支付行业：稳定币——数十场行业交流后的深度研判

Payments: Stablecoins — What we learned from our dozens ofindustry conversations; Slide deck We recently hosted a conference call where we discussed takeaways from our conversationswith dozens of industry experts across the blockchain, payments and merchant space. Wediscussed: 1) Current and emerging use-cases of stablecoins within Payments, 2) Cost ofacceptance debate – what is the right comparison? Why 3% cost of cards is a misleadingnumber, 3) Agentic Commerce use-cases – Stablecoins vs. Cards? 4) Internet native Harshita Rawat, CFA+1 917 344 8485harshita.rawat@bernsteinsg.comSimran Ratani+1 917 344 8329simran.ratani@bernsteinsg.com Viola Chen+1 917 344 8614viola.chen@bernsteinsg.com Key takeaways: In retail C2B payments, stablecoins remain a solution looking for a problem (forthe foreseeable future) in most developed markets.We haven’t seen any evidenceof C2B consumer payments activity happening on stablecoins in developed markets or inEM (at scale). There is the chicken-and-egg problem of building a merchant and consumernetwork. Debit is already regulated (& cheaper vs. credit). Cheaper rails already exist (butbarely used for retail payments) e.g., ACH and RTP solutions. In a world where conversionis still a problem, we wonder to what extent merchants would want to steer customers at It is pointless to compare the cost of credit cards (MDR) to that of stablecoins because credit cards offer a different value proposition. Card payments wrap many servicesincluding chargeback protection, fraud mitigation, and other VAS. Debit (functionally similarto stablecoins payments) MDR in the U.S. is ~70bps and lower in Europe. Ironically, the best and one of the fastest consumer payments use-case ofstablecoins is stablecoin-linked cards.Cards often provide monetization models formany fintechs including crypto firms.Cards’ value proposition (vs. other payment Retail cross-border payments (ones addressed by cards) also remain hard todisruptgiven lack of consumer friction and challenges in changing consumer behaviorand acceptance infrastructure. Also, cross-border retail payments often happen in localcurrencies and the bulk of the fees are in the FX conversion — which dollar-denominated Stablecoins, however, have stronger product market fit in cross-border settlement,less liquid remittance/payout corridors, cross-border B2B and treasury/cashmanagement. All of this will take years to play out, but we are seeing increased activityespecially in markets where there isgreater desirability around owning U.S. dollars INVESTMENT IMPLICATIONS [continued from prior page] Stablecoins may have greater utility in the internet native agent-to-agent micropayments(e.g., agents paying fordata access, APIs). However, the space is currently very nascent (<$50m in cumulative volumes). Finally, anyone who thinksstablecoins can somehow do micro-transactions and V/MA cannot do so, doesn’t fully understand V/MA’s business model (and Taking a step back, Stablecoins offer payment companies new opportunities to make money (and NOT lose volumes) and strategically enhance their networks (e.g., through faster settlement, fiat/stablecoin conversion capabilities). There is agreater opportunity for new flows in lucrative cross-border payments. Visa and Mastercard have >150 stablecoin/crypto linkedcard programs. Both networks are likely monetizing stablecoins today. We are closely watching Mastercard’s BVNK acquisition We rate V, MA, Adyen, XYZ and TOST OP. We rate FI, FIS, GPN, PYPL and KLAR MP. PLEASE SEE LINKS TO OUR RECENT RESEARCH •The Age of Agents: Insights from our Inaugural Agentic Commerce Day(April 2026)•Visa, Mastercard: The bull case; slide deck from deep dive call on Agentic, Stablecoins, VAS and Regulation (March 2026)•Payments: Mastercard's BVNK acquisition; what Stablecoins truly mean for payments (March 2026)•Visa, Mastercard: Payments-ocalypse, will AI doom the networks? (February 2026)•The Age of Agents: How does it change commerce and how we pay? (December 2025) DETAILS EXHIBIT 1:Stablecoin Payments EXHIBIT 2:Context EXHIBIT 3:Stablecoins: $300B+ Market Cap and Growing.. EXHIBIT 5:Current use-cases of Stablecoins within Payments Source: Bernstein analysis EXHIBIT 12:Remittances/P2P players are embracing Stablecoins as a way to augment their settlement capabilitiesand USD based payouts in certain countries Source: Company disclosures, Bernstein analysis EXHIBIT 13:Not surprisingly, we are seeing more activity in Latam, Asia and Africa Source: Company reports, Bernstein analysis EXHIBIT 15:Retail consumer payments – solution looking for a problem EXHIBIT 16:Cost of acceptance debate – Why 3% cost of cards is a misleading number? EXHIBIT 19:Even debit cards include cost of returns/disputes (~5bps), and fraud (~11bps) embedded in the cost oftransaction; credit cards include rewards and cost of credit Source: Similar Web and Bernstein Analysis EXHIBIT 22:Consumers are increasingly using these tools for p