TLDR
Ripple's 2026 survey of 1,000+ finance leaders says stablecoins are shifting from trading tools to core infrastructure for traditional finance cash management and payments.
- Ripple reports 74% of surveyed executives see stablecoins as improving cash-flow efficiency and unlocking trapped working capital, and 72% say digital assets are now essential to remain competitive.
- Fintechs already use stablecoins for payments and collections, while banks and asset managers focus on custody, tokenization, and treasury use cases that plug into existing payment and liquidity systems.
- Despite this attitude shift, research shows stablecoins still represent a tiny share of global payment volumes, so regulation, custody, and real-world usage must scale before TradFi flows are truly transformed.
Deep Dive
1. What Ripples Survey Actually Found
Ripples 2026 Digital Asset Survey of over 1,000 executives at banks, asset managers, fintechs, and corporates finds that 72% now view offering digital asset solutions as table stakes for competitiveness. Stablecoins are the leading use case, with 74% saying they can improve cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital, expanding their role from pure payments toward treasury and liquidity management tools. These findings are summarized in multiple reports on Ripples survey, including a detailed overview of stablecoins central role in traditional finance strategies.
Large institutions are no longer treating stablecoins as a niche experiment, but as building blocks for how they move and manage money in existing businesses.
2. How Stablecoins Are Used In TradFi
Survey breakdowns show fintechs at the tip of the spear: about 31% already use stablecoins to collect customer payments and 29% accept payments directly in stablecoins. Corporates and traditional institutions are more cautious, with roughly three quarters of corporates planning to partner with external providers instead of building their own infrastructure.
Banks and asset managers are leaning into tokenization and infrastructure. Around 89% of respondents evaluating tokenization partners prioritize secure custody, 82% of banks highlight token lifecycle management, and 80% of asset managers focus on distribution, while many institutions prefer a single, integrated provider for custody, orchestration, and compliance.
The reshaping is happening through back-end plumbing, where stablecoins and tokenization are being wired into treasury, settlement, and custody workflows rather than replacing Visa or SWIFT overnight.
3. Limits, Risks And What To Watch
A separate analysis of stablecoin usage finds that true payment volumes are still small relative to global flows, with estimates around 0.02% of total payments and most stablecoin value tied to trading rather than commerce. Business-to-business stablecoin payments are measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year, which is material but still niche versus overall B2B flows.
Ripples survey also shows institutions heavily prioritizing security and regulation, with 97% rating certifications such as ISO and SOC II as important when choosing partners, and many citing regulatory clarity and compliance as top decision factors.
The survey signals direction, not arrival. For flows to be reshaped in a hard-volume sense, you would want to see clearer regulation, bank-grade custody, and a sustained rise in real-world B2B and remittance use.
Conclusion
Ripples data suggests the strategic debate inside traditional finance has shifted from whether to use stablecoins to how to integrate them into treasury, payments, and tokenization infrastructure. In practice, though, stablecoins still handle a small fraction of real-world payment volume, with most activity clustered around trading and crypto-native settlement. The next phase to watch is whether regulatory frameworks and institutional-grade platforms convert this intent into large-scale, real-economy flows.
CoinsKid.Com