Tony McGee’s Post

Happy Tuesday to all those who celebrate and thank you for supporting my posts! Don't forget to "smash that like button" 🙂 And now, more on Stablecoins. I can't stop thinking about Mario running through a sea of coins when this topic comes up. Am I the only one (usually the case with me). Stablecoins are not showing up at your local Starbucks. You are not paying for groceries with USDC. The barista is not accepting crypto. None of that is happening at scale — and that is not the point (so far). The real story is happening somewhere most people never look. Not at the checkout counter. Underneath it. Last week: Visa launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform — a single environment for banks and fintechs to mint, manage, and settle stablecoins. The Federal Reserve System published findings concluding stablecoins complement traditional banking and lower cross-border costs. The American Bankers Association published a cover story with a direct message to every bank: the era of passive observation is over. Visa. The Federal Reserve. The ABA. Same week. All saying the same thing. The conversation has officially moved from if to how. The problem with traditional settlement Banking rails operate Monday through Friday during business hours. Settlement takes 1-3 days. Weekends and holidays, nothing moves. Capital sits idle waiting for Monday morning. For a global, 24/7 digital economy, that is a meaningful constraint. The two models Model 1 — Stablecoin-funded cards. Cardholder holds stablecoins, converts to fiat at point of sale. Merchant receives fiat. Identical consumer experience to a regular debit card — but the funding source is on-chain. Model 2 — Stablecoin settlement. Cardholder has no idea stablecoins are involved. They swipe a regular card. Transaction authorizes normally. But on the back end, settlement between the issuer and the card network happens in USDC instead of a wire transfer. Faster. Cheaper. Seven days a week. Model 2 is quietly reshaping the infrastructure of global payments right now. No consumer behavior change. No merchant integration. Just better plumbing. What actually changes Stablecoins settle on blockchain rails that never close. No weekend gaps. A payment that used to wait until Monday morning can now settle in minutes on a Sunday night. The checkout experience stays the same. What changes is everything you never see. Where Lithic fits At Lithic, we are actively having these conversations with bank partners and card programs. The infrastructure we have built — programmable tokens, real-time decisioning, flexible bank partnerships — is exactly what stablecoin-funded card programs will need as this market matures. Stablecoin settlement doesn't replace the card program. It upgrades the rails underneath it. More next week — Cleared. #008: Stablecoins vs. Tokenized Deposits (thanks for the suggestion Claire J.) #Cleared #Payments #Fintech #Stablecoins #Settlement #CardIssuing #GENIUSAct #Lithic