Stablecoins in Settlement: 21 Banks vs the BIS Stance. Who Is Right?

In brief: On 31 August 2026, Pablo Hernández de Cos, head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), said that tokenized deposits are preferable for mass payments and that dollar tokens could undermine countries' monetary sovereignty and raise banks' funding costs. Two days later, on 2 September, 21 major financial institutions, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Santander, MUFG and Fidelity, announced the creation of their own stablecoin issuer, with a dollar token to launch in the first half of 2027. This is no coincidence but a public dispute over who will control the settlement layer of digital money.

The stablecoin market in numbers as of 14 September 2026

The last two rows are constantly confused. Gross on-chain volume of $100 trillion includes exchanges' internal transfers, arbitrage, movements between wallets of the same owner and bot activity. Visa's methodology strips out these repeats and yields a figure on the order of $10.2 trillion, ten times less. When you encounter the claim that "stablecoins have overtaken Visa in turnover," gross on-chain volume is being compared with the card network's net payment turnover. That is not a valid comparison.

The BIS position: why the regulator of regulators is against

Pablo Hernández de Cos's argument comes down to three points.

Monetary sovereignty. If an economy with a volatile national currency shifts en masse to dollar tokens, the central bank loses control over money circulation. This is digital dollarization without any formal decision by the authorities.

Banks' funding costs. Money moved into stablecoins leaves deposits for the issuer's reserves. The bank loses a cheap liability and replaces it with more expensive market funding, which makes credit in the economy more expensive.

An alternative already exists. The BIS is promoting tokenized deposits: liabilities of a regulated bank on a distributed ledger. On the surface this is almost a stablecoin: round-the-clock settlement, programmability, instant finality. The difference lies in legal nature: behind a deposit stands a bank with a license, supervision and access to central bank liquidity; behind a stablecoin stands a private issuer with a bond portfolio.

The market's answer: the banks decided to do it themselves

The consortium of 21 institutions announced on 2 September is an attempt to resolve this contradiction. A dollar stablecoin is planned for launch in the first half of 2027, followed by tokens in other G7 currencies. The logic is simple: if the settlement layer is moving onto blockchain anyway, better to own it than to hand it to Tether and Circle.

The economic rationale is direct. Stablecoin reserves are placed in short-term Treasury bills, and the interest income on them goes to the issuer. It is this model that made Tether one of the most profitable financial companies in the world with a small headcount. The consortium brings that income back inside the banking perimeter.

An additional signal from the same week: on 6 September, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) conditionally approved a banking charter for Revolut, another step toward the merging of banking infrastructure and digital assets.

What the GENIUS Act has already changed

The US GENIUS Act, signed on 18 July 2025, set requirements for payment stablecoins and their issuers: full backing with liquid assets, disclosure of reserve composition, issuer registration. By current estimates, the key restrictions take effect on 18 January 2027.

The effect is already visible in market structure. The USDT-to-USDC ratio as of 14 September 2026 is 61.8% versus 25.0% of the top-15 stablecoin market cap (calculated from CoinGecko data), and the gap is gradually narrowing in favor of the more transparently regulated issuer: USDC's market cap grew 73% in 2025. For comparison, the Bank of Russia report of 25 June 2026 put USDT and USDC at a combined roughly 89% of the segment when the entire "long tail" of tokens is counted; the discrepancy with our estimate is explained by a different calculation base (the whole market versus the top 15) and different snapshot dates. It is no accident that the bank consortium's token launch in the first half of 2027 coincides with the date the restrictions take effect: it is an entry onto a prepared regulatory playing field.

The Bank of Russia's position: no for domestic settlement, open to discussion for cross-border

On 25 June 2026, the Bank of Russia published a consultation paper, "Stablecoins: Directions of Development in Russia," for public discussion. The deadline for submissions expired on 1 September 2026, meaning the regulator is now processing feedback, and this is the nearest point at which specifics could emerge.

The position in the paper is split into two tracks:

• Domestic settlement. Introducing stablecoins is deemed inexpedient: the regulator sees a risk of fragmenting money circulation and finds no significant advantages over the ruble.
• Cross-border payments. Here the Bank of Russia is ready to discuss special requirements: issuance only by credit institutions, full backing with liquid assets, daily disclosure of reserves.

The logic is the same as the BIS's: a settlement instrument is acceptable where it solves a problem the existing infrastructure does not cover, and unacceptable where it competes with the national currency. How the key rate affects the appeal of ruble instruments is covered in our piece on Bank of Russia and Fed decisions.

What stablecoin overviews don't tell you

Major Russian-language overviews describe individual tokens in detail (issuer, launch year, depeg history, backing) but hardly touch on three things that matter more for settlement than a reliability rating.

1. Who earns the interest on reserves. The stablecoin holder gets nothing; the income stays with the issuer. In the tokenized deposit model, a bank can share the yield with the client. This is a fundamental distinction for a corporate treasury holding significant balances.
2. The possibility of freezing. Centralized issuers are technically able to block an address at the request of law enforcement. For B2B settlement this is not an abstract risk but a parameter to build into the contract and the choice of issuer.
3. The difference between gross and net turnover. Without this adjustment, any estimate of "stablecoins' share of global payments" is overstated by an order of magnitude.

What's next

The nearest milestones: the Bank of Russia's processing of consultation results after 1 September, the entry into force of the GENIUS Act's key restrictions on 18 January 2027, and the launch of the bank consortium's token in the first half of 2027. Forecasts for market size vary widely: J.P. Morgan sees growth to $500–750 billion by 2028, while Citi and Standard Chartered allow for $2–3 trillion by 2030. A fourfold spread shows that the scenario depends not on technology but on how the dispute over control of the settlement layer ends.

The most likely resolution is coexistence: tokenized deposits in domestic payments and stablecoins in cross-border transactions and crypto infrastructure. That is precisely the line drawn in the Bank of Russia's paper.

Sources

• "BIS chief calls stablecoins unfit for mass payments," 7 September 2026 — https://elitetrader.ru/785352-glava-bis-nazval-stejblkoiny-negodnymi-dlja-massovyh-platezhej-21-finansovyj-institut-ot-goldman-sachs-do-ubs-v-tu-zhe-nedelju-sozdal-ih-jemitenta.html
• Bank of Russia, consultation paper "Stablecoins: Directions of Development in Russia" (summary), 25 June 2026 — https://hashtelegraph.com/tsb-rf-rynok-steyblkoinov-vyros-vdvoe-za-dva-goda-no-vo-vnutrennih-raschetah-v-rossii-im-ne-mesto/
• ForkLog, "Top 10 dollar stablecoins," 18 March 2026 — https://forklog.com/exclusive/top-10-dollarovyh-stejblkoinov-ot-potentsialnyh-monopolistov-do-pretendentov-na-vylet
• PLUSworld, "The GENIUS Act and the formation of legal regulation of stablecoins" — https://plusworld.ru/articles/69224/
• "Stablecoin market cap exceeds $320 billion" — https://finance.mail.ru/article/kapitalizatsiya-stejblkoinov-prevyisila-320-mlrd-kakovyi-doli-usdt-i-drugih-69209551/
• TAdviser, summary of stablecoin transaction volumes — https://www.tadviser.ru/index.php/Статья:Стейблкоины
• Token market capitalization: CoinGecko API, data as of 14 September 2026