Walmart and Amazon Consider Issuing Their Own Stablecoins to Conduct Transactions Outside the Traditional Financial System. The Dollar Upgrade May Arrive Faster Than the World Expects.

It may sound trivial when financial service providers collect fees of 0.3 to 2 percent of transaction volumes. But if you’re Walmart or Amazon, these fees add up to billions—a sum they would gladly want to avoid.

And as it appears, Walmart and Amazon have a plan to drastically reduce precisely these fees—they’re turning to stablecoins. That’s what the Wall Street Journal reports.

According to insider sources, both companies are already in advanced discussions regarding how to integrate stablecoins into their payment infrastructure. Expedia and other major corporations, such as airlines, are also discussing the advantages of stablecoins.

However, as the Wall Street Journal explained last Friday, the companies’ decision depends on whether the GENIUS Act will pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

This happened in part yesterday. The bill is designed to regulate stablecoins and so far has been positively received by the industry. Such a clear legal framework would provide companies like Walmart and Amazon, as well as banks, with a clear path to issue their own stablecoins legally and in compliance with regulations.

Yesterday, the Senate reached a strong bipartisan agreement on a number of proposed changes. The final vote is now pending. If it passes, the bill will move to the House of Representatives, where approval is also expected.

Stablecoins, as commented by Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire on recent developments, are close to „their iPhone moment.“ They represent „the most useful form of money ever created.“ We have yet to see the day, he adds, „when developers around the world realize the power and opportunity of programmable dollars on the internet, just as they did with programmable mobile devices. Soon.”

A bit more sober and concrete, but no less optimistic, Sam Broner, a partner at leading investor a16z, put it this way: Stablecoins are “better because they encourage competition. Now anyone can program money—the fixed and marginal costs for fintechs go down. More competition = better prices, better products, more access, more speed, lower costs. But above all, permissionless programmability will upend the market.”

The Wall Street Journal recognizes the opportunities for commerce, which “spends billions of dollars a year on fees.” Stablecoins can save the majority of these fees while also significantly speeding up payments which currently often take days to finalize.

However, the WSJ warns that crypto-based payments by Walmart or Amazon bypassing the traditional payment system would also “send a chill through the nation’s banks and card networks.” The Journal is even more critical in another article published on June 15. There, it warns that stablecoins could destabilize the financial system.

This is because stablecoins “do not draw on balances from the banking system.” When stablecoins are created, issuers receive dollars in their bank account. They can either keep the dollars or swap them for government bonds, with the funds moving to another account. The WSJ now fears this could lead to “large, uninsured deposits that will make many people nervous.”

Aside from such concerns, there appears to be widespread conviction in the US that stablecoins are a powerful technological upgrade for the dollar, strengthening its global hegemony. Europe, on the other hand, is falling behind—slowly, inexorably, and as expected.