Banks & fintechs test stablecoins for cross-border payments
Thu, 3rd Sep 2026 (Today)
Nearly half of banks and customer-facing fintechs are already using or piloting stablecoins, according to ACI Worldwide. The activity is concentrated in cross-border payments, treasury and interbank settlement.
The payments software group disclosed the finding in new research on where financial institutions are directing investment in payments. The survey covered licensed banks and fintechs that deal directly with customers, suggesting stronger interest in digital money for institutional use than for retail payments.
The result comes as banks weigh how to handle stablecoins and tokenised deposits within existing payment systems. Phil Bruno, chief strategy and growth officer at ACI Worldwide, is set to discuss whether lenders should run digital money within their current infrastructure or create a separate environment, and what each approach means for economics and operations.
That debate is unfolding alongside broader changes in payments infrastructure. ACI highlighted cloud migration, fraud controls, real-time payments and the shift to ISO 20022 messaging as areas where institutions continue to face investment decisions and operational trade-offs.
Standards delay
On ISO 20022, ACI pointed to recent delays to planned standards changes by Swift and the Bank of England. The timetable has moved, but the underlying data issue remains unresolved for many institutions.
According to figures cited by ACI, 61.2% of payments in April still carried unstructured debtor address data and 62.9% carried unstructured creditor address data. Those figures suggest banks still have substantial work to do on data quality and message formatting before the revised standards take full effect.
Craig Ramsey, global head of account-to-account payments, is expected to address what the deferrals mean for institutions at different stages of readiness. Banks should use the extra time to prepare before Swift issues an update by December, ACI said.
Real-time risks
ACI also set out its view on fraud and scams in faster payments. It cited Scamscope research, produced with GlobalData, projecting that authorised push payment scam losses across six markets will rise from USD $4.4 billion in 2023 to USD $7.6 billion by 2028.
In that environment, ACI argued that real-time settlement is forcing more verification checks into the payment flow before funds leave an account. The shift reflects the narrower window for intervention once payments move instantly between accounts.
Marc Trepanier, director of analytics and optimization for fraud and financial crime, is due to discuss those changes with Scotty Perkins, executive vice president, product management. Their focus is expected to include how fraud checks are being moved earlier in the transaction process.
Perkins is also due to address the cost of moving payments infrastructure to the cloud. The discussion will examine which operating costs change under cloud-native delivery, which simply shift location, and where resilience may improve or weaken.
Machine payments
Another issue ACI raised is the prospect of machines initiating payments on real-time rails. Bridget Hall, leader of real-time payments, Americas, is due to discuss what banks still need to fix before automated agents can safely start transactions.
The topic reflects growing industry interest in the use of artificial intelligence in commerce and treasury functions. For banks, that raises practical questions around controls, authentication, exception handling and liability when a machine, rather than a human, initiates a payment instruction.
Taken together, the subjects outlined by ACI show where banks and fintechs are focusing resources as payment systems evolve. Stablecoins may be gaining traction in cross-border, treasury and interbank activity, but legacy data problems, fraud risks and infrastructure choices remain central to how quickly that change can spread.
ACI said the strongest current use of stablecoins sits "in cross-border, treasury and interbank settlement rather than anything retail".