Citi's institutional clients can now receive stablecoin payments without directly holding cryptocurrencies.

On Sept. 28, blockchain outlet Decrypt reported that Coinbase expanded its cooperation with Citi by integrating its payment infrastructure into Citi's merchant payments platform, Spring by Citi.

This allows companies that do business with Citi to accept customers' stablecoin payments at checkout. Coinbase converts customers' stablecoins into fiat currency, and Citi settles the funds as the account management bank. The structure means companies do not need to directly hold or manage stablecoins.

Coinbase also runs a Coinbase Virtual Account using Citi's Virtual Account Wallet. The account is designed to let companies building Coinbase-based services receive, store and transfer funds in a way similar to a bank account. When fiat currency such as U.S. dollars is deposited, it is automatically converted into stablecoins.

The two functions will launch first in the United States. The companies plan to introduce additional features in the coming months. Coinbase presented more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide as potential users.

The expanded cooperation follows the companies' digital asset payments partnership announced in October 2025. At the time, the two companies said they would cooperate on fiat deposits and withdrawals to smooth on-ramps and off-ramps for Citi's institutional clients. Citi has since expanded its digital asset business and in August disclosed plans to add bitcoin custody to its existing custody service, Custody+.

Citi also operates Citi Token Services, which supports real-time cross-border payments using tokenised deposits. Since last year, it has reviewed issuing stablecoin products with major banks including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. More recently, it processed a native digital asset spot transaction on SWIFT's blockchain-based ledger as the first U.S. bank to do so.

Coinbase is also broadening its business beyond trading. Last week, it launched a fixed-rate USDC loan product backed by bitcoin using Morpho. In August, it introduced a tokenised stock service on Ethereum layer-2 network Base for users outside the United States.