Cybrid survey: 42% of businesses already use stablecoins for cross-border payments
Regulatory clarity, not integration, was the top confidence driver as 88% signaled likely use within 12 months.
A new Cybrid survey suggests stablecoins are already functioning as a settlement rail inside corporate payment stacks, not just as a trading instrument. The data points to regulation as the main gating factor for the next leg of enterprise adoption.
Key Takeaways
- 42% of surveyed businesses reported using stablecoins for cross-border payments, based on Cybrid’s survey of 468 executives and business leaders.
- 88% said they are likely or very likely to use stablecoins within the next 12 months.
- Respondents using stablecoins reported 35% average cross-border cost savings, rising to as much as 47% for firms processing over $100 million in monthly payment volume.
- Regulatory clarity was the top confidence catalyst, cited by 71% as more important than trusted providers or integration with existing systems.
Cybrid Survey Puts Hard Numbers on Business Stablecoin Usage
Cybrid surveyed 468 executives and business leaders between April 28 and May 4 across the US, Canada, and the UK, spanning technology, financial services, and ecommerce. The headline result is straightforward: 42% of respondents said their businesses already use stablecoins for cross-border payments.
The forward signal is even louder. 88% of respondents said they are likely or very likely to use stablecoins within the next 12 months. The packet also notes that only 2% identified as “committed users” of traditional payment rails, though the term “committed” and the specific rails referenced were not defined.
For traders, the relevance is not the survey headline itself. It is the implication that stablecoins are increasingly being treated as operational settlement tooling, which can translate into stickier baseline demand than purely speculative flows.
Where Stablecoins Are Showing Up in Corporate Workflows
Cross-border payments are only one slice of the workflow map. Payroll and contractor payments were the most common stablecoin use case among respondents, followed by supplier payments, customer payments, investment and yield generation, vendor payments, and treasury and liquidity management.
That mix matters. Payroll, supplier, and vendor flows are recurring by design, which is the kind of usage that can turn stablecoins into a default settlement layer rather than an occasional bridge asset. The respondent set included C-suite executives plus finance and treasury managers and payments and operations leaders, suggesting the answers were coming from people close to payment execution and policy.
Cost Savings Claims: 35% Average, Up to 47% at Higher Volumes
Businesses already using stablecoins reported average cross-border payment cost savings of 35%. For companies processing more than $100 million in monthly payment volume, reported average savings rose to up to 47%.
If those savings are directionally accurate, the incentive gradient is clear. High-volume payment businesses have the most to gain from compressing fees and intermediaries, and they also have the balance sheet and compliance budgets to industrialize new rails once policy risk is reduced.
The caveat is methodological. The packet does not provide question wording, sampling method, or margin of error, so the numbers should be treated as indicative rather than definitive.
Signals Traders Can Track: Stablecoin Supply, B2B Flow Share, and USDC Rail Expansion
The cleanest market proxy for payment-led adoption is net issuance. CoinGecko data in the packet put total stablecoin market cap at $307.64 billion, led by USDT at $184.7 billion and USDC at $73.51 billion. Sustained increases in USDT and USDC circulating supply would be consistent with real-economy demand translating into balance sheet expansion.
On distribution, BNY expanded its digital asset custody platform to support Circle’s USDC, enabling institutional clients to store, transfer, mint, and redeem USDC directly through the bank. That matters because custody plus direct mint and redeem through a major bank can lower friction for enterprises that want settlement utility without building crypto-native plumbing.
Flow composition is the other tell. Paybis said business customers accounted for nearly 98% of stablecoin payout volume on its platform in the first four months of 2026, up from 36% in 2023. McKinsey research cited in the packet estimated B2B transactions were roughly 60% of the $390 billion global stablecoin payment volume in 2025. Traders should also demand clarity on the packet’s claim that “GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoins” exceeded $76 billion in market cap, since the dataset and compliance definition were not specified.
Marcus Hale’s Take: Enterprise Demand Looks Real, but the Next Catalyst Is Policy-Driven
I take the Cybrid results as evidence that stablecoins are already being used as functional settlement rails inside businesses, especially for cross-border and payroll-style flows. That is a different demand profile than exchange collateral, and it tends to be more persistent if it is embedded in operations.
The threshold that matters is regulatory clarity. When 71% of respondents rank policy certainty above integration work, the real test is whether compliance frameworks arrive in a form that lets large payment businesses scale usage without bespoke legal risk. If that happens and USDC’s bank-distributed mint and redeem ramps, stablecoin growth starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven, because it would show up as sustained net issuance tied to enterprise settlement workflows.
