PEP Episode 066 — The Future of Payments Is Stablecoins: Why Merchants and Banks Are Embracing Stability

Stablecoins & the $27 Trillion Shift: How Digital Dollars Are Reshaping the Payments Industry

The payments industry is undergoing a seismic transformation—and this time, it’s being led by stablecoins. Once dismissed as fringe crypto experiments, these digitally native assets backed by fiat currencies are now powering over $27 trillion in payment volume annually. And major players—from JP Morgan to Stripe and PayPal—are taking notice.

In this episode of The Payments Experts Podcast, Global Legal Law Firm Managing Partner Christopher Dryden breaks down what this means for ISOs, PayFacs, fintechs, and merchant service providers navigating the future of money movement with Leo Arzumanyan, transactional attorney, and Jeremy Stock, Chief Operating Officer.

Why Stablecoins Matter to the Real Payments Economy

Unlike volatile cryptocurrencies, stablecoins offer near-instant settlement, programmable features, and transaction costs that are a fraction of traditional rails—often just pennies compared to $25–$50 wire transfer fees. As Dryden puts it:

“The cool thing about stablecoin is it’s actually bringing some certainty into cryptocurrency that has never been there.”

Highlights from This Episode:

• The Rise of Institutional Adoption: Why banks like JP Morgan are launching their own stablecoins
• Regulatory Clarity at Last: How the Genius Act has opened the door for enterprise use cases
• Smart Contracts & Compliance: How blockchain-backed programmable money enables automatic payments with built-in audit trails
• Stablecoins vs. Crypto Arbitrage: The critical difference in value consistency—and why it matters to merchants, not traders
• What It Means for ISOs and PayFacs: Opportunities in settlement, remittance, chargeback mitigation, and real-time funding

Who Should Listen?

This episode is essential for:
• ISOs and acquirers curious about next-gen processing rails
• Fintech founders building money movement platforms
• Merchant service providers looking to cut costs and offer faster settlement
• Compliance teams evaluating the transparency advantages of blockchain
• Developers and operators exploring smart contract automation in payments

The future of payments is faster, cheaper, and programmable—and stablecoins are leading the charge.

Subscribe now to The Payments Experts Podcast for real-world analysis at the intersection of law, fintech, and merchant services.

*Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice.  All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.*

Transcript

Christopher Dryden (00:00):

Different exchanges value different coins differently. And that’s how somebody like Sam Bankman freed. He was able to see how coins had different value in different places, but with technology, you could trade those coins instantaneously. And so as you’re in the blockchain, you’re moving coins around, you’re automatically making arbitrage just on the coin transfer, depending on who values it more from here to there. That’s a dangerous game. I mean, that’s like I’m a horse racing fan. That’s like me going to the track, right? I mean, there’s no guarantee anywhere in that. And a lot of people get taken, and a lot of people who are opportunistic make a lot of money. The cool thing about Stablecoin is it’s actually bringing some certainty into cryptocurrency that has never been there.

Jeremy Stock (00:48):

Welcome to the Payments Experts podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoy this episode, and we are very excited Today in studio, we have joining us, Leo, one of our associate attorneys in the transactional department, as well as a podcast regular. Of course, Leo’s quite a regular these days as well. Chris Dryden, who’s the founding and managing partner of the law firm. We also have our firm, lapdog Stewie down there. You can’t see him, but he’s joining the podcast as well.

Christopher Dryden (01:24):

Wouldn’t get out of the chair.

Jeremy Stock (01:25):

Exactly. He was dying to talk about stable coins. Gentlemen, we are talking about stable coins and the payments industry. Obviously there’s been a lot of movement, really looking forward to this one. Take it away.

Leo Arzumanyan (01:37):

Sure. Chris, I think the best way to start maybe is because you brought up this topic and said that you want to discuss. I was just curious why it

Christopher Dryden (01:43):

Came. I was kind of surprised. So it’s kind a really kind of a background, but I’ve always felt like the adoption to digital currency has been blunted by the card associations. They’re not in it. Right. And the fact that it’s fairly illiquid, right? I mean, there’s no exchange generally. I mean, yeah, there’s crypto exchanges, but where can you actually redeem your crypto very easily? And so when I saw the article that I read associated with this about the volume of stable coins that are now in commerce, I kind of saw it as, oh, okay, well maybe this is the intermediary step to creating a exchange for crypto into the regular currency markets, which I hadn’t seen before. And it seems like there’s a willingness and the banks are participating in it, so that’s why I did it. But I mean, I think what’s probably the best is just to explain what Stablecoin is.

Leo Arzumanyan (02:54):

Yeah, I agree. Before we get into that, I just want to get the exact statistic correct, but I saw in another article staggering over 27 trillion in payments last year from

Christopher Dryden (03:05):

Stablecoin

Leo Arzumanyan (03:05):

Or just from stable coins. So when I read that, I was like, oh wow, I didn’t know that it was penetrating the market, the payments industry in such a significant way.

Christopher Dryden (03:14):

Well, it it’s a thing. I mean, there’s currency markets and the thing about a stable coin that’s different than cryptocurrency is a stable coins actually backed by an asset. Usually something like the US dollar.

Leo Arzumanyan (03:32):

I kind of think of it like a digital dollar. So if you have one stable coin, it’s like if it’s pegged to the US dollar, you have one digital US dollar. And I think there are numerous benefits to using stable coins. I think some of the ones, as I started learning more about their use cases and why a lot of the bigger players are getting involved is really near instantaneous transactions, very low, almost penny costs when it comes to the fees of transferring money versus something like wire transfers, which can be upwards about 25, 30, $50 for a wire

Christopher Dryden (04:07):

Transfer. Yeah, it’s like a secure instantaneous where banks generally, even for Aach H, I’ve been surprised where, I mean, this is why instant payments or real-time payments has been so big, but until Fed now is really operational, which I don’t believe it is, it’s hard to get instantaneous payments. Stablecoin actually represents something that’s much faster than even a CH at this point.

Leo Arzumanyan (04:33):

Yeah, it is instantaneous. And then also you could do all sorts of interesting things. One thing I came across is the fact that stable coins could be programmed with smart contracts to automate payments.

Christopher Dryden (04:44):

Yeah. What does that mean?

Leo Arzumanyan (04:46):

Well, I’m still learning it, but my general understanding of what smart contracts are is it’s essentially a sort of digital rule set of instructions that are built in on the ledger, and then whatever those instructions outline, the stable coin corresponds to those instructions. So send payment from A to B under this condition at this time, and the coin mirrors the instructions or the contract.

Christopher Dryden (05:18):

So it’s a rules-based system.

Leo Arzumanyan (05:20):

It’s a rules-based system.

Christopher Dryden (05:20):

So it’s automating,

Leo Arzumanyan (05:21):

Yeah, it’s automating the flow of funds based off the conditions that are programmed into the contract.

Christopher Dryden (05:28):

Yeah, it’s interesting. Look, I think this is the next level of automation having to do with currency where, so one of the things that happens in banking that most people don’t know is there’s a large amount of money that floats from bank to bank during a day. And I think this is a way to have a stockpile of USDC or stablecoin, USDC is the one that I think of all the time in circle. I’ve seen people doing all sorts of stuff with digital coins for a long time, trying to find arbitrage between exchange rates. There’s all sorts of stuff, and it’s always been fascinating to me. But again, card brands are the big obstacle. To me, this feels like, oh, well, maybe that’s not an obstacle because some of the major banks are actually participating in different ways.

Leo Arzumanyan (06:20):

JP Morgan, I think just created their own stable coin companies like Stripe and PayPal.

Christopher Dryden (06:25):

But I think that’s going to be for internal use at least initially, right?

Leo Arzumanyan (06:28):

Yeah. But it still goes to show that this is no longer a niche trend or something that only people who are really into the crypto industry are crypto

Jeremy Stock (06:39):

Bros.

Leo Arzumanyan (06:40):

Crypto bros, right? This is really, no, this is banking. This is banking. This is starting to get adopted by all the major players across the board. Companies like Stripe, PayPal, I know they’re embedding stable coins into their platforms. It is really becoming, in my opinion, kind of the next wave. But it’s here to stay. It’s not something that’s going to come and go. They’re all coming up with various use cases on how to implement stable coins into their funds flow and into their offerings.

Christopher Dryden (07:10):

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think part of it is there’s just been a little bit more clarity. This administration, the Trump administration, they’re pushing on this. They’re pushing on a lot of things that are pro-business minded. That makes sense. And I think this is one of those items where we’re moving into a digital age, and you’ve even seen it in recent legislation.

Leo Arzumanyan (07:31):

So the Genius Act, which was just passed this year, we don’t have to get into the particulars. What I think really matters when it comes to this is just acknowledging the fact that we now have regulation that addresses this. Before, I think a lot of the major players didn’t want to get involved because there were all sorts of regulatory concerns, and really it was kind of just an open free for all of, no one knows how it’s going to be handled, how to comply, et cetera. But now we have this new law that was recently passed that lays out all sorts of requirements for issuers of stable coins. I think that coupled with the fact of what you just said, which is that the administration is backing this industry, is really going to increase the adoption of the use of stable coins and just the cryptocurrency industry in general, in my opinion, is going to really be boosted by all this.

Christopher Dryden (08:24):

Well, I just look at it as when banking auditors have some sort of clarity about regulation, you’re now within the banking environment. And that’s what the Genius Act really did was create the ability for banks to play in this playground. I mean, the people that have really won in crypto are the computer programmers who understand how to go from crypto exchange to crypto exchange and leverage transactions based on demand that they’ve figured out how to write an algorithm to make that happen,

Leo Arzumanyan (08:58):

How to develop these smart contracts and implement all these sorts of APIs. There’s just so many interesting new technologies being developed on top of each other, and that’s why I think it’s such an interesting industry.

Christopher Dryden (09:09):

Well, Leo and I read a book by Sam about Sam bankman, free by Michael Lewis. I didn’t know, I’ve always kind of stayed out of the crypto. I like things that are a little more stable. I’m a little more old school in that fashion.

Leo Arzumanyan (09:22):

Well, these are stable coins,

Christopher Dryden (09:23):

But one of the things that I liked about the book was understanding how different exchanges value different coins differently. And that’s how somebody like Sam Bankman freed. He was able to see how coins had different value in different places, but with technology, you could trade those coins instantaneously. And so as you’re in the blockchain, you’re moving coins around, you’re automatically making arbitrage just on the coin transfer depending on who values it more from here to there. That’s a dangerous game. I mean, that’s like I’m a horse racing fan. That’s like me going to the track. I mean, there’s no guarantee anywhere in that. And a lot of people get taken, and a lot of people who are opportunistic make a lot of money. The cool thing about stablecoin is it’s actually bringing some certainty into cryptocurrency that has never been there. And to me, now all of a sudden I’m like, oh, okay, well, how do we play with this currency? I do believe that as we move into the future, you are going to see people connected by currency more than they ever have been, and that’s coming.

Leo Arzumanyan (10:32):

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And one thing you just touched on the blockchain, I think that’s going to be another big factor in allowing these big players, the banking system, all these processors, et cetera, to jump into this, is that you can see every single transaction on the blockchain. So there is a clear

Christopher Dryden (10:51):

Record until there’s the Snapchat of the blockchain.

Leo Arzumanyan (10:53):

Yeah, exactly. So there’s this clear record of all these instantaneous transactions and allows you to really, if you’re focused on compliance and KYC and things like that, it really allows you to have kind of an established, verified record of everything that’s going on. And I think that’s just another plus to the system where,

Christopher Dryden (11:12):

Well, the plus is that just an opinion is that the more transactions, the more revenue from the transactions. So having that security, people will transact more. I mean, I walked into my house the other day, this is a little off topic, but sort of analogous. I said, don’t anybody buy anything online that’s from a foreign country. You’re going to get stuck with a bill. Right now, the government did away with the minimis exception. It used to be up to $800 when you bought something like you didn’t have to worry about tariffs. Well, now with the tariffs in place, anything that you buy that comes from a foreign producer, anything UPS may be demanding money for that delivery to take place or it gets sent back. I mean, there’s countries that won’t even ship to us right now because there’s uncertainty in this, and they don’t know how to address who’s going to pay for the tariffs. So it’s interesting, but that’s reducing the number of transactions, and that’s where all the money gets made. It’s not just the volume, it’s the transaction count. Because money, every time that money changes hand, it doesn’t matter if it’s 50 cents, there’s a transaction fee. So having something like that where you can actually track it and people feel comfortable, it used to be like, Hey, I got a debit card. It’s under $10. It used to be a thing with people. Now it doesn’t matter.

Leo Arzumanyan (12:38):

That’s a really great point, and actually something, it raises a question that I wanted to ask you, which is, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, given that you also do litigation, but have you seen anything come up where these bigger players, the banks, et cetera, are hesitant because the system is decentralized, which allows anyone and everyone to participate in including bad actors? Has that ever came across your radar?

Christopher Dryden (13:03):

Well, I mean, there’s bad actors in the payments landscape altogether, and I mean, I can sit and name four immediately, four to five schemes that I see perpetrated all the time. Look, I am on the periphery of the whole thing, and I’m not even an underwriter. I mean, every time I see a litigation case, I’m like, poor underwriting. I don’t care what it is. I mean, the person that’s actually the defendant or the other side generally, or if we’re representing the defendant is somebody that if you really look twice, probably needed a little more scrutiny coming into the landscape. But I won’t say that that’s always the case a lot of times where I think that the other side brings them in opportunistically to get a control of their money and then just go, oh yeah, sorry. So I mean, I think the game’s being played on both sides, and I think that there’s a lot of money exchanging both sides, and that isn’t decentralized, right? I mean, that’s still something. But to your point, I don’t know. Every time I start to think about this subject matter, the next thing, I’m in Blade Runner and I want the suit for 13 credits.

Christopher Dryden (14:22):

So where do we go? Right.

Jeremy Stock (14:23):

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. Visit us online today at global legal law firm.com. Matters discussed are all opinions that do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.