“Stablecoin Strategy” Is a 2026 Question for Banks, Not a 2027 One

There's an old joke that regional and community banks want to be first to be third. Some say they want to be leading edge, but not bleeding edge. This philosophy serves a purpose: it allowed others to validate solutions before banks committed to rolling them out.

The challenge is that most banks have misjudged the timing on tokenization. If you're just starting now, you're entering laggard territory, where the failure to offer these products creates serious deposit and non-interest income risk.

The rate of change in stablecoins and tokenization is difficult to overstate. In 2020, stablecoins were virtually non-existent. The number of active stablecoin wallets globally has grown 100x since then. Forecasts for adoption are accelerating, not decelerating. Supply may exceed $3 trillion by 2028, not 2030 as originally predicted. Hundreds of millions now have stablecoins in their pocket using existing phone apps, including Zelle, PayPal, Venmo and CashApp.

After major regulatory changes in 2025, including new guidance from the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve and the GENIUS Act, the barrage of announcements has been relentless. Products, partnerships and major acquisitions have come from the world's largest financial institutions, stock exchanges, fintechs, card networks and payments firms. Two decades of change arrived in roughly one year to the relatively conservative financial services sector.

Today, a handful of regional and community banks have already gone live with these products. For those on the sidelines, phrases like, "The market is still early" and "My customers aren't asking for it yet" to justify non-participation are missing the larger phenomenon. Deposits are already leaving. Your customers are forming lasting relationships with fintech and crypto firms right now. Banks need to act with urgency.

For those still evaluating, the window is open, but it is closing. If you are watching the market, you know that bold bets are being made with significant budgets and urgency right now. Every major financial institution is building on blockchain technology. The platform shift toward digital assets, tokenization and blockchain-based financial infrastructure is only accelerating and compounding. This warp speed stands in contrast with how long it takes for a regional or community bank to go live with new payments rails and complex infrastructure, with these institutions usually taking months or years to deploy new infrastructure.

Adding digital assets is not a simple IT project. Supporting 24/7/365 operations is entirely new to the operating model of most banks. Supporting distributed ledgers and blockchains is equally new. Although stablecoins are arguably the hottest topic, tokenization is a broad trend. Use cases range from stablecoins and tokenized deposits to tokenized money market funds, digital asset trading, loans against digital asset collateral, and crypto-backed credit cards. The compliance, risk, operations, finance and liquidity management implications take many months to work through, even for the most focused institutions.The timing no longer supports waiting.

The Reality: Deposits Are Already Fragmenting

Stablecoins do not require bank adoption to reach customers. They operate outside the traditional payment system. That is what makes this a different kind of competitive threat. Your customers are likely already using them, or would if you offered access.

A KlariVis analysis of community bank data found that 90% of institutions have customers actively transacting with Coinbase, with material outflows. Meanwhile, a YouGov survey found that 77% of respondents would open a cryptocurrency or stablecoin wallet within their banking app if one were available.

Banking clients will increasingly want to use stablecoins and tokenized money market funds for payments, small transactions, collateral management, treasury and similar uses because they may work better than traditional payment rails.

Banks can either support these products directly, keep clients, grow revenue and get an early advantage, or wait and let clients use outside providers - many of which are also trying to become banks themselves, which could make them even harder to compete with.

Banks need to support stablecoin products natively if they want to stay competitive and protect their client relationships over time.

How Stablecoin Offerings Support Bank Revenue

Many banks are hesitant about stablecoins because they are not deposits, and therefore reflect poorly on a bank balance sheet. Yet customers are increasingly interacting with stablecoins, and they need to be part of a suite of solutions offered by banks, alongside ACH and wire transfers, because neobanks and fintechs are making this the market standard. The revenue case for banks is robust though and breaks into two categories: transaction fees and deposit retention. Both are accessible to institutions of any size.

On the fee side, stablecoin sends and receives operate similarly to wire transfers. Every time a customer sends or receives stablecoins through your bank, you charge for that activity. For commercial customers managing vendor payments, payroll or cross-border transactions, volume can accumulate quickly and flow directly to fee income. Customers have even shown they will pay a premium for instant, verifiable transactions.

The fee opportunity extends to trading as well. Just as banks earn on securities transactions, they can charge for digital asset activity. For customers already moving funds to external digital asset platforms, their bank can become the more trusted and convenient option. And once assets are sold, they convert back into deposits at the bank.

Deposit retention is the largest bottom-line impact and a byproduct of being customers' primary financial account. Low-cost deposits like commercial checking accounts are the foundation of bank profitability. When a corporate treasury client maintaining $5 to $10 million in a checking account needs stablecoin payment capabilities, that money currently moves to a fintech platform and rarely returns. Offering stablecoin products directly helps keep that balance on your books.

The reverse is also true. Customers holding stablecoins elsewhere can convert them back to deposits through your bank, returning balances to the institution rather than leaving them on a crypto platform. Receive-only stablecoin functionality is a growing trend that is driving deposit growth at early-adopter institutions.

How Community Banks Can Actually Respond

Going live on digital asset products takes months, and the clock starts the moment you begin. Vendor due diligence, integration work, compliance buildout, and customer rollout all take time.

Getting there requires solving four technical problems:

• A digital asset core to handle ledgering and orchestration, connecting digital asset activity to your existing core, compliance and digital banking systems.
• Custody and liquidity management for how digital assets are held and accessed.
• Compliance tooling for OFAC, fraud and travel rule requirements.
• Stablecoin issuer API integrations for mint and redeem functionality.

A productive first step is forming a cross-functional working group across finance, risk, compliance, IT and operations, often called a DAWG (Digital Asset Working Group). Training will be required. Depending on your team, some hiring or upskilling may be needed as well. Getting those functions aligned early makes the rest of the process manageable.

The infrastructure decision matters more than most banks recognize. Some solutions operate as black boxes: the provider holds your customer data, owns the ledgering and effectively controls your customer relationships once you go live. Banks that retain ownership of their data, customer interfaces and ledger are better positioned to grow and adapt with their customers’ needs. No matter which stablecoin gains dominance or which blockchain emerges, flexible infrastructure gives you the ability to shift your offerings as the market evolves.

The Window Is Open Now

The data is clear. Your customers are moving into digital assets and stablecoins. The decision community banks need to make is whether those flows appear on your balance sheet or someone else's.

The banks that build the infrastructure to meet them will capture the deposits, fees and relationships that define the next decade of community banking.

By Nick Elledge, co-founder and COO of Stablecore, and Tal Sigura, principal at BankTech Ventures