Stablecoin Issuers

Startale Japan has begun offering digital retail bonds with a 5% annual interest rate. Interest payments and redemption will use JPYSC, a trust-type yen-denominated stablecoin. The bonds are managed on infrastructure built with Hyperledger Fabric, while JPYSC is issued on Ethereum, meaning the bonds and the funds for interest payments do not sit on the same blockchain. The company sees the connection costs of horizontal specialization as a challenge, and has set out a vertical integration strategy that provides everything from base layers such as Strium, a blockchain dedicated to on-chain finance, through to JPYSC and wallets. This initiative is positioned as the current form of efforts to promote the adoption of JPYSC.

Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said the clearest use case for stablecoins today is in cross-border payments, telling Bloomberg TV that such transfers take days and carry unclear fees. "If you make a cross-border payment, it takes days; the fees are unclear. From a working capital perspective for a company, if you could move the money instantly, it would be so much better," Miebach reportedly said. Mastercard, alongside Visa, Stripe and other partners, launched the Open USD stablecoin on Solana last month. Miebach said the company was keen to create a stablecoin focused particularly on moving money rather than on investment purposes.

JPYC, the company that issues the Japanese yen stablecoin JPYC, announced on October 9 that it had submitted information to the Japan Fair Trade Commission regarding the competitive environment in the cashless payment market. The submission was made on September 14, explaining how JPYC works and the changes taking place in the payments market. The company pointed out that card merchant agreements could hinder discounts offered to customers who use JPYC for payments, arguing that passing on payment cost savings to customers should be left to each store's own free business judgment. JPYC is an electronic payment instrument issued and redeemed at 1 JPYC to 1 yen, and since issuance began on October 27, 2025, it has become usable at more than 150 stores and businesses, including restaurants, retailers, and e-commerce sites. Payments in JPYC work by having the user send funds to the store on a blockchain, and JPYC does not collect merchant fees from stores, which the company says keeps store cost burdens lower than existing cashless payment methods. What the company takes issue with are three prohibited clauses said to be widely present in credit card and other merchant agreements, which ban charging card users extra, offering discounts to cash users, and encouraging the use of other payment methods. In its April 2022 fact-finding survey report, the Japan Fair Trade Commission stated that uniformly prohibiting different pricing for card users and cash users may risk being problematic under the Antimonopoly Act when it could weaken competition among stores to attract customers. JPYC believes the view set out by the commission also applies to discounts for customers using new payment methods such as stablecoins, and it has set up a consultation desk for stores that are uneasy about offering discounts or that have been asked by payment providers to stop doing so.

The Ripple stablecoin treasury has minted 30 million Ripple USD, or RLUSD, adding to a recent series of larger issuance transactions for the USD-pegged token. The 30 million RLUSD mint is the latest in that run of bigger issuances. No further details on the transaction were disclosed.

Institutional stablecoin settlement moved onto four live production rails within a single month, with stablecoin-linked card spending reaching $1.2 billion in September 2026, roughly triple the year-earlier figure, according to PaymentScan data cited by CoinDesk. SoFi and Mastercard went live on September 22 with SoFiUSD, the first stablecoin issued by a U.S. nationally chartered bank deployed for live card-settlement production, with $25 billion in annualized card volume migrating to blockchain-based settlement on Mastercard's global payments network. Visa is already operating at a $20 billion annualized run rate for stablecoin settlement as of September 8, a 15x increase from $1.3 billion a year earlier and up from $7 billion in April, while Stripe announced October 1 that it is expanding its stablecoin card programs to more than 100 countries by year-end, up from 18. The Solana DvP standard, launched October 5-6 with JPMorgan advisory input, cuts settlement finality from T+2 days to roughly 400 milliseconds and cost from $50-500 to less than one cent, though it launched with no production settlement volumes yet. Separately, the DTCC's tokenization service, supported by a working group of over 50 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and State Street, is planned for October launch, and OKX closed a funding extension at a $25 billion pre-money valuation with backing from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and Qube Research.

First Digital Group, the issuer behind the FDUSD stablecoin, has agreed to merge with CSLM Digital Asset Acquisition Corp III, known by the ticker KOYN, in a deal that values First Digital at $250M on a pre-money basis. The transaction would take First Digital public on Nasdaq and is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. FDUSD has recorded more than $4.7T in cumulative trading volume as of June 30, 2026, while First Digital generated about $87M in revenue in fiscal 2025. The company said the listing would give it access to public capital to expand Finance District, its on-chain ecosystem, while adding greater transparency for investors and partners.

Rain, a stablecoin payments platform, announced on October 5 that it has applied to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank, Rain National Trust Bank. If approved, it will provide custody of digital assets and US dollars, management of stablecoin reserve assets, and issuance and redemption of dollar-denominated stablecoins under OCC supervision. The new bank is to be set up as a separate entity under Rain and will not take deposits, offer individual accounts, or make corporate loans, focusing instead on stablecoin and digital asset-related business. In the United States, following the GENIUS Act, a stablecoin regulation law enacted in 2025, a federal-level supervisory framework for issuers is being developed, and the OCC is also working on rules covering issuance, reserve assets, and reporting obligations in 2026. Rain's application will now undergo OCC review, and the company plans to begin operations after obtaining the necessary approvals.

SoFi Technologies and Mastercard announced that stablecoin settlement went live across SoFi Bank, N.A.'s debit and credit card program, migrating its entire US$25.00 billion card portfolio to SoFiUSD. SoFiUSD is the first stablecoin issued by a nationally chartered bank on Mastercard's global network, positioning bank-issued stablecoins as an operational bridge between traditional payment rails and blockchain infrastructure. The move connects to SoFi's April 2026 launch of Big Business Banking, which lets enterprises manage fiat and crypto, mint and burn SoFiUSD, and access real time payments in a single bank interface. SoFi's narrative projects $7.7 billion revenue and $1.6 billion earnings by 2029, requiring 21.6% yearly revenue growth and an earnings increase of about $1.0 billion from $636.3 million today, while the most pessimistic analysts saw SoFi reaching only about US$6.0 billion revenue and US$1.0 billion earnings by 2029.

Fiserv has launched the Roughrider stablecoin, a bank-to-bank settlement token built on Solana. Versa Bank issues the bank-only token, which serves a North Dakota network of more than 90 banks and credit unions. The coin is designed for interbank settlement among those institutions rather than for consumer retail use, replacing legacy systems such as Swift and ACH with near-instant, near-zero-fee transfers. The North Dakota effort is separate from a national network of regional and community banks that is launching its own bank stablecoin network. Because the token runs on Solana, its growth could drive demand for the network's gas fees.

The crypto market entered Friday evening, October 2, 2026, in a phase of powerful strategic accumulation, with the industry's total market capitalization standing in the $2.94–$3.03 trillion range. U.S. labor market data came in weak, as Non-Farm Payrolls rose by just 29,000 against expectations of $84,000–$90,000, while the unemployment rate climbed to 4.2%. The headline also points to the biggest USD stablecoin returning to Bitcoin after 12 years.

Bitcoin rallied to its best third quarter since 2017, gaining 43% in July, August and September even as long-term Treasuries lost approximately 7.7% and the broader US bond market declined approximately 3.4%, with the 10-year yield recording its largest quarterly increase since 1994. The crypto industry spent $8 million lobbying for the Clarity Act out of a total $13 million in first-half 2026 lobbying spending, and the bill failed to win a single Democratic vote, with Coinbase leading corporate efforts at $2.2 million and Kraken spending $1 million. The OUSD stable coin, backed by a consortium of more than 200 companies, went live with Visa, MasterCard and Stripe among its five founding members, alongside Coinbase and Shopify, with reserves held at BlackRock and BNY. The EU is questioning Binance over continued operations despite a wind-down order, with ESMA, France, Germany and Greece examining whether the exchange is still servicing European customers through a reverse solicitation exemption. The CFTC secured a judgment of over $30 million against defendants in a funds fraud case, including approximately $15.7 million in restitution and a $15 million civil penalty.

The US Senate voted 49–50 on September 15 to reject a motion to advance the crypto Clarity Act, which needed at least 60 votes to pass, effectively killing the bill. After the vote, the White House blamed Democratic senators, saying they prioritized political games over doing what is best for American technology and innovation. Meanwhile, Patrick Witt, the White House's crypto adviser, called the outcome a major disappointment and warned that future global financial standards could be set by Brussels or Beijing instead of Washington and New York. Senator Cynthia Lummis pointed out that the final version of the bill had incorporated 126 amendments requested by Democrats, including new ethics rules and changes covering decentralized finance systems, yet Democrats still voted it down. Democrats Cory Booker and Adam Schiff insisted they would not support legislation that failed to address concerns about President Donald Trump's crypto conflicts of interest, and they wanted strict, enforceable ethics rules. The bill did not fail solely because of Democratic opposition, as four Republican senators, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis, also voted against ending debate. This followed heavy lobbying by traditional banks against provisions such as Section 404, which would have barred stablecoin issuers from offering deposit-like yields to customers in the United States. The biggest impact is that the United States still lacks a single federal framework for the spot digital asset market, and the CFTC will not receive the new powers the bill proposed, leaving these businesses to continue dealing with state-by-state money transmitter regulations.

Tether, the issuer of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin, announced on September 28 that it helped freeze approximately 550 million dollars' worth of USDT in 2026 in wallets that US authorities identified as linked to Iran's central bank and a sanctions-evasion network. The announcement came as the Trump administration intensifies economic sanctions on Iran. Behind it is "Operation Economic Outcast," launched by the US Treasury Department on August 24, an effort ordered by President Trump to cut off international funding networks supporting the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury Department said it will focus monitoring on five new sanctions targets: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. In April, based on information provided by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and US law enforcement agencies, Tether helped freeze more than 344 million dollars' worth of USDT at two addresses, and the next day OFAC added the same addresses to its sanctions list as digital currency identifiers of Iran's central bank. In July, after the Treasury expanded its designation of Iran's central bank, more than 130 million dollars' worth of USDT in four wallets was frozen, all of them addresses on TRON. On September 14, the US Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit seeking the forfeiture of about 61 million dollars in crypto assets, saying they represented proceeds from trading Iranian crude oil. Tether currently works with more than 340 law enforcement agencies in 67 countries, and the assets it has helped freeze to date total more than 4.9 billion dollars, of which more than 2.4 billion dollars is related to US authorities.

Circle Internet Group disclosed on September 25 that chief financial officer Jeremy Fox-Geen is stepping down after more than five years in the role, and a separate filing the same day revealed that co-founder and long-serving director P. Sean Neville had resigned from the board with immediate effect, taking it from eight members to seven. The shares fell 4.30% to close at $89.00 and slipped further after hours. Circle said neither departure arose from any disagreement over the company's operations, policies, or accounting practices, and Fox-Geen will stay in the job through December 2026 while a successor is found, with severance of about $1.05 million in cash over twelve months plus accelerated vesting on equity he already holds. Neville's resignation was described as part of an ongoing board refreshment process. Circle's revenue comes almost entirely from interest earned on reserves backing USDC, which ended the second quarter at more than $73 billion in circulation, leaving its income statement tied to Federal Reserve policy while the company digests an acquisition.

On South Korea's cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, the number of investors who bought the yen-denominated stablecoin JPYC at prices more than 10 percent above its reference price reached 21,219. South Korea's Yonhap News reported this on September 27, putting total purchases at 25.985519 billion won, or roughly 28 billion yen. According to the report, as of September 21, 3,792 of the high-price buyers still held JPYC, with an average unrealized loss of 1.32553 million won per person, totaling about 5.03 billion won. JPYC began trading on Upbit on September 17, and immediately after trading opened, the quantity available for trading was limited while buy orders concentrated, pushing the price well above its yen-pegged level. Between September 17 and 21, 11,449 investors bought at three to four times the reference price, with purchases worth 85.42003 billion won, while 13,728 bought at two to three times the reference price, purchasing the equivalent of 105.86281 billion won, and 2,574 investors bought at four times the reference price or more. Of the 21,219 who bought at high prices, 7,006, or 33 percent of the total, sold their JPYC and locked in profits, with an average realized gain of 453,687 won.

Federal prosecutors in the US state of California have seized a total of about $84.2 million from the bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets of US payments company Capstone, which has been reported to have ties to Tether. Reuters reported the move on September 25. According to court documents, authorities seized about $81 million from an account Capstone held at Wells Fargo and about $2 million from an account at JPMorgan Chase, and also seized about $1.2 million worth of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether. Capstone is a payments company operating a money transmission service registered in the US state of Montana, and in a filing seeking civil forfeiture, prosecutors argued that the company's executives described its business as information technology-related when opening the bank accounts. According to prosecutors, Capstone processed numerous payments for two cryptocurrency-related firms through a contract with a bank based in the Caribbean nation of Dominica. The seizure is not a penalty against Tether itself; at issue is the banking relationship of the bank where Tether placed some of its assets and Capstone's dealings, which are said to have processed payments at the bank's direction.