Stablecoins could make selected cross-border trade payments faster and easier to access, but fragmented regulation and weak integration with existing financial infrastructure remain major constraints, according to a new World Trade Organization report.
The WTO launched Stablecoins and World Trade: Emerging Role, Opportunities and Challenges in Geneva on September 14. The report examines stablecoins as payment and settlement tools for international commerce, rather than as replacements for banks or the financing, guarantees and risk mitigation supplied by trade-finance products.
That distinction matters for payment companies. A token can shorten the transfer leg of a transaction without solving the surrounding work of extending credit, checking documents, managing foreign exchange, screening counterparties or converting funds into local currency.
Cross-border volume has grown, but trade-finance use remains limited
The report says stablecoin use in cross-border transactions increased about 35-fold between early 2020 and mid-2024, rising from approximately $14 billion to about $406 billion in the second quarter of 2024. It cites a peak of roughly $480 billion in the first quarter of 2024.
Even after that growth, stablecoins were estimated to represent around 3% of global cross-border payment volume in early 2025. The WTO also says their use in trade finance is virtually nonexistent beyond a small number of pilots.
The 3% figure should not be read as a direct measure of stablecoin-funded merchandise trade. It is an estimate against the wider cross-border payments market, which the report puts at approximately $200 trillion a year. The report separately notes that available data often do not distinguish commercial payments from remittances, treasury transfers and other activity.
The full payment route determines cost
The WTO identifies persistent problems in international payments, including high costs, slow settlement, limited access and insufficient transparency. Stablecoins can offer near-continuous availability, rapid onchain settlement, traceability and programmable transaction logic.
But the report warns against assuming that a faster blockchain transfer automatically produces a cheaper end-to-end payment. One study cited by the WTO estimated that sending $500 through stablecoins could cost $5 to $15, compared with $20 to $30 through traditional routes. Another study covering selected corridors found total costs ranging from 0.3% to nearly 9% of the amount transferred, driven mainly by fiat on-ramps and off-ramps rather than the blockchain transaction itself.
For payment providers, that shifts the commercial question from network fees alone to the complete route: access to bank accounts, local liquidity, foreign-exchange spreads, compliance checks and the reliability of payout partners. Stablecoins may remove intermediaries from one part of a flow while leaving expensive or operationally fragile conversion points at either end.
Regulatory fragmentation limits cross-border scale
The report says the global regulatory response remains at an early stage. Drawing on a 2025 Financial Stability Board peer review, it notes that five jurisdictions, or 21% of those covered by the relevant assessment, reported a finalized regulatory framework for stablecoins. Ten were developing or completing frameworks, three had partial measures and 11 remained at an early stage.
The underlying FSB review separately found that 11 jurisdictions, or 39%, had finalized broader crypto-asset frameworks addressing financial-stability risks. That larger figure applies to crypto-assets generally, not specifically to stablecoins. For global stablecoin arrangements, the FSB found slower and more uneven implementation.
Different national approaches can create uncertainty over issuance, redemption, reserve management, licensing, consumer protection and financial-crime controls. A cross-border product may therefore be technically interoperable while remaining legally or operationally unusable in one part of its payment corridor.
The WTO argues that wider adoption will depend on greater alignment around common regulatory principles, plus interoperability with existing payment and trade-document systems. Smart-contract payment instructions, for example, cannot reliably respond to shipment or invoice events unless the payment layer can communicate with legally recognized trade documents and data systems.
What payments firms should take from the report
The immediate opportunity is narrower than replacing correspondent banking or trade finance. Stablecoins may be most useful in corridors where conventional payment access is limited, settlement windows are restrictive or small businesses face high transaction costs. Developing economies could benefit from improved access, but they can also face less mature regulation, shallow conversion markets and greater exposure to currency substitution or capital-flow risks.
Providers evaluating stablecoin trade payments should measure the entire transaction, including conversion costs, settlement finality, redemption rights, exception handling and reconciliation. They should also test whether compliance information and trade documents can move with sufficient accuracy across institutions and jurisdictions.
The WTO report presents stablecoins as a potentially useful payment rail, not a complete trade-finance system. Its central operational message is that adoption will depend less on blockchain speed than on regulation, interoperability and the financial infrastructure surrounding each cross-border route.