Money changes when it has to. Barter was too slow. Coins were too heavy. Paper was too fragile for a digital world. Credit systems and electronic banking emerged not because they were novel but because older systems couldn’t keep up with growing complexity.
Each of these transitions started small. They often began by solving localized or consumer-focused issues. Once proven, they were adopted by businesses and institutions to solve bigger, more systemic problems. Money has always scaled from simplicity to sophistication by earning trust and proving utility.
One of the clearest examples of this dynamic played out in 1958 when the Bank of Italy, later renamed Bank of America, launched an experiment in Fresno, California by mailing 60,000 unsolicited credit cards to residents with the goal to help working families finance appliances. What started as local credit cards eventually grew into a radically new form of financial infrastructure that empowered merchants, accelerated commerce, and became the backbone for global credit systems— and now it’s essential to enterprise operations.
This pattern repeats: financial tools that solve narrow problems—like a refrigerator purchase—can scale to solve global business challenges. Today’s enterprises operate across borders, manage billions in cash flow, and demand instant, data-rich financial systems. Stablecoins represent the next evolution in that lineage.
In 1958, the Bank of Italy ran an experiment that came to be known as “The Fresno Drop.” They mailed 60,000 unsolicited credit cards to local residents, aiming to make it easier for families to finance big-ticket purchases like refrigerators. At the time, consumer credit was fragmented, and mass adoption of plastic payments was untested, but the results changed the course of modern finance.
The Drop kicked off a system-wide shift: banks needed new networks to process payments, merchants needed ways to accept and verify cards, and the financial ecosystem needed standardized rules for credit issuance and settlement. This evolution set the foundational infrastructure that modern enterprises still rely on to move money, extend credit, and manage capital at scale. To support this new wave of credit issuance, banks and networks had to invent entirely new processes, building new pockets and opportunities for business, and regulators had to evolve. We learned how to authorize transactions in real time, how to settle balances across different institutions, how to enforce rules for fraud and liability, and how to reconcile funds across vendors, processors, and intermediaries. These innovations became the scaffolding for enterprise-grade systems.
Today, that scaffolding supports more than point-of-sale use cases. It enables businesses to issue credit at scale, structure receivables around predictable cash flows, and extend working capital to customers, partners, vendors, and suppliers. It’s also the foundation for the interoperable networks that move money across geographies and between entities without delay. Over time, it has reshaped liquidity management—transforming it from passive storage into an active strategy. Businesses now handle uneven cash flows more effectively, invest ahead of revenue, and maintain greater flexibility in how they allocate capital.
What began as a way to help working families buy appliances became an operating layer for global business. But the Fresno Drop also reveals a pattern: when financial tools are built to solve real-world friction, and when the infrastructure around them matures, they don’t stay small. They become indispensable.
Today’s enterprises operate across jurisdictions with vastly different financial realities. In the U.S., legacy systems like SWIFT, ACH, and batch processing still define how money moves. Cross-border payments often take days to settle, and even domestic flows can be subject to cutoff times, compliance holds, and unpredictable fees.
Elsewhere—across Europe, Asia, and Latin America—payment systems have evolved differently, shaped in part by the geography and regulatory complexity of those regions. For example, neighboring countries in Europe operate under a shared regulatory framework—but with enough variation in implementation to require coordination across jurisdictions. That fragmentation created pressure to build interoperable systems that could support seamless trade across borders. Collaboration was the only way to productively function as a regional economy. That’s why businesses in these markets are used to instant, low-cost local settlement—banks and regulations had to meet the friction they were facing every day. But challenges persist: limited interoperability beyond EU borders, inconsistent compliance regimes, and the need to support dollar-denominated operations from markets that don’t natively support them.
Regardless of geography or regulatory regime, enterprises are asking the same set of questions: how do we move faster? Reduce cost? Simplify compliance? Regain control?
Stablecoins augment existing payment rails: bridging jurisdictions, simplifying internal flows, and turning traditional money movement into programmable, real-time infrastructure. They introduce new ways to move, manage, and control money. Now, enterprises using currency-backed stablecoins can tailor how value flows through their systems to:
These attributes are increasingly relevant for treasury, operations, and payments teams because they solve real, current operational friction—And they’re catching the attention of CFOs, platform COOs, and treasury leads who are rethinking how their organizations manage value across jurisdictions and entities. This recognition is giving stablecoins the same storyline as credit cards. They didn’t begin as enterprise solutions—but once the infrastructure matured, the business use cases became clear.
And while the crypto world often frames the conversation as “fiat vs. blockchain,” that’s not how enterprises think. They’re evaluating which version of the dollar improves how their business runs, not deciding between traditional money and crypto. Enterprises who enter the ring early will define the rails they’re using for the next several years. Those who wait will end up operating on rails their competitors designed
It’s worth noting the terminology gap. Enterprises don’t think in terms of "fiat." They think in cash, dollars, euros, and yen, etc. In this context, fiat refers to traditional, government-issued money that isn’t blockchain-native.
Capital efficiency has always been a cornerstone of enterprise finance. Historically, businesses have employed tools like money market sweeps, centralized treasury centers, and internal netting systems to maximize the utility of their capital. These methods aimed to minimize idle balances, accelerate settlements, and capture returns on short-term holdings. However, they often introduced complexity, delays, and operational overhead.
Branded stablecoins built on transparent, regulated reserves—such as those offered through trust structures like NYDFS—can enable enterprises to unlock liquidity without compromising yield opportunities. By converting dollars into stablecoins, businesses can have their funds invested in highly liquid, yield-generating assets like short-term U.S. Treasuries. Simultaneously, the digital dollars issued remain fully spendable and instantly accessible. This dual functionality—earning yield while maintaining liquidity—is akin to traditional corporate sweep accounts but with enhanced programmability and transparency.
This evolution enhances existing financial tools, adding programmability and precision to capital that would otherwise sit idle. Those funds become more functional, and therefore more valuable—while aligning financial operations more closely with the dynamic needs of modern enterprises.
The evolution of money has never been about what’s trendy, but what works to solve real problems. Coins replaced barter. Credit replaced cash. Infrastructure evolved—not all at once, but in response to the growing needs of business, society, and scale.
Stablecoins are following that arc. They emerged to fill consumer crypto gaps, and now they’ve matured into tools that reflect how modern enterprise finance functions: globally, programmatically, across entities and time zones. They’re the next logical step.
And like every leap forward in financial infrastructure, they won’t remake the system overnight. They’ll start where the friction is and prove themselves in the margins, eventually becoming part of the foundation.
Just like every piece of monetary infrastructure that came before it.