Reshaping Global Trade Settlement: Stablecoins as a "Programmable Payment Layer" and Financial Infrastructure in Developing Countries

A financial revolution driven by algorithmic consensus is reshaping the underlying architecture of global trade settlement, liberating liquidity from the constraints of time and geography.

Data released by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in May 2025 reveals a key turning point: in the second quarter of 2024, the total amount of cross-border payments completed through Bitcoin, Ethereum, and major stablecoins (USDT, USDC) reached approximately $600 billion. Although speculative activity accounted for a significant portion, low-value transactions and stablecoin flows increasingly point to genuine payment needs that replace traditional remittances. This signifies that the blockchain payment layer has moved beyond the purely experimental stage and begun to systematically penetrate the value exchange环节 of global trade, especially in regions where traditional financial systems suffer from significant efficiency bottlenecks and insufficient inclusion.

The case of Maria, a Southeast Asian exporter, is not an isolated one: through stablecoins, she can receive payments from European customers in 15 seconds at a cost of less than $1, while traditional wire transfers require 3-7 business days and incur fees exceeding 5%. This leap in efficiency stems from the fundamental reshaping of cross-border capital flow logic by a "programmable payment layer" centered on stablecoins. It is no longer merely digital cash, but has evolved into a financial infrastructure combining settlement medium, value storage, and automated contract execution capabilities, providing a crucial financial resilience tool, especially for developing countries facing high inflation and foreign exchange controls.

Structural Bottlenecks in Traditional Cross-Border Settlement and Global Consensus on Reform

The arteries of global trade have long been dominated by the old system centered on SWIFT messages and correspondent banking networks. While mature, this system's high costs, slow speed, and structural injustices have become major obstacles to global trade, particularly for SMEs participating in globalization.

The pain of high costs is deeply ingrained

According to World Bank data, the global average cost of cross-border remittances in 2023 reached 6.2%-6.4%, far exceeding the UN Sustainable Development Goal's standard of below 3%. In sub-Saharan Africa and other regions, this cost further climbed to 7.9% in the fourth quarter of 2023, with remittance channel costs between some countries even reaching a staggering 33%. McKinsey's "Global Payments Report 2024" estimates that businesses lose significant profits from the $3.4 trillion in cross-border transactions annually due to various hidden costs. These costs stem not only from explicit transaction fees but are also concealed within opaque exchange rate markups (typically 0.5%-3%), intermediary bank deductions, and complex compliance costs. For a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) making $100,000 in international payments monthly, this alone could result in an annual loss of $48,000 to $96,000.

Inefficiency and opportunity costs

A standard cross-border wire transfer requires 2-5 business days for clearing; the time funds are in transit means frozen supply chain liquidity and missed business opportunities. Data from the African Development Bank shows a trade finance gap of up to $410 billion, excluding approximately 80% of African SMEs from global trade. This reveals a core contradiction in the traditional system: its technological architecture has been transformed from a "booster" of trade into a "filter."

Global policymakers have reached a consensus on reform. The G20 and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) have set clear goals to establish a "faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more inclusive" cross-border payment system. Against this backdrop, digital-native solutions, represented by blockchain technology and stablecoins, are moving from fringe practices to the mainstream, becoming a crucial path to breaking through old paradigms.

Stablecoins as a "Programmable Payment Layer

The revolutionary role of stablecoins in reshaping trade settlement lies in their unprecedented integration of global liquidity, value stability, and programmability into a single tool. This elevates them beyond simple payment mediums, evolving them into a "programmable payment layer."

Technological Implementation and Efficiency Leap

Unlike the agent banking model where funds are relayed through multiple accounts, stablecoin transfers based on public blockchains (such as Ethereum and Solana) or consortium blockchains are essentially synchronous updates of encrypted credentials on a distributed ledger. This peer-to-peer value transfer eliminates intermediaries, achieving near real-time settlement (T+0) and 24/7 continuous operation. Research by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicates that blockchain-based cross-border payment systems can reduce transaction costs by up to 80% and shorten settlement times from days to minutes. The widespread adoption of Layer 2 scaling solutions (such as Polygon) has further reduced the transaction costs of small payments to a fraction of the cost per transaction, making traditionally uneconomical payments feasible.

"Programmability" unlocks the automation of business logic

This is the essential characteristic that distinguishes the blockchain payment layer from all traditional payment systems. Through smart contracts, trade settlement terms can be encoded into automatically executed programs. For example, buyers and sellers can deploy a contract stipulating that once IoT sensors confirm the arrival of goods at the destination port and the digital bill of lading on the blockchain is verified, the stablecoin payment locked in the contract will be automatically released to the seller. This "conditional payment" or "delivery versus payment" (DvP) model significantly reduces counterparty risk and the possibility of fraud, shifting the trust mechanism from reliance on third-party institutions to reliance on verified code.

Stablecoins are anchored to their core value

Beyond their technological advantages, stablecoins denominated in major fiat currencies like the US dollar (such as USDT and USDC) maintain their value peg by holding sufficient cash and short-term government bonds as reserve assets, effectively mitigating the drastic price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies. This allows them to seamlessly integrate into the existing dollar-dominated global trade pricing system, becoming a "liquidity bridge" connecting the traditional economy and the digitally native world. BIS research also confirms that the demand for stablecoins as a medium of exchange is particularly strong in environments with high fiat currency inflation or high costs of using local currencies.

The Practical Logic of Stablecoins in Developing Countries

For many emerging markets and developing economies facing macroeconomic instability, drastic currency fluctuations, or strict capital controls, the application of stablecoins has transcended efficiency improvements, becoming a "financial resilience infrastructure" for businesses and individuals to maintain wealth and sustain cross-border business activities.

"Digital Dollarization" to Combat Inflation and Currency Devaluation

In high-inflation countries such as Argentina (annual inflation rate exceeding 200%) and Turkey (annual inflation rate exceeding 60%), merchants and residents widely use dollar-denominated stablecoins for savings, contract pricing, and daily settlements to protect asset purchasing power. This phenomenon represents an unofficial, bottom-up "digital dollarization," reflecting a erosion of public confidence in their national currencies and an urgent need for alternative stores of value. Latin America saw a surge of over 300% in stablecoin adoption in 2022-2023, far exceeding the global average.

A "grey channel" for circumventing capital controls and obtaining foreign exchange

The case of Nigeria is highly representative. Despite attempts by the country's central bank to restrict business dealings between commercial banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, local importers obtained USD stablecoins through peer-to-peer (P2P) markets and directly paid overseas suppliers, thus circumventing the barriers of tight quotas and unfavorable exchange rates in the official foreign exchange market. This objectively provided a necessary, albeit not fully compliant, financial channel for the survival of SMEs. A Chainalysis report shows that the Middle East and North Africa has become the sixth fastest-growing cryptocurrency market globally, with stablecoin transactions accounting for over 60%, highlighting its crucial role in capital flows.

Improving remittance efficiency and financial inclusion

The World Bank points out that high remittance costs severely erode valuable foreign exchange earnings flowing to developing economies. Stablecoins offer overseas workers a low-cost, instant remittance option. Data from the Philippine Central Bank shows that in 2023, cross-border remittances via cryptocurrency channels accounted for approximately 7% of the country's total remittances. This directly keeps more funds in the hands of remittance families, enhancing the resilience of the underlying economy.

From the "Gray Zone" to "Regulatory Convergence"

As the scale and influence of stablecoins expand, global regulators are shifting from initial vigilance and restrictions to actively building regulatory frameworks. A "regulatory technology" race to shape the future digital finance landscape has begun.

Global regulatory frameworks are rapidly taking shape

The international community has reached a clear consensus: stablecoins, especially global stablecoins, must be subject to timely and consistent regulation to prevent regulatory arbitrage and systemic risks. The European Union has taken the lead globally by launching a comprehensive Crypto Asset Market Regulation (MiCA), establishing strict requirements for the issuance, governance, reserve assets, and information disclosure of stablecoins. Financial centers such as Singapore, the UK, and Hong Kong have also launched or are planning targeted regulatory systems. A 2024 report by the BIS (British Standards Institution) compared the stablecoin regulatory frameworks of seven jurisdictions in detail, advocating for stronger international cooperation to bridge regulatory differences.

The collaborative exploration of innovation and regulation

Regulation is not merely about restriction, but also about exploring how to leverage technological innovation. The Monetary Authority of Singapore's "Project Guardian" is an example of experimenting with tokenizing real-world assets and conducting compliant DeFi transactions within a regulatory sandbox. More importantly, the transparency and traceability of stablecoins based on blockchain technology provide unprecedented tools for regulation. Unlike bearer cash or opaque nested accounts between banks, the transaction records of compliant stablecoins are auditable on-chain, enabling regulators to use on-chain analytics to track illicit fund flows.

The integration and competition between the public and private sectors

Officially led central bank digital currency projects are forming a competitive yet complementary landscape with private stablecoins. The "Multilateral Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge" (mBridge) project, jointly undertaken by BIS and multiple central banks, has completed a real-world transaction pilot, processing over 2,200 cross-border payments with a settlement amount exceeding RMB 2 billion. This verifies that CBDC-based cross-border payments can reduce costs by at least 50%. Mu Changchun, Director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, pointed out that the mBridge platform, through its innovative privacy architecture, achieves both efficiency and privacy control over core transaction data. A 2024 BIS survey report shows that 91% of 93 central banks globally are exploring retail or wholesale CBDCs, with wholesale CBDCs showing particularly rapid progress in cross-border payments. In the future, compliant stablecoins and wholesale CBDCs are likely to coexist and interoperate on a programmable trade settlement layer.

Future Vision: Building a Hybrid, Programmable, and Resilient Global Settlement Ecosystem

Looking ahead, the transformation led by stablecoins is not intended to completely overturn traditional finance, but rather to form a hybrid framework for the next generation of global financial infrastructure by introducing new efficiency logic, programmability, and inclusiveness dimensions, together with upgraded traditional systems (such as the ISO 20022 messaging standard and interconnection with instant payment systems) and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

A "programmable payment layer" will become standard

Trade finance and supply chain financing will increasingly be automated through stablecoins or tokenized assets embedded with smart contracts. This will not only reduce costs and risks but also give rise to new business models such as dynamic discounts and real-time invoice financing.

A "leapfrog" opportunity for developing countries

For countries with weak financial infrastructure, actively embracing and prudently regulating this trend means potentially skipping certain expensive development stages of traditional correspondent banking systems and directly building a more resilient and inclusive digital financial ecosystem. The integration of stablecoins with domestic fast payment systems and CBDCs is expected to secure a more favorable position for them in global trade.

New challenges to financial stability

The widespread use of stablecoins, particularly their strong correlation with a single fiat currency (such as the US dollar), transmits the monetary policy fluctuations of major economies more directly to the global market, posing a challenge to the monetary sovereignty and financial stability of smaller, open economies. This also places higher demands on global regulatory coordination and cooperation.

The rise of stablecoins as a "programmable payment layer" signifies that the global trade settlement system is evolving from a centralized, decentralized, and manually processed model to a distributed, interoperable, and pre-programmed execution model. This process is fraught with technological challenges, regulatory complexities, and geopolitical financial maneuvering, but it points to a certain future: global capital flows will become more transparent, efficient, and automated. In this historic reshaping, whoever can first build and master this new layer will seize the position of the next generation of global trade financial center.