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A new report from Morph, the Ethereum Layer-2 settlement network backed by the Bitget ecosystem, makes the case that stablecoins have crossed a threshold that renders the "emerging technology" framing obsolete.
Published today, The State of Stablecoins 2026 documents a market that reached $312 billion in capitalization by the end of last year – a 60-fold increase from $5 billion in 2020 – while processing $33 trillion in annual transaction volume, more than the combined throughput of Visa and Mastercard. Monthly volume crossed $1.25 trillion in August 2025, a level comparable to major card networks.
The numbers arrive at a moment when Southeast Asia's structural payment frictions make the stablecoin value proposition particularly concrete. Cross-border B2B payments in the region typically pass through three or more correspondent banks, take three to five days to settle via SWIFT, and carry FX and intermediary fees of 1.5–3% per transaction. Stablecoin settlement eliminates the intermediary chain entirely, with finality in under five seconds at a total cost below 0.1% end-to-end, according to the report.
Among firms tracked by Artemis Analytics, B2B stablecoin payment volumes grew from under $100 million per month in early 2023 to over $6 billion by mid-2025. McKinsey's February 2026 analysis, conducted with Artemis, found B2B flows account for roughly $226 billion — approximately 60% of all identifiable real-economy stablecoin volume.
Consumer remittances tell a related story. The average stablecoin peer-to-peer transfer is $47, compared with roughly $250 through traditional providers. For migrant workers sending smaller, more frequent amounts home across the region's major remittance corridors, the economics of fixed intermediary fees represent a meaningful share of the payment value. Stablecoin transaction costs do not scale with payment size, which changes that dynamic materially. TRM Labs recorded 80% growth in total crypto transaction volume in South Asia in the first half of 2025 alone.
The regulatory environment has shifted to match. Singapore's Payment Services Act framework was already in place. Hong Kong's Stablecoin Ordinance came into force on 1 August 2025, requiring HKMA licensing for all fiat-referenced issuers with 1:1 reserve requirements and comprehensive AML and CFT obligations. In the United States, the GENIUS Act — signed into law in July 2025 — formally classified payment stablecoins as neither securities nor commodities, resolving the legal ambiguity that had kept institutional capital on the sidelines. Within days of the Act's signing, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley all addressed stablecoin strategy on their Q2 earnings calls simultaneously, a first.
The Next Wave May Not Be Human
Then the report also looks at a demand driver that sits beyond the current institutional conversation entirely: autonomous AI agents.
Morph's 2027 prediction holds that AI agents will become the largest single category of stablecoin transaction initiators, surpassing retail peer-to-peer transfers in volume within two years of mainstream agentic AI deployment. The logic is infrastructural rather than speculative. Autonomous AI systems operating at scale need payment infrastructure that is programmable, permissionless, and capable of executing without requiring human authorization at each step. Legacy rails, which depend on batch processing, business-hour settlement windows, and manual approval workflows, are structurally incompatible with how agentic systems operate. Stablecoins are the only viable settlement layer that meets all three requirements simultaneously.
The implication for Southeast Asia is compounding. The region already hosts a dense concentration of digital commerce, cross-border supplier networks, and fintech infrastructure built on mobile-first architecture. As agentic AI systems are deployed across logistics, procurement, and financial services, the payment layer those systems run on will need to handle high-frequency, low-value transactions across multiple jurisdictions in real time. That is precisely the environment stablecoin rails are engineered for, and where legacy correspondent banking infrastructure breaks down fastest.
Colin Goltra, CEO of Morph, said in a statement that the institutional transition is now structural rather than exploratory. "The data is clear: we are no longer in a pilot phase. Stablecoins are now a structural necessity for modern treasury and procurement. Organizations building stablecoin capabilities in 2026 will hold a structural cost and speed advantage over those tethered to legacy rails."
Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, framed the shift in broader competitive terms. "What we are witnessing is the disruption of cross-border transfers and inter-institutional payment models that have existed for centuries. The Bitget ecosystem now provides access to 120 million users across its platforms, and on-chain settlement through Morph is how our ecosystem creates durable economic value at the transaction level."
Looking Ahead
The report's wider forward projections set a firm timeline on these trends. Annual stablecoin settlement volume is forecast to exceed $50 trillion by end-2026. A G20 central bank is expected to settle a cross-border transaction using a privately issued stablecoin on a public blockchain before 2027. SWIFT, the report argues, will be forced to launch a stablecoin settlement layer by 2027 or face material volume loss to onchain alternatives as enterprise B2B volumes approach $100 billion per month. By 2030, the base case is a $1.9 trillion market intermediating 5–10% of all global cross-border payments — a $2 to $4 trillion annual flow, per EY-Parthenon projections.
EY-Parthenon research found that 54% of organizations not yet using stablecoins plan to deploy within six to 12 months. For institutions in the region still assessing the infrastructure question, the report suggests the decision window is compressing — and that the next wave of demand may arrive not from a boardroom, but from a machine.
