Clearing the Fog of Stablecoin Payments: Actual Payments Account for Only 10% of Total Transaction Volume

Written by: Artemis Analytics

Compiled by: Web3 Xiaolu

We are often misled by the exaggerated trading volumes of stablecoins in article headlines, immersed in the excitement of their surpassing V/M trading volumes, dreaming of "cancelling plans and preparing to win" to replace SWIFT. Comparing the trading volumes of stablecoins with those of Visa/Mastercard is like comparing the volume of securities settlement funds with Visa/Mastercard; they are not on the same level.

Although blockchain data shows that stablecoin trading volumes are enormous, most of them do not represent real-world payments.

Currently, most stablecoin trading volumes come from: 1) funding balances of exchanges and custodians; 2) trading, arbitrage, and liquidity cycles; 3) smart contract mechanisms; 4) financial adjustments.

Blockchain only shows the transfer of value, not why they are transferred. Therefore, we need to clarify the actual funding pathways behind stablecoins used for payments, as well as the statistical logic. Thus, we compiled the article "Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss," by McKinsey & Artemis Analytics, aimed at helping us cut through the fog of stablecoin payments and see the reality.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stablecoins-payments-what-raw-transaction-numbers-4qjke/?trackingId=tjIPCCnHTE6N72YmfMWHVA%3D%3D

According to the analysis results from Artemis Analytics, the actual scale of stablecoin payments in 2025 is estimated to be around $390 billion, doubling from 2024.

It is important to clarify that the actual stablecoin payments are far lower than conventional estimates, but this does not diminish the long-term potential of stablecoins as a payment channel. On the contrary, it provides a clearer benchmark for assessing the current market situation and the conditions needed for the scaling of stablecoins. At the same time, we can clearly see that stablecoins do exist in the payment field, are growing, and are in the early stages. The opportunities are immense; we just need to measure these numbers correctly.

1. Overall Trading Volume of Stablecoins

Stablecoins are increasingly gaining attention as a faster, cheaper, and programmable payment solution. According to reports from Artemis Analytics, Allium, RWA.xyz, and Dune Analytics, their annual trading volume reaches up to $35 trillion.

ARK Invest's 2026 Big Ideas data shows that by December 2025, the adjusted 30-day moving average of stablecoin trading volume will be $3.5 trillion, which is 2.3 times the total of Visa, PayPal, and remittance businesses combined.

However, most of these trading activities do not represent actual end-user payments, such as payments to suppliers or remittances. They mainly include trading, internal fund transfers, and automated blockchain activities.

To eliminate interference factors and more accurately assess stablecoin payment volumes, McKinsey collaborated with leading blockchain analytics provider Artemis Analytics. The analysis results indicate:

Based on the current transaction speed (annualized figures based on stablecoin payment activities in December 2025), the actual annual stablecoin payment volume is approximately $390 billion, accounting for about 0.02% of the total global payment volume.

This highlights the need for a more detailed interpretation of the data recorded on the blockchain and the strategic investments that financial institutions need to make in application-oriented scenarios to realize the long-term potential of stablecoins.

2. Strong Growth Expectations for Stablecoins

In recent years, the stablecoin market has expanded rapidly, with its circulating supply surpassing $300 billion, while in 2020, this figure was less than $30 billion (DeFillma data).

Public market forecasts show strong expectations for the continued growth of the stablecoin market. On November 12 last year, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Basset stated in a speech at a Treasury market conference that by 2030, the supply of stablecoins could reach $3 trillion.

Leading financial institutions have made similar predictions, estimating that the supply of stablecoins will range between $2 trillion and $4 trillion during the same period. This growth expectation has significantly increased the attention of financial institutions towards stablecoins, with many institutions exploring the application of stablecoins in various payment and settlement scenarios.

When you filter out behaviors similar to payments, a completely different picture emerges, with uneven adoption. Typical scenarios include:

• Global payroll and cross-border remittances: Stablecoins provide a highly attractive alternative to traditional remittance channels, enabling near-instant cross-border fund transfers at very low costs. According to McKinsey's global payments map data, the annual payment scale of stablecoins in global payroll and cross-border remittances is approximately $90 billion, while the overall transaction scale in this field reaches $1.2 trillion, with stablecoins accounting for less than 1%.
• B2B payments between enterprises: The cross-border payment and international trade sectors have long suffered from high fees and lengthy settlement cycles, and stablecoins can effectively address these issues. Early adopters are leveraging stablecoins to optimize supply chain payment processes and improve liquidity management, with small and medium-sized enterprises benefiting particularly significantly. According to McKinsey's global payments map data, the annual scale of stablecoin payments between enterprises is approximately $226 trillion, while the overall scale of global inter-enterprise payments is about $1.6 trillion, with stablecoins accounting for only about 0.01%.
• Capital markets: Stablecoins are reshaping the settlement processes in capital markets by reducing counterparty risk and shortening settlement cycles. Some asset management firms have issued tokenized funds that automatically distribute dividends to investors through stablecoins or directly reinvest dividends into the fund without the need for bank fund transfers. This early application scenario fully demonstrates that on-chain cash flow can effectively simplify fund operational processes. Data shows that the annualized settlement trading volume of stablecoins in capital markets is approximately $8 billion, while the overall settlement scale of global capital markets reaches $200 trillion, with stablecoins accounting for less than 0.01%.

Currently, the basis cited by various parties to support the rapid proliferation of stablecoins is mostly public stablecoin trading volume data, and people often assume that this data can reflect actual payment activities. However, to determine whether these transactions are related to payment behaviors, a deeper analysis of the actual connotations of on-chain transactions is required.

(https://x.com/artemis/status/2014742549236482078)

Currently, most real stablecoin payment transaction volumes are highly concentrated in Asia, with regions like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan being at least one of the trading channels. Global saturation has not yet been achieved.

Although the above market forecasts and early application scenarios confirm the immense growth potential of stablecoins, they also reveal a reality: there is still a significant gap between market expectations and the actual situation that can be inferred from surface trading data.

McKinsey & Company, Global Payments Map

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/how-we-help-clients/gci-analytics/our-offerings/global-payments-map

3. Cautious Interpretation of Stablecoin Trading Volume

Public blockchains provide unprecedented transparency for trading activities: every fund transfer is recorded on a shared ledger, allowing people to grasp the flow of funds between wallets and various applications almost in real-time.

In theory, compared to traditional payment systems, this characteristic of blockchain makes it easier for the market to assess the degree of stablecoin adoption—traditional payment system transaction data is scattered across various private networks and only discloses aggregated data, with some transactions not disclosed at all.

However, in practice, the total trading volume of stablecoins cannot be directly equated with the actual payment volume.

The transaction data on public blockchains can only reflect the amount of fund transfers but cannot reflect the economic purposes behind them. Therefore, the raw trading volume of stablecoins on the blockchain actually includes various types of trading behaviors, specifically including:

• Cryptocurrency exchanges and custodians holding large reserves of stablecoins and transferring funds between their own wallets;
• Automated interactions of smart contracts leading to the same funds being transferred repeatedly;
• Liquidity management, arbitrage, and fund flows related to trading;
• Technical mechanisms at the protocol layer that break a single operation into multiple on-chain operations, resulting in multiple blockchain transactions and inflating the total trading volume.

These behaviors are an important part of the on-chain ecosystem's operation and are likely to further grow with the widespread adoption of stablecoins. However, from a traditional definition perspective, most of these behaviors do not fall under the category of payments. If they are aggregated without adjustments, it will obscure the true scale of actual stablecoin payment activities.

This provides a clear insight for financial institutions assessing stablecoins:

Public raw trading volume data can only serve as a starting point for analysis; it cannot be equated with the degree of stablecoin payment adoption, nor can it be viewed as the actual revenue scale that stablecoin businesses can generate.

4. The Picture of Actual Scale of Stablecoin Payments

In the analysis conducted in collaboration with Artemis Analytics, a detailed breakdown of stablecoin trading data was performed. The research focused on identifying trading patterns that meet payment characteristics, including commercial fund transfers, settlements, payroll disbursements, and cross-border remittances, while excluding trading data primarily related to trading, internal fund rebalancing, and automated cycles of smart contracts.

The analysis results show that the actual scale of stablecoin payments in 2025 is approximately $390 billion, doubling from 2024. Although the trading volume of stablecoins still accounts for a relatively low proportion of overall on-chain trading and global total payment volume, this data is sufficient to confirm that stablecoins have formed a real and continuously growing application demand in specific scenarios (see chart).

(Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss)

Our analysis yielded three prominent observations:

1. Clear value proposition. The increasing popularity of stablecoins is due to their significant advantages over existing payment channels, such as faster settlement speeds, better liquidity management, and lower user experience friction. For example, we estimate that by 2026, the spending on stablecoin-linked debit cards will grow to $4.5 billion, a 673% increase from 2024.
2. B2B leads growth. B2B payments dominate, amounting to approximately $226 billion, accounting for about 60% of the total stablecoin payment volume globally. B2B payments have grown by 733% year-on-year, indicating that 2026 will see rapid growth.
3. The most active trading activities are in Asia. Trading activities across different regions and cross-border payment channels are uneven, indicating that trading volumes will depend on local market structures and constraints. Stablecoin payments from Asia are the largest source of transactions, amounting to approximately $245 billion, accounting for 60% of the total. North America follows with $95 billion, and Europe ranks third with $50 billion. Transactions from Latin America and Africa are both below $1 billion. Currently, trading activities are almost entirely driven by payments from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.

From the above trends, it is evident that the practical application of stablecoins is gradually taking root in a few validated scenarios, and whether they can achieve broader scaling depends on whether the models of these mature scenarios can be successfully promoted and replicated in other regions.

Stablecoins have substantial potential to reshape the payment system, and the release of this potential relies on continuous advancements in technology development, regulatory improvements, and market implementation. Their large-scale application requires clearer data analysis, more rational investment layouts, and the ability to discern effective signals from public trading data while filtering out ineffective noise. For financial institutions, only by harboring ambitions for development while objectively recognizing the current state of stablecoin trading volumes can they steadily position themselves for future opportunities and seize the initiative in the next phase of stablecoin applications, leading industry development.