The Swiss National Bank (SNB) — the institution that sets monetary policy for Switzerland — has added a new item to its list of concerns. It is not inflation or the franc this time. It is stablecoins.

Speaking at an event in Zurich on September 30, 2026, SNB Governing Board member Petra Tschudin warned that large stablecoins could interfere with how monetary policy reaches the real economy. Her prescription was regulation — designed so that central bankers keep their hands on the controls.

The Core Concern: Monetary Policy Transmission

At the heart of Tschudin's warning is what economists call monetary policy transmission. When a central bank changes its policy rate, it counts on that move rippling outward. Commercial banks adjust what they charge for loans and what they pay on deposits, and eventually households and businesses feel the change.

That chain runs through what is known as the two-tier financial system. The central bank sits at the top and deals directly with commercial banks. Those banks, in turn, deal with everyone else. Deposits sit at the center of that arrangement: they are the funding banks lend from, which is why money migrating out of bank accounts matters to rate-setters in the first place.

Tschudin argued that stablecoins operate outside this structure. If deposits drift away from commercial banks and into stablecoins, the argument goes, the channels the SNB uses to steer borrowing costs could become leakier. The endgame, in her framing, is that the central bank's influence over borrowing costs could be undermined.

She did not dismiss the technology outright, though. Tschudin acknowledged that stablecoins can modernize payments, including by offering lower costs for international transfers. Her point was about guardrails rather than bans. Regulatory measures, she said, are crucial to ensure the central bank can continue to fulfill its mandate.

A Warning the SNB Has Been Building Toward

The remarks did not come as a bolt from the blue. The SNB flagged stablecoin risks in its July 2026 financial stability report, which pointed to two main dangers. The first was disintermediation — the term for money bypassing banks. The second was run risk, meaning a stablecoin backed by inadequate reserves could face a wave of redemptions it cannot meet.

Tschudin's Zurich remarks effectively carried the disintermediation warning a step further — from a stability risk to banks into a question of whether policy still works as designed when money settles outside them.

The same report offered some reassurance on the home front. The market for Swiss franc stablecoins remained small as of mid-2026, with a market capitalization under $50 million. Given that size, the SNB judged domestic risks to be manageable for now.

Switzerland's Parallel Tracks: Licenses and CBDC Experiments

Even as the SNB weighs those risks, Switzerland is pursuing a two-track response that pairs new licensing rules with the central bank's own digital currency experiments.

On the regulatory track, Switzerland is creating a new license category called a “payment instrument institution” for issuers of fiat-backed stablecoins. The license forms part of amendments to the Financial Institutions Act.

On the other track, the SNB continues to test its own alternative. Through Project Helvetia III, the bank is experimenting with a wholesale central bank digital currency, or wCBDC — a tokenized form of central bank money meant for use between financial institutions. Unlike stablecoins, which are issued by private firms, wCBDC is central bank money itself, keeping settlement between institutions inside the two-tier structure the SNB relies on. The project has been extended until at least 2028.

The progress of the Financial Institutions Act amendments, alongside Helvetia III's run through at least 2028, offers concrete markers of how Switzerland's stablecoin rules take shape relative to the concerns the SNB has now voiced publicly.

Source: CryptoBriefing — Swiss National Bank warns stablecoins may disrupt monetary policy