Firms from Uber to Amazon are diving into stablecoins. Here’s what they hope to gain


In June, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced that the ridesharing giant was looking into stablecoins as a form of global money transfer. A year ago, such a statement from a Big Tech executive would’ve seemed far-fetched. Today, though, everyone from Apple to Amazon—not to mention big banks and brokerages—is rushing to embrace stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies pegged to an underlying asset like the U.S. dollar. What changed?

Most obviously, there is a dramatically different regulatory climate in Washington, D.C. This has produced a bill, passed by the Senate and currently being considered by the House, that would ease stablecoins’ integration into the financial system.

Crypto boosters also say there’s a growing business case for stablecoins. Stablecoins, which are separate from more volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, promise a more efficient form of payments—the ability to send digital dollars at near-instantaneous speeds and with lower costs. This potentially upends how companies approach anything from global treasury management to paying staffers and contractors around the world.

However, as the technology remains early and its regulatory future uncertain, analysts who spoke with Fortune also voiced skepticism that Silicon Valley’s tech giants would widely adopt stablecoins in the near future.

For a company like Amazon, moving money around the world is expensive. Net sales from its international business accounted for 22% of its consolidated revenues last year, totaling almost $143 billion, according to its 2024 annual report. Those sales are denominated in local currencies, which means the company has to account for foreign exchange risk and currency fluctuations that potentially cost it billions of dollars.

Nick van Eck, the CEO and cofounder of the stablecoin startup Agora, pointed to global treasury management as one of the advantages of stablecoins—being able to convert local currency into stablecoins and repatriate that back to the U.S.

Agora allows companies to white-label their own dollar-backed stablecoins. Van Eck told Fortune that while most of Agora’s clients today are crypto firms, his ideal customer is a multinational company like Pepsi that has dozens of bank accounts and corporate entities around the world, along with thousands of suppliers. “Stablecoins can drastically improve their capital efficiency,” he argued. “Now you can move $100 million from country to country in one second versus waiting days.”

Agora isn’t the only startup looking to cash in on Silicon Valley’s stablecoin craze. A flood of stablecoin startups have raised tens of millions from VCs over the past year, including Mesh, Bastion, and BVNK. Last October, the payments company Stripe completed a $1.1 billion landmark acquisition of the stablecoin startup Bridge.



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