Checkout.com and Coinbase Just Made Stablecoins a Merchant Payment Option
Hey Payments Fanatic!
Stablecoins just took another step toward becoming a mainstream payment method.
Checkout.com announced a new partnership with Coinbase that will allow enterprise merchants to accept stablecoin payments alongside cards, bank transfers, digital wallets, and local payment methods.
On the surface, it sounds like just another payment option.
But I think the timing is what makes this interesting.
For years, stablecoins have mostly been associated with trading, crypto exchanges, and on-chain activity. Now we're increasingly seeing them show up inside traditional payment infrastructure, right next to the payment methods merchants already use every day.
The numbers help explain why. According to McKinsey and Artemis, real-world stablecoin payment volume doubled to $390 billion in 2025.
What's changing is that merchants no longer need to build crypto expertise in-house to participate. Companies like Checkout.com are packaging stablecoin acceptance into familiar enterprise payment rails and workflows.
That may end up being one of the most important drivers of adoption.
Because new payment methods rarely win by replacing existing infrastructure. They win when they become part of it.
We'll stay on the stablecoin theme further down the newsletter, where Circle's latest Q1 2026 results offer another interesting glimpse into how quickly this market is evolving.
Today's remaining Payments headlines are just below. 👇 See you tomorrow!
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
📊 Circle’s Q1 2026 results highlight the growing role of stablecoins as financial infrastructure, with USDC circulation reaching $77 billion and on-chain transaction volume surging to $21.5 trillion. Beyond payments, Circle is expanding into enterprise treasury, tokenized assets, and AI-driven commerce. Find the full breakdown here
NEWS
🇬🇧 Checkout.com enables stablecoin acceptance for merchants in partnership with Coinbase. The capability allows eligible enterprise merchants to accept stablecoin payments from consumers, giving them more ways to capture global demand and meet growing customer appetite for digital money.
🇧🇷 Payments technology firm Juspay joins the Mastercard Engage partner network for Mastercard Click to Pay. Building on its rollout in Brazil, Juspay plans to support the global expansion of Click to Pay, helping merchants streamline online card payments and improve checkout conversion rates.
🇳🇱 Worldline, ING, and Mastercard complete a live end-to-end European agentic payment in production. Completed between an ING cardholder and a merchant in the Netherlands, the solution operates on the same underlying infrastructure across Belgium and runs across the Mastercard network, leveraging their respective secure authentication and authorisation mechanisms.
🇺🇸 Mastercard announces leadership updates to advance strategy and support continued growth. As part of these updates and continuous evolution, Mastercard is unifying its customer focus under one team to underscore its consistent support, coordination, and accountability across all markets.
🌎 Apple reportedly plans to introduce iPhone bill splitting via receipt scans. According to the report, users would be able to scan a receipt, select who ordered which items, and send payment requests from their iPhone. The feature is also expected to account for tax and tip when calculating each person’s share.
🇬🇧 Adyen selected as payment services provider for GOV.UK Pay. The move will see around 1,000 public sector services migrate to Adyen’s platform as the government modernizes its payments infrastructure and expands account-to-account payment capabilities.
🇳🇬 Flutterwave promotes 25% of its global workforce as part of a talent retention move. The company, which recently secured a microfinance banking licence in Nigeria, also introduced employee support measures including cost-of-living adjustments, tax assistance, and one-time economic relief payments.
🇳🇱 ABN AMRO has introduced BUUT Pay through its youth banking app BUUT, enabling children aged 10 and older in the Netherlands to make mobile payments. The solution allows young users to pay directly from designated savings pots while giving parents oversight and control, supporting financial education in a digital-first environment.
🇺🇸 MoneyGram launches MGUSD, a stablecoin to power its own global network. MGUSD will serve as the connective tissue powering those services for families sending money across borders and billions of people underserved by traditional finance.
🇬🇧 Wallester expands to the UK with EMI authorisation. The EMI application was first submitted to the regulator for Wallester UK on 1 August 2025 and received official approval on 28 May 2026. The company will use the licence to extend Wallester's embedded finance and payment infrastructure offering to enterprise clients in the region.
🇳🇱 Yuno appoints Edwin Poot as Chief Technology Officer. Poot brings more than two decades of technology leadership across FinTech, payments, and large-scale digital infrastructure and will lead Yuno’s global engineering organization as the company continues to expand its platform and capabilities for merchants worldwide.
🇰🇭 Indian travellers can use UPI to pay in Cambodia via the KHQR network, including retail stores, restaurants, and tourist locations. Transactions are enabled through real-time QR-based payments, allowing users to pay in local currency through their existing UPI apps.
🇬🇧 Affirm and Stripe team up to power flexible UK payments. The partnership enables Stripe merchants to offer Affirm’s pay-over-time options at checkout starting in July. The companies are also collaborating on AI-powered commerce initiatives, including support for Shared Payment Tokens to facilitate installment payments in agent-driven shopping experiences.
🌍 TransferMate partners with BVNK to bring real-time stablecoin settlements to the global payments network. The integration will allow customers to access 24/7 settlement options using fiat-backed stablecoins, reflecting the growing adoption of stablecoin-based payment rails by enterprise financial institutions.
🇺🇸 NMI acquires Fee Navigator, adding AI-powered pricing intelligence to its embedded payments platform. The deal adds merchant pricing optimization tools to NMI’s embedded payments platform, further expanding its offerings across payments, real-time money movement, and merchant services.
🇦🇪 Binance launches regulated AED crypto transfers in the UAE. Under the new service, Binance users can deposit AED directly into their accounts through ADCB with zero fees, subject to a minimum transfer amount of Dhs10 and a maximum daily limit of Dhs7.2m.
🇺🇸 Kraken adds native support for USDT0 deposits and withdrawals on Tempo, allowing customers to move stablecoins with sub-second settlement and without needing a separate gas token. The integration is designed to simplify funding and transfers while providing faster, lower-cost payment rails for stablecoin users.
🇺🇸 Exodus was named UFC's first official payments partner. The partnership will debut at UFC Freedom 250 in Washington, D.C., where Exodus will showcase its Exodus Pay offering as part of a broader push to promote digital dollar payments and self-custody financial services.
🇬🇧 Thredd renews and expands its partnership with Caxton. As part of the renewed agreement, Thredd will bring Caxton’s parent-child card programme, nimbl, onto the Thredd platform. All nimbl customers will be re-carded as the programme is launched using Thredd’s infrastructure, with completion targeted before the end of the year.
🇺🇸 Crossmint launches Agentic Cards API using Visa Intelligent Commerce and Basis Theory. Users can access Visa Intelligent Commerce Connect to create tokenized credentials linked to cardholders’ existing Visa cards for agentic payments subject to issuer approval and applicable controls.
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