Author: Prathik Desai
Original title: The Maturity Fingerprint
Compiled and edited by: BitpushNews
Stablecoins are widely considered to be on the rise. In just two years, their circulating supply has more than doubled, while their adjusted trading volume has more than tripled. Last month, stablecoin monthly adjusted trading volume hit an all-time high. Some scoff at these figures, while Crypto Twitter (CT) celebrates.
But numbers alone cannot fully explain the nature of growth. Equally important is the context in which this growth occurs, such as who is using stablecoins, for what purposes, and whether usage patterns are changing. Allium gave us a preview of their latest report on stablecoin infrastructure—" Stablecoins: The Rise of New Payment Tracks ." This is a very important report because the charts show that the use of stablecoins is shifting from enabling low-cost cross-border remittances to supporting universal business and supplier payments between enterprises.
Most of the current debate surrounding stablecoins centers on whether they are financial products (like banks, government bond wrappers, or yield vehicles) or simply payment infrastructure. Policy-level debates regarding stablecoin interest rates assume that stablecoins are primarily used as financial instruments. However, data in the report offers a different perspective: recent stablecoin activity increasingly resembles a payment track rather than a savings product.
This mirrors the evolution of the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network we've seen: from initially replacing paper checks in payroll to becoming the backbone of general commerce, B2B payments, and consumer bill payments.
This article will use data from the Allium Stablecoin Infrastructure Report to explain why it has changed our view on the future of stablecoins.
Speed differentiation
Since January 2024, the circulating supply of stablecoins (total supply minus non-circulating supply) has increased by over 100%. During the same period, adjusted transaction volume (excluding scalping, internal circulation, and loopback transactions) has increased by 317%.
During the accumulation phase of any new asset, supply typically grows faster than usage. However, as an asset matures, usage grows faster than supply. This is because asset holders are spending more of the asset. Here, since the adjusted trading volume is growing much faster than the circulating supply of stablecoins, this indicates that stablecoins are maturing from value stores into more popular mediums of exchange or value transfer tools.
This shift is reflected in the velocity of stablecoins, calculated as adjusted transaction volume divided by circulating supply.
Allium
The velocity of stablecoins has increased from 2.6 times to more than 6 times in the past two years, reflecting that the current turnover rate of stablecoins per dollar is 2.3 times higher than in January. A benchmark comparison with traditional payment tracks reveals just how mature the use of stablecoins has become.
Another indicator of stablecoin maturity is the number of transactions. It is least susceptible to large noise. Therefore, when the number of payment transactions grows faster than the transaction amount, it indicates that the average transaction amount is decreasing. This behavior is typical of a payment track that has established itself, rather than an experimental tool for shuttling between exchanges.
This raises the question: Who is making these payments, and what are they paying for?
In 2025, the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) category will remain the largest channel, ahead of consumer-to-business (C2B), business-to-business (B2B), and business-to-consumer (B2C). However, its growth rate will be the slowest among the four categories.
The slowdown in C2C growth further confirms the maturity of stablecoin usage, as peer-to-peer transfers are the simplest use case. They require no merchant integration, no invoicing tools, no APIs, and have very few procedural barriers to adoption. This is the typical starting point for every new payment technology.
When India launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) a decade ago, retail users were the first to join, driven by cashback and other customer acquisition strategies. I remember using Google Pay (originally launched in India as Tez) to transfer money between my two accounts simply because it offered me a dollar cashback. Shops and institutions only joined after business tools, reporting, and a dedicated payment confirmation audio device system (speakers) were introduced.
As infrastructure matures, business use cases begin to capture market share. And this transformation appears to be underway.
The high growth in C2B indicates that more and more users are using stablecoins for general commerce, subscriptions, and merchant payments. Meanwhile, the growth in B2B shows that business counterparties are beginning to adopt stablecoins in invoicing, supply chain payments, and financial operations. Both growth rates (131% for C2B and 87% for B2B) exceed the overall payment growth rate of 76%, indicating that the share of commercial payments is expanding.
When you combine the increased C2B transaction volume with the average order value of C2B transactions (which decreased from $456 to $256), it suggests a trend of people starting to use stablecoins for recurring purchases.
Although the peer-to-peer (P2P) category still dominates in absolute terms, it will soon relinquish its position. Quarterly share data makes this shift even more significant.
Allium
After falling below half in the first quarter of 2025, C2C has never accounted for more than 50% of total payments.
The world appears to be moving beyond the experimental phase of using stablecoins for low-risk, low-frequency peer-to-peer transfers and is now consistently using them for high-frequency payments.
When I first started tracking stablecoin adoption, one of the mainstream narratives supporting stablecoins was how they empowered cross-border remittances and could potentially disrupt Western Union by allowing workers in developed economies to send money home. But the data tells a different story.
Currently, about three-quarters of stablecoin payments occur domestically. Over the past year, the proportion of cross-border payments at the national level has decreased from 44% to approximately 25-29% of total payments. At the regional level, 84% of payments still flow within the same geographic area.
Allium
Based on all our previous charts, it's clear that stablecoins are not competing with SWIFT in the international settlement arena. Instead, B2B metrics, including a 74% domestic dominance, declining average transaction size, payroll processing, and growing invoice use cases, all point to stablecoins competing with domestic payment tracks like ACH.
For reference, ACH's B2B payments grew by approximately 10% in 2025, while stablecoin B2B payments grew by 87% during the same period. I realize that the absolute scale is still incomparable, and we must consider the low base effect of stablecoins. However, this growth is not to be underestimated.
prospect
For a long time, I considered cross-border remittances and peer-to-peer transfers as the main drivers of stablecoin adoption.
Imagine a son in India receiving US dollars from his family in Dubai on a bank holiday, without having to pay the 7% to 8% commission charged by intermediaries—the narrative is certainly appealing. This story still holds true today, but perhaps it's no longer the main focus.
Interestingly, the narrative surrounding domestic consumption scenarios has quietly and rapidly surpassed everything else. The C2C (consumer-to-consumer) market share hasn't returned to 50% for over a year, a metric that seems to have never been a hot topic in crypto discussions. But it is precisely this metric that signifies the transformation of stablecoins from a "cryptocurrency product" to "financial infrastructure"—making transactions between consumers and businesses, or between businesses, possible.
It's also worth mentioning that the payment transaction volume tagged by Allium is based on analysis of the wallets they can cover, identify, and tag. Although this data shows that payment transactions only account for 2% to 3% of the total adjusted stablecoin transaction volume, this can only be considered a lower limit—because there are certainly a large number of wallets that Allium has not covered.
Next, I will focus on two key areas: whether the proportion of C2B (consumer-to-business) and B2B (business-to-business) transactions will continue to rise, and whether the average transaction value can remain low in the coming quarters. If these two trends persist even during a cryptocurrency market downturn, it would indicate that stablecoin payment infrastructure has truly begun to break free from the speculative cycle of the crypto market.
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