In 2025, the passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (better known as the GENIUS Act) in the United States established a clear regulatory pathway in the US for stablecoins. This long-awaited regulatory clarity requires stablecoin issuers to maintain high-quality reserves, undergo independent audits, and provide transparency for buyers. By legitimising stablecoins, institutions and entrepreneurs alike can integrate them into payments, settlement, and treasury operations at scale.
This sets the stage for mainstream adoption and innovation. For entrepreneurs, especially those operating across borders or in underserved markets, stablecoins are emerging as a powerful tool. Proponents suggest they can unlock new business models, streamline operations, and expand financial inclusion.
This past week, at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025 panel on “The Future of Stablecoins: Decoding the GENIUS Act”, leaders from Visa, Binance, Solana, Ripple, Crypto.com, and Fiserv explored how stablecoins are reshaping financial flows and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Stablecoin Usage Often Depends On Financial Inclusion and Market Access
Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, highlighted that stablecoin usage is high in territories where financial inclusion remains low. In many emerging markets, stablecoins are leapfrogging traditional banking systems. Populations excluded from formal financial institutions now have access to digital payments and savings. For entrepreneurs, this means new customer bases and markets are opening up, particularly in regions where banking penetration is limited but smartphone adoption is widespread.
Photo credit: Singapore FinTech Festival
Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, emphasised that stablecoins create a “default state” of equal access, rather than zero access. Entrepreneurs can build platforms that enable financial services, such as savings accounts and brokerage services, to be delivered via the same stablecoin infrastructure. Traditionally, these services are provided by different financial institutions or on separate platforms. The use of stablecoins, she claimed, effectively democratises financial services, allowing startups to reach users who were previously locked out of traditional systems.
Photo credit: Singapore FinTech Festival
Breaking Traditional Money Movement
Takis Georgakopoulos, Chief Operation Officer of Fiserv, noted that stablecoins “break the traditional mode of moving money.” Crypto off-ramps, services that allowed users to exchange cryptocurrency for fiat currency, were largely unregulated and fragmented before the passing of the GENIUS Act. Now, with regulatory clarity, entrepreneurs can design payment systems that bypass legacy rails, offering faster, cheaper, and programmable transactions.
Photo credit: Singapore FinTech Festival
Monica Long, President of Ripple, illustrated this with real-world examples: stablecoins enable 24/7 treasury management and real-time cross-border payouts. Businesses can settle transactions between the US and territories like Brazil or the UAE in days rather than weeks. For entrepreneurs managing global supply chains or remote teams, this efficiency translates into lower costs and improved cash flow.
Photo credit: Singapore FinTech Festival
Visa’s Chris Newkirk, President, Commecial & Money Movement Solutions underscored the importance of legal clarity. According to him, Visa views itself as a “hyperscaler for payments”, offering entrepreneurs access to a service stack that integrates stablecoins into existing networks. Stablecoin-linked Visa cards now exist, supported by infrastructure deals such as Visa’s acquisition of Pismo earlier this year.
Expanding Use Cases Beyond Payments
Eric Anziani of Crypto.com argued that stablecoins are moving “beyond payment and DeFi”. Entrepreneurs can leverage them for prediction markets, tokenised assets, and liquidity solutions.
Photo credit: Singapore FinTech Festival
Lily Liu pointed to on-chain IPOs as a future frontier. By removing traditional bottlenecks of bankers and lawyers, entrepreneurs could raise capital directly from global investors in a fully digital environment. Stablecoins serve as the settlement layer for these innovations.
Ripple’s Monica Long therefore emphasised the importance of “blending traditional and decentralised systems” to deliver the best customer experience. Entrepreneurs who can “facilitate transfers between the two” will be best positioned to thrive. Those who fail to make these connections, she warned, “will be left behind.”
Risks And Sovereignty Concerns
Despite the optimism of most of the panellists, they also acknowledged that there would always be risks. With nearly 99% of fiat-back stablecoins now pegged to the US dollar, Solana’s Lily Liu warned that many countries will be concerned about their future economic sovereignty. They may feel compelled to issue their own stablecoins to avoid “being dollarised” and inheriting US monetary policy.
Fiserve’s Takis Georgakopoulos warned that a proliferation of stablecoins could introduce credit risk if issuers lack transparency or adequate reserves.
For entrepreneurs, this could mean navigating a landscape where multiple sovereign-backed digital currencies coexist alongside private stablecoins.
Building A Wallet-Based Economy
Binance’s Richard Teng predicted a shift toward a wallet-based economy, where users manage payments, savings, and investments within a single digital interface. Yield compression and high fees are challenges today, he acknowledged, so entrepreneurs who design efficient wallet ecosystems will capture significant value.
Visa’s Chris Newkirk echoed this urgency: “We are all in on enabling stablecoins. Like all new technologies, there’s an adoption curve, so first we’re busy building that infrastructure.”
Photo credit: Singapore FinTech Festival
Entrepreneurs who act fast will be positioned to ride the stablecoin curve rather than chase it.
Stablecoins Are Primed To Offer A Wealth Of Opportunities To Entrepreneurs
The GENIUS Act has transformed stablecoins from speculative instruments into legally recognised, institutionally integrated financial tools. For entrepreneurs, this era offers unprecedented opportunities, including access to underserved markets, faster, cross-border payments for global operations, and partnerships with institutions like Visa that are actively building infrastructure.
However, Fiserve’s Takis Georgakopoulos was quick to point out that current money movement systems, with all their limitations, still get the job done. The difficulty of changing existing structures leaves only the truly forward-looking institutions willing to adopt stablecoins. This is why there’s currently still no real sense of disruption. The current US dollar stablecoin market capitalisation is only $303 billion, according to CoinGecko, a relative drop in the ocean.
Top Image Credit: LinkedIn/Richard Teng
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