The industry view in the UK is that stablecoins’ core near-term use case is cross-border payments rather than domestic retail payments.
Cointelegraph reported that the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) conveyed that view as it released the results of discussions from its March “stablecoin sprint”.
Participants including banks, payments companies and stablecoin issuers saw cross-border payments as stablecoins’ clearest near-term use case. They assessed that the advantages are large in emerging markets with limited access to U.S. dollars, but limited on major payments corridors where existing systems are already fast and relatively low-cost.
The spread of stablecoins for consumer retail payments in the UK was expected to be slow. UK consumers have little incentive to switch because existing payment methods are already fast and cheap. Some participants said merchants could benefit from lower costs and faster settlement.
The FCA plans to reflect the feedback in its future stablecoin payments policy.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr