The stablecoin market, which has grown to $300 billion, initially emerged as a means to facilitate faster global transactions, but companies are now exploring more practical applications for these digital assets. This shift is driving a new wave of adoption, as the industry transitions from building basic infrastructure to focusing on real-world business use cases, according to Paxos Labs Co-Founder Chunda McCain. In a recent interview with CoinDesk, McCain stated, "The initial step was to establish a stablecoin, and now the question is: what's next?" Paxos Labs, a subsidiary of Paxos, recently secured $12 million in strategic funding to develop a "financial utility stack" that enables companies to integrate digital assets into their products through a single integration. The newly launched Amplify Suite offers three primary tools: Earn, which provides yield on digital assets; Borrow, which allows lending against these assets; and Mint, which supports the issuance of branded stablecoins.
This suite is designed to allow firms to integrate tokens into their business and add capabilities over time. For years, the focus of enterprise crypto adoption has been on "first-touch" capabilities such as trading, custody, or issuing a stablecoin.
However, these initial steps rarely generated significant returns on their own, according to McCain. He noted that stablecoins have long been considered loss leaders.
The true opportunity lies in how these assets are utilized. Payments are a prime example, as merchants typically incur fees of 2% to 3%, while stablecoin-based payments can reduce these costs and even generate yield on on-chain balances.
McCain explained, "You convert what has traditionally been a cost into revenue." Some of the more innovative use cases lie at the intersection of payments and credit. Payment providers already track merchant revenues and cash flow, positioning them to underwrite loans, McCain argued. This could enable merchants to access financing based on real-time performance, earn yield on incoming payments, and settle transactions instantly across borders.
Although these models are still in their early stages, the building blocks are starting to come together, he said. Not every company needs to issue its own stablecoin to capture these benefits. While some companies, like PayPal, have launched branded tokens to control payments and margins, issuing a stablecoin requires significant investment in liquidity, compliance, and distribution. McCain noted, "If you only need the economic benefits, you don't need to create your own stablecoin." Many firms can instead integrate existing stablecoins and still benefit from lower costs and added yield.
This shift may lack the hype surrounding big firms like Western Union launching their own tokens, but it has a tangible impact on how businesses operate. Stablecoins are beginning to transform margins, unlock credit, and change the way money moves globally, particularly in areas where traditional systems are costly or slow. McCain stated, "It may sound unexciting, but this is the underlying math."