Get the Full Report

Enter your email below to view

State of Stablecoins and Payments: September 2026

Stablecoin payments are showing real adoption, growing 42% to at least $401B through August even as supply grew just 6% to $303B.

Stablecoin payments reached between $401 billion and $527 billion in the first eight months of 2026, up 42% to 63% on the previous year. Businesses receive 58% to 64% of all payments, while cross-border stablecoin payments are growing 7 times faster than conventional fiat rails.

Sep 15, 2026
Stablecoins & Payments
Payments
Authors
Elton Shehdula, Head of Research, Allium
Elton Shehdula
Head of Research
Maksym Sherman, Research, Allium
Maksym Sherman
Research
Olivia Denk, Research, Allium
Olivia Denk
Research
Download the Report

Key takeaways

  1. Stablecoin supply reached $303 billion in August 2026, up 6% year-over-year. Tether and Circle account for 85% of that supply. Exchanges hold $89 billion, and DeFi protocols hold $26 billion. The reserves backing this supply generate an estimated $170 billion in new U.S. Treasury demand.
  2. Payments are the fastest-growing use of stablecoins. Payment volume reached at least $401 billion through August 2026, up 42% or more on 2025. Businesses receive 58% to 64% of those payments. Business-to-business payments form the largest lane.
  3. Cross-border stablecoin payments are growing 7 times faster than fiat payments. Cross-border stablecoin payments grew 64% in 2025, compared to 9% for conventional fiat rails. Stablecoins account for 0.31% of global retail cross-border payment value. Within geo-attributed stablecoin payments, 61% of volume remains domestic.

Abstract

Total stablecoin transfer volume reached $85 trillion from January to August 2026, but only $4.0 trillion was real economic activity once exchange-internal, DeFi, and infrastructure transfers were removed. Trading accounted for 69% of that adjusted volume, store of value for 13%, and payments for up to 13%. Business-to-business settlement formed the largest single payment lane at $137 billion to $153 billion. Corporate operations led payment volume, with $56 billion in service fees, $43 billion in payroll, and $28 billion in supplier payments outpacing $19 billion in retail purchases.

61% of geographically attributed payment volume was domestic, while business-to-business transfers showed the highest cross-border share at 43%. Attributed payment volume skews toward emerging markets and international trade hubs. Estimated Thailand wallets received $10.8 billion in payments through August 2026, followed by Turkey at $7.8 billion, Indonesia at $6.3 billion, and Mexico at $6.1 billion.

Emerging payment rails scaled through high-frequency transactions. Agentic payments on the x402 protocol reached 29 million monthly transfers in August 2026, averaging 6 cents per payment. Since October 2025, 89% of agentic transfers purchased infrastructure, analytics, and data queries. In consumer spending, Ether.fi Cash grew 8x to $108 million in monthly spend in August 2026, one issuer of many that Allium tracks.

Download the full report for the data and methodology.

Informational only. Not investment advice.

State of Stablecoins and Payments: September 2026

More from Allium Research

Get new Allium research in your inbox

October 15, 2026
State of Stablecoins and Payments
Allium's Q3 2026 report measures stablecoin supply, adjusted volume, payments, agentic payments and card spend through September 30, 2026, with commentary from 17 industry contributors. Supply grew 0.4% this year to $305B, while payments grew 45% to $482B as payment count rose 71% and the average payment fell. By Elton Shehdula, Head of Research @Allium Maksym Sherman, Research @Allium Olivia Denk, Research @Allium
Read
July 30, 2026
Stablecoins add $170B of genuinely new Treasury demand
Stablecoin reserves sit in short-dated Treasury bills and Treasury repo, so supply growth is often read as a straight line to Treasury demand. This joint white paper with Citizens classifies roughly $295 billion of stablecoin supply by how it is actually used and finds an estimated $170 billion of genuinely incremental U.S. Treasury demand behind it. With Eric Merlis, Leslie Wong & David Scherrer, Global Markets @Citizens
Read
July 30, 2026
Stablecoins are 0.31% of cross-border payments
Raw stablecoin transaction volume is mostly non-economic activity, and what remains mixes domestic with cross-border, so the industry has been sizing stablecoin payments by rough estimate. This joint report with FXC Intelligence puts a number on it: $135bn of the $44.3tn of retail cross-border payments volume in 2025, 0.31% of the market, up from 0.2% in 2024. The share is far higher wherever consumers are involved. C2C runs at 0.95% and B2C at 0.89%, both on track to pass 1% in 2026, while B2B, the largest segment by far, sits at 0.19%. By Lucy Ingham, Ian Manns, Matteo Chiorrini & Arinola Lawal, FXC Intelligence With onchain data from Allium
Read
Explore the Full Research Library

Finance is moving onchain. Allium is the system of record it runs on.

Explore terminal
Talk to us now
Decorative
Finance is moving onchain. Allium is the foundation it runs on.