Stablecoins are now a treasury question, and most businesses are evaluating them wrong

For most of their history, stablecoins were a tool for crypto traders who needed a dollar that stayed inside the exchange. That is no longer the main story. Businesses now use dollar-pegged tokens to pay overseas suppliers, settle marketplace payouts within minutes instead of days, and hold idle treasury balances in a form that moves at internet speed. The question for finance teams is no longer whether stablecoins work. It is whether a specific stablecoin, on a specific network, through a specific provider, meets the standards the business already applies to bank money.

Most evaluations start in the wrong place. Teams compare transaction fees and launch a pilot with the token that is easiest to buy. That skips the parts that determine whether a dollar in stablecoin form is actually worth a dollar when something goes wrong. The useful framework has six questions, and each one can change the answer.

1. Who can redeem, and how fast?

A stablecoin is only as good as the mechanism that converts it back into dollars. Start by finding out who is allowed to redeem directly with the issuer, and whether that is limited to large institutions or open to a broader set of business customers. Ask about minimum redemption sizes, settlement timing and any fees. A token that trades at one dollar on an exchange is not the same as a token you can redeem at one dollar on a Tuesday afternoon when markets are stressed.

The 2023 episode with USDC is still the clearest lesson. When Silicon Valley Bank failed in March of that year, USDC briefly traded well below one dollar because part of its reserves had been held there. The price recovered after the reserves were shown to be accessible, but finance teams that had treated the token as cash had a rough weekend. Redemption rights and reserve custody are the first things to read, not the last.

2. What backs the token, and how is that verified?

Reserve quality varies widely. Some issuers hold short-dated government securities and cash in regulated banks. Others hold a mix that includes commercial paper, secured loans or deposits at smaller institutions. Many publish monthly attestations from accounting firms, which are not the same thing as a full audit. An attestation confirms the balances at a point in time, but not necessarily the quality of the assets or the legal structure that protects holders in insolvency.

The 2025 US GENIUS Act pushed the market toward clearer requirements for payment stablecoin issuers, including one-to-one reserves in high-quality liquid assets and monthly public reserve disclosures. The European Union's MiCA regime has applied stablecoin rules since mid-2024. These frameworks make the comparison easier, but they do not remove the need to read the reserve report yourself.

3. Which chain, and when is a payment final?

The same token can exist on several blockchains, and each has different fees, confirmation times and reorganisation risk. For a business payment, the relevant concept is finality: the point at which a transaction cannot be reversed in practice. A payment that looks settled after a few seconds on one network may need a longer confirmation window on another. Your payment reconciliation logic has to know which rule applies to each rail.

Bridging tokens between chains adds another layer of risk. Bridges have been a frequent target for attackers, and a wrapped version of a stablecoin is not always the same as the native issue. Prefer native issuance on the chain you use, and treat any bridged representation as a separate asset with its own risk review.

4. Can you get the money out?

Liquidity at the off-ramp decides whether stablecoin payments save you money or just move the cost somewhere else. A payout to a bank account in a country with capital controls, or a conversion through a provider with thin local liquidity, can cost far more than the network fee suggested. Map every route your money takes out of the stablecoin system, including the provider's minimums, daily limits and the spread at which they buy and sell.

5. How does your accounting and tax treatment work?

Finance teams need a clear answer on how a stablecoin balance is recorded. Depending on jurisdiction and the structure of the holding, it may be treated as cash equivalent, as a financial asset measured at fair value, or as something else. Tax rules for conversions and payments vary by country. Get the answer from your accountant before the first payment, not during the audit.

6. Who holds the keys?

Custody is an operational decision with security consequences. A business can use a regulated custodian, a multi-party computation setup, or self-custody with hardware keys and strict approval workflows. Each option moves risk around. Custodians add counterparty exposure and freeze risk. Self-custody puts the burden of key management on your own team. For most mid-sized businesses, a regulated custodian with clear segregation of client assets and well-documented withdrawal controls is the practical default.

A practical policy for a first deployment

Start with a bounded use case, such as paying a small set of overseas suppliers or settling marketplace payouts in a single corridor. Set a maximum balance held in any one stablecoin, and hold at least two issuers or two providers so that a single depeg or outage does not stop operations. Write down the depeg playbook before you need it: who decides to pause payments, which fallback rail is used, and how customers are informed.

Compliance is part of the design too. Know-your-customer checks, sanctions screening and travel-rule obligations apply to many stablecoin flows, and providers differ in how well they handle them. Ask for their compliance documentation during due diligence, not after you have integrated their API.

Actionable takeaways

• Draw a map of every point where money enters and leaves the stablecoin system, including each provider's fees, limits and spreads.
• Read the redemption terms and the most recent reserve report. Note the difference between an attestation and an audit, and find out where reserves are held.
• Choose the chain based on finality and reconciliation needs, not only on the lowest transaction fee.
• Set a balance cap per token and per provider, and keep at least two options for each critical rail.
• Agree the accounting treatment and the depeg response plan with finance and legal before the first live payment.

Stablecoins are useful when they reduce the cost and time of moving money, and dangerous when they are treated as cash without checking what sits behind the peg. The businesses that gain the most will be the ones that apply the same due diligence they would apply to a bank or a payment processor, because the risks are different in form but not in seriousness.