Survey: 69% of Banks Offer or Plan Stablecoin Services, but Only 18% See Broad Client Demand
Key Takeaways
- •Eighteen percent of surveyed financial institutions currently offer stablecoin services and another 51% plan to launch within two years, yet 82% say interest has come from no more than a quarter of their customers.
- •EY's analysis shows competitive differentiation ranks above revenue generation as the main driver for institutions building stablecoin capabilities.
- •Citi Token Services is the only one of the four bank initiatives with disclosed recurring volume, handling close to $1 billion daily in tokenized deposits rather than public stablecoins.
- •Spring by Citi settles payments in fiat so merchants can accept stablecoin payments without ever holding tokens themselves.
- •Savings from reduced prefunding are modest, with $10 million released two days earlier at a 5% annual funding cost equaling roughly $2,740 per transfer.
Most financial institutions are moving ahead with stablecoin services even though few of them report broad client demand. The figures come from a blockchain-payments survey of 383 corporations and 138 financial institutions familiar with blockchain payments, conducted by EY-Parthenon, EY's strategy arm, in July and August and published in October. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to track the value of a government currency, most commonly the US dollar.
Most Institutions Are Building, Few Clients Are Asking
Among the financial institutions surveyed, 18% already offer stablecoin services and another 51% plan to launch within two years — a combined 69%. Yet 82% said interest in stablecoins and tokenized deposits had come from a quarter of their customers or fewer. On the corporate side, 18% of respondents have blockchain payments live in production.
The interest figures count how many clients have asked about the technology, not how much money they move. They also cover only organizations already familiar with blockchain payments, so the results describe an engaged slice of the market rather than every bank and business.
Why Build Ahead of Demand
EY's own analysis of the results offers the reason: among financial institutions, competitive differentiation ranked above revenue generation as a driver of interest. Banks are building to avoid being left behind, and a separate profit line can come later. These launches are also unfolding as major markets put dedicated stablecoin rules in place: the European Union's MiCA framework has required stablecoin issuers to be authorized since mid-2024, and the United States created a federal framework for payment stablecoins with the GENIUS Act in 2025.
Narrow demand can still be good business. A handful of multinationals or payment platforms can move large volumes, so a service used by a small share of clients is not necessarily a small service. What matters is whether those clients keep using it, and EY's analysis points to the condition for that: the service has to fit into the workflows companies already run.
What the Live Products Actually Show
Four bank-led initiatives illustrate where things stand:
| Product | Confirmed | Open question |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Chartered / Circle | USDC minting and redemption for eligible institutions via the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), launched in July | No active-client count, volume, or revenue disclosed |
| Spring by Citi / Coinbase | Stablecoin acceptance with fiat settlement, announced in September, US first | How widely available it is, and how often merchants use it |
| Citi Token Services | Hundreds of clients moving close to $1 billion a day in tokenized deposits | Revenue; transfer value is not income |
| Citi / Swift shared ledger | Live transactions with FAB and OCBC in a July–December proof of concept | Whether it becomes a commercial service after the pilot |
The only one of the four with disclosed, recurring volume — Citi Token Services — does not use public stablecoins at all. Tokenized deposits are ordinary commercial-bank money on a blockchain, held inside existing account relationships. Citi chief executive Jane Fraser said on the bank's third-quarter earnings call that deposit tokenization was growing faster than stablecoin activity among its clients, a split Coindoo examined in a separate analysis of Citi's approach to the two. Standard Chartered's USDC minting service is the clearest bank route into the stablecoin itself, but it has published no usage numbers yet.
Built So the Merchant Never Holds a Token
Spring by Citi shows how banks are bridging the gap. The stablecoin exists only at the start of the payment: the merchant gains customers who want to pay with stablecoins without ever holding one, and its receipts arrive in the bank account it already uses. Taken with Citi's deposit-token volumes, it suggests an answer to the headline question: many banks are designing their products on the assumption that most business customers are not ready to hold stablecoins themselves.
The Cost Test
Take a company paying an overseas supplier after its bank's normal cutoff. A faster transfer helps only if the supplier gets spendable money sooner. It helps less if either side needs extra manual approvals, a separate currency conversion, or banking access at the other end that is closed. A fair comparison sets the stablecoin route against the best conventional option for the same corridor, including instant-payment services where they exist.
Factors that can add cost:
- Payment and conversion fees
- Foreign-exchange spreads
- Compliance and custody
- Integration and reconciliation work
Factors that can save money:
- Settlement outside banking hours
- Less cash parked in prefunded accounts
- Fewer intermediaries on the route
The prefunding saving is easy to overstate. Freeing up cash improves liquidity, but the freed balance is not profit; the gain is what that cash costs to fund. With hypothetical numbers: $10 million released two days sooner at a 5% annual funding cost works out to roughly $2,740. That is real money at scale, but it is a funding saving measured in thousands per transfer, not a share of the transfer value.
The public disclosures do not give comparable costs or revenue for any of the four services. The figures that would show whether customers are ready are the ones not yet published: how many eligible clients use a service again after the first month, what share of their cross-border volume moves through it, and the all-in cost per payment against the bank route it replaced.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
Source: Coindoo
