Walmart and Amazon Explore Issuing Their Own Stablecoins, Good Idea?

Do we need more stablecoins?

Corporate coins could take payments activity away from banks and the traditional financial system. I am 100% O.K .with that.

What Is a Stablecoin?

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to another asset, typically the U.S. dollar.

Regulation will likely ensure that US dollar stablecoins are physically backed 1-1 by US dollars or very short term treasuries to guarantee liquidity.

Exploring Stablecoins

The Wall Street Journal reports Walmart and Amazon Are Exploring Issuing Their Own Stablecoins

Some of the biggest merchants are exploring how to issue or use stablecoins, potentially shifting the high volumes of cash and card transactions that they handle outside the traditional financial system and saving them billions of dollars in fees.

Walmart WMT, Amazon AMZN and other multinational giants have recently explored whether to issue their own stablecoins in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.

Expedia Group and other large companies such as airlines have also discussed potential efforts to issue stablecoins, some of the people said.

A move to launch crypto-based payments by Walmart or Amazon that bypasses the traditional payments system would send shivers through the nation’s banks and card-network giants.

With vast networks of customers and employees, troves of data and far lighter regulations, retail and technology companies have long been viewed as particular threats to banks, including regional and community lenders.

The retailers’ final decisions would depend on a bill, called the Genius Act, which would begin to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The bill recently passed another procedural hurdle but still needs to clear the Senate and House.

Why Retailers Are Interested

Stablecoins could allow merchants to circumvent traditional payment rails, which cost them billions of dollars in fees each year, including the interchange fee they pay when customers make purchases using their cards.

Payments can take days to settle, delaying the time it takes for merchants to receive the proceeds from sales. Stablecoins offer the possibility for a quicker process. They could be of particular interest to merchants with suppliers who are located abroad.

Merchant trade groups have been meeting with lawmakers in recent months to push for passage of the Genius Act. The trade groups, led by the Merchants Payments Coalition, have said that a regulatory framework for stablecoin would enable an alternative payment type for merchants that could significantly lower their expenses and create competition against Visa and Mastercard.

Walmart has lobbied for adding a separate amendment that would introduce more competition in the credit-card sector to the Genius legislation, according to people familiar with the matter.

Walmart has long sought to get into financial services, where it could leverage its network of millions of weekly customers and employees. It has in recent years waded deeper into the industry through its fintech unit.

Genius Act Advances

CNBC notes the Genius Act Advances out of committee but it still has to get a formal vote.

The U.S. Senate voted on Wednesday to advance the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, known as the GENIUS Act, setting it up for a final floor vote in the coming days.

The legislation aims to regulate the roughly $238 billion stablecoin market, per CoinDesk data, creating a clearer framework for banks, companies and other entities to issue the digital currencies.

The bill has bipartisan support, as well as criticism from both parties, making its fate in the Senate uncertain.

The currency is used in a number of ways, including for payments and futures trading. Since they’re also more predictable than regular crypto tokens, traders also use stablecoins “to sit out times of volatility or market downturns,” says Nic Puckrin, a crypto analyst, investor and founder of The Coin Bureau.

“Stablecoins are also being used increasingly in emerging markets, like Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, to hedge against monetary instability, as well as for cheap cross-border payments,” he adds. “The use cases are very broad, and new ones are emerging all the time.″

“If we fail to act now, not only will these benefits slip away — we will also fall behind in global competitiveness,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who introduced the bill, said in the Senate on Wednesday. “Without a regulatory framework, stablecoin innovation will proliferate overseas — not in America!”

We need to see the final wording but I agree with Senator Bill Hagerty.

I want to see the consumer protections in the final bill.

Credit Card Implications

The Visa (V) reaction is interesting. But why did Visa get so high in the first place?

The Visa PE ratio as of June 12, 2025 was 31.72.

There will soon be all kinds of competition to credit cards. One easy ploy will be to undercut credit card fees by offering 2 percent cash back or so to stablecoin buyers.

Will Stablecoin Usage Soar?

How does that impact someone who pays bills on time and accumulates miles and other benefits?

One possibility is Visa and Mastercard retain the bad customers (people like me who don’t carry balances) and lose customers tired of paying huge interest fees.

Of course, this presumes the good customers (those unlike me), have the cash to pay in cash.

And competition is coming in all corners, not just Amazon and Walmart, but big banks.

This may take a while (or not), but merchants will need changes to accept stablecoins. And they will.

But will store adoption be fast or slow? And then the critical question, will consumer adoption be fast or slow? At the expense of Bitcoin?

Bear in mind, Banks may decide to pay interest on stablecoins.

Regardless, over time, Visa and MasterCard will have a hard time maintaining current profits margins. That’s what competition does.

This post originated on MishTalk.Com

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Mish