Making Sense of Where Stablecoins Fit in the Issuer-Merchant-Acquirer Stack

Whoever owns the rails of digital payments might just own the next phase of commerce.

Stablecoins, once dismissed as niche instruments for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, could be poised to mature into legitimate infrastructure for commerce by challenging legacy roles in the issuer-merchant-acquirer stack.

Walmart and Amazon, for example, are reportedly interested in launching their own stablecoins. Shopify began rolling out a feature this week that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins within their existing payment and order fulfillment flows. Visa and Bridge, a stablecoin orchestration platform, partnered in April to launch a stablecoin credit card.

Stripe, meanwhile, acquired digital wallet firm Privy Wednesday (June 11). By integrating Privy into its stack, Stripe aims to reduce the complexity of crypto onboarding for merchants and consumers.

Yet for all the momentum, confusion remains. While stablecoins offer new efficiencies, their right-now reality may threaten to expose existing gaps in oversight, standards and risk controls.

Several questions remain unanswered. Are stablecoins simply a faster, more programmable way to settle payments? Or are they quietly positioning themselves as new forms of issuers, (e.g., digital-native alternatives to traditional bank networks)? And what happens to time-honored pillars of the card ecosystem like chargebacks, fraud management and liability coverage if stablecoins upend how value moves?

Read also: With Bitcoin at Record High, Smaller Banks Face Urgent Crypto Decisions

The traditional issuer-acquirer-merchant landscape is one where every transaction is a dance of communication and trust, usually routed through multiple intermediaries and settlement layers — each adding time, cost and complexity. Stablecoins can promise to rewrite that choreography.

In their most immediate and least controversial use case, stablecoins serve as a settlement layer, or a way to move money between parties more quickly and at lower cost than existing bank rails.

This settlement use case has clear appeal, including speed, traceability and reduced counterparty risk. However, it also raises a fundamental question: If a stablecoin moves money, who is responsible when something goes wrong?

Things get more complex when stablecoins are used not just to settle funds, but as the actual medium of consumer payments at checkout.

Take a stablecoin wallet like Circle’s or a Web3-enabled debit card that draws from a USDC balance. In that case, the stablecoin provider starts to resemble a neo-issuer — not offering credit or revolving balances but enabling stored-value payments outside of the traditional card stack.

Unlike traditional card networks, where dispute resolution is standardized and liability is contractually shared, stablecoin rails often lack defined rulesets. Some protocols are exploring decentralized identity and escrow layers, but these are nascent at best.

This ambiguity has strategic implications. If stablecoins can bypass banks and card networks for issuance and settlement, they don’t just streamline the stack — they potentially collapse it.

See also: Project Agora Bank Consortium Counters Stablecoins With Programmable Fiat

One of the most underappreciated functions of the traditional stack is how it handles reversibility and responsibility.

In the current model, if a consumer disputes a charge, the issuer initiates a chargeback, and the network adjudicates the outcome. There are defined timelines, evidence requirements and chargeback codes. Consumers enjoy protection under laws like Regulation Z (credit cards) or Regulation E (debit cards).

Stablecoins, by contrast, are final by design. Once a USDC transfer is confirmed on-chain, it is practically irreversible. That may be ideal for automation and fraud resistance, but it’s problematic when errors or disputes arise.

At the same time, while it’s tempting to view stablecoins through a Western lens — as faster, cheaper versions of existing tools — in markets like Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, stablecoins are filling different gaps.

In Argentina, where annual inflation has topped 100%, stablecoins like USDC and USDT offer dollar-denominated stability in ways the local banking system cannot. In Nigeria, stablecoins provide a workaround to strict capital controls and limited international payment access.

In these contexts, the stablecoin is not a settlement layer — it’s the payment method itself. The wallet becomes the issuer, the protocol replaces the network, and local FinTechs play hybrid roles as acquirers, remittance agents and custodians.

Here, the question isn’t whether stablecoins fit into the existing stack. It’s whether the stack itself is still relevant.

Ultimately, despite the disruptive potential, stablecoins are unlikely to fully displace the issuer-acquirer model anytime soon. More likely is a hybrid future, where stablecoin-based payments coexist alongside fiat rails, particularly in cross-border commerce, digital marketplaces and creator economies.

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