Trace Finance CEO Says Stablecoin Scale Still Runs Through Banks

Stablecoins can move the middle leg of cross-border payments faster, but they do not remove banks from the stack, according to Trace Finance Co-Founder and CEO Bernardo Brites. For PSPs and high-risk merchants, the practical point is simple: institutional stablecoin flows still depend on fiat entry, compliance, and local payout rails.

1. In a column published Sunday, Sept. 6, by Decrypt, Brites said companies processing stablecoin payments at institutional scale are getting deeper into traditional banking infrastructure. He pointed to Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge, Citi’s launch of crypto custody services and Standard Chartered’s stablecoin settlement tests in Singapore as signs of that convergence.
2. Trace Finance builds regulated banking and stablecoin settlement infrastructure linking Brazil, the United States and emerging markets. Brites’ comments therefore sit squarely inside the commercial reality he operates in: stablecoins are not replacing the bank layer, they are being plugged into it.
3. The payment flow he described has three steps. The payer sends local currency through a domestic system, such as a Brazilian importer paying in reais through Pix. Stablecoins then move value between institutions on-chain in seconds. The recipient finally converts the stablecoins into local currency and deposits the proceeds in a bank account.
4. The banks are still doing the first and last legs. In Brites’ framing, they remain the entry point for fiat currency, the compliance anchor, and the local rails in each market a payment touches. Stablecoins may replace a chain of correspondent banks and Swift messages in the middle, but the flow still begins and ends in fiat.
5. The scale gap matters. Cross-border payments reached $208 trillion in 2025, according to FXC Intelligence figures. Genuine stablecoin payments were running at approximately $390 billion annually by late 2025, based on McKinsey and Artemis estimates. Brites also noted that frequently cited totals above $30 trillion usually include automated trading, exchange transfers and bot activity, not commercial payments.

For institutional users — corporate treasury departments, multinational employers and investment funds — the setup still starts with money in traditional bank accounts. And as transaction volumes rise, the dependency on banking relationships, foreign exchange capabilities and licenses gets more, not less, important: a company processing $50 million annually may operate with one bank, one stablecoin issuer and one compliance system, while at $10 billion growth depends on how many markets that banking stack can support.