Are Stablecoins the Future of Global Instant Payments?

It is easy to project the future as one where payments are global, fee-less, and instantaneous. However, Jeremy Allaire, the head of Circle, is actively working toward such a future. In a recent webinar conducted by the Chamber of Digital Commerce, Allaire laid out his plans in which stablecoins play an important role.

Stablecoins and Global Instant Payments

On June 24, 2020, the Chamber of Digital Commerce Youtube channel organized a meeting of the FinTech minds. Noah Buxton, Co-Leader of Armanino’s Blockchain Practice, had the privilege of moderating this virtual conference with four knowledgeable speakers:

• Daniel Gorfine – Adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, formerly served as chief innovation officer of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now works closely with former CFTS Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo at the Digital Dollar Foundation – pushing for a token-based digital dollar instead of account-based.
• Jeremy Allaire – Founder of Circle Internet Financial and co-creator of USD Coin (USDC) in collaboration with Coinbase, one of the biggest US-based crypto exchanges.
• Rafael Cosman – Co-Founder & Head of Engineering and Product at TrustToken (USDK), a platform for creating asset-based tokens.
• Walter Hessert – representing PAXOS with their Paxos Standard (PAX) stablecoin.

As you can tell, the emphasis of the webinar was on transitioning to a non-volatile digital currency, which is the sole purpose of stablecoins. As an experienced FinTech and crypto expert, Jeremy Allaire sees the trajectory of digital finance clearly. Considering that the demand for high-throughput financial infrastructures grows daily, this creates incentives for developing frictionless financial systems alongside blockchain-powered solutions.

Circle CEO on the Future of Payments

Accordingly, Allaire’s Circle is working closely with the Algorand Foundation to integrate Circle’s USDC stablecoin into the framework of the Algorand Blockchain, which is supposed to occur near the end of this year.

“The combination of USDC and Circle Platform Services with the Algorand blockchain will create a foundation for developing a wide range of scalable, secure and compliant financial applications.”

Daniel Gorfine of the Digital Dollar Foundation made a sound case that even Digital Dollar Project skeptics should prepare themselves for this possibility. According to him, is almost a certainty given that China’s central bank continues its efforts on developing and testing its own version of digital currency. Allaire agrees that the Digital Dollar is a game-changer because it has the backing of the government, which gives it instant legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the public.

As far as the role of stablecoins goes, Walter Hessert of Paxos foresees that stablecoins will play a critical role in tokenizing securities. More importantly, as USD fiat currency is the dominant global currency comprising 80% of all global transactions, one should not expect to be supplanted. Instead, the infrastructure for speedy payments is rife to be explored, as Facebook’s WhatsApp Pay is seeking to accomplish.

Have you already used stablecoins in e-commerce such as USDC and PAX? Tell us in which areas in the comments below.