Fintech Takes: Stablecoins as payments infrastructure

Stablecoin real-world payments hit $400 billion in 2025, representing about 1% of the entire M2 money supply. This is still just a fraction of total global payment volume, but the growth curve is steep enough that some of the biggest names in finance, from Western Union to PayPal, are starting to embed stablecoins into their products. 

Even so, the question of whether stablecoins are a passing trend or a permanent shift in how the world moves money remains. In this conversation, Alex Johnson from Fintech Takes sits down with Western Union global head of digital assets Malcolm Clarke and Rain CTO Charles Yoo-Naut to discuss the real problems stablecoins can—and are—solving. From expanding financial access to improving capital efficiency, this technology has real implications for businesses and consumers, and Malcolm and Charles are on the front lines. 

Watch on-demand to learn more about: 

• How the market is likely to shake out between a few dominant stablecoin issuers, brand-led entrants, and bank consortium efforts, and why some new stablecoins will attract real volume while others will have little utility 
• Why parking capital in correspondent banking gets expensive for a treasury team moving billions of dollars a year, and what changes when stablecoins replace it, using Western Union's own numbers
• How the GENIUS Act in the US and other emerging regulatory frameworks around the world are impacting how companies are building their products and why compliant and non-compliant tokens are likely to continue to coexist 
• Where the next wave of opportunity is forming, from on-chain FX settlement between different stablecoins and chains to the earliest experiments in programmable, agent-driven payments