How crypto is quietly rewiring business payments

The last time many boards discussed crypto in earnest, it was framed as a volatile bet best kept at arm’s length. Now, the same topic is returning to the agenda in a very different guise — as the potential plumbing of cross-border business payments.

For Anil Öncü, CEO of London-headquartered Bitpace, the shift is rooted in a basic operational problem. “Blockchain and crypto excel in solving inefficiencies in global value transfer,” he says. “Cross-border payments are still dominated by slow, costly, and opaque systems. Crypto can reduce settlement times from days to seconds and lower transaction costs significantly,” while adding transparency and real-time reconciliation across markets.

In 2024, the global cross-border payments market was estimated at more than $190 trillion in value — close to twice global GDP. Costs remain stubbornly high in many corridors. The World Bank estimates that sending remittances still averages around 6.5% of the amount sent worldwide, with bank-based transfers often higher. Within Europe, transferring €5,000 between small businesses in the Western Balkans has been found to be roughly ten times more expensive than a similar transfer inside the Single Euro Payments Area.

UK businesses feel the friction too. Since Brexit, Visa and Mastercard have raised certain cross-border interchange fees for European customers shopping online at UK merchants by as much as fivefold, prompting the Payment Systems Regulator to propose caps after estimating that domestic businesses paid an extra £150–200 million in a single year. For online retailers operating on thin margins, and for exporters taking card payments from overseas buyers, the cost of moving money across borders has become a strategic issue.

Stablecoins step into the spotlight —

Against that backdrop, the rise of stablecoins and tokenised cash has caught the attention of both fintechs and incumbents. These instruments aim to keep a stable value — typically pegged to a major currency — while moving on blockchain rails. In 2024, stablecoins processed around $27.6 trillion of transfer volume, surpassing the combined transactions handled by Visa and Mastercard. What started as a niche crypto product is now being positioned as a settlement asset for mainstream finance.

Large players are moving into the space. Just this week, Klarna launched a dollar-backed stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, on a payments-focused blockchain developed with Stripe, explicitly targeting the cost of cross-border transfers and card network fees. Deutsche Börse, meanwhile, is integrating regulated euro and dollar stablecoins into its Clearstream infrastructure as potential assets for securities settlement, collateral management, and treasury operations — one of the first such deployments under Europe’s new crypto rules.

Öncü says the same logic is playing out in the mid-market corporate space. “We’re seeing adoption in B2B payment solutions, particularly for international trade, supply chain settlements, and treasury management,” he explains. “Businesses are starting to use stablecoins for instant, low-cost settlement, which eliminates reliance on multiple correspondent banks.” Rather than holding volatile assets on balance sheet, many clients convert in and out of local currencies at either end of a transaction, using the crypto rail purely as a bridge.

Inside the boardroom, the narrative has evolved accordingly. “We see crypto and blockchain not as a speculative asset class, but as a set of technologies that can deliver real utility for businesses,” says Öncü. There is, he adds, “excitement around efficiency gains, but also caution about regulation and operational risks.” That change in tone has been shaped by the rise of institutional-grade stablecoins, the entry of large financial institutions, and a wave of regulatory activity. “Initially, crypto was viewed primarily through the lens of volatility and speculation,” he says. “The narrative has moved from ‘crypto as a risk’ to ‘crypto as infrastructure.’”

Regulation is central to that shift. In Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regime entered into force in 2023, with rules for stablecoins applied from June 2024 and the broader framework due to apply from December 2024. Every crypto-asset service provider operating in the EU will be required to hold a licence from 2025, with transition periods into 2026. In the United States, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, signed into law in July 2025, creates a dedicated licensing regime for payment stablecoin issuers and sets standards for reserve backing, supervision, and the participation of foreign issuers in the US market.

Collectively, those frameworks signal that policymakers now see stablecoins as part of the regulated financial system, rather than an experiment sitting outside it. They also raise the bar for providers. “Regulatory clarity is critical because without it, large-scale adoption is challenging,” Öncü says. Reputationally, he notes, Bitpace is “conscious of avoiding any association with illicit activities,” making robust AML, know-your-customer checks, and enterprise-grade security non-negotiable.

Even with clearer rules, many corporates still route most cross-border flows through traditional banks. Yet 23% of UK SMEs already use fintechs or non-bank providers for their cross-border payments — nearly double the share that do so for domestic transactions. That appetite for alternatives is driven by the same pain points Öncü describes: opaque pricing, slow settlement, and high FX spreads. Dedicated B2B payment fintechs, often working with partners like Bitpace in the background, are experimenting with stablecoin rails to compress those costs.

“Regulatory uncertainty remains the single biggest barrier,” Öncü says. “Beyond that, there’s a lack of standardisation across jurisdictions, concerns about counterparty risk, and gaps in technical understanding among decision-makers.” Global efforts to fix legacy rails, from the G20 Roadmap on cross-border payments to domestic instant payment schemes, are progressing but are unlikely to hit their most ambitious 2027 targets on cost and speed. That leaves space for tokenised options — but only where governance and risk controls are credible.

Öncü expects that, over the next several years, corporate use of crypto rails will look pragmatic rather than revolutionary: targeted corridors where stablecoins offer clear savings; treasury flows that benefit from real-time settlement; compliance processes that exploit blockchain’s audit trail. For boards considering their first move, his message is deliberately cautious. “Start with a clear use case and a compliance-first mindset,” he says. “Avoid being drawn in by hype or speculative opportunities. The goal should be operational efficiency and customer value, not short-term gains.”

In other words, the most important crypto discussion in the boardroom today may not be about digital gold or meme coins at all. It is about whether the next upgrade to the company’s payment infrastructure should run, at least in part, on tokenised rails.