How Stablecoins Fit Into The Modern Treasury Stack

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• Legacy treasury systems are too slow and fragmented for modern global businesses.
• Stablecoins enable instant, 24/7 global settlements at a fraction of the cost.
• Prefunding is no longer needed, freeing up working capital.
• Smart contracts allow automated, accurate, and compliant treasury operations.
• Stablecoins now replace SWIFT, FX desks, and reconciliation tools in modern stacks.

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The traditional treasury management stack includes banks, ERP systems, and other reconciliation tools. While it is relevant today, the pattern in which global businesses are evolving (speed and reach) causes the legacy treasury management stack to do more harm than good for the companies. [[widget crypto=(USDC)]]

With the old ways, corporate treasury teams had to plan for a settlement cycle of 5-10 days, pre-fund multiple company accounts, and route transfers through a string of correspondent banks. Stablecoins just do it better.

[[related text=(What are Stablecoins?) link=(https://transak.com/blog/what-are-stablecoins)]]

The Legacy Stack Is Showing Its Age

Here’s the typical setup in most companies:

• A corporate bank account in one or two currencies
• An ERP tool to track it all
• Stripe, SWIFT, or Wise to move money
• Accounting software to reconcile
• A treasury team is firefighting every international transaction

This worked when your company had one market, one office, and one payroll currency. But today, your engineers are in Bengaluru, your clients are in Berlin, and your investors are in Dubai.

What used to work simply doesn’t scale anymore.

Also Read: Stablecoins vs. Bitcoin: 7 Major Differences Explained

Stablecoins As Treasury Assets

What if:

• Your USD balances settle globally in 30 seconds
• Your idle funds can be parked in tokenized T-Bills over the weekend
• You can run mass payouts to vendors in Nairobi, Manila, or São Paulo instantly and cheaply

Real-Time Settlements

Stablecoins enable near-instant settlements against traditional wire transfers that may take around 2-5 days.

This fundamental aspect of stablecoin alone ensures:

• Transaction settlement time of 2-3 minutes
• Reduced transaction cost by 71% due to zero correspondent banking fees
• 365/24/7 settlement

Stablecoins seamlessly settle billions of dollars in trade volume daily across borders, to any place. PayPal already uses its stablecoin, PYUSD, for faster, less-expensive cross-border transactions. Its Pay With Crypto feature allows US merchants to accept payments in 100+ cryptocurrencies (later on converted to PYUSD or USD and given to merchants). 

[[button text=(Buy PYUSD) link=(https://transak.com/buy/pyusd)]]

Surplus Working Capital

With stablecoins, you can pay instantly while bypassing the long chain of correspondent banks, escrow accounts, and custody requirements. This eliminates the need for prefunded accounts, saving precious working capital from being tied up in banking pipelines.

Also, stablecoins are always on-chain and are more liquid than conventional cash and cash equivalent reserves. The ready ‘digital cash’ at hand allows up to 45% reduction in idle cash. They can also be used to acquire more short-term treasury bills or added to regulated DeFi pools for competitive yields.

Smart Treasury Management

Stablecoins are programmable infrastructure, which helps corporates preposition liquidity across corridors to reduce delays. Cash position can be optimized across currencies using stablecoin liquidity pools.

You can set up escrow mechanisms or conditional transfers and automate payment pipelines with stables, which isn’t possible with treasury bills or fiat. Also, real-time cash flow updates and automated variance analysis allow enhanced forecast accuracy.

A Nilos analysis finds that stablecoin inclusion in treasury operations can reduce manual processes by 85%, with 99.9% execution accuracy and no reconciliation backlog.

Reduced Costs

You can reduce transaction costs from 3% to 1%. Billions in interchange fees can be saved. Instead of $20-$50 in international wire fees and 0.5-3% in FX spreads, you pay fees in cents for stablecoin transfers.

Nilos' analysis pins costs savings as:

• 71% reduced transaction costs
• 90% lower banking fees
• 85% reduced operational costs

Better Compliance

The GENIUS Act in the US and MiCA in the EU have granted ‘federal recognition and clear prudential standards’ to dollar stablecoins. Stablecoins can achieve automated reporting and compliance for different jurisdictions and regulations, given their smart contract capabilities.

Better FX Risk Management

Foreign exchange requirements get reduced as stablecoins are global money, and most efficient for cross-border transactions. Companies can extend trade relations to more countries without worrying about intermediary bank relationships or SWIFT network frictions.

For example, if your company exports to Nigeria, you can send USDC to the Nigerian firm, which can then convert it into their home currency. No intermediary bank involved. Least conversion costs, no need to set up multiple nostro/vostro accounts, thanks to stablecoins.

Volatility Hedge

Keeping funds in stablecoins allows companies and governments to preserve value, and hedge against weak currencies. You can keep funds in more stable currencies like USD-pegged stables to reduce FX risk exposure, and benefit from their yield-bearing capacity.

How Stablecoins Fit Into the Stack

Here’s where stablecoins are showing up in our own treasury architecture:

Conclusion

If your business runs on the internet, your money should too.

If you’re running a global fintech, SaaS, or marketplace, now’s the time to start building a treasury stack that runs on stablecoin rails.

Transak can help you integrate stablecoins. The efficiency gains are real and the flexibility is unmatched. And the ability to operate across borders without friction is a serious competitive advantage.

Leverage stablecoins with Transak today.