How APAC Financial Institutions Move Value in 2026

For a long time, the digital asset conversation was framed as a head-to-head contest: blockchain against correspondent banking, stablecoins against SWIFT, fast settlement against low fees.

That framing has stopped matching reality.

Across banks, payment providers, and multinational corporates throughout Asia-Pacific, the discussion has moved away from rails and toward efficiency. Institutions aren't adopting stablecoins because the technology is novel — they're adopting them because specific business problems keep resisting existing infrastructure.

This shift may be one of the clearest markers that digital assets have entered a more mature phase of institutional adoption.

Executives who work in this space describe a consistent pattern: institutions don't start by asking whether to use stablecoins. They start by mapping out where their capital gets stuck, where liquidity moves inefficiently, and where customers run into avoidable friction. Only after identifying the pain point do they look for a fix — and stablecoins are often part of the answer.

As Fiona Murray, Managing Director of Ripple Asia Pacific, highlighted during REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2026, institutions rarely begin by asking whether they should adopt stablecoins. Instead, they begin by identifying where capital becomes trapped, where liquidity is inefficient, and where customers face unnecessary friction.

"Choose a corridor that you have pain in... the chances are that you'll be pleasantly surprised."
— Fiona Murray, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Ripple

Institutions Pick Outcomes, Not Rails

A common misconception is that stablecoins are meant to go head-to-head with traditional payment infrastructure everywhere, all at once.

That's not how institutions actually approach it.

A treasury team wiring funds between New York and London faces a completely different set of constraints than a merchant importing goods from China into Nigeria, or a multinational shifting liquidity between Southeast Asian subsidiaries.

Every corridor has its own bottlenecks. Some already run on deep liquidity and competitive correspondent banking relationships. Others are burdened by expensive pre-funding requirements, thin access to US dollars, or settlement lags that eat into working capital.

Rather than ripping out infrastructure across the board, institutions are evaluating corridors one at a time. Where existing rails already work well, there's little incentive to switch. Where they don't, stablecoins become an added tool in the kit — not a full replacement.

That's why cross-border payments are heading toward a hybrid model rather than a winner-take-all outcome.

The Bigger Prize Is Capital Efficiency, Not Just Speed

Early stablecoin conversations centered heavily on speed — settling payments faster.

Speed still counts. But institutions are increasingly focused on something with a bigger balance-sheet impact: freeing up trapped capital.

Correspondent banking traditionally relies on pre-funded accounts scattered across jurisdictions. Keeping idle liquidity parked in every market ties up capital that could otherwise be put to work.

Stablecoins offer a different model — moving value on demand through always-on digital settlement rails, instead of pre-positioning cash everywhere it might be needed.

That shift supports several goals institutions are actively pursuing:

• Shrinking pre-funded capital requirements
• Making treasury operations more mobile
• Enabling just-in-time liquidity
• Settling outside normal banking hours
• Keeping operations running through weekends and holidays

For a CFO or treasury head, unlocking capital that's currently sitting idle typically creates more economic value than simply cutting settlement time from two days to two minutes.

Trade Finance Could Be the Biggest Enterprise Use Case

Global trade may be the strongest institutional use case to emerge so far.

For many businesses in emerging markets, the core problem isn't payment speed — it's getting hold of US dollars in the first place.

A Nigerian merchant buying inventory from a Chinese supplier might spend several days sourcing dollars through conventional banking channels, absorbing FX costs the entire time.

Stablecoins collapse that timeline into something closer to instant, borderless transfer.

The pitch, then, isn't really "crypto for payments." It's fast access to working capital that's usable anywhere.

This matters especially for Asia-Pacific, where trade routes link manufacturing hubs to markets across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Whoever makes it easiest for businesses to participate in that trade holds a real competitive edge.

Stablecoins Are Turning Into Financial Infrastructure, Not Just Payment Rails

Institutions are also rethinking where stablecoins fit beyond payments.

Payments still matter, but capital markets applications are catching up fast. Regulated stablecoins are starting to function as programmable cash — capable of moving between trading venues, collateral pools, tokenized assets, and treasury systems almost instantly.

Instead of sitting idle between transactions, that liquidity can keep circulating across different financial functions. Examples now on the table include tokenized money market funds and real-time collateral mobility, where firms shift between stablecoins and tokenized investment products without waiting on traditional settlement cycles.

That reframes what stablecoins are for. They're no longer just a substitute for payment messaging — they're becoming a liquidity layer underpinning a much broader set of financial activities, including collateral management, securities settlement, and treasury optimization.

Banks Don't Want to Tear Out Their Existing Systems

One theme that might surprise outsiders: banks have no appetite for rebuilding their tech stacks from scratch to accommodate digital assets.

That's rarely how enterprise technology actually gets adopted. Large institutions tend to keep their treasury platforms, compliance workflows, and ERP systems largely intact.

New infrastructure tends to succeed by slotting in underneath what's already there — not by replacing it. The priority, according to industry voices, is partnering with regulated providers that handle custody, wallets, compliance, and licensing, so institutions can tap into digital assets without gutting their internal processes.

It's a pattern that echoes the early days of enterprise cloud adoption: most companies didn't rebuild themselves around the cloud. Cloud infrastructure just quietly became part of the plumbing while core business processes stayed the same. Stablecoins appear to be following a similar trajectory.

Regulatory Clarity Is Becoming a Competitive Edge

Regulation is playing an increasingly central role across the region. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea have each made real progress toward formal frameworks for stablecoins.

That matters because banks aren't primarily looking for proof the technology works — they're looking for certainty about the rules. As regulatory frameworks solidify, internal conversations shift from experimentation toward long-term infrastructure planning.

Boards are increasingly being asked a direct question: what's our digital asset strategy? That's a notable change from the more tentative, wait-and-see posture of just a few years ago.

SCB 10X Perspective

From SCB 10X's perspective, the most important trend is not that more financial institutions are adopting digital assets—it is that the way they evaluate technology is fundamentally changing.

In the early stages of the industry, competitive advantage was largely defined by technological capability. Faster blockchains, more efficient protocols, and new digital asset innovations were often enough to differentiate one platform from another. As financial institutions become the primary adopters, however, the criteria for success are evolving. Competitive advantage is no longer determined by what a technology can do, but by how effectively it solves real business challenges.

This shift will have broad implications for the industry. The next phase of competition is unlikely to be driven by technology innovation alone. Instead, it will be shaped by how well companies understand the operational priorities of financial institutions—from liquidity management and cross-border operations to regulatory compliance and enterprise integration.

For investors, this suggests that the next generation of market leaders may not necessarily be the companies with the most advanced technology. Rather, they will be the ones that can transform digital assets into enterprise-ready financial infrastructure—solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing financial systems and deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.

Watch full session from REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2026 at https://youtu.be/_3AH3YnNEj4