Stablecoins: The End of SWIFT?
The quiet revolution in international payments is underway.
At a time when globalization is shaping the competitiveness of businesses, a striking paradox remains: cross-border payments, the lifeblood of global trade, are one of the slowest, most expensive, and most opaque links in the financial system. The infrastructure inherited from the 20th century, embodied by the SWIFT network, is struggling to meet the demands of agility, transparency, and sovereignty in the 21st century. Processing times stretch over several days, fees accumulate at each stage of intermediation, and the path of funds remains a black box for corporate treasurers.
At the same time, a silent revolution is underway, driven by the most discreet but most useful crypto-assets: stablecoins. Far from the speculative volatility of other digital currencies, these tokens backed by traditional currencies such as the dollar or the euro already function as monetary rails on an immense scale. The figures are staggering. In 2024, the volume of transactions settled via stablecoins reached an astronomical $24 trillion. Even more revealing is that of this total, $7.6 trillion was dedicated to actual payments—a figure that already represents five times the annual volume processed by a giant like PayPal.
This dynamic is no longer a weak signal. Strategic maneuvers, such as the acquisition of the startup Bridge by the payment leader Stripe, confirm this acceleration towards a more modern, faster infrastructure that is less dependent on traditional banking channels. Faced with this observation, a pragmatic and powerful technological alternative is emerging: the “stablecoin sandwich.” Far from being a simple technical innovation, this is an architectural overhaul that could well redefine the rules of the game for international payments.
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The SWIFT System: A Legacy on Its Last Legs
To understand the scope of this innovation, we must first assess the limitations of the current system. Created in the 1970s, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is not a payment system, but a secure messaging service that allows more than 11,000 financial institutions to exchange transfer orders. The transfer of funds itself relies on a complex network of “correspondent banks.”
Let's imagine that a company in Paris needs to pay a supplier in São Paulo in Brazilian real. Its French bank probably does not have a direct account with the supplier's bank in Brazil. It will therefore go through one or more intermediary banks, often large international banks based in New York or London. Each intermediary checks the transaction, deducts its fees, converts the currency (often at an uncompetitive rate), and passes the order on to the next link in the chain. This cascading process explains the delays of two to five business days, the accumulation of costs (transfer fees, correspondent fees, exchange margins), and the lack of traceability. For the company, this means a loss of time, money, and control over its cash flow.
The “Stablecoin Sandwich”: A New Architecture for the 21st Century
The concept of the “Stablecoin Sandwich” proposes to bypass this chain of intermediaries through a three-step architecture that is remarkably simple.
First layer (Local conversion): The company initiating the payment does not change its habits. It pays in its local currency, for example, in euros. A specialized payment service provider instantly converts these euros into a liquid stablecoin, such as USDC (backed by the US dollar) or EURC (backed by the euro). This conversion takes place on platforms with abundant liquidity, guaranteeing an optimal exchange rate.
Intermediate layer (Blockchain transfer): The amount in stablecoins is then transferred via a public blockchain (such as Ethereum, Solana, or Tron) to the provider's digital wallet in the destination country. This transfer is the cornerstone of the system: it is almost instantaneous (taking a few seconds to a few minutes), secured by cryptography, and its fees are minimal and predictable, regardless of the amount transferred.
Final layer (local reconversion): Once the stablecoins arrive at their destination, the provider immediately reconverts them into the beneficiary's local currency, for example, Brazilian real. Again, the transaction is carried out on a local market with high liquidity. The funds are then paid into the supplier's traditional bank account.
The beneficiary receives the expected amount in their currency, without ever having to interact with cryptocurrency. The issuing company, for its part, has simply made a local payment. The “sandwich” has absorbed all the complexity of the cross-border transfer. This approach offers a major strategic advantage: it allows companies to pay beneficiaries on the blockchain without directly adopting cryptocurrencies internally. It is a simple and gradual way to expand their payment channels without changing currencies or disrupting their accounting and financial organization.
Three Decisive Advantages for Business Competitiveness
For CFOs and treasurers, the benefits of this model are direct and measurable.
First, speed. Going from a delay of several days to a few minutes is a game-changer. For a company that imports critical components, paying a supplier in Asia or Latin America almost instantly can unlock a delivery and prevent a breakdown in the production chain. For SMEs, whose cash flow is often tight, receiving a payment in a matter of minutes instead of waiting a week drastically improves working capital and financial visibility.
Second, economic efficiency. Disintermediation has a direct impact on costs. By eliminating correspondent bank fees and accessing much more competitive exchange rates at both ends of the chain, companies can achieve substantial savings, in the range of 1% to 3% of the total amount on certain payment corridors. On millions of dollars of annual flows, these gains become strategic. Transparency is also total: fees are known in advance, eliminating unpleasant surprises.
Thirdly, scalability and inclusion. The “Stablecoin Sandwich” model is particularly suited to companies operating in areas that are underserved or poorly served by major correspondent banks, particularly in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. It makes it possible to reach suppliers or customers in countries where banking infrastructure is fragile or currencies are highly volatile. By using the dollar (via a stablecoin) as a transfer vehicle, one is protected from the volatility of exotic currencies during the transport of funds.
The Hegemony of the Digital Dollar: America’s Strategic Advantage
This payment revolution is not neutral in geopolitical terms. Far from threatening the dominance of the US dollar, the emergence of stablecoins is dramatically reinforcing it. One thing is clear: the overwhelming majority of the most liquid and widely used stablecoins (USDT, USDC) are backed by the dollar. Every transaction made with these assets, whether between Singapore and Mexico or between Nigeria and Turkey, is effectively denominated in dollars.
This phenomenon gives the United States a decisive advantage. While other economic powers, such as Europe, theorize and experiment with a digital euro that is slow to materialize, the US private sector has already built and deployed a private infrastructure for a digital dollar on a global scale. These new financial rails, fast and efficient, extend the influence of the greenback far beyond traditional banking channels.
Far from being a tool for circumventing American power, stablecoins are becoming a vehicle for its hegemony. They anchor the dollar more deeply at the heart of the global digital economy, making it indispensable for blockchain transactions. This “dollarization” of new financial circuits gives Washington indirect but considerable leverage, since the main issuers of stablecoins are centralized entities subject to US regulation. The stablecoin revolution, despite its appearance of decentralization, could well consolidate the US currency's position as an essential pillar of the global financial system for decades to come.
A Powerful Lever for Monetary Engineering and Sovereignty
Beyond technical innovation and its geopolitical implications, this is a question of monetary strategy and resilience. By breaking free from almost total dependence on traditional banking networks, payments via stablecoins offer unprecedented operational flexibility. Companies are no longer at the mercy of bank opening hours, public holidays, or the decisions of an intermediary located in another time zone.
In a context of increasing geopolitical and financial fragmentation, where access to certain payment networks can be used as a lever of pressure, diversifying payment channels is becoming imperative for economic sovereignty. The “Stablecoin Sandwich” is emerging as a powerful lever for monetary engineering, based on stable and liquid digital assets, to build more resilient, less centralized, and less vulnerable payment flows.
While public institutions, such as the European Union with its MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) regulation, are investing in regulating asset tokenization and central banks are cautiously exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), companies are already taking action. They cannot wait five or ten years for these projects to materialize. By adopting the “Stablecoin Sandwich” model, they are responding to an immediate need for fluidity, speed, and control over their international payments. This is not a sudden break, but a natural evolution, guided by the search for operational performance. The replacement of SWIFT may not be a grand event, but a gradual transition, led by those who are already building the finance of tomorrow on the ground.
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