The proportion of stablecoin payments is less than 1% in actual payments

McKinsey & Company estimates the volume of stablecoin payments at around 390 billion USD/year, equivalent to about 0.02% of the global payment flow, so the “settlement” from stablecoin is still much lower than 1% of actual payment activities.

The figure of 390 billion USD/year shows that stablecoin has payment activity, but the scale is still small compared to the global payment flow. The important point is that “payment volume” is different from “on-chain transfer volume” recorded on the blockchain.

This gap reflects the reality of measurement: the majority of stablecoin transactions recorded are not payments for goods, services, or bill settlements. Instead, many transactions are on-chain rotations serving crypto trading, liquidity management, or coordination between wallets and exchanges.

Therefore, if we only look at the total volume of stablecoin transfers on-chain, the scale may seem very large, but it does not reflect the actual trade proportion. To assess payment applications, it is necessary to filter out transactions that are not linked to real-world economic exchanges.