Skadden Insights 2026 - Flipbook - Page 3
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Bank Stablecoin Readiness
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence
about it. There were 44 unique mentions
Monitoring regulatory developments and market activity
of stablecoin on bank earnings calls in
41%
2025, up from just one a year earlier.
Mark Chorazak, partner and head of
the financial institutions regulatory group
at Skadden, predicts most banks won’t
Not currently preparing for stablecoin adoption
be stablecoin issuers, but there will still
39%
be ways they can integrate the service
and generate revenue. “The exciting part
is the plumbing of stablecoins. Whether
Developing internal policies, risk frameworks or governance
acting as a custodian or providing some
other intermediary digital assets service,
7%
banks can find a variety of areas for fee
revenue.”
According to the Office of the Comp-
Actively piloting or building stablecoin related capabilities
troller of the Currency, custody services
provided by a bank typically include the
0%
safekeeping of customers’ marketable
securities, like Treasuries. And since each
stablecoin is backed one-to-one by the
U.S. dollar, each issuer must have cash
reserves that back the number of stablecoins they have in circulation. That cash
been about the ways it is going to rob
with stablecoin and offer it to their cus-
them of deposits and harm their ability to
tomers. One use case is for international
extend credit. The Treasury Department
payments. This would provide an instant,
issued a report in April 2025 putting that
more seamless and cheaper option for
deposit flight from traditional financial
commercial customers who make a lot of
institutions at as much as $6.6 trillion.
cross-border payments.
That could be exacerbated if Congress
“Make it easy for your clients to do that.
passes the Clarity Act, which would allow
In your online banking system, say, ‘I
stablecoin providers to offer rewards on
want to send money to this person using
transactions.
stablecoin’ and have a button to do that,”
Chris Dean, CEO of Treasury Prime,
says Dean, who estimates that even if
which provides software for embedded
less than 10% of customers select that
banking products, says banks have to
option, it would still be worth offering and
take that reality very seriously. “They
demand is likely to grow.
should really be worried about deposit
flight, which I think would be the death
Planning for the Future
of these banks,” he says. “Because there’s
An April 2026 study published by S&P
a truism: If you don’t have deposits, you
Global Market Intelligence found that just
don’t have a bank.”
7% of primarily smaller financial institu-
Dean strongly believes that stablecoin
tions surveyed are developing internal
isn’t going away, and that banks must
frameworks for stablecoin, and none
adapt to that reality. He says even if they
report actively piloting its capabilities.
don’t have a use case for it today, they
But that same study showed more bank
should still be looking for ways to work
boards and C-suites are at least talking
is held in institutions acting as reserve
banks.
Reed says because of the current market concentration, the opportunities for
banks to provide either of those services
don’t exist now, but he believes they will
in the future. “It’s not much of an expense
to be a reserve bank or a custodian,” he
says. “You probably need to talk to a consultant to make sure you understand the
landscape, but I don’t think you’re going
out and hiring five new [employees] to be
a reserve bank.”
Another future use for stablecoin
is to help banks provide more seamless and efficient treasury management
services, such as faster intraday liquidity
movement and streamlining business-tobusiness payments. The instant and ondemand nature of stablecoin is its biggest
benefit, says Dean. “I can move stablecoin
anytime I want,” he says. “I don’t have to
wait for the bank to be open and the other
bank to be open.”
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