trust stack to pre-empt “is this safe?” and keep partners comfortable as rollout expands market-by-market.
• Stablecoins as an API layer gets validated again: Bridge is the abstraction layer that makes “receive, hold, send, convert, payout” feel like normal payments primitives, hiding wallets, keys, and chain ops. The strategic consequence is important: stablecoin enablement becomes increasingly commoditized, and the competitive edge shifts to distribution, compliance coverage, corridor depth, and pricing.

📺 Money Code Podcast 

Ep 20: Stablecoins Are Becoming Everyday Money w/ Chris Harmse and Anthony Yim

Ask actual users of stablecoins about their behavior and stablecoins start to look a lot less like crypto product and much more like everyday money. 

Chris Harmse (Co-Founder & CBO at BVNK) and Anthony Yim (Co-Founder & CTO at Artemis) join Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh to unpack data from their new survey on how stablecoin holders actually earn, spend, and move value across 15 countries. See the full report here: Stablecoin Utility Report 2026

The signal is clear: demand for “normal payments” is running ahead of real-world access, so the next adoption wave will be won by the fintech apps that embed stablecoin rails into familiar flows. 

But are those apps going to come from incumbents who already have trust? Or startups who can move more quickly to suit the user needs?

We decode:

• Do users want stablecoins, or do they just want faster, cheaper payments that happen to use stablecoins?
• If demand is real, why is adoption still stuck, and what exactly closes the integration gap?
• What happens to “instant cash-out” fees when stablecoins make settlement always-on?

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:

📊 Market Trends

$125B Real Estate Giant Starwood Capital Ready to Tokenize Assets, Held Back by US Regulations (read more)

Asia leapfrogging the West in onchain retail use as regional hubs lead on stablecoin rules (read more)

💸 Fundraises and M&A

Dragonfly closes $650M fourth fund (read more)

Figure Technology Solutions Upsizes Secondary Public Offering at $32.00 Per Share (read more)

Nexus to Launch Revenue-Sharing USDX Stablecoin powered by M0 (read more)

OneChain Raises $67M Series A to Build Institutional RWA Infrastructure (read more)

Superset Secures $4.0M Seed Funding (read more)

Tether invests in Hyperliquid frontend Dreamcash, offering perps markets for TSLA, gold and more using USDT0 collateral (read more)

Wall Street giant Apollo deepens crypto push with Morpho token deal (read more)

🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships

dLocal Adopts Fireblocks' Stablecoin Infrastructure for Cross-Border Treasury Operations (read more)

Franklin Templeton and Binance Launch Off-Exchange Collateral Program for Institutional Traders (read more)

Infinant and Omnia Join Forces to Enable Bank-Ready Stablecoin Payment Solutions (read more)

Lightspark and Cross River Partner to Power 24/7 Real-Time Fiat Payments Through Bitcoin (read more)

Major US Banks Partner to Create Tokenized Deposit Network (read more)

Modern Treasury Adds Stablecoin Support to Traditional Payment Platform (read more)

Nomura, Daiwa, Japan’s big 3 banks to test stablecoin securities settlement (read more)

Payoneer Partners with Bridge to Launch Stablecoin Payment Services (read more)

Privy Launches Custodial Wallets to Meet Institutional-Grade Compliance and Recovery Needs (read more)

Quantoz Becomes Visa Principal Member to Enable Stablecoin Spending (read more)

Robinhood's Layer 2 Testnet Achieves 4M Transactions in First Week (read more)

Stripe's Stablecoin Firm Bridge Receives Conditional Bank Charter from OCC (read more)

Tether's USA₮ Stablecoin Integrates with Rumble Wallet for Creator Payments (read more)

TON Foundation partners with OSL's Banxa to expand stablecoin payment infrastructure for Asia-Pacific merchants (read more)

TRON Partners with Nexus to Enable Zero-Fee USDT Gaming Payments (read more)

Wirex launches Visa Direct 'Stablecoin Push-to-Card' payouts for BaaS clients (read more)

World Liberty Financial Partners with $3.5T Apex Group for Stablecoin Integration (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

Agant registers with U.K. FCA ahead of British pound stablecoin debut (read more)

BVNK has secured a MiCA CASP licence from Malta’s MFSA. (read more)

Hong Kong regulator approves first crypto company license since June (read more)

Hong Kong remains committed to digital assets but feels competition from an ‘aggressive’ UAE (read more)

Japan Tests Stablecoin Payments Using National ID Card System (read more)

🍻 Upcoming Events

• Wednesday 25 Feb, Mexico City: Stablecon Roadshow by Rain and VelaFi @ Mexico Fintech Week 2026
• Thursday 26 Feb, New York: Stablecon Salon Modern Treasury Edition

💬 Posts of the Week

📖 Reads of the Week

• Stablecoin Utility Report 2026
• State of Stables Report: USA 2026 Q1 
• Building Permissionless Neobanks
• Everything is Market
• The Machinery of Modern Finance