Stablecoin payments often work better for one party than the other. Wesley Rios asks how payment providers can make the arrangement worthwhile for both the payer and the recipient.
“I get paid in stablecoins,” a friend once told me. “To be honest, it’s a pain in the neck. When I want to convert my stablecoins into fiat to pay my bills, it’s extra work for me finding the right conversion and withdrawal services. Also, who has the time to compare fees between different exchanges?”
Most of us think a payment is just a straightforward transfer of value. It’s anything but. A payment that works well for the sender may still create costs or complications for the recipient. Be it a bank transfer or a stablecoin payment, convenience for one side can come at the expense of the other.
Many platforms see the person who signs up and pays for the service as their customer. But the truth is, every payment, whether in fiat or stablecoins, serves two parties. Both deserve to be treated as customers because adoption depends on people being willing to transact with each other. A company may be happy to pay in stablecoins, but if its contractors keep asking for bank transfers, the arrangement is unlikely to last. Equally, a freelancer’s preference for stablecoins means little if clients find paying that way too much trouble. Platform providers need to give both parties a reason to return.
Easy for whom?
However, that’s easier said than done. With limited resources at their disposal, platform providers naturally gravitate towards the customers they already have. If a company is saving money and keeps using the platform, there may be little reason to investigate what happens after a recipient gets their stablecoin payment.
How much does the recipient spend converting the stablecoins to fiat? Is there a reliable withdrawal service where they live? Who helps when the funds are stuck? These questions determine whether the recipient wants to be paid this way again, yet they receive little attention when the platform measures success through its paying customers. The costs can eventually return through higher contractor fees or requests to use another payment method.
Paying and Being Paid: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Even with time-tested bank transfers, getting paid can prove to be painful. A Morph survey of 150 businesses in five markets in Asia revealed that 87% of respondents experienced at least one banking or payment disruptions in the previous 12 months.
Does paying in stablecoins make the process easier? Not quite. Sending a payment link is easy enough. What happens when the client opens it? If paying a freelancer in stablecoins requires opening an exchange account, buying the correct tokens, and working out which network to use, the freelancer just made it more difficult for the client to pay them.
So, is there no way to make everyone happy?
Leaving the Customer to Connect the Pieces
My friend’s complaint points to a problem: institutions draw the boundaries of their services too narrowly and leave customers to connect the pieces. The platform facilitates the transfer of stablecoins, an exchange handles the conversion, and the bank receives the withdrawal in fiat. On the surface, it appears like the customer has the freedom to choose who they want to work with. But really, the customer is just taking on the extra work of researching and coordinating, and moving money between services to complete one payment.
A debit card funded by crypto could potentially address this pain point. The recipient spends from a crypto balance held in a card, and the conversion is done in the backend, ensuring the merchants receive fiat. The recipient does not have to make a separate trade or swap their crypto for fiat. However, a card only goes so far. A mortgage or a loan serviced by a bank account still requires a different route.
The Opportunity for Platform Providers
A platform cannot build every part of the payments journey itself. However, it can take the lead in arranging the connections. In the ideal world, if a recipient needs fiat in their bank account, the conversion and withdrawal should be available within the platform, with the cost shown before they proceed. The ability to use different chains within a single payment platform is a first step. Connecting the services a customer needs to make a payment in one interface is the goal.
Serving both customers in a single payment requires platforms to go beyond their own technology. Understanding how stablecoins work and acknowledging their benefits do little for adoption if either or both sides dread the work that follows. Services need to work together, and until we do, someone is paying the cost for another’s convenience.
About the author:
Wesley Rios is Morph’s Senior US Payment Partnership Manager. Wesley is a fintech and payments leader with 15+ years of experience in product strategy, market expansion, and strategic partnerships across Mastercard, J.P. Morgan, and Citi. He specializes in payments infrastructure, stablecoins, digital identity, issuer processing, and cross-border growth, with a focus on building scalable financial products across global markets.
