Retailer Stablecoins Are A Real Opportunity For Stable Retailers

Forbes

5 hours ago

People shop at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025 (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP ... More via Getty Images).
The Wall Street Journal reports that some big players, including Walmart and Amazon, are exploring the idea of issuing their own retailer stablecoins in order to bypass the 'traditional' payment systems and exploit their 'troves of data'. This makes them a threat to banks, including regional and community lenders. Whether they succeed in stablecoins or not, the fact remains that retailers may have a much bigger role in the future of fintech.
Retailer Stablecoins Are Within Reach
Walmart is, of course, a focus for those of us looking at the retail/fintech possibilities and they have been looking in this direction for some time. Back in 2022, CTO Suresh Kumar said that crypto will become "an important payment tool" across the Metaverse and social media, as these will be the spaces where consumers discover new products.
(Walmart are active in many directions here: their Mastercard credit card is expected to launch this fall, with the experience embedded inside the OnePay app.)
The noted venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz single out Walmart in their argument for 'how stablecoins will eat payments' pointing out that Walmart made $648 billion in annual revenue and $15.5 billion in profit, but paid $10 billion in fees to the payment networks (they also point out that for another supermarket chain, Krogers, net income and payment fees are approximately equal). Thus, they say, greater stablecoin adoption would significantly improve profitability in many businesses, including small businesses like coffee shops or restaurants.
Stable or unstable?
I am not commenting on their math, other than to say that payment fees cover a lot more than the cost of the payment and when considering the costs and benefits, it is also important to look at what additional services might be cross sold from payments. I might also comment that stablecoins are not the only way to drive down these costs and as Richard Crone points out that adding adding a pay-by-bank capability inside a retailer's wallet, such as OnePay, with the attendant anti-fraud benefits such as strong user authentication, could result in significant savings. Real-time payments have been around since 2017 thanks to The Clearing House starting the RTP network that year, but only some banks have adopted the new tool, and those that have signed up have had tepid uptake in the marketplace. The launch in 2023 of the Federal Reserve's competing instant system, FedNow, has boosted adoption by banks, but real world use remains limited: Walmart might change that.
Sarah Arnio, Walmart's director of digital payments recently said that 'We're really bullish on instant payments and hoping to move forward with them within the next year'. Now, Walmart already gives customers the option to sign up on its website to be able to pay directly from a bank account, moving those payments via low-cost automated clearing house transfers (ACH) transfers but Arnio sees this as a 'stepping stone' to faster instant payments because "We at Walmart really have a drive internally to speed up everything'..
Looking beyond the current payments landscape, Walmart are also exploring AI-driven shopping assistants as an entirely new type of customer, distinct from traditional consumers, and they will need ways to pay too, as well as exploring a future where consumers may opt for third-party shopping agents built by technology firms, ensuring its systems are adaptable to external AI-driven purchasing solutions.
(Walmart know, as I am fond on repeating, that AI agents won't just facilitate transactions in existing processes, they will reshape the entire retail experience.)
They are also taking their first steps into the metaverse, the coming augmented and virtual reality space where customers will go to work, rest and play. They have their Walmart Realm to experiment with more 'engaging' buying options. Justin Breton, Walmart's director of brand experiences says that they are following three trends here: customers enjoy brands more when they have unique virtual experiences; customers want to be entertained while shopping; and customers are inspired by virtual games where they can purchase items they discover'.
I've used Walmart as the example here but of course all big retailers must be looking at these new technologies with some similar ideas. Partly because of reduced costs and increased speed but also because of the potential for new business models. One advocate is Shopify, which recently announced it has already started allowing customers to pay with popular stablecoin USDC allow their small business base to tap into global markets. As they said in rheir press release, 'Small businesses should be able to sell to a customer on the other side of the world as easily as their next-door neighbor'. All in all, you can see why retailers might be motivated to move now, although it is fair to observe, as Brady Dale does, it would be on them to find a way to convince customers to hold enough stablecoins to fund their purchases
The Bank Response To Retailer Stablecoins
So what does the mean for banks? Tom Brown's summary seems pretty accurate to me. That so, stablecoins are having a moment [and] all of this attention has left large banks with a very bad case of FOMO. The fear may be justified. Ron Shevlin, a well-respected industry analysts, says that stablecoins could divert significant transaction volume—and core deposits—away from banks as retailers, fintechs, and Big Techs issue branded stablecoins that lead consumers to move cash into stablecoins for convenience, rewards, or programmability. It is hard to disagree with him when he says that for some people stablecoins become functional equivalents of bank deposits—but without the FDIC insurance, relationship ties, or regulatory protections banks provide. As Ron points out, this risk isn't theoretical: Deposit displacement has been happening for years. A new study from Cornerstone Advisors found that $2.15 trillion has already left banks for fintech investment accounts—two-third of it from Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. This is on top of the estimated $10 billion that Americans have sitting in merchant mobile apps like Starbucks' in any given week.
So how can banks, who enjoy a great income stream from interchange right now, position themselves for a world of retailer stablecoins and instant payments? The networks have already been active—they are not sitting back and waiting—but on the general assumption that payments margins are on the way down, the banks' strategic response should be to add value around the transactions, not to try and survive off of shrinking interchange in the face of competition from non-card alternatives such as Walmart Pay-By-Bank or an Amazon coin. Those services might, for example, include safety and security, data and decisioning, not only the payments themselves.