Stablecoins for Commerce and Retail Leaders: A Practical Guide
Why stablecoins are gaining traction in retail and commerce—and what brand leaders should know.
A new financial infrastructure is quietly but decisively taking shape. Stablecoins—digital currencies pegged to fiat like the U.S. dollar—are emerging as the connective tissue for AI-driven shopping, real-time cross-border payments, and frictionless digital experiences.
The buzz is growing louder for a reason. While cryptocurrencies once dominated headlines for their volatility, stablecoins are earning attention for the opposite: their ability to bring predictability, speed, and programmability to global commerce systems.
If you're leading a brand navigating AI, automation, or international expansion, you don't need to become a crypto expert. But you do need to understand why stablecoins are being integrated by the likes of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe and Shopify—and how they’re reshaping the future of payments, loyalty, and operational agility.
Why This Matters Now
AI and digital payments are coming together fast, driving major changes in commerce. Leading platforms are starting to use stablecoins, both in what customers see and behind the scenes:
- Visa’s Intelligent Commerce platform allows AI agents to shop and pay autonomously using tokenized credentials.
- Mastercard’s Agent Pay embeds secure transactions into AI-driven interfaces for autonomous shopping experiences.
- PayPal and Perplexity now offer in-chat shopping powered by AI, leveraging PayPal’s global payment rails.
- Shopify accepts USDC (a fiat-backed stablecoin), converting payments to local currency with no FX fees—while offering merchants and buyers cashback for using it.
- Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge will let retailers hold, convert, and spend stablecoins across currencies while offering embedded crypto payments at checkout.
None of this is fringe innovation, it’s a signal of a broader shift to a more programmable, autonomous, and increasingly stablecoin-powered.
“The launch of Mastercard Agent Pay marks our initial steps in redefining commerce in the AI era.” - Mastercard CPO Jorn Lambert
The Role of Stablecoins
Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, stablecoins aren’t built for speculation. They’re built for execution. They offer predictability and comfort even when the broader digital asset markets are stormy and unpredictable. They also support the structured growth of digital commerce capabilities like tokenized rewards, programmable payments, or embedded finance. That makes them ideal for use cases like cross-border payouts, AI/agent-based shopping, composable loyalty programs, dynamic wallets, and real-time settlements.
In short, they’re the “middle managers” of crypto: not glamorous, but critical to keeping everything on track. But few innovations are more misunderstood, yet strategically useful, than stablecoins. So let’s talk a bit more about what they are.
What Are Stablecoins?
Stablecoins are blockchain-based digital currencies that maintain a consistent value, typically pegged 1:1 to fiat like USD. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, they are engineered for:
- Predictability (value stability)
- Liquidity (easy exchange)
- Utility (fast, programmable transactions)
Key types include:
In essence, stablecoins combine the reliability of fiat with the programmability of blockchain— ideal for wallets, payments, and supply chain automation.
How Are Stablecoins Reshaping Payments in Retail?
Stablecoins are rapidly moving to be more than just a treasury or infrastructure tool—they’re now a customer-facing payment method. And Shopify is leading the way.
Shopify now enables merchants to accept USDC via crypto wallets like Coinbase or Metamask. The platform converts those funds automatically into the merchant’s local currency—with no FX or multi-currency fees. More significantly, Shopify is actively incentivizing adoption:
Merchants who accept USDC will receive up to 0.5% cashback, and the company has announced it will offer cashback to customers who pay with USDC later this year.
This is a pivotal development: stablecoins are becoming embedded in everyday checkout flows—rewardable, programmable, and instant.
“Soon people will have AI agents browse, select, purchase and manage on their behalf.” — Visa CPO Jack Forestell
Fueling AI-Native, Agent-Driven Commerce
One use case that’s top of mind for many businesses today and likely to drive significant growth in stablecoin usage is agent-driven and AI-native commerce. Using stable coins as the financial layer in these instances allows bots—not just humans—to pay on your behalf.
- Visa’s Intelligent Commerce lets AI agents initiate and authorize purchases using tokenized payment credentials.
- Mastercard’s Agent Pay does the same through conversational interfaces, integrating directly into voice and chat-based product discovery.
- Stripe now supports USDC payouts, enabling platforms and marketplaces to pay out creators, freelancers, and sellers with low fees and real-time speed—even across borders.
Production-level integrations at Visa and Mastercard are enabling AI-agent purchasing with tokenized payment credentials through conversational interfaces and Stripe’s support of USDC enables platforms and marketplaces to pay out creators, freelancers and sellers with low fees and real-time speed, even across borders. Stablecoins are being embedded into the next era of digital UX, where agents shop, negotiate, and settle for us in real time.
“The next generation of commerce is happening on the agentic side. People are starting to research and shop online through agents.” - PayPal Technology Chief Srini Venkatesan
The Only Type of Stablecoin That Matters for Brands
Stablecoins generally fall into three categories: fiat-backed, crypto-backed, and algorithmic. For commerce and retail leaders, only one of these is truly viable.
Fiat-Backed
Fiat-backed stablecoins are pegged 1:1 to traditional currencies like USD and are backed by actual cash reserves held in banks or short-term government securities. They are the most reliable, regulated, and enterprise-ready option, used for payments, treasury, loyalty, and more.
Examples: USDC (by Circle), PYUSD (by PayPal), USDP (by Paxos)
Crypto-Backed
Crypto-backed stablecoins, while decentralized, rely on volatile crypto assets as collateral. They’re overcollateralized to manage risk, but still subject to fluctuations and complex mechanisms that make them ill-suited for customer-facing commerce experiences.
Algorithmic Stablecoins
Algorithmic stablecoins attempt to maintain price stability through software-controlled supply and demand. These have proven fragile in real-world scenarios, with high-profile failures reinforcing their unsuitability for commercial operations.
For brand use cases, stick with fiat-backed, regulated stablecoins, which offer the compliance, stability, and liquidity you need.
Expanded Use Cases Across the Commerce Stack
Beyond payments, stablecoins continue to deliver value across key operational and experience layers:
Cross-Border Payments
Brands can pay global vendors, influencers, or agencies in seconds, with lower transaction costs than SWIFT or wire transfers. Unlike traditional systems, stablecoins operate 24/7 and aren't limited by banking hours or FX middlemen.
Treasury Operations
Stablecoins help optimize internal fund flows between global entities or business units. Funds can be moved instantly—with no batch cutoffs, delays, or costly currency conversions—improving liquidity and responsiveness in volatile markets.
Loyalty, Wallets, and Rewards
Instead of points locked in a silo, brands can issue programmable rewards in stablecoins—store credit with real monetary value and potential cross-brand portability. Wallet-native experiences also enable tokenized upsell moments at checkout or post-purchase.
Smart Contract Settlement
For wholesale marketplaces, B2B platforms, or supply chain ecosystems, stablecoins can power automated, rules-based settlement. Imagine a payment released automatically when goods are scanned into a warehouse, or commissions settled in real time across global partners.
You don’t need to build infrastructure from scratch. Stablecoin is emerging as a global standard, and many major software platforms already support stablecoin integration:
- Stripe: Supports USDC payouts for platforms and creators.
- PayPal: Issued PYUSD, integrating into branded wallets and checkout flows.
- Checkout.com: Enables stablecoin acceptance for ecommerce.
- Fireblocks, Circle, Coinbase Commerce: Provide APIs, custody, and off-ramps for USDC and other stablecoins.
Stablecoins Aren’t About Crypto—They’re About Commerce
You don’t need to be bullish on crypto to take stablecoins seriously. Forget the crypto hype you’ve been hearing for the past 5 years. This is about making your systems move money more intelligently and efficiently.
Stablecoins are showing up in wallets, rewards, AI agents, supply chains, and B2B finance. They’re programmable, global, and ready now. And they’re increasingly available through leading software and payment platforms. Ignore them, and you’ll risk being left behind. Understand them, and you’ll be positioned to lead.
Jason Cottrell
Founder and CEO, Orium
Jason Cottrell is the CEO & Founder of Orium, the leading composable commerce consultancy and system integrator in the Americas. He works closely with clients and partners to ensure business goals and customer needs are being met, leading the Orium team through ambitious transformation programs at the intersection of commerce, composability, and customer data.