The stablecoin conversation is missing the everyday user

In stablecoin conversation, institutions mostly talk to each other, and then at everyone else.

On paper, Asia should be one of the clearest markets for stablecoin adoption. Money moves constantly between the region's economies. Foreign workers send money home, small businesses do cross-border trade, and freelancers get paid by clients located all over the globe.

The World Bank estimated that in 2024, East Asia and the Pacific received US$88b ($112b) in remittances, excluding China, whilst South Asia received US$207b ($264b).

Stablecoins seem well suited to address some of the friction faced by these demographics. Institutions often describe stablecoins as a way to make everyday financial transactions faster, cheaper, and easier. Yet the beneficiaries of these supposed benefits, the everyday person, are still very much left out of the conversation.

As someone working in crypto communications since 2021, I believed fervently that institutional participation in digital assets was a non-negotiable for mass adoption. That pitch left the heavy lifting to institutions, regulators, and investment companies signing the big cheques. If they move fast, the rest of us will follow. If we don't follow, it's because they are dragging their feet.

I am not so sure it still works that way.

The stablecoin conversation is starting to feel one-sided. Institutions mostly talk to each other and then at everyone else. We spend a lot of time (and column inches!) discussing what banks, issuers, and payment providers are building, but we rarely talk about how an ordinary person might actually use stablecoins.

I realised this even more at a recent e-commerce conference in Singapore. We thought it was going to be straightforward: build a booth, get merchants curious, explain what it does, and wait for them to realise that stablecoin payments are going to transform the way they get paid. Surely, people are just dying to pay for their online shopping with stablecoins.

Then someone said: "I know about stablecoins. I just don't think my customers are ready to pay with them."

This simple comment was an important “aha-moment” for us. We had been thinking about merchant enablement: how easily a business could incorporate stablecoin payments into its operations. We had not spent enough time thinking about consumer behaviour. Why would anyone choose that option simply because it appears on the checkout page?

Stablecoins in everyday life
A merchant can add a stablecoin payment button and a financial institution can build the settlement infrastructure. Neither step ensures that regular people will understand why they should use it instead of what they already have.

Conversations around stablecoins today usually focus on regulation, institutional settlement, tokenised deposits, cross-border liquidity, or the latest bank launching a stablecoin project.

When consumers are mentioned, it is usually with broad promises like faster remittances, lower fees, or "more of your earnings reaching your loved ones at home."

These benefits are important, just as institutional infrastructure and regulatory frameworks are. But we need to go beyond what stablecoins can do for banks, investment firms, and fintech companies. How can someone pay with stablecoins with a simple scan of a QR code? How can a salary paid in stablecoins be just like one paid in fiat? If stablecoins' impact on remittances is so transformative, why are foreign workers still sending money home via remittance counters?

Solve everyday frustrations, not blockchain problems
When people hear "stablecoins," they often think of "crypto," "USDC," and "blockchain." It may even appear like cutting-edge technology that all the smart people are using. But this link to crypto creates hesitation instead of encouraging adoption. The logic is simple: people won't use what they don't trust, and they won't trust what they don't understand.

Someone receiving a payment should not have to worry about using the right blockchain network. They should not need to check if they have the right token for a gas fee or search through wallet addresses to see who paid them.

Crypto-native users might find these tasks normal. For everyone else, they are reasons to stick with costly bank transfers or credit cards. This isn't to say that stablecoins face an uphill task in entering mainstream consciousness.

We have seen something similar happen in personal investing. In the past, we relied on financial advisors to tell us how to invest. The language was full of jargon, the products seemed complicated, and many people left meetings not fully understanding what they had agreed to buy.

Personal investing apps changed this by allowing us to manage our money whilst learning about investing at the same time. It became easier to compare fees, begin with a smaller amount, monitor a portfolio, and learn along the way.

Singapore offers a useful precedent. Adoption of investing apps grew 16-fold between 2018 and 2023, with around 36% of Singaporeans reported using these apps. In a separate study of 1,000 residents, 64% of investors said these platforms gave them great control over their investments.

Stablecoins need to make a similar change.

Start with the user, not the stablecoin
Instead of asking, "How do we get more people to use stablecoins?", we should start with the problems that businesses and freelancers already deal with.

A freelancer with an overseas client wants to get paid quickly and avoid losing too much to fees. An online store getting orders from different markets wants faster settlement, clearer records, and access to funds outside normal banking hours — not to burn their weekends reconciling wallet addresses with the right customers.

Institutional participation will remain essential to the development of stablecoins. Banks, issuers, regulators, and payment providers are building the foundation needed for the technology to operate reliably and at scale. It shouldn't stop here. Even though the everyday person doesn't need to know how the foundation is laid, it doesn't mean they don't care if the house is fit for living.

The next stage of adoption depends on whether we can turn this foundation into something clearly useful. It should not be just another financial product people are told to want, but a way to solve a problem they believe they have to live with.

This starts by taking their daily lives and activities into consideration, listening and catching the nuances of what they are saying about their finances, and building the solution they didn't know they needed.