America’s new stablecoin law could lead to billions of dollars in annual savings for enterprise retailers that issue their own digital money.
When President Trump signed the bipartisan Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law in July 2025, America became the first nation to provide a regulatory framework for the issuance and oversight of secure, fiat-backed digital currencies.
“This bill will cement U.S. dollar dominance, protect customers, increase demand for U.S. treasuries, and ensure that innovation in the digital asset space is in the hands of the United States of America, not our adversaries,” said Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty (R), who was the bill’s lead sponsor, in an official statement.
The GENIUS Act requires the participating banks or businesses releasing stablecoins to back each dollar’s worth of cryptocurrency with one dollar in cash or U.S. Treasury bonds — essentially, secure and liquid assets.
The U.S. GENIUS Act pegs the value of stablecoins to the U.S. dollar.
Retail Stablecoin
One possible use for the stablecoins that the GENIUS Act governs would be retailer-issued currency.
Walmart and Amazon may already be considering it to slash payment processing fees.
As every merchant knows, payment cards typically cost 1% to 3% in transaction fees. Those fees add up quickly for enterprise retailers.
Store-issued stablecoins could help these retail behemoths bypass traditional payment networks and cut transaction fees to nearly zero.
Thus, Walmart and Amazon, among other retailers, could drop billions to the bottom line each year. Collectively, American merchants pay something like $160 billion a year for payment card transactions.
Stablecoin Benefits
Beyond the immediate savings on transaction fees, issuing a stablecoin offers compelling benefits to an enterprise retailer, such as better cash flow from instant settlements, lower fraud risk, and improved customer loyalty from a branded digital money.
Yet some observers remember TerraUSD, the “stable” coin that took a nosedive in May 2022, dipping below its one-dollar peg on the 9th before eventually plunging to just 10 cents.
TerraUSD was an “algorithmic” stablecoin that used its relationship to another cryptocurrency, Luna, to hold its value.
The idea was this. TerraUSD was supposed always to be worth exactly one U.S. dollar, but Luna’s price could change.
The algorithm aimed to maintain TerraUSD at $1 by allowing people to trade it for $1 worth of Luna whenever the price fluctuated. If TerraUSD dropped to 99 cents, you could swap it for $1 worth of Luna and make a small profit, which was supposed to push the price back up.
The problem was that this only worked if people trusted the system and Luna had value. A run on TerraUSD pushed Luna prices down so fast that some investors panicked and started dumping Luna, too.
The algorithm stopped working.
Secure Coins
GENIUS Act stablecoins, however, will be as reliable and, as their name implies, as stable as most financial instruments.
This stability comes from the backing assets described above — $1 held in an account for every $1 worth of stablecoin in circulation, much different from TerraUSD and similar algorithmic or crypto-backed “stablecoins.”
Not for SMBs
Stablecoins have the potential to transform ecommerce and retail, but small and mid-size businesses will likely see relatively few benefits, at least in the near term.
For example, stablecoins unlock opportunities in cross-border sales, but ecommerce platform providers and marketplaces might not pass on per-transaction savings to sellers.
As an example, Shopify announced its support for USD Coin (USDC) in June 2025, but, at the time of writing, the ecommerce platform charged stablecoin transaction fees similar to standard payment card processing, despite USDC transactions being dramatically cheaper.
Large ecommerce marketplaces could take a similar tack, charging merchants the same fees to process stablecoins as for payment cards.
Concerns
I see two further concerns. First, any retailer issuing its own stablecoin will face banking-industry levels of reporting, regulation, and oversight.
Second, some economists worry that the proliferation of “private” money could create market chaos, especially if consumers used stablecoins for everyday purchases as described here.
Nonetheless, government-regulated stablecoins are real, and they will impact in-store and online merchants.
