Stablecoin Payment Statistics 2026: Volume and B2B Share

Stablecoin payments are $482 billion for January to September 2026, up 45%, according to Allium's report of October 15, 2026. That is one-fifth of the $2.4 trillion of end-user stablecoin activity and under 1% of the $97.9 trillion in raw transfers. An earlier Allium report, covering January to August, says businesses receive 58% to 64% of payments, and Allium with FXC Intelligence puts cross-border stablecoin growth at 64% for 2025.

How big are stablecoin payments in 2026?

Allium's October 15, 2026 report is the latest count we could read. It covers January to September, with 1.04 billion payments, up 71%, that averaged $462, down from $544. Growth came from more, smaller payments. September set a monthly high of $72 billion, and third-quarter payment value ran 51% above the third quarter of 2025.

Stablecoin payments in 2026 with the source and period of each figure.

Supply barely moved while payments grew: Allium reports that Tether, Circle and Ethena shrank this year while other issuers added a net $6.9 billion. Agent payments doubled to 68.3 million in the third quarter but were worth only $3.7 million.

Transfers are not payments

Allium counts $97.9 trillion of stablecoin transfers from January to September 2026. After it removes exchange-internal flows, protocol activity and infrastructure transfers, plus automated and mint-and-burn movements, 2.5% remains: $2.4 trillion of end-user activity. Payments are one-fifth of that.

The filter moves the answer. One month earlier, Allium's September 15, 2026 report counted $85 trillion of raw transfers from January to August, $4.0 trillion of adjusted volume, and payments as a range of $401 billion to $527 billion, with payments at up to 13% of adjusted volume. The October report restates adjusted volume at $2.4 trillion and payments at a single $482 billion. A gap that size in one month looks like a change of method, not of the economy; that is our inference, because the public summaries do not reconcile the two.

I would not let a transfer-volume number onto a payments slide, and I would ask any provider that quotes one which filter produced it. A business that reads $97.9 trillion as demand for payments will size a corridor, a team or a price off the wrong base. I would size a corridor from the bank leg instead: what the payer sends in, what the beneficiary receives, and how long it took.

B2B is the largest lane

Allium's September data, covering January to August 2026 (the October summary does not repeat the split), says businesses receive 58% to 64% of stablecoin payments, and B2B settlement is the largest single lane.

Stablecoin payment volume by use, January to August 2026.

Allium reports the lane and the categories separately, so do not add them. Our note on how B2B fintechs approach stablecoin payments covers the buyer side.

Most payment volume is domestic, and cross-border grew 64% in 2025

Allium found that 61% of geographically attributed payment volume from January to August 2026 was domestic. B2B transfers had the highest cross-border share, at 43%. The 61% covers only volume that could be tied to a place.

Allium and FXC Intelligence, on July 30, 2026, put stablecoins at $135 billion of the $44.3 trillion retail (non-wholesale) cross-border payments market in 2025, or 0.31%, up from $82 billion and 0.2% in 2024. Stablecoin cross-border volume grew 64% against 9% for fiat.

Stablecoin penetration and growth in retail cross-border payments by segment, 2025.

B2B is 79% of fiat cross-border flow but 49% of stablecoin cross-border flow. Stablecoins carry 0.19% of B2B cross-border value against 0.95% of consumer-to-consumer value, so business money still moves mostly on banks. Where each rail wins is laid out in stablecoins vs SWIFT for B2B payments, and the unit that matters for pricing a route is the stablecoin corridor.

On Lumx, a domestic and a cross-border payout use the same call, and the rail sets the timing. Per the docs read on November 1, 2026, Pix (Brazil's instant payment system, run by the Central Bank) and SPEI (Mexico's interbank transfer system, run by Banxico) run 24 hours a day with no cut-off, FEDWIRE settles the same business day with a 3:00 PM ET cut-off, and SWIFT in USD takes 1 to 5 business days.

Supply, issuers and chains behind the payments

Two issuers dominate the supply of stablecoins (what a stablecoin is). Allium put Tether and Circle at 85% of supply in August 2026, and DefiLlama's count on November 1, 2026 shows USDT at $179.7 billion and USDC at $71.7 billion of $299.1 billion in dollar-pegged stablecoins, or about 60% and 24%. Artemis reads $306.7 billion on the same day, so two live trackers sit $7.6 billion apart on different token sets.

For payments, Allium reports that Tron settled two-thirds of payment value and USDT 84% of it from January to September 2026. Which coin suits a given payment is argued in USDC vs USDT for payments.

On Lumx, wallets hold USDC and USDT. The Coverage page lists conversion to BRL, USD, EUR, MXN and GBP for USDC on Ethereum, Polygon and Base and for USDT on Ethereum, Polygon and Tron, and a wallet keeps its balance between operations.

Regional data on Brazil, Mexico and Southeast Asia

Two Chainalysis reports, both for the 12 months to June 30, 2026, show what the global figures hide.

In Latin America (report of September 23, 2026), stablecoins reached 32.1% of cross-border crypto value, 22.1% of domestic peer-to-peer activity and 17.6% of personal wallet balances by June. Mexico's quarterly stablecoin service inflows were $8.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, and Colombia's were $3.5 billion. Brazil's stablecoin economy grew 495%, against 89.4% for the rest of the region. Chainalysis quotes a Bitso stablecoin executive saying that in Brazil stablecoins have been more of a B2B tool, and notes that Pix, used by 91% of Brazilians, makes them less prominent for everyday consumer payments. Our stablecoin vs traditional payments goes into the rails.

In Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania (report of September 30, 2026), cross-border stablecoin activity exceeded domestic activity in every market analysed, at a regional ratio of 3.2 to 1. Thailand has $10.4 billion of domestic stablecoin activity and Vietnam $6.9 billion, and their cross-border markets are 50% to 100% larger or more. An exchange executive quoted in the report estimates that 5% to 10% of inbound remittances to the Philippines now settle in stablecoins, an estimate and not a measurement.

These regional cuts use a different method from Allium's, so they cannot be set against its 61% domestic share. Allium's September report ranks receivers through August 2026: Thailand at $10.8 billion, Turkey $7.8 billion, Indonesia $6.3 billion and Mexico $6.1 billion.

On Lumx, Brazil and Mexico are corridors with real-time rails at the end: BRL payouts go by Pix and MXN payouts by SPEI. COP accounts collect by Bre-B (Colombia's instant payment system) or PSE (Colombia's online bank-transfer network) and pay out by Bre-B or ACH Colombia. For beneficiaries in Asia-Pacific, Lumx pays USD by SWIFT or sends stablecoin to an external wallet address with a transfer. The Lumx coverage page lists rails and currencies.

Why do the sources disagree?

Because each counts a different thing over a different period. The first three sources below are Allium's own work or built on its data, so three citations are not three measurements.

Where each figure in this post comes from, what it counts and why it differs from the others.

Name the source and period next to every number, and keep a range as a range. Do not set a January to August figure against a full-year one. Check the denominator: 0.31% is a share of retail cross-border value, not of all payments.

When these statistics are the wrong basis for a decision

They describe activity on the blockchain, the fast part of a payment. Treat them as context, not as a price or a forecast, in three cases:

• Sizing or pricing a corridor. Nothing here shows the bank deposit before the stablecoin leg or the local payout after it, where a recipient's timing and cost are set, and no figure above is a fee or a settlement time. Cross-border payment costs in 2026 has fees.

• Planning around one number. Whether a flow is payment, trading or storage is inferred from wallet behaviour, and the Allium filter changed within a month.

• Comparing countries. Chainalysis and Allium use different methods, so a regional number from one cannot be read against the other.

What these numbers look like on a Lumx payout

A statistic counts the stablecoin leg, and a payout has three: money in, the stablecoin movement and money out. Lumx is stablecoin payments infrastructure for businesses that move money between Latin America and the rest of the world: one API to collect, hold, convert, and pay out in BRL, MXN, COP, USD, EUR, and GBP or in USDC and USDT, over local rails such as PIX, SPEI, PSE, Bre-B, ACH, FEDWIRE, SEPA, and Faster Payments, with SWIFT and on-behalf-of payments and collections (POBO and COBO) in USD, EUR, and GBP, plus named virtual accounts, custodial wallets, and KYB/KYC built in.

In the docs read on November 1, 2026, each customer gets a wallet on each supported network. An off-ramp debits that wallet, converts the stablecoin to local currency and sends it to a destination registered under the customer. The docs treat the off-ramp as complete once funds leave Lumx's banking partner, and the receiving bank can still hold them for review, so a count of chain transfers cannot tell you when a beneficiary can spend. An offramp.success webhook marks the end of the Lumx leg.

The price is a quote, not a statistic. Lumx offers a floating rate for estimates and a locked rate for a fixed quote, held for 30 seconds, one minute or five minutes. The 30-second lock has no fee and the longer ones include one for volatility. The quote returns an exchangeRateId that the transaction passes in, so the customer sees the final amount before money moves. See global payments.

The label that chain statistics lack is on every record. Each on-ramp and off-ramp carries a purpose field, and each customer, individual or business, completes identity verification, KYC (know your customer) or KYB (know your business), before it can transact. Each payout debits that customer's wallet to a destination registered under it. So the record says what the payment was for when it is made.

Methodology and sources

We read each source below on November 1, 2026 and kept every range as a range.

• Allium, State of Stablecoins and Payments, Q3 2026, published October 15, 2026: payments, volume, supply, chains, plus agents and cards. We read the public summary.

• Allium, State of Stablecoins and Payments, September 2026, published September 15, 2026: payment ranges, B2B lane, use split and domestic share. We read the public summary.

• Allium and FXC Intelligence, Stablecoins are 0.31% of cross-border payments, published July 30, 2026: retail cross-border share and segments. We read the public summary.

• Chainalysis, Latin America adoption report, September 23, 2026, and Chainalysis, Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania, September 30, 2026.

• Artemis stablecoin supply and the DefiLlama stablecoin data feed, live counts read on November 1, 2026. The DefiLlama figure sums its dollar-pegged tokens, because its web page sits behind a bot wall.

• Lumx docs: Coverage, Transactions, Wallets, Exchange rates and cut-off times.

Not quoted: the BCG white paper of January 2026 on stablecoin payments, because its PDF refused our request, and the Circle and Tether transparency pages and the Visa Onchain Analytics dashboard, because their figures load by script. Our earlier news item on a single month of stablecoin transfers is a dated snapshot, and none of its numbers are repeated here. The 60% and 24% shares for USDT and USDC are our arithmetic on the cited figures.

Verified on November 1, 2026. Operational context, not legal, tax, or investment advice.

Cover photo: Ed 259 on Unsplash.