New Landscape of Stablecoin Payments: Fierce Competition for Control of Financial Future

Stablecoin Issuers' Strategic Transformation: Building Exclusive Payment Channels Currently, mainstream stablecoin issuers are undergoing a profound strategic shift. They are no longer satisfied with merely operating on third-party blockchain networks; instead, they are actively working to build their own customized payment networks to firmly grasp revenue sources and optimize user experience. For example, Tether, the issuer of USDT, is actively developing its Plasma network, while Circle, the driving force behind USDC, is accelerating the advancement of its Arc protocol. This move signifies their transition from mere asset issuers to controllers of a payment ecosystem, aiming to internalize transaction fees that would otherwise be paid to external networks like Ethereum, thereby achieving fine-tuned control over transaction speed, costs, and scalability. These efforts are crucial for the large-scale payment applications of stablecoins, indicating that the sector is entering a more mature development phase, shifting from basic issuance to comprehensive control over the entire transaction lifecycle. Fintech Giants Accelerate Integration: Building One-Stop Crypto Payment Solutions Meanwhile, traditional payment service providers are not sitting idly by; they are adopting proactive integration strategies. Global payment processing giant Stripe has demonstrated its commitment to vertical integration through a series of precise acquisitions. Following its $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure startup Bridge in October 2024, Stripe acquired wallet infrastructure company Privy in June 2025 and decentralized finance protocol Metronome in January 2026. This series of acquisitions has built a complete crypto payment technology stack for Stripe, from backend infrastructure to user-facing wallets and decentralized finance logic. Its goal is to seamlessly integrate stablecoin payments into existing merchant services, providing merchants with a powerful alternative to traditional card networks. It is foreseeable that other fintech companies may also be quietly implementing similar integration strategies to respond to the potential disruptions brought by the emerging financial layer. Revenue and Control: The Core Driving Force Behind the Stablecoin Payment Race The core driving force behind this competition lies in the enormous revenue potential embedded in the payment processing sector. In the traditional financial system, card networks capture billions of dollars in profits each year through interchange and network fees. Currently, the fees from stablecoin transactions running on general-purpose blockchains like Ethereum mainly flow to validators and the protocols themselves. By establishing independent payment channels, stablecoin issuers and fintech companies can retain these revenue sources for themselves. More importantly, control over the network allows them to customize governance mechanisms, compliance features, and collaboration models according to their own needs, while also avoiding risks such as network congestion, high costs, or governance disputes that may arise from excessive reliance on a single external chain. For institutional clients and large payment processors that demand high reliability and predictability, this control is seen as crucial. Key Technical Architecture of Next-Generation Payment Networks Next-generation payment-optimized networks exhibit significant differences in design philosophy compared to first-generation blockchains. Their key design priorities include: （此处应接原文关于技术架构的具体描述，但原文在此处中断。在实际内容优化中，需要根据完整原文补充此处技术细节。） These technical requirements have given rise to specific [此处也应接原文具体描述，但原文中断。]