Stablecoin regulation remains unsettled in the United States, but adoption and infrastructure development continue across payments, settlement and financial services. Against that backdrop, XREX Group is bringing Stablecoin Summit 2026 to Singapore on October 8, with industry participants set to examine interoperability, tokenized money, cross-border payments, DeFi and the infrastructure needed to connect increasingly diverse digital-money systems.

The stablecoin market is entering a more infrastructure-focused phase. Issuers, banks, payment companies and blockchain developers are increasingly moving beyond questions about whether digital dollars can work and toward how different forms of tokenized money can operate together across financial systems.

That transition will be a central theme at Stablecoin Summit 2026, scheduled for October 8 at Andaz Singapore and hosted by XREX Group. The fourth edition of the event is expected to bring together participants from financial services, payments, blockchain infrastructure and regulation to discuss the next stage of stablecoin adoption.

The timing comes as U.S. cryptocurrency legislation remains unresolved. The Senate’s September 15 motion to invoke cloture on the CLARITY Act failed 49-50, falling short of the three-fifths threshold required to advance the motion. The legislation includes provisions affecting the digital-asset market, while stablecoins have featured in broader policy discussions around payment tokens and whether they should provide rewards or yield.

Yet regulatory uncertainty has not stopped the stablecoin market from expanding. Industry data currently puts total stablecoin supply around the hundreds of billions of dollars, although the exact figure varies with market conditions and methodology. The market has also moved increasingly into practical payment and settlement use cases.

McKinsey’s analysis with Artemis Analytics estimated that actual stablecoin payments reached approximately $390 billion in 2025, more than double the previous year’s level. B2B transactions accounted for about $226 billion, or roughly 60% of that activity, while payments originating in Asia represented approximately $245 billion.

Those numbers provide a more nuanced picture than headline blockchain transaction volumes. McKinsey found that much of the trillions of dollars sometimes attributed to stablecoin activity consists of trading, internal transfers and automated blockchain operations rather than real-world payments.

That distinction is increasingly important for digital payments platforms and financial infrastructure providers. The market is shifting from simply issuing stablecoins toward building the connectivity, compliance, settlement and interoperability layers required to use them at scale.

Stablecoin Summit 2026 will examine that infrastructure across several forms of digital money, including central bank digital currencies, deposit tokens, U.S.-dollar and local-fiat stablecoins, non-fiat stablecoins and DeFi-based stablecoins.

The agenda also extends beyond stablecoin issuance. Organizers say sessions will explore interoperability, payments, settlement, the AI economy and supply-chain finance, reflecting the expanding range of applications being tested around programmable money.

That breadth mirrors developments across the financial technology market. Stablecoins are increasingly being incorporated into card programs, cross-border payment products, treasury workflows and institutional settlement networks. At the same time, banks are developing tokenized deposit systems that retain commercial-bank money within regulated financial institutions.

McKinsey’s 2026 research describes this as part of an emerging architecture for on-chain money, with tokenized deposits potentially playing a significant institutional role alongside stablecoins. The firm notes that tokenized deposits are beginning to process substantial institutional volumes, while interoperability between different forms of digital money remains a key challenge.

For open banking infrastructure and embedded finance platforms, the implications are considerable. If digital currencies are to become part of mainstream financial workflows, institutions will need systems capable of moving value between different ledgers, currencies and payment networks while maintaining compliance and operational controls.

Asia is particularly relevant to that development. McKinsey’s analysis found that Asia-originated stablecoin payments accounted for about 60% of identified stablecoin payment volume in 2025, with Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan representing major sources of activity.

Singapore’s position as the summit’s host location therefore places the event within one of the markets actively developing digital-asset and payments infrastructure. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has also been working on frameworks and initiatives around digital money and tokenization, creating an environment where financial institutions and fintech companies can experiment with regulated digital-asset applications.

The event’s participant list reflects the increasingly diverse competitive landscape. Speakers and organizations associated with the summit include XREX, Curve Finance, Stripe, S&P Global Ratings, Coinbase, Visa, SAP, Rakuten, Stellar Development Foundation, Paxos Labs, Aave Labs and Galaxy Ventures.

The presence of both traditional financial-services companies and crypto-native infrastructure providers illustrates another defining feature of the stablecoin market: the boundaries between fintech, payments and blockchain infrastructure are becoming less distinct.

For payment networks, the opportunity is to integrate stablecoins into existing merchant and settlement infrastructure. For blockchain companies, it is to build interoperable rails that can connect different assets and ecosystems. For banks, tokenized deposits offer a route toward programmable commercial-bank money. And for fintech platforms, stablecoins can become another settlement layer inside cross-border and embedded-finance products.

The remaining challenge is fragmentation. Different stablecoins operate under different issuers, jurisdictions, reserve models and technical standards. Tokenized deposits can be confined to individual bank ecosystems, while DeFi protocols introduce another set of liquidity and governance mechanisms.

That makes stablecoin interoperability a central infrastructure problem. The next phase of adoption may depend less on the growth of individual tokens and more on whether institutions can connect those systems securely and efficiently.

Stablecoin Summit 2026 is positioned around that question. Rather than focusing exclusively on a single asset or blockchain, its agenda brings together competing approaches to digital money and examines how they might interact across global financial infrastructure.

Market Landscape

Stablecoins have moved from a predominantly crypto-market use case toward a broader payments and financial-infrastructure discussion. McKinsey estimates actual stablecoin payments at about $390 billion in 2025, while noting that this remains a small share of global payment activity.

The competitive landscape now includes stablecoin issuers, banks developing deposit tokens, payment networks, fintech infrastructure companies and decentralized finance protocols. The key technical questions increasingly involve interoperability, settlement, compliance, liquidity and integration with existing financial systems.

Asia is an important part of that evolution, accounting for the largest regional share of identified stablecoin payment activity in McKinsey’s 2025 analysis.

Stablecoin Summit 2026 will take place against this backdrop, with its Singapore agenda focused on how these separate systems can develop into more connected digital-money infrastructure.

Top Insights

• The CLARITY Act’s September Senate cloture vote failed, leaving U.S. digital-asset market structure legislation unresolved while stablecoin infrastructure continues developing.
• McKinsey and Artemis estimate actual stablecoin payments reached $390 billion in 2025, with B2B transactions representing about 60% of identified payment volume.
• Asia accounted for roughly 60% of identified stablecoin payment volume in 2025, led by activity originating from Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
• Stablecoin Summit 2026 will examine interoperability across stablecoins, CBDCs, deposit tokens and DeFi-based forms of digital money.
• The next infrastructure challenge is increasingly connecting different digital-money systems to payments, settlement and financial-services platforms.

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