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:

• MoneyGram Adds Fireblocks To Power Stablecoin Settlement
• Ep 12 of Money Code: Why Enterprises Are Moving Billions Into Onchain Lending w/ Paul Frambot (Morpho)
• Product launches, partnerships and funding news from Aleo, Brale, Circle, Eco, Huma Finance, Ingenico, Lead Bank, 1Money, Orbital, Stripe, Tala, Tempo, WSPN more.

Do you want to master stablecoins and programmable money? 

Subscribe to our podcast for breakdowns, lessons and insights from the top builders in the space.

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 

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

📺 Money Code Podcast 

Ep 12: Why Enterprises Are Moving Billions Into Onchain Lending w/ Paul Frambot (Morpho)

If stablecoins are checking accounts, vaults are savings accounts.

Sure, you’ve heard of “DeFi”, and “onchain lending”, but how does it actually work? When is it better than traditional lending and how long until we see it start to tackle the $5T global unsecured credit market

In this episode, Paul Frambot, CEO of Morpho, explains how Morpho became the lending stack behind players like Coinbase by acting as infrastructure, not a fund, and by letting curators design their own markets. 

He lays out how open ledgers, enterprise-grade code, and competitive underwriting could turn onchain vaults into the savings and credit layer for fintechs, banks, and allocators.

We decode:

• How do you build lending products that feel like Web2 apps, but tap a global, competitive onchain liquidity book behind the scenes?
• Why are enterprises willing to trust Morpho as “DeFi infra” when so many onchain lending protocols have been hacked?
• What happens when you unbundle underwriting, let curators set risk and price, and extend the model to unsecured credit?

What you’ll get:

• A clear mental model for Morpho as “lending infrastructure” versus Aave/Compound-style pooled protocols, and why that matters for enterprise adoption.
• A practical lens on how onchain loans are really just priced promises, and how different trust primitives can be combined.
• A forward-looking view on the building blocks still missing and how they shape the roadmap for onchain lending products.

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

Money Code is presented by Stablecon and Powered by BVNK

Subscribe on Apple, Spotify and Youtube, or search Money Code wherever you get your podcasts. 

Don’t forget to follow Money Code on X (@moneycodepod) and LinkedIn. 

🏆 Top Stories

MoneyGram Adds Fireblocks To Power Stablecoin Settlement

MoneyGram, which serves 50M users across 200+ countries, has selected Fireblocks to run its stablecoin settlement layer and programmable treasury infrastructure. The integration lets MoneyGram move liquidity across multiple blockchains in real time, reduce global pre-funding, and improve cross-border settlement speed. The partnership builds on MoneyGram’s existing digital wallet experiments and earlier crypto on/off-ramp investments.

Why it matters:

MoneyGram is turning its global remittance footprint into a programmable, always-on payments network.

A few shifts define the strategic significance:

• Break from the Stellar-only era. MoneyGram’s 2021 Stellar partnership was one of the earliest high-profile TradFi–blockchain integrations. Moving to Fireblocks’ multi-chain infrastructure suggests the company now wants flexibility to use whichever chain best serves cost, speed, liquidity, or corridor coverage.
• Incumbents accelerate their stablecoin roadmaps. Remittance leaders are moving faster than banks in upgrading their settlement stack. They have distribution, recurring flows, and brand trust, so stablecoins can be both a back-end efficiency upgrade as well as a new consumer product (see MoneyGram’s wallet launch earlier this year)
• Capital efficiency gains. Fireblocks’ programmable treasury layer reduces the need to pre-fund accounts across dozens of FX corridors, improving working capital and reducing reconciliation friction.

MoneyGram is fully leaning into revamping its operations via stablecoins but now in a chain-agnostic way. The door is now open to integrating Solana (already chosen by Western Union), Polygon, or any of the emerging payment chains. 

Stablecoins were expected to kill legacy money-transfer companies. Instead, they’re reviving them while accelerating a quiet shift of monetary power from emerging markets toward dollar rails.

Stablecoin payments cost cents. So why is Stripe charging 1.5%?

Stripe announced a full roll out of their stablecoin acceptance product, turning it on by default for all eligible US merchants. 

Some crypto circles are upset with the 1.5% fee:

“Charging 1.5% simply to send USDC is ludicrously unreasonable”

Not quite. This is a category error.

Stripe is selling payment acceptance, not blockchain transfers

Comparing 1.5% to gas fees misunderstands the value Stripe provides: checkout integration, refunds, fiat settlement, fraud checks, subscription logic, compliance, support, analytics… all inside the same system merchants already use for cards, wallets, and everything else

To undercut Stripe, a competitor would need to replicate the entire checkout surface + payments operating system, not just accept a USDC transfer. That’s a tall order. 

And merchants won't build a parallel system themselves: crypto acceptance isn’t their business, dev time is scarce, stablecoin volume is still tiny, and it’s cheaper than the 2.9% they already pay.

Stripe’s value isn’t the rail. It’s the checkout suite that orchestrates all the rails.

So yes, blockchain transfers are near-free. Payment acceptance is not.

Is Stripe earning a healthy margin? Probably. That’s what pricing power looks like when you own the checkout surface.

I think it’ll come down over time, but only once they start to feel pressure from competitors who truly threaten to win over customers for the full package. 

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

💸 Fundraises and M&A

African Crypto Payment Firm Ezeebit Raises $2.05M Seed Round (read more)

AllScale Secures $5M Seed Round to Launch Self-Custody Stablecoin Neobank (read more)

Paradigm bets $13.5 million on stablecoin startup Crown in first Brazil investment (read more)

Major Financial Giants BNY, Nasdaq, S&P Global, and iCapital Invest in Digital Asset's Canton Network (read more)

Singapore's MetaComp Secures $22M to Expand Stablecoin Payment Network (read more)

Lead Bank Acquires Crypto Payment Company Loop Crypto to Scale Stablecoin Operations (read more)

Stripe Acquires Valora's Engineering Team to Boost Blockchain and Stablecoin Development (read more)

🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships

1Money Launches Zero Fees Stablecoin Orchestration Platform Ahead of Layer-1 Blockchain (read more)

Italian Payment Network Bancomat to Launch Euro-Pegged Stablecoin by 2026 (read more)

Brale-issued SBC powers US Treasury Financing on Canton (read more)

Circle to Launch Privacy-Focused USDC Stablecoin (USDCx) on Aleo Blockchain (read more)

Conduit Announces New Multicurrency Virtual Accounts (read more)

Dubai Customs Partners with Binance to Enable Crypto Payments for Trade (read more)

Eco Launches on Solana to Bridge its $15B Stablecoin Ecosystem (read more)

Crypto Wallet Firm Exodus Bets on Stablecoins for Real-World Payments With 2026 App (read more)

Huma Finance and Tala Partner to Launch Scalable Tokenized Lending Platform on Solana (read more)

IBKR adds stablecoin account funding powered by ZeroHash (read more)

POS provider Ingenico rolls out in-store crypto payments to millions of terminals (read more)

JPMorgan Unveils 2026 Strategy with Major Focus on Blockchain and Private Markets (read more)

Klarna Partners With Privy to Explore Crypto Wallet Use Within its Ecosystem (read more)

Texas Lender Monet Repositions as $6B Crypto-Focused Institution (read more)

MoneyGram Partners with Fireblocks to Enable Stablecoin-Powered Global Payments (read more)

Former Signature Bank Execs Launch N3XT, a Blockchain-Powered Bank (read more)

Orbital and Eightcap Partner to Enable Global Stablecoin Payment Solutions (read more)

Malaysia Launches Ringgit-Backed Stablecoin for APAC Payments (read more)

State Street Investment Management, Galaxy Digital, and Ondo Finance Announce Plans to Launch Private Tokenized Money Market Fund (read more)

Stripe's Tempo Blockchain Launches Public Testnet with Major Institutional Partners (read more)

Superstate Rolls Out Direct Stock Issuance for Public Companies on Ethereum, Solana (read more)

Tether-backed chain Stable launches Mainnet (read more)

WSPN Partners with ArrivalX to Enhance Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments (read more)

⚖️ Regulatory Developments

Pakistan to Launch First Sovereign Stablecoin (read more)

Bolivia to Integrate Digital Assets into Financial System, Starting with Stablecoins (read more)

India's NPCI Confirms Programmable CBDC Already Active with Real-World Use Cases (read more)

Tether’s USD₮ Recognised as Accepted Fiat-Referenced Token in Abu Dhabi’s ADGM (read more)

UK FCA to prioritize stablecoin payments in 2026 (read more)

📖 Reads of the Week

The IMF released a report titled "Understanding Stablecoins" where they caution that the rapid rise of dollar-denominated stablecoins could push households and businesses to abandon local currencies, especially in high-inflation or low-trust environments. See here and here for a good high level summaries.

Report: The Protocol Economy: Hashed 2026