Visa Partners with Dunamu and Shinhan to Build Stablecoin Rails in Korea

Coinbase Global is expanding its stablecoin distribution through a partnership with Samsung that will bring USD Coin to Samsung Wallet users in the United States, with the service expected to launch in the last week of October 2026 and USDC as the default dollar stablecoin. Coinbase will provide subcustody through Coinbase Prime, alongside licensed infrastructure partner Bastion. The company said average USDC balances held in Coinbase products reached a record $20 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 44% year over year, with more than 30% of circulating USDC held in Coinbase products at quarter-end. Coinbase cautioned that greater adoption will not automatically translate into higher earnings, since the financial impact will depend on customer activity, transaction volumes, operating costs and revenue-sharing arrangements. Among competitors, PayPal Holdings is broadening the reach of its PYUSD stablecoin through its consumer and merchant network, while Circle Internet Group announced a partnership with Tereina on Oct. 7, 2026 to integrate USDC and EURC into enterprise workflows starting with the SAP ecosystem. Shares of Coinbase have lost 55.5% in the past year compared with the industry decline of 27.9%, and the stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 74.44 against an industry average of 15.11.

The architecture for institutional stablecoins effectively locked into place between October 6 and October 8, 2026, as five distinct infrastructure layers shipped simultaneously to satisfy the requirements of the GENIUS Act. The reserve layer is now a functional duopoly of the JPMorgan JLTXX fund, holding $733.7 million in assets under management, and the BlackRock BSTBL parent fund, backed by a $6.1 billion parent fund, because the GENIUS Act's 40% concentration limit on any single tokenized reserve asset forces issuers to use both. Above the reserves, SAP Pay has been embedded into SAP Cloud ERP, supporting USDC and EURC across 89 corridors and reaching approximately 400,000 customers. The credit layer gained the first-ever stablecoin protocol rating from Moody's, which assigned a B3 rating to the Sky Protocol alongside an S&P B- rating, defining a 0.9% capital ratio and upgrade and downgrade thresholds. On the merchant side, Citi connected its $6 trillion payment network to Coinbase stablecoin rails, covering 150 million cardholders with a 3.75% platform incentive. These layers feed four settlement rails: SoFi and Mastercard, Visa's $20 billion annualized volume, Stripe's expansion across more than 100 countries, and Solana's delivery-versus-payment capabilities. The urgency stems from the January 18, 2027, effective date of the GENIUS Act, with seven federal agencies having failed to meet their July 2026 rulemaking obligations, while a survey by the American Bankers Association and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors found 18% of community banks plan to launch tokenized deposits within 12 months and 60% expect to lose ground to the new stablecoin rails.

Coinbase will serve as the powering exchange for USDC as the default dollar stablecoin on Samsung Wallet for U.S. users beginning in the final week of October 2026, the company announced Thursday. USDC balances will be custodied by Coinbase Prime Vault. The move extends a partnership that began last July, when Coinbase added Samsung Pay as a payment option to make it easier for users to buy crypto in the Coinbase app. In October, Coinbase extended that partnership to more than 82 million Galaxy users in the US, with Coinbase One benefits offered directly inside Samsung Wallet.

Coinbase Global Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup Inc. is partnering with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up a milestone for the cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong said that when he started Coinbase, getting a bank to work with the company at all was nearly impossible, and thanked Citi for the partnership. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing component of Coinbase's revenue; the company shares interest income on the reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group Inc. and monetizes customer balances held on the platform. USDC held in Coinbase products reached an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, accounting for more than 30% of all USDC in circulation.

Coinbase Global CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup has partnered with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up proof the crypto giant "has come a long way" since 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong recalled that getting a bank to work with Coinbase at its founding was "nearly impossible," and thanked Citi for the arrangement. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing revenue component for Coinbase, which shares interest income on reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group and monetizes customer balances on its platform; USDC held in Coinbase products hit an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, more than 30% of all USDC in circulation. Coinbase shares finished Friday down 3.32% at $183.

The OUSD stablecoin has officially gone live with Visa, Mastercard and Stripe behind it, according to Scott Melker on "The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker." OUSD, or Open USD, is a consortium of fintechs and payment companies launching their own stablecoin to compete in a massive market where high interest rates generate essentially free money, and it is being run by Stripe, which acquired Bridge in a unicorn deal and whose Bridge CEO is also running the blockchain. The stablecoin is launching on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with the bulk of liquidity expected on Stripe's own Tempo blockchain, while reserves will be held at BlackRock, BNY and Lead Bank. Five founding members — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — will split the equity and have invested a billion dollars for initial liquidity, and depending on usage they will accrue more or less equity or earnings from the stablecoin, meaning earnings accrue to the companies promoting and using it rather than to a private company behind it. The launch follows a huge debate when it was announced, as 140 logos appeared including BlackRock and others, and some companies said they had never heard of it and had not gotten the memo.