Welcome to another edition of the Money Code newsletter (fka The Weekly Stable), the essential source of stablecoin news coverage for global fintech professionals, brought to you by This Week in Fintech and Stablecon.
This week we cover:
Meta launches creator stablecoin payouts via Stripe's Link, Tempo, and Circle's USDC
Stripe Sessions delivers the financial OS for AI commerce
Computershare and Securitize open the S&P 500 to tokenization
Ep 30: Davi Strazza on Lightspark's Grid Global Accounts
Product launches, partnerships and funding news from MoonPay, Belo, Squads, Visa, Western Union, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Ondo, Fence, Nuva and more.
Want to master stablecoins and programmable money? Subscribe to our podcast for breakdowns, lessons and insights from the top builders in the space.
For feedback or suggestions, reply to this email, find Chuk and Stablecon online, or join the Stablecon community on Telegram. P.S. Get your tickets for Stablecon EMEA 2026
A Message from our Partner
Stablecoins are reshaping how businesses move money — and VelaFi's Stablecoin Payments makes it ready for your daily operations. Accept and settle globally via QR codes and payment links for high-frequency settlement and programmatic payouts. No intermediaries, no FX friction, no banking hours, minimal cost.
Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.
🏆 Top Stories
Meta Goes Live With Stablecoin Payouts via Stripe
Meta is live with USDC creator payouts to select creators in Colombia and the Philippines. The integration runs through Stripe Link, where creators hold custodial USD-stablecoin balances and can withdraw to external wallets on Solana or Polygon. Stripe handles conversion, wallet connectivity, and tax reporting, with settlement routed on Tempo behind the scenes. For the creator, the chain is invisible.
Why it matters:
Four years after killing Libra and Diem, Meta is back in stablecoins without issuing one. It rented the stack: Circle for the dollar, Stripe for delivery, Tempo as Stripe's settlement layer. The build path ended in Washington. The partnership path put the same product in market without that fight.
Abstraction wins. Stripe absorbed the chain selection, the custody, and the conversion. The creator experience looks like a Wise account, and the blockchain sits beneath as wholesale infrastructure. Stablecoin UX is ready for consumers at scale.
Path to billions is real. Meta has 3 billion users. Stripe Link has 250 million wallets. The launch is small, two countries and select creators, but the rails now connect both bases. Compliance and creator-program selection are the only gates left.
Local wallet integration removes the crypto-native onboarding tax. Creators in the Philippines connect Coins.ph. Creators in Colombia connect Bitso. Switching on stablecoin payouts is a settings change for creators.
Tempo's playbook lands. Tempo got distribution through Stripe routing settlement through it. The choice propagated to Meta via the Stripe partnership. This is the wholesale path Stripe and Paradigm built Tempo for.
Stripe Builds the Financial OS for AI Commerce
Stripe Sessions came in at 288 product launches across payments, treasury, and AI commerce. The marquees: a relaunched Treasury that holds 15 currencies and stablecoins as sibling balances, with payouts to anyone in 160 countries via email. A full AI-agent primitive set spanning MCP, Console, Link agent wallet, Issuing for agents, and the Machine Payments Protocol co-authored with Tempo. Streaming payments built on Metronome and Tempo. Bridge expansion across Tempo, Plasma, Celo, and Sui, plus four new stablecoins.
Why it matters:
Stripe used Sessions to position itself as the financial layer for AI commerce. The agent stack and the stablecoin stack ship as siblings inside the Stripe account, with each AI primitive routed through stablecoin rails underneath.
Treasury goes stablecoin-native. Treasury holds 15 currencies and stablecoins as sibling balances and pays anyone in 160 countries via email. Privy noncustodial wallets back the rails in 150+ markets. Wise/Mercury/Brex competitor with onchain rails built in.
Agents get the full stack. MCP for data, Console for execution, Link agent wallet for payments, Issuing for cards, Machine Payments Protocol for agent-to-agent settlement. The next year of AI-startup product roadmaps will sit on these primitives.
Streaming payments solve agent-economy fraud. AI services want to charge per token, but cards and prepay leave them exposed when an agent racks up usage and walks. Metronome tracks consumption; Tempo settles in real time as each token burns. Billing on the surface, collection control underneath.
The AI thesis became surface area. Last year it was a pitch slide. This year it shipped as 288 launches. Anyone building AI commerce now has Stripe primitives in the default path, the way Stripe payments became the default path for SaaS.
Computershare signed a technology agreement with Securitize letting US-listed clients offer Issuer-Sponsored Tokens (ISTs) alongside traditional shares. As transfer agent, Computershare keeps the official ownership record for ~58% of the S&P 500 and 25,000+ US-listed companies. ISTs make that record itself the token. The shareholder holds the share directly, with dividends, proxy votes, and corporate actions flowing the same as any other registered holder.
Why it matters:
The institutional stack for tokenized US equities just got its missing piece. With the largest US transfer agent on board, tokenized shares move from one-off pilots to an option 25,000 issuers can adopt without changing their capital structure.
The recordkeeper opened the gate. Tokenization couldn't scale until existing recordkeepers were on board. Computershare turns it from a bespoke project into a configurable holding type for 25,000 issuers. The infrastructure switched on. Issuer demand is the next gate.
ISTs and wrappers play different fields. The SEC's Crypto Task Force distinguishes ISTs (direct ownership of a US-registered share) from third-party wrappers (synthetic derivatives, usually offshore). ISTs are the regulated US path. Wrappers like Kraken xStocks and Ondo Global Markets serve non-US investors looking for exposure to US equities.
Two tokenization rails just emerged. DTCC's own SEC-blessed service launches on Canton this year, with depository-mediated tokenized entitlements. ISTs run on the issuer's transfer agent register, where the token is the share itself. The two rails operate in parallel.
Twelve months unlocked by Washington. A year ago, tokenized US equities were one-off pilots. Today the full stack is in place across transfer agents, exchange MOUs, ATSs, and the IST regulatory framework. The SEC-CFTC joint guidance on tokenized securities and the Crypto Task Force gave issuers and recordkeepers the rules to act. Regulation is the institutional unlock.
📺 Money Code Podcast
Ep 30: Crypto Payments Won't Scale Without Convenience w/ Davi Strazza (Lightspark)
The infrastructure to move money globally on crypto rails is ready. The products that make people actually use it are not.
Davi Strazza spent 11 years at Adyen, helping grow the company from $30B to $1.3T in payments volume. He left for a 50-person startup building on Bitcoin.
This week Lightspark launched Grid Global Accounts, a banking-as-a-service layer for stablecoin and Bitcoin payments across 65+ countries. He says the industry is still solving the wrong problem.
We decode
Inside Grid Global Accounts: how Lightspark moves money across 65 countries with Bitcoin as the invisible transport layer, and where stablecoins fill the liquidity gaps
The convenience gap: why Davi believes users care about rewards and convenience, merchants care about economics and efficiency, and neither will adopt crypto that requires understanding the rails
The 1% thesis: what trillions in Swift volume, checks, and cash-heavy economies tell you about how early we still are, and why Davi says all of it goes digital within a decade
Give it a listen and share your feedback by sending me a DM or replying to this email.
Money Code is presented by Stablecon and Powered by BVNK
Subscribe on Apple, Spotify and Youtube, or search Money Code wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to follow Money Code on X (@moneycodepod) and LinkedIn.
Read on for a round up of this week's news:
📊 Market Trends
Bain projects stablecoin supply to soar 1,100% by 2030 (read more)
JPMorgan says DeFi exploits and stagnant TVL continue to limit institutional appeal (read more)
JPMorgan says tokenization will drive change across entire funds industry, but good use cases still years away (read more)
Juniper Research projects cross-border B2B stablecoin payments to hit $5 trillion by 2035 (read more)
Standard Chartered says DeFi shaken by $292 million hack but showing resilience (read more)
💸 Fundraises and M&A
Galaxy Digital leads $20 million investment in Fence to modernize $6 trillion credit market (read more)
MoonPay acquires Israeli crypto security firm Sodot in $100 million stock deal (read more)
Nuva, co-incubated by Animoca, raises $5.2 million in seed funding for RWA yield platform (read more)
Solana Ventures leads $18 million round in Squads to scale stablecoin platform Altitude (read more)
Tether leads Belo's $14 million raise to expand stablecoin payments across Latin America (read more)
🚀 Product Announcements & Partnerships
Banking Circle introduces stablecoin settlement services after CASP license approval (read more)
Coastal Bank partners with Tempo for cross-border stablecoin payments (read more)
Coinbase lists first GBP-backed stablecoin tGBP (read more)
Dlocal launches stablecoin payments platform for emerging markets (read more)
FIS launches Lyriq platform for banks to issue tokenized deposits and digital currencies (read more)
Infinite rolls out B2B stablecoin banking services powered by Thiel-backed Erebor Bank (read more)
KBank, South Korea's biggest digital bank, taps Ripple for SWIFT-replacement global transfers (read more)
Kyriba brings Circle, AFP, and JPMorgan Asset Management into AI-orchestrated treasury platform (read more)
Lightspark launches Grid Global Accounts banking-as-a-service via Cross River Bank, opening stablecoin and Bitcoin payments to platforms and AI agents in 65+ countries (read more)
Morgan Stanley launches stablecoin reserves fund aligned with GENIUS Act requirements (read more)
Nomura, Mizuho, and JSCC trial tokenized collateral on Canton Network (read more)
OKX launches Agent Payments Protocol for AI commerce (read more)
OKX lets institutions use BlackRock's BUIDL fund as trading collateral (read more)
Ondo Finance adds proxy voting rights for $700 million in tokenized stocks and ETFs (read more)
Paystand launches USDb, the first Bitcoin-aligned stablecoin purpose-built for the B2B economy (read more)
Plasma and Ramp partner to bring stablecoins into payroll and spend through Plasma One (read more)
Ripple and OKX expand RLUSD access with over 280 spot pairs and derivatives (read more)
Shinhan Card to test real-world stablecoin payments on Solana (read more)
State Street to launch tokenized fund servicing from Luxembourg by year's end (read more)
Toku taps Paxos Labs' Amplify to add yield to stablecoin paychecks (read more)
Visa stablecoin settlement hits $7 billion run rate as pilot expands to nine blockchains (read more)
Western Union to launch stablecoin next month with Stable Card planned for global consumers (read more)
⚖️ Regulatory Developments
BIS warns crypto exchanges operating as unregulated shadow banks (read more)
ECB signs digital euro infrastructure agreements with ECPC, nexo standards, and the Berlin Group (read more)
FASB proposes mandatory disclosure of corporate stablecoin holdings (read more)
India pushes e-rupee through welfare pilots as BRICS digital currency plan takes shape (read more)
Israel approves first shekel-pegged stablecoin framework after two-year regulatory pilot (read more)
🍻 Upcoming Events
Wednesday 6 May, London: Stablecon Salon: London Edition
💼 Stablecoin Jobs
Search 1,600 jobs across 60+ stablecoin related companies. Filter by stage, category, region and remote.
📖 Reads of the Week
In "The new stack for global finance: Stablecoins edition", Noah Levine, Guy Wuollet, and Robert Hackett at a16z crypto map how stablecoins are graduating from a niche trading instrument into the load-bearing layer of a new banking-as-a-service stack. They argue payments is the opening act. The more consequential second act is credit, where stablecoin float meets onchain capital markets.
Bitso's Crypto Landscape in Latin America 2025 report draws on behavioral data from nearly 10 million users across Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. The headline: dollar-pegged stablecoins (USDC at 24%, USDT at 16%) accounted for 40% of all crypto purchases in the region during 2025, outpacing Bitcoin (18%) for the first time. Bitcoin still dominates portfolios as a long-term store of value (52%), but the purchase-flow data shows "digital dollarization" is now the default behavior of LATAM crypto users.