Stablecoin payments rise 45% to $482 billion this year while supply stays flat, Allium says

Payments made with stablecoins rose 45% from a year earlier to $482 billion in the first nine months of 2026, according to a report by blockchain analytics firm Allium, CoinDesk reported on Sunday 18 October (US time).

The number of payments grew 71% to more than 1 billion over the same period, the report said. The total value of stablecoins in circulation was about $305 billion at the end of September, up 0.4% since the start of the year, according to Allium. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to hold a fixed value against a currency such as the US dollar.

Spending on stablecoin-linked cards reached $3.9 billion through September, ten times the level a year earlier, and purchases under $50 accounted for 84% of the increase in card transactions, the report found.

Allium said its payments figure covers a small part of overall stablecoin activity. Of $97.9 trillion in raw stablecoin transfers through September, it classified $2.4 trillion, or 2.5%, as end-user activity after removing exchange, decentralised finance and automated transfers. It estimated that second-quarter spending on stablecoin cards equalled 0.03% of Visa’s $4 trillion in payment volume.

The report came in the same week Mastercard launched a platform combining traditional currency accounts with stablecoin balances, Stripe announced multi-currency cards with Plasma, and Visa said a first provider was using its stablecoin prefunding service commercially, CoinDesk reported. Figures are in US dollars.