Stablecoins aren’t going to become a disruptive force in payments in the United States anytime soon as businesses are displaying a lack of enthusiasm for the digital currency, based on a survey by the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank.
Reasons businesses are cool to using stablecoins include lack of familiarity with the technology; satisfaction with legacy payment options; and little to no demand among customers and suppliers to use stablecoins for payment, according to the results of the Cleveland Fed’s survey in late September.
Of the survey’s 148 respondents, only one said it is currently using stablecoins. Among the remaining respondents, seven said they plan to use stablecoins in the future. The other respondents either said they weren’t sure they would use stablecoins in the future or expressed a lack of familiarity with the digital currency.
The results were somewhat surprising to Federal Reserve researchers conducting the survey as they expected more respondents to have plans to begin using stablecoins.
“We didn’t expect the results to be as lopsided as they were,” Peter Zimmerman, a research economist for the Cleveland Fed who co-authored the report, said in summarizing the survey’s results during an interview earlier this month.
Lack of knowledge about stablecoins is a big reason why businesses are not rushing to accept them for payment or use stablecoins for payment, according to the Cleveland Fed’s report.
When asked what factors would influence their decision to use stablecoins, 49 respondents, about a third, cited the need for more time to observe market trends and adoption.
While respondents were not “terribly critical” of stablecoins in their comments, many said they needed “more time to understand the technology,” Zimmerman said.
The Federal Reserve of Cleveland conducted its research in September 2025, about two months after the Genius Act became law, providing a federal regulatory framework for stablecoin payments. The Federal Reserve of Cleveland surveyed companies in the Fourth Federal Reserve District, which includes Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and the northern panhandle of West Virginia.
One reason businesses may lack knowledge about stablecoins and potential use cases for the digital currency is that they are primarily being used for back-end settlement between banks, which keeps the technology in the background.
“What we are seeing is stablecoins being linked to cards for payments, which on the front end looks like a normal card transaction,” said Aaron McPherson, principal of AFM Consulting, in an interview this month. “Banks settle those transactions in stablecoins on the back-end between themselves, but the public doesn’t see that. What they see is the front-end of the transaction.”
Another roadblock to stablecoins becoming a mainstream payment option is the efficiency, cost effectiveness and competitiveness of existing payment options in the U.S., such as the ACH network. Some 42 survey respondents, just under a third of those surveyed, said they need more evidence stablecoins are cheaper or more efficient than other forms of payment.
“Any new payment option clearly has to be better than the existing options to break the inertia,” McPherson said. “There is a cost of acceptance for stablecoins, like other payment options, but stablecoins don’t have a clear economic advantage over many established payment methods yet.”
Lack of demand from customers to pay with stablecoins is also a barrier for businesses to accept or pay with stablecoins. Among respondents to the Cleveland Fed’s survey, 50, or about a third, said consumer demand to accept stablecoins for payment is a key factor influencing their decision to use stablecoins.
“To get people to want to pay with stablecoins, they need an inducement to do so, such as earning rewards,” McPherson said.
McPherson likens the situation to the chicken and egg scenario with any new payment option: acceptance drives usage and vice versa. “Inducing demand to spend stablecoins will boost acceptance,” McPherson added.
Despite the many headwinds facing stablecoins as a payment option, the best use case for the digital currency is cross-border payments, say some industry consultants. Using stablecoins for cross-border payments enables funds to move directly between the sender’s and recipient’s digital wallet, which reduces the number of parties involved in the transaction, lowers fees and speeds the transaction.
“In the U.S., stablecoins are largely a niche payment option and their best use case is cross-border payments,” Tony DeSanctis, vice president for Cornerstone Advisors, said in an interview this month. “Businesses that have a lot of international clients is where we will see activity.”
If businesses are going to overcome their lack of enthusiasm for using stablecoins, they need an answer to the question of how stablecoins will improve operations.
“Businesses need to be educated about what the technology is capable of, [to understand] whether it can disrupt the current state of payments and find the niche where it can serve,” DeSanctis said. “No one knows for sure what technology will be the next market disruptor, but we haven’t seen enough of stablecoins to make that distinction.”