* Key insight: Banks are finding new business cases for stablecoins.
* What’s at stake: Stablecoins could redefine cross-border settlement and other payment forms.
* Forward look: Regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act and other crypto regulations enables broader bank experimentation.
Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review
Digital assets, like cryptocurrency and stablecoins, used to be on the fringe of the traditional finance world. In recent months, however, banks and fintechs are bringing them into the mainstream.
The reasons for this go beyond the passage of recent stablecoin regulations in the U.S., according to speakers at American Banker’s Most Powerful Women In Banking conference on Tuesday.
Anchorage Digital Bank chief operating officer Rachel Anderika believes that traditional finance and digital assets are now meeting because banks are finding business use cases for stablecoins, a form of digital currency tied to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar.
“We’re seeing settlements and settlement finality being improved,” Anderika said. “We’re seeing international remittances being improved by stablecoins. When you see operations being meaningfully improved, that’s when you see institutions being able to come in.”
Citi is one example of a traditional bank that is a forerunner in the digital assets space. The bank earned a 2025 Innovation of the Year Award from American Banker for its launch of Citi Token Services, a blockchain technology platform that converts deposits into digital “tokens,” enabling real-time cross-border payments and liquidity management.
“Traditionally it was only the digital natives that wanted the online, real-time instant capability,” said Debopama Sen, head of payments services at Citi. “But today, every industry’s business model is being transformed. Commerce is now pushing even Treasury flows to be online 24/7. You may need to move money on Labor Day to pay a supplier in Vietnam, where you didn’t have to do that in the past. That client driver, combined with the regulatory enablement, is what has given us the ability to experiment with the technology.”
Rosemary “Ro” Spaziani, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn, said in the panel discussion that the passing of a U.S. stablecoin bill referred to as the GENIUS Act this summer set up a much-needed framework for banks to start moving forward with their digital asset plans.
“Prior to that, banks were just in a holding pattern because they didn’t know where the framework was going to land,” Spaziani said. “It leads to more flexibility to be able to explore different technologies without the regulatory criticism and pushback that they were experiencing over the last five to seven years.
“Now, if we’re all very fair, we are still uncertain where the entire regulatory framework is going to evolve,” Spaziani continued, “but there is at least a sense of, ‘Here are the different charters that are going to work. Here’s how we’re going to be able to facilitate foreign entrance into the U.S.’ Yes, we have a thousand questions, but at least there is some sort of movement forward.”
Irina Berkon, chief financial officer of distributed ledger technology company Metallicus, believes there is still a relevant role for bank involvement even as digital assets are sometimes used to bypass traditional financial institutions. For example, banks can assist consumers in managing the private digital “keys” used to access crypto wallets.
“You can lose your keys,” she said. “We hear this all the time.”
Berkon also referenced a recent incident where a Hyperliquid user’s private key was leaked and hackers stole $21 million in crypto.
“There is a group of people that are very good at managing their keys, and they will never go to a bank [for that], but eventually they have to go buy milk and bread or something,” she said. “They will need some interaction at some point, and they want to make sure that the bank that they’re going to will understand them and provide them the interaction that they need instead of having to go to a third party that is more risky. Even though those third parties may be very good companies, banks are still banks.”
