Global marketplaces have a payouts problem. Stablecoins can solve it.

Marketplaces have become the giants of ecommerce.

The largest online retailer in the US is not Amazon, but Amazon Marketplace. If sales by Amazon sellers were compared to national gross domestic product (GDP), Amazon marketplace would be the 37th-largest economy globally, ahead of Malaysia.

Many are based in the US (eg Ebay, Airbnb, Etsy, Walmart) but they connect buyers with sellers globally. That means contending with cross-border payments at scale.

It means paying out to international sellers in places where it’s hard to move funds.?

Marketplaces have a payouts problem – and stablecoins can solve it.??

Let’s get into it.

Marketplaces need to move dollars out of the US

Imagine you’re a marketplace in the US. Your dollars originate there, your bank accounts are there too. But your sellers are international.?

Eg

• an ecomm platform receives payment from a US buyer but needs to pay a seller in Argentina.?
• a freelancer platform receives payment from a US employer but needs to pay an IT contractor in India.
• a travel marketplace receives payment from a US guest, but needs to pay a host in? Brazil.
• a social platform receives payment from a US user, but needs to pay a creator in Thailand.

In a simplified model, these payments are collected in dollars by the marketplace’s payment processor, who splits the funds, settling the marketplace in dollars for its commission/ finders fee. The remaining funds are then sent to the seller.?

That’s often where the problems begin.

Getting dollars out of the US isn’t easy?

Today, most marketplaces use a patchwork of payment processors. At some point in the journey, almost all cross-border payments rely on the correspondent banking system, Swift.?

While some international banks are directly connected by Swift (eg US-UK), others aren’t, relying instead on intermediaries. The result is slow settlement and high fees. Swift payments from the US to South East Asia for example might use several intermediary banks, take 3-4 days and cost 2-4% in FX fees.

Then there’s the last mile payout via local rails, which can add 1-2 days to settlement times.

According to analysis from FXC Intelligence, payouts from social media platforms to international creators for example, typically take several days via traditional methods.

Why is this bad??

Payment delays impact cash flow and financial planning and can leave marketplaces exposed to foreign exchange risk. Finance teams may also need to hold funds in escrow accounts until the transaction is confirmed, tying up working capital.?

For sellers, late payouts can have a big impact on financial stability. Imagine you’re a craft seller in Argentina. You depend on sales from marketplaces to connect with global buyers. But every time you make a sale, you wait days—sometimes weeks—to get paid, often receiving less than you expected because of poor exchange rates.

Now imagine you're paid in minutes, in full – this is the promise of stablecoins.

Stablecoins are starting to solve for this?

Over the last few years, stablecoins have emerged as an always-on, digital dollar payment rail. They run on blockchains that operate 24/7/365, and settle anywhere in the world in an instant. Unlike other crypto assets, their value is pegged to the US dollar, making them more suited to payments. BVNK works with many enterprises to help them send and receive stablecoins. We process more than $8bn in annualized volumes for clients like Trust Payments and Deel.?

We’ve seen that global enterprises are already leveraging stablecoins to speed up payments –? often via their payment processors. Typically, stablecoins are used to accelerate the middle part of a cross-border payment, which takes places between PSPs (aka the stablecoin sandwich).

In this model, the buyer, seller and marketplace never touch a stablecoin:

1. The US payment processor settles USD to a USD account that the marketplaces holds with a stablecoins payments partner.
2. The stablecoin partner converts USD to stablecoins and sends to the local partner in the country of the seller.
3. The local partner converts stablecoins to local fiat and sends to the seller’s bank account via local payment rails.

In this model, the payment reaches the seller a few days earlier than it would using Swift.?But there are inefficiencies here too:

• Sellers have to wait for funds to clear via local payment rails, and might lose out from conversion rates to their local currency.?
• Marketplaces and or the PSPs who serve them still have to contend with local payments infrastructure and find local partners.?

To experience the full power of stablecoins, we need to unlock the last mile payment.?

Unlocking the last mile with stablecoins

For those of us in countries with strong currencies and developed financial systems, it might be hard to imagine selling something on eBay and receiving payment in stablecoins.?

But in many places outside the US, demand for dollars is high as people look to protect their wealth and purchasing power from local currency volatility. Stablecoins have become a proxy for the US dollar globally.

A 2024 study from BVNK and Cebr found that users in 17 emerging markets paid above face-value to access stablecoins, as a way to hedge against devaluation. A survey from Castle Island Ventures, YouGov and Visa also found that 1 in 2 people in emerging markets used stablecoins as a way to access dollars in digital form.?

Adoption is particularly high in regions like Latin America and Asia Pacific, where many marketplace sellers are based.?If sellers are looking to hold digital dollars, stablecoin payouts make a lot of sense.

In the example below:

1. The US payment processor funds an account in USD with a stablecoin payments partner like BVNK.
2. BVNK converts USD to stablecoins and sends those funds to the seller directly on request.??

There are clear benefits to this approach: settlement is near-instant, intermediaries are removed? and you avoid foreign exchange fees or unfavorable conversions.?

Payouts are the fastest growing stablecoin use case at BVNK

At BVNK, we serve platforms (of all kinds) that are paying out in stablecoins (like Deel who enable global contractors to get paid in stablecoins).

Stablecoin payouts represent around 20% of our payment volumes today, with significant month on month growth.?Our business customers typically keep their funds in fiat in BVNK safeguarded virtual accounts. BVNK converts and pays out stablecoins on demand.

But what does this experience look like for the sellers? In the video below, we walk through how a seller can request payment in stablecoins, powered by BVNK.

At BVNK, we believe that stablecoins are becoming a core payment rail like ACH, Sepa and Swift. But in many growth markets, they’re also becoming an alternative payment method for consumers.?

As BVNK expands our presence in the US in 2025, we’re excited to support marketplaces in accelerating payments to sellers globally with stablecoins.