The Payments Experts Podcast
Expert payments attorneys discuss the electronic payments industry from a legal perspective.
The Payments Experts Podcast
The Future of Payments Is Stablecoins: Why Merchants and Banks Are Embracing Stability | PEP066
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.**
Visit globallegallawfirm.com to learn more.
A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm
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 transfer, depending on who values it more from here to there. That's a dangerous game, right? 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. 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.
Speaker 2: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 Arzumanian, 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.
Speaker 2:He wouldn't get out of the chair. 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.
Speaker 3: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 I was kind of surprised.
Speaker 1:So this is kind of 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 that, 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, Right? 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.
Speaker 3: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 from last year were just from stablecoins. 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.
Speaker 1:Well, there's like so it's a macro thing, right? I mean, there's currency markets and the thing about a stablecoin that's different than cryptocurrency is a stable coin is actually backed by an asset, usually something like the US dollar, right? I kind of think of it like a digital dollar right.
Speaker 3: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 stablecoins. 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 near instantaneous transactions, right, very low, almost penny costs when it comes to fees of transferring money, versus something like wire transfers, which can be upwards of about $25, $30, $50 for a wire transfer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like the secure instantaneous where you know banks generally. Even for ACH, I've been surprised where I mean. This is why, like instant payments or real-time payments, has been so big. But until FedNow 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 ACH at this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's instantaneous. And then also you can do all sorts of interesting things. One thing I came across is the fact that stablecoins can be programmed with smart contracts to automate payments. Yeah, what does that mean? I'm still learning it, but my general understanding of what smart contracts are is it's essentially like 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 you know, send payment from a to b uh, under this condition at this time, and the coin mirrors the instructions or the contract. So it's just, it's a rules-based, it's a rules-based system. It's automating yeah, it's automating the flow of funds that, based off the conditions that are programmed into the contract.
Speaker 1: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 stable coin. Usdc is the one that I think of all the time. It's Circle. I've seen people doing all sorts of stuff with digital coins for a long time, like 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 like, oh well, maybe that's not an obstacle because some of the major banks are actually participating in different ways right.
Speaker 3:Jp morgan, I think, just created their own stable coin.
Speaker 1:Uh, companies like stripe and paymail I, but I think that's going to be for internal use, right initially, right, yeah yeah, but it still goes to show that this is no longer a niche.
Speaker 3:You know something that only people who are really into the crypto industry are creating Crypto bros, crypto bros right, 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. Paypal, I know they're embedding stable coins into their platforms. It's 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.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, I think part of it is there's just been a little bit more clarity that this administration, the Trump administration, they're pushing on this. Like they're pushing on a lot of things that are pro-business minded, that make 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.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 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. There were all sorts of regulatory concerns and really it was kind of just an open free-for-all of like no one knows how it's going to be handled, how to comply, etc. But now we have this new law that was recently passed that lays out all sorts of requirements for issuers of stable coins, and 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.
Speaker 1: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, how to develop these smart contracts and implement all these sorts of APIs.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 1:Well, leo and I read a book about Sam Bankman free by Michael Lewis. I didn't know, I've always kind of stayed out of the crypto because I like things that are more, a little more stable. I'm old, a little more old school in that fashion, and well, these are stable coins but one of the things that I.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I 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, right. 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. 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, okay, well, how do we play with this currency? Because I do believe that as we move into the future, you're going to see people connected by currency more than they ever have been.
Speaker 3:That's coming. 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 record Until there's the Snapchat of the blockchain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:So there's this clear record of all these instantaneous transactions and allows you to really you know, 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 Well, the plus is that, Just an opinion Is that the more transactions, the more revenue from the transactions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so having that security, people will transact more. I mean, I walked into my house the other day it's a little off topic, but sort of analogous and I said don't anybody buy anything online that's from a foreign country because you're going to get stuck with the bill right now. Like the government did away with the de minimis exception, so 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, and so 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. You know who's going to pay for the tariff, so it's interesting.
Speaker 1:But that's reducing the number of transactions, right, I mean, 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. You know it used to be like hey, I got a debit card. It's under $10,. You know, like there used to be a thing with people like now it doesn't matter, right.
Speaker 3:That's a really great point. Right, that's a really great point and actually something. It raises a question that I wanted to ask you, which is you know, 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?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean there's bad actors in the payments landscape altogether and I mean I can sit and name like four to five, immediately four to five schemes that I see perpetrated all the time. Look, I'm on the periphery of the whole thing and I'm not even an underwriter or I mean every time I see a litigation case I'm like poor underwriting.
Speaker 1:I don't care what it is right. 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 looked twice, probably needed a little more scrutiny coming into the landscape. Right, I mean it's, but I won't say that that's always the case, because there's 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, you know, I mean I think the game is 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, like that, that's still something. But to your point, I don't know, it's like every time I like start to think about this subject matter. The next thing, I'm in Blade Runner and I want the, I want the suit for 13 credits, you know. So we're like, where do we go right, Right.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. Visit us online today at globallegallawfirmcom. Matters discussed are all opinions that do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.