For years, building a stablecoin meant standing up your own blockchain infrastructure, establishing banking relationships, and working through a maze of regulations—all before you could consider use cases. Stablecoin-as-a-service (SCaaS) flips that model. Instead of building from scratch, you work with a partner who handles the technical, legal, and administrative load, while you focus on making the coin part of your business strategy.

Below, we’ll explain how SCaaS works, what to look for in a provider, what benefits it can bring, and how businesses are using it.

What’s in this article?

• What is stablecoin-as-a-service, and how does it work?
  
• What features should you look for in a stablecoin service provider?
  
• What are the business benefits of using stablecoin-as-a-service?
  
• How do you launch a branded stablecoin with stablecoin-as-a-service?
  
• What are the top use cases for stablecoin-as-a-service?
  
• How do stablecoin platforms manage compliance and risk?
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What is stablecoin-as-a-service, and how does it work?

A stablecoin is a digital token pegged to a reference asset (often a fiat currency such as the US dollar), so its value stays predictable while still moving on the blockchain. SCaaS gives businesses a way to launch and manage their own stablecoins and accept stablecoin payments without building the tech or compliance stack. With SCaaS, you define the basics, and the provider delivers the infrastructure.

With SCaaS, you can:

• Issue custom stablecoin

• Accept stablecoin payments from customers

• Store stablecoins for your global treasury

• Integrate stablecoins into your apps or payment flows

In the background, the provider handles custody of the reserves, keeps the peg stable, and runs the required compliance checks. You control the brand, customer experience, and business strategy, but you don’t have to manage the blockchain.

This model is gaining momentum. The average supply of stablecoins in circulation rose from 152.7 billion in 2024 to over 260 billion by 2025, and new laws in major markets such as the US are giving issuers clearer regulatory paths. SCaaS has become the shortcut for businesses to quickly get a branded stablecoin into the market and easily accept stablecoin payments.

What features should you look for in a stablecoin service provider?

The right stablecoin-as-a-service partner delivers a secure, compliant, and flexible foundation for your stablecoin use from end to end. Here’s what to look for in a provider:

Regulatory cover

Issuing a stablecoin is a regulated activity in most jurisdictions. Your provider should have the licenses and banking relationships that keep you in compliance from launch. That means money transmitter licensing (or an equivalent), Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) workflows, and reliable transaction monitoring tools. Compliance should be a key feature of the platform.

Reserve security and transparency

A stablecoin’s reliability comes from its reserves.

Look for a provider that:

• Custodies funds with regulated banks or trustees

• Offers clear segregation of customers’ reserves

• Publishes regular reports or audits (ideally monthly, sometimes in real time)

Some firms also manage yield-bearing investments (such as short-term treasuries), so reserves earn interest without risking the peg. The important part is that you can prove, at any time, that every token in circulation is fully backed.

Smart contracts

The blockchain code running your coin is key infrastructure. You want contracts that have been professionally audited, have a track record in production, and if needed support multichain deployment. Ask how administrative controls are secured: do they use multiple signatures, time locks, or hardware security modules? If they’ve launched major tokens before, that’s a sign they know how to manage high-stakes code safely.

Integration process

You’ll need application programming interfaces (APIs) and tools that make it easy to issue, redeem, and track your stablecoin in your systems. If the provider offers white-label web apps or dashboards for minting and burning, onboarding customers, and monitoring flows, that’s even better. The tech should scale with your business and support 24/7 availability.

Speed and customization

One of SCaaS’s biggest advantages is speed to market, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of flexibility. The provider should be able to launch your coin quickly (in weeks, not years) while accommodating your choices of token name, symbol, chain, and compliance features.

On-ramps/off-ramps and liquidity support

A stablecoin gains value when it’s used. The best providers offer built-in fiat on-ramps and off-ramps—so you and your customers can easily swap cash for tokens and back again—and connections to exchanges and digital wallets to seed early liquidity.

SCaaS providers such as Bridge offer those features to simplify the process of accepting and issuing stablecoins for all businesses.

What are the business benefits of using stablecoin-as-a-service?

Accepting payment stablecoins or launching a new stablecoin through SCaaS can create measurable financial and strategic gains.

Here’s what the model can provide:

• Real-time payments across borders: Stablecoins move on blockchain networks that run 24/7, and transactions settle in minutes. This applies whether you’re accepting a local payment or transferring funds halfway across the world.

• Lower costs on every transfer: Stablecoin transactions can cost a fraction of traditional payment methods, especially across borders. Cutting per-transaction fees and foreign exchange (FX) spreads can free up margin and make microtransactions or high-frequency payments more viable.

• Revenue from reserves: The fiat or asset reserves backing your stablecoin can earn interest. It’s a built-in revenue stream from money that would otherwise be idle.

• Stronger customer engagement: A branded stablecoin can act as a universal rewards currency that’s redeemable, spendable, and tied to your business. That stickiness can drive customer retention and brand visibility.

• Global access without banking barriers: Anyone with internet access and a smartphone can hold and send stablecoins. Businesses can reach new markets where banking access is limited or the currency is less stable.

• Programmable money: Because stablecoins are code-based, you can build business logic into transactions, including conditional payouts, automated revenue splits, or escrow that releases funds on predefined triggers.

• Market differentiation: Issuing your own stablecoin signals you’re forward-looking and modernizing your financial infrastructure.

How do you launch a branded stablecoin with stablecoin-as-a-service?

Though a stablecoin-as-a-service provider eliminates much of the technical and regulatory overhead, launching your own branded stablecoin is still complex. You’ll need to make coordinated strategic, legal, and operating decisions that set the coin up for long-term utility.

Before you begin, make sure launching a branded stablecoin is the right move. If the goal is customer engagement or environment control, a branded coin might make sense, but if you need only stable value in transactions, integrating an existing stablecoin could be more efficient.

Here’s how to launch a branded stablecoin:

• Be clear about why you’re issuing a stablecoin: Is your stablecoin for in-app payments, loyalty rewards, cross-border payments, internal treasury operations, or something else? Your use case will determine the best design.

• Evaluate potential SCaaS providers: Review possible providers’ licensing, reserve management processes, blockchain expertise, integration tools, and speed to market. Ask how many stablecoins they’ve launched, in what jurisdictions, and on which chains. Make sure you understand their revenue model, including setup fees, transaction fees, and reserve interest sharing. Bridge Open Issuance, for example, handles liquidity and reserves, letting you focus on branding and customizing your stablecoin.

• Build the compliance and legal framework: Decide whether your business or a regulated partner such as a trust or bank will issue the coin. Look into licensing coverage, and use the provider’s regulatory umbrella if you don’t have the required licenses. Cover KYC and AML: will identity verification happen in your platform, via the provider’s interface, or both? For customers, draft clear redemption rights, fee structures, and risk disclosures in collaboration with the provider. Providers such as Bridge handle regulatory readiness in the US by designing reserves with the GENIUS Act in mind.

• Establish and fund the reserve: Your reserve is the foundation of the coin’s credibility. Set up reserve custody (this is typically held in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts with regulated banks or trustees), and decide between holding 100% in cash or a blend of cash and short-term instruments such as treasury bills. Deposit an amount equal to the first planned issuance—for example, $10 million to issue 10 million tokens. Establish the cadence and method for reserve reports (i.e., monthly, real-time dashboards, or both).

• Create and integrate the tokens: The provider will build and deploy a smart contract with your terms, conditions, and logic using audited, secure code. You’ll then mint your first token batch in line with reserve deposits. Use provider APIs or dashboards to connect mint/burn functionality and transaction monitoring to your systems, whether that’s a wallet in your app, a checkout integration, or internal treasury software. Run in sandbox or limited-release mode to confirm all flows (i.e., issuance, redemption, reporting) work before public launch.

• Launch, monitor, and evolve: Some issuers launch with a closed pilot before scaling; others go public immediately, supported by strong user education. Whichever method you choose, ensure customers can convert back to fiat easily and liquidity is available to meet demand. Regularly reconcile supply with reserves internally, even if your provider automates this process. Monitor adoption, on-chain activity, and user feedback, and expand to new chains or add features over time. Be ready to adjust your processes as laws change and new frameworks for stablecoins go into effect.

What are the top use cases for stablecoin-as-a-service?

Businesses are using stablecoin-as-a-service to solve problems across industries. Here’s where embedding stable, blockchain-native money into business systems is proving most useful:

• Cross-border payments and remittances: Traditional cross-border transfers are slow, costly, and restricted by banking hours. A branded stablecoin lets businesses send payments globally in minutes, with minimal fees, and without depending on correspondent banks. With stablecoins, payment apps can offer faster, cheaper remittances, enterprises can instantly settle with overseas suppliers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can distribute aid to recipients in regions with limited banking access.

• Yield-bearing accounts and fintech savings products: Branded stablecoins are being used to hold customer balances. These stablecoins are backed by reserves that can earn interest through safe assets, such as short-term treasuries, and a portion of that yield is shared with customers. This creates high annual percentage yield (APY) savings features without touching volatile crypto markets.

• Ecommerce and marketplace payments: Retailers, marketplaces, and multisided platforms (e.g., ride-hailing, gaming, streaming) are issuing their own stablecoin for purchases to create a closed-loop payment system. This allows for lower processing costs, faster settlement with vendors, and the ability to layer incentives, such as discounts or rewards, into the currency. Stablecoins can also be used to manage gift card balances or store credit by making them instantly transferable and easy to track. The more integrated the coin, the more it can drive retention and brand visibility.

• B2B settlement and treasury upgrades: Moving funds between subsidiaries or settling B2B invoices is often bogged down by cutoff times and settlement delays. Stablecoins allow real-time intercompany transfers, supplier payments, or trade settlements, even across continents.

• Exchange and trading liquidity: Exchanges or brokerages are issuing proprietary stablecoins as the base asset for trading. Traders can park funds between positions in a stable-value asset, and the platform can reduce reliance on third-party stablecoins and capture reserve yield.

SCaaS makes these use cases accessible to organizations that don’t have blockchain engineering teams or regulatory licenses in-house. The provider delivers the infrastructure and compliance scaffolding, and the business decides where the stablecoin fits into its operating model and customer experience.

How do stablecoin platforms manage compliance and risk?

Running a stablecoin program means you need to protect the currency’s integrity, meet shifting legal requirements, and safeguard against threats. Effective compliance and risk management in stablecoins includes identity verification, transaction oversight, regulatory reporting, reserve transparency, and technical security. A strong SCaaS provider embeds these safeguards into its architecture so it can operate securely and legally at scale:

KYC/AML at onboarding

• Identity verification: Customers who mint or redeem stablecoins must be screened through KYC processes, often as part of the issuer’s app via APIs or white-label interfaces.

• AML checks: Transactions are screened against sanctions lists and monitored for patterns that suggest money laundering, the financing of terrorism, or fraud.

Continuous transaction monitoring

• Blockchain analytics: Providers use specialized tools to flag suspicious digital wallet addresses, unusual transfer patterns, or known links to illicit activity.

• Intervention capabilities: Providers use administrative controls to freeze or restrict tokens in cases of fraud or legal action.

Regulatory reporting and oversight

• Ongoing obligations: Depending on jurisdiction, issuers might need to report suspicious activity, maintain transaction records, or undergo regulatory audits. Providers maintain systems for logging and reporting across regions.

• Regulatory changes: Leading platforms track new rules such as the US GENIUS Act and the EU’s MiCA regulation, then adjust operations so clients remain compliant without disruption.

Reserve protection and audits

• Segregated custody: Reserves are held in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts in regulated banks.

• Transparency: Monthly or real-time reports verify that every token in circulation is fully backed.

• Risk mitigation: Conservative investment policies (e.g., cash, short-term treasuries) minimize market risk. Some providers add insurance for custodial assets.

Smart contracts and operational security

• Code audits: Smart contracts undergo professional security reviews before they’re deployed.

• Key management: Minting and burning privileges are secured with multisignature controls, hardware security modules, or multiparty computation.

• Operational safeguards: Disaster recovery plans, Systems and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) audits, and uptime targets of 99.99% or higher ensure stability even under stress.

Ongoing risk management

• Threat monitoring: Dedicated teams track emerging risks, including new vectors of fraud and changes in blockchain network conditions.

• Adaptive controls: Providers can adjust compliance rules, pause transfers, or introduce new verification steps if circumstances demand.

• Focused guidance: Experienced SCaaS partners help issuers balance reach with risk by weighing decisions such as whether to operate on open public blockchains or permissioned networks.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world. Businesses can accept stablecoin payments globally that settle as fiat in their Stripe balance.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment user interfaces (UIs) and access to 125+ payment methods, including stablecoins and crypto.

• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.

• Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.

• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% uptime and industry-leading reliability.

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.