Opinion by: Innokenty Isers, Founder and CEO of Paybis
The loudest signal in months was not a price chart — it was a checkout button.
PayPal turned on crypto at the point of sale for US merchants, promising near-instant settlement and international fees up to 90% lower than the status quo.
That kind of delta doesn’t just reduce costs, it rewrites the economics of cross-border commerce.
It also suggests what the next phase of crypto adoption will look like: embedded in everyday payments and widely accessible, rather than speculative, flashy and gated to traders.
Regulation is quietly choosing payments
Developers have spent years waiting for a compliance path they could follow, and it arrived first for payments. In Europe, MiCA created a single rulebook for stablecoin issuance and e-money tokens, with key provisions taking effect in 2024–2025.
Singapore’s framework outlines redemption, reserve, and disclosure rules for single-currency stablecoins.
Hong Kong has switched on licensing for issuers, moving from pilot programs to full regulation.
While trading remains unclear in many jurisdictions, payments have a regulatory pathway, with stablecoins increasingly treated as financial infrastructure rather than speculative instruments.
Adoption arrives invisibly
The first time tens of millions of people “use crypto” at scale, they will probably not even notice. PayPal’s crypto checkout tool supports more than 100 tokens and wallets, settling to stablecoins or fiat behind the scenes. This is precisely the kind of simplicity mainstream users expect.
Corporate signals are lining up, too. JD.com says it will seek stablecoin licenses in major markets to reduce cross-border settlement times to seconds.
This is the shape of mass adoption. It’s not teaching everyone seed phrases, but letting payments work faster and cheaper inside the tools people already trust.
Others will object that stablecoins still carry systemic and policy risks, a view Europe’s ECB has aired forcefully. Those critiques are healthy because they sharpen the mandate for oversight and resilience as payment scales.
The trader-first design is blocking the on-ramp
Many crypto apps were designed primarily for speculation — depth charts, reward pop-ups and complex staking flows. That type of UX excludes the everyday users that payment solutions are meant to serve.
When every screen screams “buy the dip,” a parent sending money to family or a freelancer invoicing abroad will click away. To reach them, platforms must look less like exchanges and more like utilities — compliant, predictable and available when needed.
That utility standard is well-defined. It means high uptime under heavy demand, clean fiat on/off-ramps, and KYC/AML that feels like a modern bank account opening, not a weeklong scavenger hunt. It also empowers back offices with blockchain benefits like shared, tamper-evident records that reduce duplicate audits and speed reconciliations. Mobile-first is the default (most payments originate on a phone), and customer support must speak each market’s language and law.
The takeaway is clear: Payments can be effectively regulated and scaled sooner than other crypto verticals.
The market consequence: utility and yield
Payments change who benefits from crypto, shifting benefits from traders to businesses and households. A remittance that used to cost 5%–10% now costs roughly 0.99% in PayPal’s program, which is a meaningful transfer of value to small businesses and families. When costs fall significantly, transaction volume follows, and the winners will be companies that look and behave like regulated financial utilities.
Analysts underscore the point: Stablecoins intersect with traditional finance and crypto, and their regulatory momentum is unmatched across jurisdictions. If payments are the most transparent use case today, stablecoins are the rails that power them.
Risks remain. Policy makers worry about capital flows, consumer protection and illicit finance — and they’re right to, especially as mainland China experiments via Hong Kong’s cautious regime. Market builders should welcome stringent audits, fast redemption, reserve quality rules and real-time monitoring.
These are not obstacles but prerequisites for global reach. The reality is that better compliance tech (the very thing some skeptics fear) is what will finally unlock crypto’s mainstream utility.
Opinion by: Innokenty Isers, Founder and CEO of Paybis.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
