Stablecoin payments jump 45% to $482bn even as total supply stalls

What happened

Allium's quarterly report on stablecoins, published October 15 with data to the end of September, found payments made with these dollar-linked tokens hit $482 billion so far this year. The number of payments rose 71% to about 1.04 billion, so the average payment fell from $544 to $462. September set a monthly record of $72 billion, and third-quarter payments were 51% higher than a year earlier. Over the same nine months, stablecoin supply edged up only 0.4% to roughly $305 billion. Spending through stablecoin-linked cards hit $3.9 billion, about ten times the year-earlier level.

What it means

A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, backed by cash and short-term government debt. For years, the headline number was supply: how many of these tokens exist. Allium's data suggests that measure no longer tells the full story. The same pool of tokens is circulating faster, which is what you would expect if people and businesses use them to pay for things rather than park money between crypto trades.

The mix inside the market is changing too. According to the report, the token count fell this year at the market's heavyweights, Tether, Circle and Ethena. Smaller issuers added a net $6.9 billion, and the number holding more than $1 billion rose from 11 to 15. AI agents, meanwhile, made 68.3 million payments between July and September, twice as many as before, a small but notable sign of software paying software.

Big payment companies are building bridges between the two worlds. In the past week, Mastercard launched a platform combining traditional accounts with stablecoin balances, Stripe said it is working with Plasma on cards that spend from multiple currency balances, and Visa put a stablecoin funding service for cross-border payouts into commercial use. Their pitch is that businesses want one system for both kinds of money, not a separate crypto setup.

Some perspective is needed. Out of all the stablecoin transfers recorded, worth $97.9 trillion before filtering, Allium counted only $2.4 trillion, or 2.5%, as real end-user activity after stripping out exchange, decentralized finance and automated flows. Stablecoin cards made up just 0.03% of Visa's roughly $4 trillion in second-quarter payment volume. The growth is fast, but from a very small base.

The bull case

Payments growing far faster than supply points to genuine use rather than speculation, and big networks like Visa and Mastercard are now building on stablecoin rails. Faster, cheaper cross-border transfers and payroll are strong use cases. If usage keeps climbing, demand for well-run stablecoins and the infrastructure around them could grow for years, benefiting payment firms that move early.

The bear case

The numbers remain tiny next to traditional payments, and most raw stablecoin transfers are not real-world spending. Supply is flat and the biggest issuers have shrunk, which could squeeze revenue for companies like Circle that earn interest on reserves. A crowded field of smaller issuers may also bring more competition and thinner margins.