<div class="light-yellow-block">
 <h2 id="strong-key-takeaways-strong"><strong>Key Takeaways</strong></h2>
 <ul>
  <li><strong>69% of surveyed institutions offer or plan services.</strong></li>
  <li><strong>Just 18% see broad client interest.</strong></li>
  <li><strong>Differentiation, not revenue, is driving bank interest.</strong></li>
  <li><strong>Citi’s live flows run on tokenized deposits.</strong></li>
 </ul>
</div>
<p>The figures come from <a href="https://www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-unified-site/ey-com/en-gl/insights/financial-services/documents/ey-gl-blockchain-based-payments-survey-10-2026.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">EY-Parthenon’s October blockchain-payments survey</a> of 383 corporations and 138 financial institutions familiar with blockchain payments, carried out in July and August.</p>
<h2 id="69-building-18-asked">69% building, 18% asked</h2>
<div style="margin: 24px 0; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; align-items: center; justify-content: center; gap: 10px 26px; text-align: center;">
 <div>
  <p style="margin: 0; font-size: 46px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1; color: #2775ca;">69%</p>
  <p style="margin: 6px 0 0; font-size: 13px; max-width: 170px;">of institutions offer stablecoin services or plan to within two years</p>
 </div>
 <p style="margin: 0; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; opacity: 0.55;">vs</p>
 <div>
  <p style="margin: 0; font-size: 46px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1; color: #f59e0b;">18%</p>
  <p style="margin: 6px 0 0; font-size: 13px; max-width: 170px;">see interest from more than a quarter of their clients</p>
 </div>
</div>
<p>Among the financial institutions surveyed, 18% already offer stablecoin services and another 51% plan to launch within two years. But 82% said interest in stablecoins and tokenized deposits came from a quarter of their customers or fewer. On the corporate side, 18% of respondents have blockchain payments live in production.</p>
<p>Those interest figures count how many clients have asked, not how much money they move. They also cover only organizations already familiar with blockchain payments, so they describe an engaged slice of the market rather than every bank and business.</p>
<h2 id="why-build-ahead-of-demand">Why build ahead of demand</h2>
<p>EY’s own <a href="https://www.ey.com/en_uk/insights/financial-services/seven-signals-shaping-the-next-phase-of-blockchain-payments" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">analysis of the results</a> offers the reason: among financial institutions, competitive differentiation ranked above revenue generation as a driver of interest. Banks are building to avoid being left behind, and a separate profit line can come later.</p>
<p>Narrow demand can still be good business. A handful of multinationals or payment platforms can move large volumes, so a service used by a small share of clients is not necessarily a small service. What matters is whether those clients keep using it, and EY’s analysis points to the condition for that: the service has to fit into the workflows companies already run.</p>
<h2 id="what-the-live-products-actually-show">What the live products actually show</h2>
<div style="margin: 22px 0; display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(240px, 1fr)); gap: 12px; font-size: 14px;">
 <div style="padding: 14px 16px; border-left: 4px solid #2775ca; background: rgba(39,117,202,0.07); border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0;">
  <p style="margin: 0 0 6px; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.circle.com/pressroom/standard-chartered-and-circle-launch-launch-first-g-sib-led-integrated-access-to-usdc-minting-and-redemption" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Standard Chartered / Circle</a></p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;"><span style="color: #22c55e; font-weight: bold;">✓</span> USDC minting and redemption for eligible institutions via DIFC, launched in July</p>
  <p style="margin: 0;"><span style="color: #f59e0b; font-weight: bold;">?</span> No active-client count, volume or revenue disclosed</p>
 </div>
 <div style="padding: 14px 16px; border-left: 4px solid #2775ca; background: rgba(39,117,202,0.07); border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0;">
  <p style="margin: 0 0 6px; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.citigroup.com/global/news/press-release/2026/citi-coinbase-expand-collaboration-connect-digital-fiat-payments-corporations-consumers" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Spring by Citi / Coinbase</a></p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;"><span style="color: #22c55e; font-weight: bold;">✓</span> Stablecoin acceptance with fiat settlement, announced in September, US first</p>
  <p style="margin: 0;"><span style="color: #f59e0b; font-weight: bold;">?</span> How widely available it is, and how often merchants use it</p>
 </div>
 <div style="padding: 14px 16px; border-left: 4px solid #22c55e; background: rgba(34,197,94,0.07); border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0;">
  <p style="margin: 0 0 6px; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/investor-day/citi-ID26-services-presentation-transcript.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Citi Token Services</a></p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;"><span style="color: #22c55e; font-weight: bold;">✓</span> Hundreds of clients moving close to $1 billion a day in tokenized deposits</p>
  <p style="margin: 0;"><span style="color: #f59e0b; font-weight: bold;">?</span> Revenue; transfer value is not income</p>
 </div>
 <div style="padding: 14px 16px; border-left: 4px solid rgba(148,163,184,0.8); background: rgba(148,163,184,0.07); border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0;">
  <p style="margin: 0 0 6px; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.citigroup.com/global/news/press-release/2026/citi-services-pioneers-live-transactions-swift-ledger-fab-ocbc-redefine-always-on-global-payments" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Citi / Swift shared ledger</a></p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;"><span style="color: #22c55e; font-weight: bold;">✓</span> Live transactions with FAB and OCBC in a July–December proof of concept</p>
  <p style="margin: 0;"><span style="color: #f59e0b; font-weight: bold;">?</span> Whether it becomes a commercial service after the pilot</p>
 </div>
</div>
<p>The only one of the four with disclosed, recurring volume, Citi Token Services, does not use public stablecoins at all. Tokenized deposits are ordinary commercial-bank money on a <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">blockchain</a>, held inside existing account relationships. Citi chief executive Jane Fraser said on the bank’s <a href="https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/Earnings/Q32026/3q26-citigroup-earnings-transcript.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">third-quarter earnings call</a> that deposit tokenization was growing faster than stablecoin activity among its clients, a split Coindoo examined in <a href="https://coindoo.com/citi-calls-stablecoins-clunky-but-builds-ways-to-use-them/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Citi’s approach to the two</a>. Standard Chartered’s <a href="https://coindoo.com/standard-chartered-launches-usdc-minting-for-institutions/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">USDC minting service</a> is the clearest bank route into the stablecoin itself, but it has published no usage numbers yet.</p>
<div class="read-more pb-3 pt-3 pt-md-2 px-3 my-4 border bg-light">
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  </div>
  <div class="contentLeft col-8">
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</div>
<h2 id="built-so-the-merchant-never-holds-a-token">Built so the merchant never holds a token</h2>
<p>Spring by Citi shows how banks are bridging the gap. The stablecoin exists only at the start of the payment:</p>
<div style="margin: 20px 0; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; align-items: center; gap: 6px; font-size: 14px;"><span style="padding: 6px 12px; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgba(39,117,202,0.7);"><span style="color: #2775ca;">●</span> Buyer pays in stablecoins</span><br><span style="opacity: 0.6;">→</span><br><span style="padding: 6px 12px; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgba(148,163,184,0.6);"><span style="color: #94a3b8;">◐</span> Coinbase converts to fiat</span><br><span style="opacity: 0.6;">→</span><br><span style="padding: 6px 12px; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgba(34,197,94,0.6);"><span style="color: #22c55e;">●</span> Citi settles dollars to the merchant</span>
</div>
<p>The merchant gains customers who want to pay with stablecoins without ever holding one, and its receipts arrive in the bank account it already uses. Taken with Citi’s deposit-token volumes, it suggests an answer to the headline’s question: many banks are designing their products on the assumption that most business customers are not ready to hold stablecoins themselves.</p>
<h2 id="the-cost-test">The cost test</h2>
<p>Take a company paying an overseas supplier after its bank’s normal cutoff. A faster transfer helps only if the supplier gets spendable money sooner. It helps less if either side needs extra manual approvals, a separate currency conversion, or banking access at the other end that is closed. A fair comparison sets the stablecoin route against the best conventional option for the same corridor, including instant-payment services where they exist.</p>
<div style="margin: 22px 0; display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(220px, 1fr)); gap: 14px; font-size: 14px;">
 <div>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 8px; font-weight: bold; color: #ef4444;">Can add cost</p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;">− Payment and conversion fees</p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;">− Foreign-exchange spreads</p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;">− Compliance and custody</p>
  <p style="margin: 0;">− Integration and reconciliation work</p>
 </div>
 <div>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 8px; font-weight: bold; color: #22c55e;">Can save</p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;">+ Settlement outside banking hours</p>
  <p style="margin: 0 0 4px;">+ Less cash parked in prefunded accounts</p>
  <p style="margin: 0;">+ Fewer intermediaries on the route</p>
 </div>
</div>
<p>The prefunding saving is easy to overstate. Freeing up cash improves liquidity, but the freed balance is not profit; the gain is what that cash costs to fund. With hypothetical numbers:</p>
<p style="margin: 18px 0; padding: 12px 14px; border: 1px dashed rgba(148,163,184,0.6); border-radius: 8px; text-align: center; font-family: ui-monospace, Menlo, Consolas, monospace; font-size: 14px;">$10M released 2 days sooner × 5% annual funding cost ≈ <strong style="color: #22c55e;">$2,740</strong></p>
<p>That is real money at scale, but it is a funding saving measured in thousands per transfer, not a share of the transfer value.</p>
<p>The public disclosures don’t give comparable costs or revenue for any of the four services. The figures that would show whether customers are ready are the ones not yet published: how many eligible clients use a service again after the first month, what share of their cross-border volume moves through it, and the all-in cost per payment against the bank route it replaced.</p>
<p style="text-align: center; font-size: 13px; opacity: 0.75;"><em>This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.</em></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://coindoo.com/69-of-banks-plan-stablecoins-only-18-see-wide-demand/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">69% of Banks Plan Stablecoins: Only 18% See Wide Demand</a> appeared first on <a href="https://coindoo.com" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Coindoo</a>.</p>

69% of Banks Plan Stablecoins: Only 18% See Wide Demand

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