Citi's institutional clients can now accept stablecoin payments from their customers—without ever needing to hold the tokens themselves—under an expanded partnership between the Wall Street bank and crypto exchange Coinbase.

Coinbase said Monday that it has deepened its previously announced deal with Citi on two fronts, according to the company's official announcement.

First, Coinbase's payments infrastructure now plugs into Spring by Citi, the bank's merchant payment platform, allowing Citi's institutional clients to accept stablecoins at checkout. Coinbase handles the conversion of the tokens into fiat, and Citi settles the funds as the bank of record. For merchants, the flow ends in familiar dollar balances at their bank rather than crypto on their own books—a design that lets businesses offer the checkout option without taking on token custody themselves. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to a traditional currency, usually the U.S. dollar, and they can settle around the clock—in contrast to conventional payment processing that typically follows banking hours and business days.

Going the other direction, Coinbase has tapped Citi's Virtual Account Wallet, part of the bank's banking-as-a-service business, to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts. These accounts let businesses building on Coinbase accept, hold, and send money much like a traditional bank account. Incoming fiat, such as U.S. dollars, is automatically converted into stablecoins. Where the Spring integration moves stablecoins into Citi's merchant rails, the Virtual Accounts feature works in reverse, giving crypto-focused companies a way to receive fiat and hold it as stablecoins.

Both features are launching first in the United States, with more capabilities planned in the coming months, the companies said. Coinbase pegged the potential audience at more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide. The initial U.S. rollout makes the pace of those added capabilities the main detail to track as the partnership moves past its first phase.

"Citi is exactly the kind of regulated banking partner the digital asset economy needs to move from experimentation to everyday commerce," said Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, in a statement.

The expansion builds on a collaboration the two firms first announced in October 2025. At the time, the companies said they would work together on fiat pay-ins and payouts to smooth crypto on- and off-ramps for Citi's institutional clients. The new offerings extend that fiat-rails foundation into merchant checkout and account services.

Citi has since pushed further into digital assets. In August, the bank announced plans to add Bitcoin custody to its Custody+ suite.

Coinbase, meanwhile, has been widening its menu beyond trading. Last week, it rolled out fixed-rate USDC loans against Bitcoin, powered by decentralized lending protocol Morpho. In August, it launched tokenized stocks on Base, its Ethereum layer-2 network, available to non-U.S. users. The parallel moves show the line between traditional banking services and crypto platforms continuing to blur: a Wall Street bank adding digital-asset custody even as a crypto exchange adds banking-style payments and accounts.