Every time you send money internationally, it quietly bounces through a chain of intermediary banks before reaching its destination. This system is slow, expensive, and overdue for an upgrade.
Maya Caddle, Global Payments BD and Partnerships at the Solana Foundation, sat down with TheStreet Roundtable to explain how stablecoins are already beginning to rewire the global correspondent banking system.
Why correspondent banking is broken
Most people have never heard of correspondent banking, but they feel its effects every time a wire transfer takes days or costs $30 in fees.
The problem is structural: not every bank has a direct relationship with every other bank globally. So money has to hop through intermediaries — each one adding cost and delay.
“Not all banks have direct connectivity to each other. So if you’re moving money from country A to country B, sometimes it has to go through country C, country D before getting to country B. And that’s inefficient. It adds middlemen, which means it adds costs, which means it also adds delays.”
Even real-time payment platforms like Venmo or Cash App only appear instant. Behind the scenes, they are constantly rebalancing pre-funded positions through the same traditional correspondent banking rails.Stablecoins are already disrupting this industry.
Stablecoins are already disrupting this
The solution Caddle sees emerging is banks holding stablecoin-denominated accounts alongside traditional fiat accounts — allowing them to settle directly with each other without routing through intermediaries.
“A bank in country A can directly settle with a bank in country B with stablecoins. And that’s one way to heavily reduce some of the costs, but making sure that we’re also aligned with how institutions behave,” she said.
This is not hypothetical. Caddle says it is already happening within the Solana ecosystem.
“Within the Solana ecosystem, there’s a number of big banks across the world that I’m working with who are getting ready for this reality, who are ready to directly settle banks in the US and other markets in stables as well as in fiat. And that’s a really exciting reality that’s coming to fruition quicker than you would think,” she noted.
The scale of stablecoin activity backs up the claim. In 2025, stablecoin transaction volume hit a record $33 trillion, up 72% year-over-year, according to data from Artemis Analytics. USDC led with $18.3 trillion in transactions, surpassing USDT’s $13.3 trillion.
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An evolution, not the end
Caddle was clear that stablecoins are not replacing correspondent banking — they are upgrading it.
“Correspondent banking isn’t going anywhere. It’s just going to evolve, it’s going to adapt, and it’s going to become more and more optimized,” she said.
According to the United States Congress, it is predicted that there will be over $250 trillion in cross-border payments, primarily facilitated by correspondent banks.
The market being disrupted is enormous. Global cross-border payment flows are projected to exceed $250 trillion by 2027, according to the Bank of England, with correspondent banks facilitating the majority of those flows.
Regulatory environments will continue to create situations where intermediaries are necessary. Caddle pointed to India as an example — moving between fiat and stablecoins is still complex there, so flows often route through UAE Dirham before converting into Indian Rupees.
“There may still be a middleman in certain markets, and that will depend upon the regulatory nuances. Not all middlemen are bad.”
The result will not be fewer banks. It will be a new version of what a correspondent bank is and does — one where stablecoins serve as the settlement rail between institutions that previously needed multiple hops to move money.
Stablecoin-native payment infrastructure is not a future state. The institutions are already positioning. And the networks enabling it — Solana chief among them — stand to capture significant value as this shift accelerates.
