Stablecoins are typically associated with the domain of crypto exchanges and wallets. But today, fintechs, the biggest retailers, platforms, and banks are starting to define their own branded stablecoins. With the US passing the GENIUS Act to regulate stablecoin issuance, the legal guardrails are now forming.
These companies are taking notice because a custom stablecoin is more than just another payment method. It’s a chance to take control of the money layer itself: how quickly it settles, what it costs, how it can generate loyalty, and even how it earns income in the background.
The appeal breaks down into a handful of powerful levers:
- Faster settlement: Payments settle in seconds, no matter where they’re coming from.
- Lower costs: Bypassing traditional card networks means margins stay in-house.
- Built-in loyalty: Rewards and rebates can be instant and programmable.
- New revenue: Stablecoin reserves earn rewards.
- Better data: Companies gain richer insights without handing transaction information to outside intermediaries.
Stablecoins are becoming a compelling near-term competitive strategy for top enterprises. Here’s a closer look at what issuing your own stablecoin can really unlock.
1. Faster access to liquidity and real-time settlement
Traditional payments still move on banker’s hours. A credit card transaction might show up instantly in your point-of-sale (POS) system, but the funds don’t actually land in your account for one to three business days. Cross-border wires can drag out for a week, especially when you hit time zone cutoffs or bank holidays. That delay is cash locked up in transit and unavailable when you might need it most.
Stablecoins flip that timeline. Transfers settle in seconds, 24/7/365, whether the buyer is down the street or across an ocean. There’s no batch processing or waiting for banks to reopen in Tokyo or New York. That speed translates into faster liquidity, especially for enterprises with international customers or suppliers. The money from a sale can be reused the same day instead of sitting idle on the way through correspondent banks. Stablecoins can also be used to move money internally (say, between a US parent company and its overseas subsidiaries) without touching the fiat/corresponding banking system at all. That means lower costs, faster treasury management, and fewer middlemen clipping fees along the way.
Stablecoins are also the perfect counterpart to agentic commerce. As agentic systems process millions of microtransactions across networks, they demand a monetary medium that can settle instantly and reliably. Stablecoins provide exactly that: stability, programmability, and global liquidity. They remove volatility and friction, enabling real-time, borderless payments and automated on-chain coordination. In short, stablecoins deliver the speed and dependability that agentic commerce needs to scale.
2. Customizable rewards, loyalty, and payment flows
Running your own stablecoin lets you turn payments into a loyalty engine, with rewards and incentives woven into the transaction itself. Think of customer gift cards as the analog blueprint: customers preload funds and earn perks for using them, and Starbucks captures both loyalty and lower payment costs. A stablecoin takes that closed-loop system digital and global. Rewards can be granted instantly, and coins can be used across a network of services, not just one store. For example, you can pay with a retailer’s coin and see an immediate rebate in your digital wallet, or a rideshare coin can reward every trip while also working at partner grocers or delivery apps.
Bridge’s Open Issuance makes this kind of customization simple. Businesses can brand the coin, configure reserves, and decide whether it stays “closed loop” within your ecosystem for tighter control or can be used outside your platform for broader reach. Either way, the company owns the payment experience end-to-end—and the loyalty that comes with it. Stablecoins become a way to keep customers close, reward them in real time, and creates a virtual currency that carries the company’s brand value everywhere it goes.
3. Reduced transaction costs
Big retailers share a pain point: card fees. US businesses alone paid more than $187 billion in card processing fees in 2024. Rerouting payments onto their own network could claw back enormous value for large companies with high transaction volume.
Stablecoins make lower costs possible by stripping away intermediaries. Instead of involving an issuing bank, an acquiring bank, and a card network for every transaction, a stablecoin transfer is direct: digital cash from customer to enterprise. The only cost is a small blockchain network fee, often pennies, which is negligible compared to interchange and network fees for cards. This applies to more than just customer payments: multinational companies routinely move money between subsidiaries through the banking system and pay hefty wire transfer fees and currency conversion costs when they do. Using a proprietary stablecoin, those internal transfers also become nearly free. Treasury teams can handle cross-border liquidity in-house, rather than routing it through correspondent banks.
There’s already a playbook for this. Company-branded gift cards effectively let the company bypass interchange by charging a card fee once when the balance is loaded, rather than on every purchase, which drops their effective payment cost. A branded stablecoin can replicate that model digitally, at greater scale and without the friction of plastic cards. Bridge’s Open Issuance is designed to make these savings real. Enterprises don’t pay burn fees to redeem their stablecoin.
4. Revenue from reserves
When customers buy your stablecoin, the dollars paid sit in reserves. As part of Bridge’s Open Issuance program, revenues earned on those reserves are paid to you for stablecoin origination. The reserves are invested by the issuer in highly secure, highly liquid short-term instruments such as US Treasuries, and revenues from those investments add up. And because these reserves are safe, secure, liquid instruments, these revenues are predictable at scale. By using a Bridge issued stablecoin on your platform, your finance team can model a recurring source of income tied to customer balances.
Enterprises can design how those rewards flow within their ecosystem. The economics can be powerful, whether the issuer keeps the returns or uses it to subsidize rewards programs.
Bridge’s Open Issuance makes the economics especially attractive. The platform shares any returns on funds net of issuance fees directly with the business and doesn’t charge burn fees. That means originating businesses capture the upside of stablecoin reserves and can choose whether to use that upside to incentivize customers or improve margins.
5. Richer customer data and stronger user privacy
When transactions run through card networks, a company only sees its slice of the data, while banks and processors keep the rest. With a proprietary stablecoin, the enterprise has a direct line of sight into how customers spend: information that can power personalization, loyalty design, and fraud detection.
This can at the same time translate into better privacy for your users. If payments happen with your own stablecoin, you no longer need to share sensitive purchase details with multiple external parties. Data that once passed through a half-dozen intermediaries can stay inside your ecosystem, governed by your privacy standards. While transparency on public blockchains complicates things—anyone can analyze flows if transactions are fully open—enterprise-grade stablecoins often use privacy-preserving structures (while at the same time providing money transmission and law enforcement compliance), such as encrypted ledgers, whitelists, or closed-loop networks. Bridge’s Open Issuance supports both open and closed configurations, so businesses can decide how much to prioritize interoperability versus confidentiality.
The start of a new era in payments infrastructure
For decades, enterprises had no choice but to run on other people’s payment methods. That meant handing over margins to established players and treating payments as a fixed cost of doing business. Stablecoins open a different path. They let companies design the money layer with the same intent they bring to products, user experience, or supply chains.
Brands that issue their own stablecoin can see settlement in seconds, loyalty that feels native to the brand, lower transaction costs, revenue from reserves, and richer data paired with stronger privacy. Companies are beginning to build their own financial infrastructure, tuned to their needs, at scale, and money is becoming programmable, branded, and profitable. Bridge’s Open Issuance is making this change practical, plugging into liquidity and sharing reserve revenues with originating businesses. With their own stablecoin, enterprises can finally treat payments as a strategic asset.
The content in this article is for general information and education purposes only and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Bridge does not warrant or guarantee the accurateness, completeness, adequacy, or currency of the information in the article. You should seek the advice of a competent attorney or accountant licensed to practice in your jurisdiction for advice on your particular situation.
Request demo
