- Citi institutional clients can accept stablecoins at checkout and receive fiat.
- Coinbase Virtual Accounts now run on Citi’s banking infrastructure.
- Citi is building several forms of blockchain money in parallel.
- Coinbase is using bank partnerships to grow revenue that does not depend on trading.
Citi’s institutional clients can now let customers pay them in stablecoins without ever holding a token. Under an expanded partnership announced on September 28, Coinbase handles the stablecoin side of checkout payments made through Spring by Citi and converts the funds automatically, while Citi settles dollars to the merchant as bank of record. In the other direction, Coinbase has chosen Citi’s Virtual Account Wallet to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts, which turn incoming fiat into stablecoins for business users. Both services launch first in the United States.
A customer pays in stablecoins, and the merchant gets dollars from Citi
The merchant product is designed around everything the business never has to touch. A customer pays in stablecoins, Coinbase Payments receives and converts the funds, and Citi credits ordinary dollars to the merchant’s account. The company needs no wallet, no custody arrangement and no treasury policy for digital assets. Coinbase says the setup opens these merchants to more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide.
Coinbase Virtual Accounts run the same flow in reverse. Businesses building on Coinbase get accounts that accept, hold and send funds much like a bank account, and incoming fiat can convert to stablecoins on arrival. Citi supplies the regulated banking layer underneath through its Banking-as-a-Service unit.
Neither company is stepping outside its own field. Citi keeps the licenses and the settlement, and Coinbase keeps the blockchain plumbing.
Eleven months from an on-ramp agreement to a Citi checkout product
The two firms first announced a collaboration on October 27, 2025. That agreement covered fiat pay-ins and payouts, on- and off-ramps for Coinbase clients and round-the-clock connectivity between bank money and digital assets. Stablecoin payouts were listed as something to explore later. Eleven months on, stablecoin acceptance is a product Citi can sell to its corporate clients.
Citi’s scale is what gives the arrangement weight. The bank says it moves about $6 trillion a day and banks 90% of the largest e-commerce companies, along with 15 of the world’s 20 biggest fintechs.
Citi is backing tokenized deposits, USDC and a bank stablecoin at the same time
At its 2026 Investor Day, Citi named acting as a bridge between fiat, stablecoins and tokens as one of its digital-asset priorities. The Coinbase deal covers third-party stablecoins such as USDC. Citi Token Services covers tokenized deposits, which are claims on Citi itself recorded on a blockchain, and in early September Citi put the platform’s volume at around $1 billion in transactions. On September 28, Citi said Token Services is now live in Japan and the UAE, bringing it to seven markets.
The third format could be a stablecoin issued by banks themselves. On September 1, 21 institutions, Citi among them, announced plans to form a company that could issue a dollar stablecoin as early as 2027. Citi has also run live transactions on Swift’s blockchain ledger and plans to begin custody of native digital assets, starting with Bitcoin, later this year.
Citi’s own research explains the hedge. Its Stablecoins 2030 report puts issuance at $1.9 trillion by the end of the decade in a base case, yet the same analysts expect bank tokens to carry more transaction volume than stablecoins by 2030. A bank that expects both to grow has every reason to own the connection between them.
Coinbase is wiring itself into Citi, JPMorgan and 3,000 smaller banks
Stablecoins already make Coinbase real money. The company reported about $292.1 million in stablecoin revenue for the second quarter, and average USDC held across its products hit a record $20 billion, more than 30% of circulating supply. Subscription and services revenue made up 48% of net revenue in the quarter.
Citi is one of several distribution deals. Coinbase signed payments firm PPRO in May to reach its merchants, and on September 16 it partnered with Stablecore, whose software can reach more than 3,000 U.S. banks and credit unions. Six days earlier, it announced a similar deal with Moov aimed at more than 1,000 community banks. JPMorgan’s JPM Coin deposit token already runs on Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 network. Each link routes payment volume through Coinbase infrastructure, whatever crypto prices do.
Coinbase pays about 3.75% on balances, the issue that split banks and crypto over CLARITY
According to the Wall Street Journal, stablecoins held on the Coinbase side of the arrangement earn a reward of about 3.75% a year. Stablecoin rewards were one of the issues banks and crypto firms clashed over as the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate. The Journal reported that Citi Services head Shahmir Khaliq said the setback has not stopped the bank’s digital-asset work, which it runs under its existing licenses.
Bitcoin custody and a 2027 bank stablecoin are Citi’s next tests
The U.S. launch covers two products, and the companies say more capabilities will follow over the coming months. Total stablecoin supply stood near $305 billion on September 25, with USDC at roughly $75 billion, a small base next to Citi’s own 2030 projections. The next concrete checkpoints are Citi’s Bitcoin custody launch later this year and the bank consortium’s plans for a possible 2027 stablecoin. Another is whether Congress returns to stablecoin rewards, which, according to the Journal, Coinbase is already paying on these balances.