Amazon, Walmart and the rise of stablecoins: who's next?
Money in the US has always been an evolving entity - from the Colonial notes issued in 1690 to the adoption of the $ symbol in 1785, American currency has continually adapted to meet new demands. During the Civil War, the US government introduced Demand Notes which were redeemable in gold or silver. These paper instruments, backed by tangible value, offer a historical comparison to modern-day stablecoins such as Tether Gold (XAUT), USDC and Paxos Gold (PAXG) which are tied to physical assets and designed to provide financial stability in the digital age. Fast forward to 2025, and retail giants such as Amazon and Walmart are preparing to revolutionise payments through stablecoins. These digital tokens, typically backed by fiat currencies or commodities, promise faster settlement, lower costs and fewer intermediaries. With mounting interchange fees and growing FinTech competition, stablecoins could significantly disrupt the established dominance of Visa and Mastercard. In effect, stablecoins are allowing global corporations to create and issue their own money - bypassing banks and much of the traditional payment infrastructure. Much of this is being enabled by the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) which has already been passed in the US Senate house, potentially to be passed by the house of Representatives before the August recess, and which aims to offer regulatory clarity. These digital assets combine the efficiency and programmability of blockchain technology with the dependability of fiat money, making them increasingly attractive for business to businesses payments - especially cross border.
When a customer pays with a credit or debit card, the merchant pays an interchange fee. These fees are collected by the issuing bank and shared with card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. Intended to cover processing, fraud prevention and credit risk, interchange fees have become a major cost for merchants accepting card payments and are one of the reasons that Mastercard and Visa are so very profitable. In 2023, US interchange fees reached a record $187.2 billion, putting pressure on prices and reducing profit margins across retail. According to Airwallex, the average fee is around 2% for credit cards and 0.5% for debit cards, with rates varying based on card type, merchant category and transaction method. In response, some regions such as the EU have imposed fee caps to protect businesses, although no such national limit exists in the US. If Amazon and Walmart were to partially replace card transactions with stablecoins, the potential savings could be massive. Below is an estimate of how much they could save, based on different adoption levels. Therefore, it ought to be of little surprise that Amazon and Walmart are considering the option of issuing their own forms of private money, aka a stablecoin.
Source: Public data from Amazon, Walmart, Airwallex and the Nilson Report
Collectively, Visa and Mastercard process more than 90% of non-China card payments. According to FactSet and The Motley Fool, their profitability has been propped up by high margins, with Visa reporting 69% and Mastercard 56% - compared to the S&P 500 average of just 12%. Facing pressure, Mastercard has started shifting from “plastic to platform” by investing in blockchain and digital wallet infrastructure. As highlighted by Sam Boboev, this marks a strategic evolution but the disruption risk from stablecoins remains real.
A selection of other corporates exploring or deploying stablecoins:
· PayPal’s PYUSD - brings a USD-backed coin to millions of users
· Revoult
· Expedia
· Apple, X (Twitter), Airbnb and Google Cloud - reportedly researching or piloting stablecoins
· Shopify - merchants can now accept stablecoins such as USDC
· Coinbase - offers crypto-native operating accounts
· Circle - supports six blockchain networks for stablecoin transfers
· Ant Group and Société Générale - are developing enterprise-grade stablecoins.
Meanwhile regulation is playing catch-up. The proposed GENIUS Act could shape US tokenisation policy by introducing national standards for stablecoin issuance, reserve requirements and consumer safeguards. Furthermore, by offering legal clarity, it may accelerate the adoption of stablecoins in retail, finance and beyond. However, if large consumer-facing platforms such as Amazon or Walmart issue stablecoins, banks could lose deposit flows. Therefore, to retain depositors, banks might be forced to raise interest rates whereby compressing their lending margins and making loans and mortgages more expensive. In addition, the number of banks in the US had fallen to over 4,500 by the end of 2024 and if stablecoin adoption accelerates, traditional banks may struggle to compete with these tech-powered payment ecosystems. Essentially, stablecoins are no longer the exclusive domain of crypto traders; with global corporations such Amazon and Walmart exploring their use, the programmable digital money is entering the mainstream. The opportunity to save billions in fees, gain real-time settlement and bypass traditional networks is too great to ignore. The question is not whether stablecoins will play a role in global payments, but how quickly and widely they will be adopted. As the GENIUS Act advances and banks and non-banks prepare to launch their own forms of money, the financial ecosystem must brace for transformative change. In the next wave of payment innovation, stablecoins could redefine how value moves in the modern economy. The race has started - so, who’s next?