Major PayFi week: Open USD consortium stablecoin launches on Solana, Spark-Uniswap FX layer goes live with $150M liquidity, Huma passes $15B in transactions, and multiple institutional partners expand stablecoin capabilities.
DeFi & Yields ·
Multiple stablecoin initiatives moved forward this week across payment infrastructure. Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, Coinbase, BlackRock, and over 140 additional partners unveiled Open USD, a consortium stablecoin launching on Solana with mechanisms to distribute reserve yield among issuers. Separately, Spark and Uniswap built a stablecoin foreign-exchange layer provisioned with $150 million in liquidity on Uniswap v4, covering USDS/USDT and USDS/PYUSD pairs. SoFi's SOFID stablecoin grew from $100 million to $300 million following its expansion to Solana.
Regional and institutional adoption also accelerated. SBI Group and Startale Group launched Japan's first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin, while Standard Chartered partnered with Circle to grant institutional clients direct access to USDC minting and redemption. Coinbase teamed with Spiko to enable stablecoin entry and exit within European UCITS funds, and BNY deepened its Circle relationship to expand institutional stablecoin services.
Transaction volume in the PayFi sector continued climbing: Huma reported surpassing $15 billion in cumulative transactions with year-over-year growth at 3x. The breadth of institutional participation—spanning traditional payment networks, banks, and exchanges—indicates consolidation around stablecoin infrastructure, though broader adoption timelines and regulatory clarity in key markets remain unspecified.