Fragmented Rules, Not Technology, Limit Stablecoin Adoption in World Trade, WTO Director Says

Fragmented regulatory regimes are holding back stablecoin adoption in international trade, according to a senior World Trade Organization official, who argued that technology is no longer the bottleneck — regulation is.

“The constraint is not technology. It is actually regulation and the lack of development of regulatory frameworks,” said Juan Marchetti, director of the trade in services and investment division at the WTO, during a speech in Geneva on Monday at the launch of the organization’s study on stablecoins in world trade.

Only 39 percent of jurisdictions have final rules

Marchetti cited an October 2025 report from the Financial Stability Board which found that only 39 percent of surveyed jurisdictions — 11 out of 28 — have finalized their stablecoin regulatory frameworks. That patchwork, he said, is why stablecoins currently account for only around 3 percent of total international payments despite their potential to ease long-standing friction in trade finance.

The WTO’s study identified five friction points that stablecoin adoption could improve: high costs, low speed, limited access, insufficient transparency, and foreign exchange limitations. The report also found that stablecoin payments in cross-border flows grew 35-fold between 2020 and mid-2024, suggesting that demand exists even before the regulatory picture settles.

Developing economies face the sharpest trade-off

The WTO director highlighted an uncomfortable asymmetry at the heart of the report. Developing economies stand to benefit most from stablecoin adoption because the technology can meaningfully reduce remittance fees, which often consume a disproportionate share of the money migrant workers send home. Yet those same countries tend to have the least developed regulatory regimes to facilitate adoption.

The result is a gap between where stablecoins could do the most good and where the rules allow them to operate. Multinational payment corridors with clear legal frameworks are moving faster, while smaller economies that rely heavily on remittances are left waiting for regulatory clarity that may be years away.

Payment giants are already moving

Even without comprehensive global rules, some of the largest payment processors are exploring stablecoins to improve cross-border payments. In August, Mastercard partnered with stablecoin orchestration network Borderless to pilot bringing more trust into cross-border stablecoin transfers through the payment giant’s Crypto Credential framework.

In June, Mastercard announced plans to expand its settlement capabilities to include intraday, weekend and holiday card settlement, including settlement through stablecoins — a shift that would extend settlement beyond traditional banking windows for the first time at scale.

Western Union has moved in parallel. In August, the remittance giant said it partnered with stablecoin infrastructure provider Rain to launch a digital wallet and Visa-branded card enabling users to hold and spend a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin in 37 markets, with plans to expand to more than 60 markets by the end of the year.

Why trade finance is watching

Trade finance has long been burdened by exactly the frictions the WTO report enumerates. Cross-border payments between trading partners can take days, documentation costs pile up, smaller firms in emerging markets struggle to access bank credit lines, and currency conversion adds expense at every hop. Stablecoins, in theory, compress several of those steps into a single near-instant transfer.

The 3 percent adoption figure suggests the market agrees in principle but is constrained in practice. Banks and corporates remain cautious about holding or transacting in assets whose legal status differs from one jurisdiction to the next, and compliance teams must navigate conflicting requirements on licensing, reserve disclosures, and cross-border transfer limits.

Marchetti’s remarks echo a growing consensus among international bodies that the next phase of stablecoin growth depends on regulatory harmonization rather than further technical innovation. The Financial Stability Board’s findings point in the same direction: frameworks such as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regime have set precedents, but most jurisdictions are still drafting, consulting, or delaying.

What comes next

For the WTO, the study marks an evolution in how trade institutions view digital assets — from curiosity to potential infrastructure for world trade. The organization’s five friction points provide a framework that regulators and payment companies alike can use to measure whether stablecoins are actually delivering on their promise.

The immediate takeaway from Geneva is that the ball is in regulators’ court. The technology to move value across borders in minutes exists today, and payment processors from Mastercard to Western Union are deploying it in growing numbers of markets. Whether stablecoins move beyond 3 percent of international payments will depend less on what blockchains can do and more on whether governments can agree on what the rules should be — and whether the developing economies with the most to gain will be included in that process rather than left behind by it.