U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is teaming up with payments infrastructure company Moov to supply stablecoin payments infrastructure to U.S. community banks and credit unions. Smaller financial institutions that have struggled to invest in crypto technology compared with large banks will be able to offer such services using existing systems.

On Sept. 10, local time, Cryptopolitan and Coinbase said the two companies agreed to integrate Coinbase’s digital-asset infrastructure into Moov’s payments platform. Initial services include consumer stablecoin payments, merchant acceptance and settlement, corporate payouts and real-time funding. A key feature is that financial institutions do not need to build separate crypto systems from scratch.

Moov has a customer base of more than 1,000 community banks and credit unions across the United States. Its existing platform has supported card issuing, merchant payments and connections to real-time payment networks, and Coinbase’s payments API and custodial wallet technology will be added. This does not mean that all of the roughly 1,000 institutions have decided to adopt the service.

Wade Arnold (웨이드 아널드), Moov's chief executive officer, said corporate clients of community financial institutions are already receiving requests for stablecoin payments but are using outside providers to handle them. Jill Castilla (질 카스티야), chief executive officer of Citizens Bank of Edmond, also said small-business clients are looking for ways to cut card payment costs and receive payments faster.

The partnership was announced ahead of a vote on the U.S. Senate's digital-asset market structure bill, the CLARITY Act. The Senate is set to hold a procedural vote on Sept. 15 to decide whether to move the bill forward, and 60 votes are needed. The crypto industry is calling for the bill to pass, while community banks are seeking tighter regulation, saying stablecoin rewards could drain deposits and weaken community lending capacity.

The Coinbase-Moov partnership is drawing attention in that it offers community banks an option to use stablecoins directly as payments infrastructure instead of viewing them only as a competing product amid the conflict.