- Key Insight: Digital-asset cores let community banks offer stablecoins without building their own tech.
- Expert Quote: Banks can "weave stablecoins into the familiar banking experience," says Accenture's Duane Block.
- Forward Look: Banks can now partner with custodians and adapt compliance for stablecoin integration.
- Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review.
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Stablecore, a digital asset core provider, has raised $20 million in funding from firms such as
Bank of Utah, one of Stablecore's bank investors, anticipates that blockchain and digital assets will be "one of the most transformative opportunities in modern finance," according to president Branden Hansen.
"While much of the innovation so far has been outside of traditional finance, the real power of these technologies will be felt in communities when local banks bring them into everyday financial services," Hansen said. "Stablecore makes this vision possible, giving our customers faster, safer and more innovative ways to move money and build wealth, while preserving trust and personal connections."
Duane Block, digital assets lead at consulting firm Accenture, told American Banker that banks and credit unions can "weave stablecoins into the familiar banking experience, bringing credibility and trust to digital dollars."
"Banks of all sizes are exploring solutions and partners to launch branded digital asset products, allowing them to get to market faster, while also benefiting from the service provider's lessons learned along blockchain's steep learning curve," Block said.
The fintech, founded at the beginning of this year, serves as a "digital asset core" for community and regional banks and credit unions. Its application programming interface integrates with existing bank cores, enabling financial institutions to offer digital asset products to their customers without needing to change their own technology infrastructure.
The fintech is not a digital asset custodian, but works with custodians such as
"We're enabling banks to choose those providers and work with one or multiple of them in a very flexible way so they don't have to necessarily be locked into any given platform," Stablecore CEO Alex Treece told American Banker. "Something that is very attractive to banks is having that flexibility, because this space is evolving very quickly and will continue to in the next one to five years. Banks need to be in a position where they can be flexible and support different types of custody and exchange offerings, and we bring that type of flexibility to them."
As the post-GENIUS Act stablecoin market takes shape, there are two camps of banks developing stablecoin strategies, BankTech Ventures managing director Carey Ransom told American Banker.
"One is a smaller number of banks who were previously, in 2020 or 2021, looking to bank crypto in some way," he said. "They've kind of dusted it back off now, and often have either a customer segment or a product idea in mind."
The second group are banks just beginning to start creating plans for digital assets.
"The ones that are starting to plan know this is something they need to pay very serious attention to, but are not entirely sure what this is going to look like," Ransom said. "As a bank, I'm probably going to want to be able to accept and bring in a stablecoin that I can trust from a customer that I can trust, and convert that into a deposit and potentially tokenize that, because that's where people are going to want to continue to use banks. But banks want to have flexibility and a partner that's not forcing them to make a clear bet. That's why Stablecore is so compelling to me. They're going to put banks in the right places when the time comes for those various key enablements to be turned on."
Treece said the new funding will be used to hire more staff, expand marketing and develop products for credit unions, community banks and regional banks.
"We see our market as super-regionals down to community banks," Treece said. "That's obviously a very wide bucket. A lot of the bigger banks are building things directly themselves, and we don't want community banks and mid-sized banks to be left behind in this transition. That's a very important part of our mission: community banks should have these capabilities, just like the bigger banks do."
Stephen Aschettino, a lawyer who leads the payments team at law firm Steptoe's Financial Innovation & Regulation practice, told American Banker that stablecoins are "a significant opportunity" for community banks and credit unions to remain competitive in the financial services industry.
"Instead of viewing them as a threat to traditional deposits, these institutions should see stablecoins as a tool to enhance their services," he said. "By offering faster, cheaper, and 24/7 payment rails, they can directly compete with larger banks and fintechs, attracting new customers and retaining existing ones who want to engage with digital assets. This can create a new source of fee income and help them solidify their role as essential players in their local economies."
Aschettino explained that the passage of the GENIUS Act, as well as other recent state and federal legislative developments, provides much-needed clarity to banks and fintechs on how to approach stablecoins.
"However, community institutions must still be prepared to address critical concerns around reserve requirements, consumer protection, and operational resilience" he said. "This means establishing robust systems for managing reserves and ensuring all activities comply with the requirements set forth by their regulators."
Aschettino also noted that banks have a responsibility to understand, and educate their consumers about, how digital holdings differ from traditional assets in regard to protections.
"Stablecoins are not covered by federal deposit insurance, so clear communication with customers about this distinction is essential," he said.
