Stablecoins Are Becoming a Global Payments Rail, and Businesses Are Driving It

Lightspark is building open payments for the Internet—modern, always-on payment solutions powered by Bitcoin: the only open, neutral network for moving value.

In partnership with researcher Nir Chemaya and Artemis, we developed a report that provides an empirical, data-driven analysis of stablecoin adoption as a payments instrument, focusing on person-to-person, business-to-business, and person-to-business flows. By combining on-chain transaction data with Artemis’s wallet labeling and institutional attribution, we move beyond raw volume metrics to better distinguish payments activity from trading, DeFi, and other smart-contract–driven behavior.

The findings help clarify a question that has become increasingly important as stablecoins scale: where is payments usage happening, and who’s driving it? The report shows that while P2P transfers dominate transaction counts, the majority of stablecoin payment volume is driven by businesses and institutions, including internal treasury movements and B2B settlements. At the same time, overall stablecoin payments activity has grown sharply over the past year, reinforcing the role of stablecoins as a core payments primitive rather than a niche use case. We’re excited to share this work and hope it provides builders, policymakers, and payment providers with clearer insight into how stablecoins are used today—and where the next phase of adoption is likely to emerge.

Read the full report here.