Everyone remembers stablecoin issuers as money-printing machines, because they keep all the interest from their reserves. But there's a startling truth hiding underneath: in 2024, Circle, the issuer of USDC, paid over $908 million to Coinbase — not because Coinbase created the coin, but because Coinbase is the one who "puts the coin in users' hands." Distribution is this node — the exchanges, wallets, and payment apps that pull stablecoins toward real people, and take back a big share of the "reserve interest" in return. And the most expensive question in this whole field is — where's the real moat: in "who issues the coin," or in "who reaches the users"?
Europe Runs Live Agent Payments Across 30+ Banks as US Stalls on Liability
Europe has moved agentic payments into live production while the United States remains stalled over who bears the loss when an AI agent errs. Live end-to-end payments have been executed by Santander, Mastercard, ING, and Worldline, and on July 2, 2026, ING, Worldline, and Visa completed an agentic payment in Germany using Visa Payment Passkeys for biometric authentication. Mastercard has enabled all issuers in Europe at the network level for Agent Pay, backed by a new Lisbon Centre of Excellence for Innovation, with Mastercard Europe President Kelly Devine calling agentic payments a profound shift in how commerce is initiated and executed. In the US, the Treasury OIG has flagged ambiguity in Regulation E on agent authorization, and the AI AGENT Act introduced in July 2026 addresses fiduciary duties rather than liability allocation for agent misexecution, prompting the Consumer Bankers Association to recommend the industry write its own private network rules. Hypertrade data shows a 4,700% year-over-year increase in AI-generated traffic to retail sites, yet agentic commerce is less than 1% of US e-commerce, with only 23% of US consumers trusting generative AI to handle payment transactions and 93% of merchants saying the AI provider should bear the financial loss for incorrect purchases.
Mastercard, Visa race to set standards for AI agent shopping payments
Mastercard rolled out a payment option Thursday that lets cardholders give an AI agent a virtual card to buy things online without checking in before each purchase, with limits on spending, retailers, or required approval before checkout. Rival Visa partnered with Alchemy earlier this year and has announced its own AI shopping and payment product, Visa Intelligent Commerce, which the company says is still being deployed, while Meta's Muse can search for products and navigate checkout but presents the purchase for the user's final approval. Phil Bruno, chief strategy and growth officer at payments company ACI Worldwide, called it "a land grab for infrastructure standards," saying that if card companies set the standards for agentic commerce they can keep the commerce in their environments for decades to come. Consumer appetite lags the infrastructure push: just 7% of U.S. and U.K. consumers surveyed who buy fashion items said they would allow an AI assistant to make purchases without approval under predefined conditions, according to research commissioned by ACI Worldwide, and more than half said they were uncomfortable allowing AI to purchase on their behalf. Mastercard has developed a digital paper trail called Verifiable Intent to record who authorized the agent to shop and what it was authorized to buy, but when asked who would be responsible if an agent made an incorrect, fraudulent, or unauthorized purchase, Mastercard pointed back to Verifiable Intent and did not specify who would ultimately be responsible if an agent bought something outside those instructions.
Mastercard, Alchemy Launch AgentCard for AI Agent Payments
Alchemy has turned its agent-payment framework into a live developer product called AgentCard, giving AI software agents single-use Mastercard credentials tied to a customer's existing account rather than permanent access to a payment card. Developers can set spending caps, limit eligible merchants and restrict transactions geographically, while users keep their existing rewards and credit arrangements. Alchemy says the service is already available, letting autonomous agents buy goods anywhere Mastercard is accepted online. Mastercard shares were nearly flat at $566.285 Friday morning, and the chart puts the stock 17.09% below a GF Value estimate of $683. Neither company has disclosed pricing, transaction volumes or committed customers yet.
Sam Altman's Worldcoin Launches World Money Stablecoin Super App in 150 Countries
World, the crypto network co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched a global stablecoin super app called World Money. The self-custody app combines stablecoin balances, payments, trading, investing and yield, and is set to be available in 150 countries. It integrates with Stripe, Bridge and Kalshi, among others. The app's novel approach ties World's proof-of-human verification, the iris-scanning system that gives users free tokens for proving they are human, to a full suite of crypto-powered financial services. World was previously known as Worldcoin.
Coinbase Partners With Stablecore to Bring Stablecoins to 3,000-Plus Community Banks
Coinbase announced a partnership with Stablecore on September 16, 2026, embedding digital asset capabilities into the core banking systems used by more than 3,000 community banks and credit unions. The deal plugs Coinbase into existing core banking providers such as Q2 and Jack Henry, letting legacy institutions offer tokenized deposits, digital asset accounts, and collateralized loans without overhauling their technology stacks. It is Coinbase's second major distribution play in September alone: six days earlier, on September 10, the exchange partnered with Moov to bring stablecoin payments and real-time funding to another 1,000-plus institutions. Together the two deals reach into a US long tail of more than 4,700 community banks and 4,700 credit unions. Coinbase's Alec Lovett said community banks and credit unions should not have to choose between staying local and staying current, while Stablecore's Alex Treece said banks should not have to migrate to entirely new platforms to support digital assets. The push comes as the OCC's November deadline looms as a potential catalyst for federal clarity; PYMNTS Intelligence data shows 77% of consumers would open a stablecoin wallet through their existing banking or fintech application, but if the OCC deadline slips or the final rule narrows eligibility, the new integrations stay dormant.
Visa Joins Mastercard and Ant International on AI Agent Identity Standards
Visa has joined Mastercard and Ant International in pushing for common identity standards for AI purchasing agents, proposing a Know-Your-Agent framework that would let verified trust signals travel across card networks, digital wallets, marketplaces and agent platforms without forcing every participant into the same approval system. Under the proposal, each company would still decide which agents it trusts, while shared certification, identifiable operators and ongoing transaction monitoring could give the emerging agent-commerce ecosystem a common security backbone. Visa shares slipped approximately 0.4% to $369.39. For Visa, interoperability cuts both ways: common standards could strip friction out of agent payments, reduce duplicated verification and accelerate adoption across merchants and platforms, potentially expanding the pool of transactions flowing through Visa's network, but Visa would not control the identity layer alone. No transaction-volume, pricing or revenue commitments were disclosed.
Visa's Agent Commerce Gap: Hundreds of Beta Transactions Versus Millions Projected
Visa reported in December 2025 that it had completed "hundreds" of secure, agent-initiated transactions in a closed beta, while projecting that "millions" of consumers will use AI agents to complete purchases by the 2026 holiday season. That gap between a few hundred test cases and a multi-million-transaction reality marks the adoption ceiling for agentic commerce, held back by three structural barriers: consumer trust, merchant liability, and protocol proliferation. According to the Visa Earning Trust Report, only 23% of U.S. consumers trust generative AI to handle payment transactions, and PYMNTS Intelligence found that just 14% trust AI to execute purchases without manual verification, while 93% of merchants believe the AI provider should bear the financial loss for incorrect purchases and only 28% are willing to offer their full product range to AI agents. The technical landscape is fragmented across at least five competing checkout protocols, including Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, Stripe ACP, Google UCP, and Meta Muse, with integration costs ranging from $5,000 to $500,000 per protocol. Visa is attempting to bridge the gap with Intelligent Commerce Connect, a network-, protocol-, and token-vault-agnostic integration platform, but it remains unproven at the scale required to hit Visa's holiday 2026 targets, and Bernstein research notes that agentic commerce currently accounts for less than 1% of U.S. e-commerce.
Coinbase CEO Says AI Agents Will Need Their Own Financial Infrastructure
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said AI agents will need their own financial infrastructure, telling Scott Melker that the company has built a set of tools for the agentic economy. Armstrong said the existing payment rails are sometimes not sufficient for AI because agents want to move very fast, make payments globally, and in some cases transact in very small amounts. The stack includes the Base blockchain, the USDC stablecoin that Coinbase co-created with Circle, and the X402 protocol, which Coinbase created and which is now under the Linux Foundation in collaboration with Google, AWS, CloudFlare and others. He said X402 allows agents to pay each other in real time instantly all over the world, even in very small transaction amounts like a couple of cents at a time, which traditional payment rails do not really support. Armstrong also said Coinbase has been able to bring perpetual futures products to the US under this administration, calling them a pretty killer app in the trading world, and that he expects a future not too far off in which more agents transact in the economy than humans.
Mastercard Targets Small-Business Growth With New Collection for Business
Mastercard is positioning itself beyond payments with a new Collection for Business offering, citing survey findings that small businesses prioritize stability and integrated tools. Its Dreamonomics survey of more than 6,000 SMEs across 18 countries found that 68% prioritize stability and predictability over rapid growth, while 54% avoid unnecessary financial risk, and 61% favor deeper customer relationships over simply reaching more buyers. The new Collection for Business combines payment capabilities with productivity tools, travel and lifestyle benefits, cybersecurity support and business-focused experiences for eligible cardholders. Mastercard sees clear gaps: SMEs already rely on five digital tools on average, yet 89% intend to add more and 78% say integrated tools are critical, while 71% consider cyber protection a priority but only 37% currently use cybersecurity tools. Rival Visa launched its Visa & Main platform with a $100 million working-capital facility, and American Express offers its Business Blueprint, as Mastercard shares have lost 0.5% year to date compared with the broader industry's 11.2% decline.
Coinbase Trades 47% Below High as 24/7 Wall St. Sets $212.94 Buy Target
24/7 Wall St. has issued a BUY rating on Coinbase with a 12-month price target of $212.94, implying 23.73% upside from a current price of $172.11, even as the stock sits 47.37% below its 52-week high. The call follows a rough second quarter in which revenue of $1.22 billion fell 18.5% year over year and missed consensus by 5.36%, with GAAP EPS of -$1.36, as total crypto spot trading volume dropped 25% quarter over quarter. The bull case rests on diversification: subscription and services reached 48% of net revenue in Q2, prediction markets already exceed $100 million in annualized revenue, average USDC held on platform hit an all-time high of $20 billion, and Base has processed roughly $32 trillion in trailing 12-month stablecoin transfer volume, with management projecting the stablecoin market will grow tenfold from $300 billion today to $3 trillion by 2030. The bear case is equally blunt: consumer transaction revenue fell 20% year over year and institutional dropped 26%, assets on platform slid to $246 billion from $294 billion, and the FY2026 EPS estimate has collapsed from $0.8953 ninety days ago to -$1.9697 today on 13 downward revisions in the past 30 days. For comparison, Robinhood posted Q2 2026 revenue up 32% year over year to $1.31 billion and carries an $87 billion market cap versus Coinbase's $38 billion, while CME Group reported $1.71 billion in quarterly revenue at a $99 billion market cap. 24/7 Wall St.'s bull scenario points to $361.40, while its bear scenario lands at $186.62, still above the current price.
JPYC to List on South Korea's Upbit on September 17
JPYC, the electronic payment instrument stablecoin issued by JPYC Inc., will list on Upbit, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, on September 17. It will begin trading alongside PayPal's dollar-denominated stablecoin PYUSD, with both tokens listing on three markets: Korean won, Bitcoin, and USDT. Trading is scheduled to start at 12:00 that day for PYUSD and 18:00 for JPYC. According to Upbit's announcement, JPYC's trading start was pushed back from the originally planned 12:00, first to 15:00 and then to 18:00, and the deposit and withdrawal network for both tokens will be Ethereum only. JPYC is issued on multiple chains including Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon, but Upbit will support only the Ethereum version. Noritaka Okabe, representative director of JPYC Inc., told CoinPost he was surprised that the token would be handled by Upbit, South Korea's largest exchange, before domestic electronic payment instrument operators, and said he sees great potential in the fact that the 1 million yen cap on issuance and redemption does not apply to overseas exchanges. He expressed hope that this listing would become one of the triggers for reviewing the 1 million yen issuance and redemption limit in Japan.
CEA Estimates Minimal Impact on Bank Lending Even With Stricter Stablecoin Yield Rules
The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) on September 15 published a re-examination finding that tightening regulation of stablecoin yields would do little to protect bank lending. In the CEA's base case, a full ban on yields would move about $54 billion from stablecoins into bank deposits, while the increase in bank lending would be only about $2.1 billion, or 0.02% of the loan balance, with lending by small and mid-sized regional banks rising by about $500 million. Even in a case where stablecoins grow from about 1.7% of bank deposits to 10%, a yield ban would increase lending by only about $11.1 billion, or 0.09% of the loan balance, the CEA estimates. The banking industry has argued that yield-bearing stablecoins could substitute for bank deposits and affect lending. The American Bankers Association (ABA), in an April 13 rebuttal, criticized the CEA for failing to adequately capture deposit outflows if the market expands, and on September 10 again urged lawmakers to tighten yield rules under the Clarity Act. The sticking point is that the GENIUS Act, enacted on July 18, 2025, bars issuers from paying interest or yield, while it does not explicitly prohibit third parties such as exchanges from offering rewards to holders.
Circle Launches Arc, a New Blockchain for USDC Fees
Circle, the major US stablecoin issuer, announced on September 16 that it has launched the mainnet of Arc, its underlying layer-1 blockchain. Arc is designed so that transaction processing fees are paid in the dollar-denominated stablecoin USDC, with settlements finalized in under one second, and it also offers security features for institutional investors such as confidential transactions and quantum-resistant signatures. The founding validators that approve transactions include 11 companies, among them BlackRock, the US DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, SBI Group, and Sumitomo Corporation. Arc is linked to StableFX, a foreign exchange platform that exchanges multiple currencies around the clock, and JPYC, the company issuing the Japanese yen stablecoin JPYC, is also listed as a participating partner currency. By the 16th, Circle had completed the issuance of an initial supply of 10 billion of its own token, ARC, and aims to migrate to proof of stake around 2027, saying it is the world's first listed company to issue its own token on a new layer-1.
Circle Launches Arc Mainnet With BlackRock, Visa Among Validators
Circle has launched the public mainnet of Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain built for payments, trading and agentic economic activity, with BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo, Visa, Worldpay and Galaxy forming its founding cohort of validators. Chief executive Jeremy Allaire called it the single most significant launch in Circle's history since USDC itself, and the USDC stablecoin, with around $74 billion in circulation, serves as the chain's gas token. Circle completed the genesis mint of ARC this week, creating all 10 billion tokens and making it the first publicly traded company to mint a network token for a new Layer 1, though the company said the mint is not a commitment to publicly launch ARC and described it as a technical step toward a possible move from proof of authority to proof of stake in 2027. Circle had already raised $222 million in an Arc token presale at a $3 billion valuation. Banks with access include BNY, HSBC, Societe Generale and State Street, while Aave and Morpho anchor lending, Uniswap, Aero and fomo provide trading, and Binance, Kraken, Bybit and OKX offer routes in, with Coinbase to follow; BlackRock's BUIDL and Circle's USYC provide tokenized collateral. Circle said USDC accounts for 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume, citing Dune, and that Arc's testnet, launched last year with BlackRock and Visa among the participants, processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year.
Senate Blocks CLARITY Act in 49-50 Cloture Vote, Sinking XRP and Crypto-Linked Stocks
The Senate voted 49 to 50 on September 15 against opening debate on the CLARITY Act, falling eleven votes short of the 60 needed for cloture and leaving the crypto market-structure bill dead for the year. Four Republicans broke ranks, with Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran opposing the bill on its merits over community-bank concerns about the stablecoin yield provision, while Thom Tillis voted no on procedural grounds and filed a motion to reconsider at 3:01 p.m. Seven Democrats who helped negotiate the text, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Ruben Gallego, Angela Alsobrooks and Catherine Cortez Masto, ultimately voted against it, with Elissa Slotkin calling the ethics provisions too thin. After the vote, XRP fell 7.98% to $1.29, Bitcoin dropped 1.42% to $75,924, Ethereum declined 3.15% to $2,404 and Solana slipped 3.67% to $97.23, while listed companies tied to market structure fell hardest, with Coinbase down roughly 8% and Circle about 11%. Polymarket, which priced the bill becoming law in 2026 at 82% in February, now puts the odds near 7%, and Kalshi traders price passage before January 1, 2027 at 20%. The SEC's Regulation Crypto Assets proposal introduced September 1, 2026, the March 17 joint SEC-CFTC interpretation and a blockchain transfer-agent overhaul cover much of what Congress left unlegislated, but agency rules can be revoked by a future chair, unlike a statute.
Ripple's RLUSD Hits $2.345 Billion Market Cap as Acquisition Strategy Builds Institutional Settlement Rails
Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin has reached approximately $2.345 billion in market cap as of September 16, 2026, a 1,278% year-to-date increase that makes it the third-fastest growing stablecoin of the year, with daily transfer activity tripling since January to $750 million per day by August. Roughly $963 million of the token sits on the XRP Ledger and $1.05 billion on Ethereum. Ripple is pursuing a vertically integrated strategy built on acquisitions rather than validators, including the $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, now rebranded Ripple Prime, which clears roughly $3 trillion annually and lets RLUSD serve as collateral with zero haircut for over 300 institutional clients, alongside the $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury's treasury management platform, which reaches 1,200 corporate treasurers processing $13 trillion annually. Integrations include a September 2025 partnership with DBS and Franklin Templeton for 24/7 trading of tokenized money market funds, a Securitize link allowing holders of BlackRock BUIDL and VanEck VBILL to swap into RLUSD around the clock, and a Mastercard and WebBank pilot marking the first time a regulated US bank has settled card transactions on a public blockchain using a stablecoin. Ripple holds a New York Department of Financial Services trust company charter and conditional OCC approval, and launched in Japan via SBI under the JFSA's revised Payment Services Act, positioning itself around private-sector consensus and state-level charters after the CLARITY Act failed on September 15. The Federal Reserve Master Account remains the key bottleneck, and expansion into L2 networks via Wormhole NTT is still pending NYDFS approval.
US House Ways and Means Committee Unveils Comprehensive Crypto Tax Bill, Markup and Vote Set for the 16th
Jason Smith, chairman of the US House Ways and Means Committee, introduced the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act on September 14, a comprehensive bill aimed at clarifying federal tax rules for crypto assets. On the 15th, he also released a substitute amendment, and a markup to amend and vote on the bill is scheduled in the committee for 10 a.m. US Eastern Time on the 16th. The bill introduces a de minimis exemption under which gains and losses are not recognized on certain network fees and transaction fees paid in crypto assets when they are $10 or less, and treats qualifying US dollar-denominated stablecoins, under certain conditions, as having their redemption value count as tax basis. It also includes a provision allowing widely traded digital assets to elect a simplified annual accounting method, with the de minimis fee exemption and this accounting method applying from 2028. Income from mining and staking would generally be taxed as ordinary income, and certain investment funds would not lose their tax status merely because they stake the assets they hold. An option included in an earlier bill to defer income recognition on newly issued digital assets was not included, and the wash sale rules that apply to stocks and other assets would be extended to digital assets that are traded.
Senate Blocks Digital Asset Market Structure Bill; Crypto Stocks Slide
The Senate blocked a landmark digital asset market structure bill in a procedural vote Tuesday, sending crypto-related stocks sharply lower. The legislation failed to reach the 60 votes needed to advance. Coinbase declined more than 9%, while Circle Internet Group dropped over 9.6%; Strategy fell roughly 5%, and Bitmine Immersion Technologies lost more than 7%. The bill would have given the Commodity Futures Trading Commission primary authority to regulate the digital assets industry, and Democrats blocked the measure citing concerns over ethics provisions designed to address President Donald Trump's crypto business interests. Senate Republican leaders released an updated version of the Clarity Act late Sunday night that added measures to expand state attorneys general's ability to enforce ethics provisions and further limit crypto companies from offering rewards or interest to stablecoin users, including a circuit-breaker for the Treasury Department to prohibit such rewards, interest or yield. Democrats said the ethical guardrails for the president and other elected officials holding cryptocurrencies did not go far enough, particularly in light of Trump's $1.4 billion crypto windfall, and the defeat comes less than two months before the midterm elections in November.
Bitcoin Falls 4.9% as Clarity Act Stalls in Senate Committee
Bitcoin fell as much as 4.9% on Tuesday from Monday's high of nearly $80K after the Clarity Act failed to advance out of committee, with the largest cryptocurrency by market cap sliding to $76.1K Tuesday afternoon, down 2.7% over the past 24 hours, and a low of the day of $75.7K against Monday's high of $79.6K. Ethereum, the second-largest digital token by market cap, dropped 4.5% to $2.40K at about 3:05 PM ET. The odds of the Clarity Act becoming law before Jan. 1, 2027, slid to 7.7% at about 3:45 PM ET from as high as 39% at 7:27 AM ET, after a procedural vote to advance the bill to the Senate floor for a full vote failed Tuesday afternoon, with major sticking points including ethics over legislators and the president profiting from stablecoins and other digital assets and whether platforms should be allowed to pay interest on stablecoin holdings. Vladimir Tikhomirov, founder of Theorem and co-founder of Algebra, said the development was a setback but "doesn't change the direction of the crypto market either, as prices are still too heavily dependent on rates, dollar liquidity, and macro conditions," adding that the RWA market remains in an uncertain position with no regulatory blueprint for how these assets can be traded, how liquidity is formed around them, and how investors can actually exit their positions. Crypto stocks slumping the most in Tuesday trading included Circle Internet at -10%, Coinbase Global at -9.5%, Gemini Space Station at -7.3%, and Bakkt at -6.9%, while crypto mining stocks also dipped, with Riot Platforms at -5.5%, CleanSpark at -4.6%, Core Scientific at -4.0%, Hut 8 at -4.2%, and IREN at -3.6%.
Stripe's Shared Payment Token Emerges as Default Agentic Commerce Layer
Stripe introduced its Shared Payment Token in October 2025 as a programmable, revocable primitive designed to standardize how AI agents interact with financial rails. The token prevents exposure of underlying credentials during agent-initiated transactions by mapping to the latest Funding Primary Account Number while adding agent-specific metadata such as merchant scoping, time-bound constraints, and transaction caps, with Stripe Radar providing real-time fraud and risk signaling. Stripe is currently the only provider supporting both agentic network tokens and BNPL tokens within a single primitive, a consolidation that matters given BNPL accounts for over $300 billion in global volume and businesses on Stripe report up to a 14% revenue increase on BNPL-eligible sessions. As of March 3, 2026, the platform supports Mastercard Agent Pay, Visa Intelligent Commerce, and BNPL providers including Affirm and Klarna, meaning merchants already integrated with Stripe need no additional development work to support agentic transactions. Adoption remains far behind the infrastructure: only 14% of consumers express trust in AI to execute purchases, dropping significantly for transactions exceeding $50, while just 3% of total transactions involve agents even as 42% of merchants report testing the technology. Stripe is also co-developing the open-source Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI and has made a $7.5 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, signaling an intent to control the routing and execution environment where agents operate.
Visa Study Finds Home-Centered Spending Embedded Across Six Markets
Visa Inc. says the "couch economy" has become a lasting part of consumer behavior rather than a passing e-commerce trend, with online and in-app payments expanding in every market it studied between 2019 and 2026. In the United States, online and in-app payment volume rose to 58% in 2026 from 48% in 2019, while Poland climbed to 24% from 10% and the UAE increased to 55% from 35%. More than 17% of U.S. cards now carry streaming subscriptions, versus about 6% tied to cinema and concerts, and in the UAE active food delivery cards jumped from roughly 2% in 2018 to nearly 30% in 2026. Visa said the shift creates a favorable payments backdrop, as more online, in-app, subscription and delivery spending can lift digital transaction activity across its network and deepen card usage through recurring payments. Mastercard Incorporated and American Express Company are also benefiting from the same move toward digital purchases, with Mastercard seeing higher transaction volumes and demand for tokenization and fraud prevention services, and American Express gaining through increased card spending, merchant fees and its closed-loop transaction data. Visa shares have gained 7.1% in the year-to-date period against the broader industry's 10.8% decline, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 25.18X versus the industry average of 17.69X.
8 US banking groups oppose Circuit Breaker mechanism in the CLARITY Act draft
Eight major US banking groups are warning that the revised draft of the CLARITY Act could trigger deposit outflows if stablecoin yields function like bank deposit interest. In a letter sent to John Thune and Charles Schumer, the Senate leaders, the banking groups, which include the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the National Bankers Association, stated that the temporary suspension mechanism, or Circuit Breaker, under this draft would only activate after a major loss of deposits had already occurred. By then it would be too late to stop the problem, and it would affect lending for housing, small business loans, agricultural loans, and other community loans. The letter comes ahead of a Senate procedural vote scheduled for September 15. The banking groups are calling for the removal of the word Solely from Section 10404(c)(1)(A), the removal of the phrases On a payment stablecoin balance and On an interest bearing bank deposit from Section 10404(c)(1)(B), a change in the test criterion from Economically or functionally equivalent to Substantially similar throughout Section 10404, and the complete removal of Section 10404(3)(B). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended the Circuit Breaker mechanism, saying it gives the Treasury more authority to protect community banks, while Patrick Witt, the White House crypto adviser, rejected the deposit outflow claims, pointing out that bank deposits have continued to rise.
Coinbase CEO Says CLARITY Act Nears Finish Line Ahead of Sept. 15 Senate Vote
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told Bloomberg Thursday that the CLARITY Act is nearing the finish line ahead of a Sept. 15 Senate vote, with banks, law enforcement groups and crypto companies all endorsing it. Armstrong, speaking from the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, said he is confident the bill will pass but added that even a failed vote would not leave the industry without clarity, since the SEC and the CFTC have said they are ready to publish rulemaking. He called passage of the CLARITY Act a regulatory checkbox that could unlock institutional capital and pave the way for tokenized equities in the U.S., describing it as a big milestone for the industry. On Bitcoin, Armstrong said he personally believes the cycle bottom is already in and expects the cryptocurrency to trend higher over the coming year or two as the next halving approaches. He also told CNBC's Squawk Box Asia that about half of Coinbase's revenue comes from trading, which has been down for the past year, pushing the company to diversify into stocks, commodities and foreign exchange, while the other half comes from subscriptions and services led by USD Coin stablecoins. Armstrong said he expects the stablecoin market to grow from roughly $300 billion today to $3 trillion by 2030, and cited stablecoin payments on Base up 700% year over year, prediction markets growing 100% quarter over quarter on the Coinbase app, tokenized equities launched in Abu Dhabi with real shareholder rights, and 90% of agentic finance payments running on Base.
KEO Capital Partners with Mastercard to Expand Cross-Border Card Program
KEO Capital AB has announced a strategic partnership with Mastercard that will allow the Stockholm-listed company to issue Mastercard-branded cards as part of its cross-border program. The agreement has an initial term of 5 years and authorizes the U.S. Dollar as the currency for all Corporate Purchasing Cards and Travel and Expenses Cards issued under the program. Mastercard's network spans more than 200 countries and territories and processed over USD 10 trillion in gross dollar volume in 2025, giving KEO Capital's clients and program participants substantially broader geographic reach. KEO Capital said the partnership complements its existing collaborations and validates the market fit of its cross-border offering. Roberto Marchiori, KEO Capital's COO, said the deal gives the program significantly greater reach, including into new markets, and called the tie-up with a company of Mastercard's global scale a strong validation of what the company has built.
Crypto Rallies as Clarity Act Odds Jump to Near 30%
Crypto markets gained on Monday as optimism over a key US crypto bill revived risk appetite across the digital-asset spectrum. The rally came as the odds of the market regulation Clarity Act passing this year climbed from as low as around 14% to near 30% on Polymarket, still a long shot but a sharp repricing of its prospects. Bitcoin, which accounts for around 60% of the market value of all cryptocurrencies, again approached the $80,000 price level, increasing as much as 1.5% to $78,452. Shares of crypto-related companies rallied more, with digital exchange Coinbase Global Inc. jumping as much as 8% and stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group Inc. increasing as much as 6.4%. Senators have promised to kick off procedural votes later this week, and ahead of that Republican senators released a final draft of the bill with changes addressing some of its most contentious points, including giving the Treasury Secretary power to intervene if deposit flight became detrimental to community banks and adding new ethics guard rails that would force the president to divest from virtual assets or place significant holdings in a blind trust. Analysts at Clear Street wrote in a report Monday that they believe the ethics compromise is the most important single change, since it was the primary Democratic sticking point, calling it incrementally positive for Coinbase, Circle and Bullish.
Republicans Release Final 635-Page CLARITY Act, Eyeing Tuesday Vote
Republican senators unveiled the final revised text of the CLARITY Act on Sunday, aiming to win over Democrats ahead of a procedural vote this Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. Eastern Time. The 635-page proposal was released by Cynthia Lummis, chair of the digital assets subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, along with Chairman John Boozman and Tim Scott, and reflects a year of bipartisan negotiations with 126 amendments made at Democratic requests. The content covers changes to the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, or BRCA, provisions governing stablecoin yield, and new ethics requirements that Lummis said President Donald Trump has accepted. These require federally elected officials, judges, and their spouses to divest significant financial interests or place them in a certified blind trust, with civil penalties of 500,000 dollars or 20 percent of the amount gained in a prohibited transaction, whichever is greater, and the ethics provisions would take effect 360 days after enactment. The revised BRCA would retain protections for developers from being treated as money transmitters or financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act, extend protections to miners and transaction validators, and repeal references to Section 1960 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code.
Thai Crypto Market in August: Average Daily Trading Volume 1.6 Billion Baht, Up 20.81%
Thailand's cryptocurrency market in August had an average daily trading value of 1.6 billion baht, an increase of 20.81%, with trading heavily concentrated in USDT, accounting for as much as 76% of total trading volume. Overall, the crypto market still has key issues, including Bitcoin's price rebounding to near 80,000 dollars after the release of US CPI inflation figures, while investors are watching the US central bank, the Fed, for its interest rate decision. At the same time, the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission is pushing forward with token funds and Travel Rule measures. On the capital flow side, pressure remains from outflows of 449 million dollars from Bitcoin ETF funds. Meanwhile, there are also developments in blockchain related to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency regulations worldwide that warrant continued attention.
Block Files for OCC National Trust Bank Charter to Custody Bitcoin and Stablecoins
Block, Inc. filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on September 8, 2026 for a national trust bank charter under the name Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., seeking federal authorization to custody Bitcoin and stablecoins at institutional scale. The charter is uninsured and non-deposit-taking, meaning Block is not seeking to become a traditional bank, but rather to bypass the state-by-state money transmitter licensing regime that has constrained its Cash App business since inception. Block's filing joins a broader charter wave that has sorted into three distinct lanes: crypto-native firms such as Circle, which received final OCC approval in July, Ripple, which obtained a conditional charter, and BitGo, which secured final approval; Wall Street institutions including JPMorgan, BNY Mellon, and State Street, which have expanded digital asset custody through existing banking licenses rather than new charters; and Block itself, a consumer fintech with over 50 million monthly active users on Cash App that is building institutional plumbing. The structural advantage of an OCC trust charter is preemption, replacing a patchwork of state requirements with a single federal framework and providing access to the Federal Reserve's payment rails and correspondent banking network. The timing matters, as the CLARITY Act heads for a Senate floor vote on September 15 and the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July, established a stablecoin-specific regulatory framework, while the OCC's processing timeline for national trust bank charters has varied from six months to over a year.
Thai SEC seeks public comment on stricter five-point stablecoin regulation to curb money laundering
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened a public consultation on principles for regulating stablecoin transactions through digital asset businesses, aiming to prevent risks from money laundering, technology crime, and circumvention of cross-border transfer rules. The SEC board approved the principles at its meeting in September 2026. The proposed rules under consultation are divided into five main parts. The first governs stablecoin transfers through digital asset businesses, requiring that transfers be made only to the customer's own account or wallet, that they comply with the Travel Rule, and that inbound and outbound transfers be capped at no more than 5 million baht per day per person per business operator, with exceptions for transfers between customer accounts through operators within Thailand and three further exceptions: customers that are digital asset businesses, businesses under the supervision of the Bank of Thailand that are permitted to use stablecoins, and customers acting as liquidity providers in stablecoin/baht pairs. The second part covers off-platform transactions by digital asset brokers and dealers, setting a minimum transaction value of 3 million baht and above, requiring disclosure of trading prices on their website or platform, and prohibiting brokers from arranging direct customer-to-customer transactions. The third part tightens oversight of liquidity providers and liquidity service providers, requiring digital asset exchanges to disclose on their websites the list of market makers and the digital assets for which they provide liquidity, while brokers are prohibited from having liquidity providers for stablecoin/baht pair transactions, and liquidity providers must not be located in countries without FATF measures. The fourth part brings source exchanges under the supervision of anti-money-laundering or business-conduct regulators. The fifth part strengthens the SEC's power to order business operators to correct or carry out data collection and disclosure within a specified period.
Visa Expands Blockchain Lending Data Push as Stablecoin Card Volume Jumps Nearly 200%
Visa is expanding its data offering to blockchain-based lenders as demand for stablecoin-linked cards accelerates, combining its VisaNet settlement data with onchain lending infrastructure to help stablecoin card programs and fintechs obtain working capital more efficiently. The company currently has more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, with payment volume on those programs up nearly 200% year over year, while stablecoin settlement volume has surpassed a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times the level a year earlier. The model gives blockchain lenders access to settlement-performance data so they can assess credit risk and provide financing faster, addressing a practical constraint for fast-growing stablecoin card issuers that need capital to fund daily settlement obligations before collecting money from cardholders. Visa has already been piloting the approach with Credit Coop, with more than $2.5 billion in cumulative financed settlement volume since 2023 across participating facilities and no reported defaults. Its broader partnership with Bridge is targeting expansion of stablecoin-linked Visa cards to more than 100 countries, though the $20 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate remains relatively small compared with Visa's traditional payments business, and regulatory, credit and privacy risks persist.
MoneyGram Launches USDC-Backed Visa Card in Colombia
MoneyGram has launched a stablecoin-backed card that lets users hold a U.S. dollar-denominated balance and spend it anywhere Visa is accepted. The new MoneyGram Card is initially available only in Colombia, with plans to expand to other markets in the coming months. Consumers can sign up through MoneyGram's app and use the card for online and in-store purchases, and can also send money to themselves for cash pickup at MoneyGram locations. The card runs on Visa's global payments network and uses Circle Internet Group's USDC stablecoin, and MoneyGram said it plans to eventually make its own MGUSD token available with the card as well. MoneyGram added that it plans to introduce a physical version of the card later this year that will support withdrawals at ATM bank machines. The launch comes as stablecoin trading volumes surpassed $1.1 billion U.S. in August, according to Payment Scan. MoneyGram is no longer publicly traded, having been acquired by private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners in 2023 for $1.8 billion U.S.
Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol Goes Global With 10 Wallets and 7 Acquirers
Ant International is rolling out its Agentic Mobile Protocol globally, with 10 Alipay+ digital wallets and 7 acquiring partners joining Phase I in 2026. The Phase I wallets, which together serve 1.5 billion user accounts, are Alipay, AlipayHK, DANA, GCash, KakaoPay, MPay, TNG eWallet, TrueMoney, Toss and Starryblu, while the acquiring partners are Adyen, Allinpay, Checkout.com, Fiserv, Global Payments, Nuvei and Worldline. The protocol sits inside the Alipay+ ecosystem, a mobile payment network with more than 50 mobile payment partners, over 10 national QR schemes and more than 2 billion consumer accounts. Ant International, Mastercard and Visa have begun collaborating on a Know-Your-Agent interoperability framework to streamline agent onboarding and identification across networks, working through BuildFin.ai, an industry platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. AMP, launched in April 2026, is now open-sourced on GitHub with source code, developer SDKs and technical documentation, and it includes AgentSafePay, a money-back guarantee for merchants against agentic-specific risks, and a nano-scale agent-to-agent settlement mechanism handling transactions as small as $0.000001.
MoneyGram launches Visa-backed stablecoin card, starting with Colombia pilot
MoneyGram announced on September 10 the launch of the MoneyGram Card, a card backed by stablecoins, in partnership with the Visa network. The pilot begins with a virtual card in Colombia as the first market. The card lets users hold balances in a fixed-value digital currency and spend through Apple Wallet or Google Wallet with tap-to-pay anywhere Visa cards are accepted, as well as withdraw cash at MoneyGram service points. It supports the USDC digital currency as the first currency, with plans to add support for its own MGUSD stablecoin, which launched on the Stellar network in June, in the near future. Behind the technology is a partnership in which Rain handles the card issuance system, Crossmint manages the digital wallet system, and the Stellar network is the main blockchain used for processing. Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and CEO of MoneyGram, said the company is giving customers more freedom and control in managing their own money, all in one place. MoneyGram said it will launch additional physical plastic cards in late 2026 before expanding to other markets worldwide in the following months. MoneyGram currently serves more than 60 million customers worldwide, covering more than 200 countries and territories through nearly 500,000 service points. The move comes just one month after major competitor Western Union launched its own Stablecard, also in partnership with Rain, reflecting that major players in the international money transfer business are racing to bring stablecoins in to cut cross-border transaction costs. A World Bank report in September 2025 noted that debit cards were the lowest-cost channel for receiving remittances, at 3.61% of the amount transferred.
Coinbase Partners with Moov to Bring Stablecoin Payments to Over 1,000 Community Banks Across the US
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on September 10 a partnership with payments infrastructure company Moov. The tie-up will offer more than 1,000 community banks and credit unions nationwide in Moov's customer base the ability to accept stablecoin payments, settle them, and access real-time funding. Coinbase will provide regulatory-compliant digital asset infrastructure and custody, while Moov integrates it into existing payment systems, allowing financial institutions to offer the service without building their own crypto infrastructure. Coinbase Vice Chairman Ryan VanGrack said the latest technology should support local financial institutions and give them the means to compete with the largest players. Among major financial institutions, 21 companies including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Mitsubishi UFJ announced plans on September 1 to establish a stablecoin issuer, making this partnership a move to bring regional financial institutions in as participants rather than competitors.
SEC opens consultation on regulatory principles for stablecoin transactions via digital asset businesses
The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has opened a public consultation on regulatory principles for stablecoin transactions conducted through digital asset businesses. This consultation follows the schedule announced earlier. The consultation opened on 11 September 2026 at 20:58, aiming to set out regulatory guidelines for stablecoin transactions carried out through digital asset businesses under the SEC's supervision. The details of the principles and the scope of the consultation are as set out in the document the SEC has published to the public.
Coinbase CEO Says Bitcoin Has Bottomed, Keeps $400,000 Target for 2030
Brian Armstrong, CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, appeared on CNBC on September 10 and said the outlook for Bitcoin to reach $400,000 by 2030 is "a reasonable target." That would be roughly five times its current level of around $77,000. He explained that Bitcoin repeats a cycle of roughly four years of gains and euphoria followed by about a year of decline, saying, "This downturn has passed the one-year mark. Personally, I think the bottom of this cycle is in," and expressed the view that the market will enter an upward trend over the next one to two years heading toward the halving in about a year and a half. On the regulatory front, he stressed that a procedural vote scheduled in the Senate on September 15 to decide whether to begin deliberation on the CLARITY Act is in a position to secure enough yes votes, and said that even if the bill stalls, the SEC and CFTC will move to build out rules under their existing authority, so regulation will become clear within a month either way. Speaking also to Bloomberg, he presented a forecast that the stablecoin market will reach $3 trillion by 2030, and named payments, tokenization, prediction markets, and finance driven by AI agents as areas of focus. However, in August 2025 he had predicted $1 million by 2030, and the probability in prediction markets of the CLARITY Act passing this year remains below 20 percent.
Mastercard Partners With Flowcart to Embed Card Payments in Chats
Mastercard announced on September 7 a partnership with Flowcart to embed secure card payments into social-messaging conversations, with an initial rollout in Kenya and planned expansion across East Africa and into South Africa, Nigeria, and Côte d'Ivoire. Expected payment value and commercial terms were not disclosed. The company reported second-quarter 2026 net revenue of $9.3 billion, up 14%, alongside $2.9 trillion in gross dollar volume, a base the partnership would need substantial expansion to meaningfully influence. Flowcart lets merchants accept payments through embedded links, QR codes, or native checkout flows, with tokenized card details supporting repeat purchases and no need for standalone websites or conventional point-of-sale terminals. A World Bank assessment using data through 2024 highlights widespread mobile-money use in Kenya and a declining ratio of bank cards to mobile-money accounts, while processed value is not revenue because customer incentives and pricing discounts can reduce the economics of winning additional business. Insider Monkey's database showed 158 hedge funds holding Mastercard at the end of 2Q2026, up from 157 funds three months earlier.
Circle to Discontinue USDC and CCTP V1 on Noble Blockchain
Circle announced on September 10 that it is discontinuing USDC and CCTP V1 on the Noble blockchain, and Noble will not receive CCTP V2. Noble served as the single canonical issuance point for USDC within the Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication ecosystem, unifying more than 100 bridged versions of USDC into one native asset used by sovereign appchains including Osmosis and dYdX. Under the schedule, new USDC minting on Noble via Circle Mint will be disabled on October 13, 2026, CCTP V1 burn limits begin reducing to zero on October 31, CCTP exits will be limited to destination chains that still support V1 burns by December 1, and the Noble USDC contract and all CCTP routes are fully paused on January 12, 2027, with a manual redemption portal opening the following day. All USDC on Noble remains 1:1 redeemable through the January 12 deadline, and Circle Mint customers retain withdrawal access until then. The move follows Coinbase's halt of USDC deposits and withdrawals on Noble on August 17, 2026, and comes as Circle prepares to launch its Arc mainnet on September 16 with a validator set including BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, Global Payments, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, and Visa. Circle said it is working with Noble and Cosmos ecosystem teams on an intermediate solution to route USDC flows to and from the ecosystem, but no timeline, technical architecture, or commitment has been specified.
Ant International, Visa and Mastercard Agree on Agent Identity Framework
Ant International, Visa and Mastercard announced a Know Your Agent interoperability framework in São Paulo on September 10, 2026, targeting cross-network operator traceability, shared certification requirements and continuous transaction monitoring. The framework aims to bridge three proprietary protocols: Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, launched in October 2025 with 12 partners including Adyen, Shopify and Stripe; Mastercard's open-source Verifiable Intent, introduced in March 2026 and co-developed with Google; and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol, released in April 2026 and connected to a digital wallet ecosystem that accounted for 56% of global e-commerce value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, representing over $13 trillion in spending according to the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2026. Ant International CIO Jiang-Ming Yang told CNBC that an agent registering with Ant would not need to register again with Visa or Mastercard, while Mastercard CDO Pablo Fourez and Visa SVP Rubail Birwadker both stressed that trusted identity and explicit permissioning are prerequisites for agentic commerce at scale. McKinsey projects $3–5T in global consumer commerce orchestrated by AI agents by 2030, but the framework remains high-level intent with no technical specifications, governance bodies or rollout timelines disclosed. Consumer trust is a further hurdle: the Product.ai Trust in AI Commerce Report from April 2026 found only 14% of consumers trust AI to execute purchases without verification, and 42% will not trust AI for purchases exceeding $25, while Visa's $2.4 billion acquisition of BioCatch in August 2026 underscores ongoing investment in behavioral biometrics.
Binance to Delist $100 Million FDV Pax Dollar Stablecoin on September 24, 2026
Binance is preparing to remove Pax Dollar (USDP) from its platform after the stablecoin failed to meet the exchange's requirements in its most recent periodic review. All USDP spot trading pairs will stop trading on September 24, 2026, at 03:00 UTC, according to Binance. The delisting affects a stablecoin with a fully diluted valuation of $100 million.