Is it time for stablecoins to rip up the treasury rulebook?

SWIFT has been the backbone of cross-border treasury since the 1970s. It works… slowly. Moving cash internationally can take many days, sometimes up to a week. While banks skim 1%+ in FX spread as your money crawls through a messy network of intermediaries. Stablecoins offer an alternative. A treasury pipe that never sleeps; cheaper and faster by design. But are CFOs ready to put crypto in the treasury stack?

—
Read time: 10 minutes 47 seconds
⧗ Written by Katishi Maake and Secret CFO

Companies are taking advantage of Campfire's $5M ERP buyout fund

Campfire, the AI-native ERP built for modern finance & accounting teams, is helping companies escape legacy ERP contracts. 

They believe your team deserves a modern, AI-native system. And an aggressive contract shouldn't get in the way.

They’ll buy you out of your legacy ERP contract if you change to Campfire by the end of the year.

Make sure you claim your portion of the $5M buyout fund before year end

Last month, JP Morgan announced its USD-denominated stablecoin, JPM Coin, would be available to institutional clients. Meanwhile, Visa and Ramp are publicly bulking up their crypto-treasury capabilities with new hires. Something is happening with stablecoins…

But what gives? When you hear crypto you picture wild price swings, pump-and-dumps, and late-night traders chasing the next moonshot from their mom’s basement. Not “backbone of a corporate treasury operation.” It’s no wonder CFOs have kept their distance.

But underneath those stereotypes, there's serious technology: cryptographic rails that move money instantly, transparently, and without the banking baggage. Stablecoins take that technology and tie it to trusted fiat currencies to eliminate price swings.

And while stablecoins aren’t new, until now they’ve mostly been a tool for retail crypto traders seeking safety in the dollar while keeping their money on-chain. 

In a recent Deloitte survey, nearly a quarter (23%) of large business CFOs surveyed expect their treasury departments to use crypto for investments or payments within the next two years.

They’ll soon have plenty of options: PayPal, Mastercard, and Fiserv are all adding stablecoin products to their payment networks. 

And reports indicate Walmart and Amazon are exploring issuing their own stablecoins to streamline payments and trim credit card fees.

And while everyone loves the promise of easier, cheaper transactions, the real question remains: what the hell is a stable coin, and is your money safe?? Here’s what you need to know…

Put simply, a stablecoin is a cryptocurrency whose value is tied to a specific asset like the dollar, gold, or another major currency.

Stablecoin supporters would say it gives you the best of crypto’s technology with the trust and stability of a currency you actually recognise (but… they would say that, right?).

This is how fintech company Circle, one of the largest issuers of stablecoin, does it. When a user deposits real dollars into Circle’s reserves, the company mints a dollar’s worth of USDC: the company’s fully reserved stablecoin. Circle also issues EURC, the euro-pegged stablecoin, under the same model. 

Bjorn Halvorson, Head of Finance at HR and payroll company Rise, explains a stablecoin transaction, end to end, like this:  

User A (an individual or business) purchases stablecoin via a liquidity or “on-ramp” provider such as Circle or Coinbase. Funds are sent from a bank account directly to a cryptocurrency wallet. 

Let’s say User A is now holding $100 of stablecoin. At any time, they can go into their wallet provider and initiate a payment to User B, who also holds a separate wallet with a unique address. 

User B can be anybody in the world, any type of entity, and a transaction can occur during the day, at night, or on the weekend. 

The payment is sent immediately and "confirmed" on the blockchain via a "transaction hash," or a URL specifically for that transaction. This is where you can see the sender, receiver, amount, which stablecoin, time stamp, etc. 

User B can then convert that received stablecoin into real dollars at the other end via their provider. This is the “off-ramp”.

Stablecoins suffer unfairly from the ‘branding’ issue that comes with the wider crypto ecosystem if you ask Aleksander Perak, Co-founder of stablecoin platform RebelFi.

“There's a negative connotation around them… because there's a negative connotation around crypto, but all that negativity is towards these volatile currencies versus these stable one-to-one backed currencies,” Perak said in an interview. 

Why are stablecoins useful and who for? 

Stablecoins have the potential to transform cross-border treasury operations. International payments are traditionally wired through the SWIFT payment system. An invisible network of card networks, banks and currency exchanges - all of whom need to be paid along the way. That means they are slow (2 - 5 days) and limited to traditional banking hours. With stablecoins, payments can be processed within seconds, and can be made 24/7. And that efficiency reduces costs substantially, which reduces fees.

Faster and cheaper? This makes them interesting for businesses with large scale cross-border treasury operations.

Rise offers stablecoin as a payment option to its customers.

And because so many take that option up, Rise also uses crypto for its corporate treasury management, Halvorson told us. 

The company devised a homegrown billing system in which they can pull stablecoins from their customer funds and add them directly to their corporate treasury. 

“The more other companies have stablecoin… the more it makes sense for a company like us to have stablecoin on our balance sheet,” Halvorson said. “The more that stablecoins can stay moving around the ecosystem, the more utility they have.”

Rise are not alone in accepting stablecoins as a form of customer payment.

SCal Mobile, a B2B Apple device recommerce business, is using stablecoin to collect money more easily from international customers. B2B wholesale trade and cross border remittance is critical to the company’s business model. 

That’s why it’s important for the company and CFO Jonathan Hanitio to innovate in payment platforms. He started searching for a stablecoin counterparty in late 2023. 

For SCal, offering stablecoin as a payment option is a competitive advantage, opening up growth in markets that have unstable local currencies.

“We've been able to expand our buyer network globally because we're not limited to customers that have access to USD banking or third-party money transmitters,” Hanitio said. “Improving the customer experience should extend beyond the core product or service your business provides, it should extend to the customer’s payment experience.” 

While the benefits are clear, so is the cynic’s case. Transfers settle instantly on-chain, but your money still has to move on and off the chain. And while it’s on-chain; how do CFOs know their money is in safe custody? That introduces a different flavor of counterparty risk for any CFO kicking the tires on stablecoins.

How do you know the issuer is secure? How do you know the asset peg is real? And how do you get comfortable that the whole chain of custody can actually be trusted?

The GENIUS Act passed earlier this year in the United States is here to clear out bad actors. The law is the first comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins, setting rules for which companies can issue stablecoins, compliance requirements, how issuers manage reserves, and allow customers to recoup them for U.S. dollars. 

But, while regulation will help build some confidence, it doesn’t eliminate the risk. 

We asked… how does Hanitio know his money is safe while it’s ‘on-chain’?

It’s all about the provider you pick, as that will drive your counterparty risk. And that’s a lot easier with big dogs like JP Morgan in the game:

Major stablecoin issuers, including Circle, Brex, and Paxos, adhere to strict AML and KYC compliance standards. 

SCal Mobile found comfort in picking two of the most prominent stablecoin choices - USDC and USDT, backed by Circle and Tether, respectively. 

Naturally, test payments of small amounts are vital to verify security, particularly when sending to new vendors/wallets.  

Currently, the U.S.-dollar-denominated stablecoin market is projected to reach $500-$700 billion “in the coming years,” per JP Morgan.

Perak believes the buy-in from these large companies will serve as the rocket fuel for widespread adoption. He boils it down to a matter of trust. 

And he believes there’s an opportunity for finance and treasury management professionals to distinguish themselves by leaning into stablecoin processing. Rather than running from it.

“A lot of companies are looking for someone to spearhead this stablecoin adoption for their company, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make an impact on such a big scale… there are only so many times we’re going to have a financial inflection point like this,” Perak said. 

Stablecoins also have the technological capability to be programmable money; letting you automate payments so funds are released the moment certain pre-agreed conditions are met. No invoices to chase, no manual approvals, no delays.

But one step at a time…

Big-Crypto still needs to convince us our money is safe first.

The questions your board will ask - beat them to it: