“The endgame is clear: one simple balance that’s always earning, with universal addresses, no more account and routing numbers, and passkey-style login,” said Ryne Saxe, CEO of crypto wallet company Eco. “Stablecoins are just better money. To attract users and be competitive, banks and fintechs have no choice but to build on stablecoin rails.”
Marcin Kazmierczak, co-founder of blockchain oracle network RedStone, said wallets are most likely to take share first in payments, rather than credit or savings.
“A bank account bundles three things: payments, savings and credit. Stablecoin wallets have already won payments in high-friction corridors,” he said. “Banks risk owning the license while wallets own the customer relationship.”
That is particularly relevant for international payments. Kazmierczak cited World Bank data putting the average cost of bank remittances at 14.99%, compared with a global average of 6.36%. Stablecoin transactions can settle in seconds for less than 1%, he said.
But the wallet does not necessarily mean self-custody or a world without banks.
“What I actually expect is that banks will start issuing tokenized deposits, interoperable with stablecoins, rather than stablecoin wallets simply replacing the bank account,” said Ran Goldi, senior vice president of payments at Fireblocks. “So less ‘stablecoins win,’ and more ‘the bank account becomes programmable.’”
