Stablecoin infrastructure companies: 13 compared for 2026

Stablecoin infrastructure splits into four layers: issuing, moving, holding and earning. Most companies sell one or two of them, and payment networks have been buying the orchestration providers that bundle several behind one API.

Follow $10,000 a US payroll app sends to a contractor in Manila. The app turns dollars into USDC through Circle or Bridge, and the USDC waits for payday either in the app's own wallet at a custodian like Fireblocks or in its balance at a payout provider like Zerohash or BVNK. On payday the provider delivers it to the contractor's wallet or converts it and pays a local bank account. The days between funding and payday are when the balance can sit in a stablecoin vault, such as an Upshift vault, and earn. Those four steps map the main stablecoin infrastructure companies in 2026: Circle, Tether, Paxos, Ripple and Bridge issue; BVNK, Zerohash and Coinbase move; Fireblocks, BitGo and Anchorage hold; Tempo and Circle's Arc are new chains built for settlement; and Upshift runs vaults where the float earns.

We checked each company against its own announcements, regulators and DefiLlama on 3 October 2026. The list isn't ranked, and we didn't test the products. Upshift runs the earning layer and is entry 13, held to the same kind of facts as the rest.

Stablecoin infrastructure companies compared

Supply figures come from DefiLlama on 3 October 2026, when dollar stablecoins totalled $312.8 billion, with USDT at 58.8% and USDC at 23.7%. "Not published" means we couldn't find a recent figure from the company.

What is stablecoin orchestration?

Stablecoin orchestration is one API that handles several layers for you: converting dollars to stablecoins, routing them across chains and banks, checking compliance and paying out in local currency. Bridge, BVNK and Zerohash sell it. A payments company that would otherwise sign an issuer, a custodian and a payout partner signs one contract instead.

Think of it like a travel agent. You could book the flight, the hotel and the transfer yourself, though the agent books all three and deals with the airline when something goes wrong.

In the diagram, money flows through four layers from left to right. Issuers turn dollars into stablecoins, orchestration APIs move them as pay-ins, payouts and currency conversion, custodians hold the keys, and idle balances can go into stablecoin vaults such as Upshift's, wallet Earn APIs or partner reward programmes. All four run on settlement chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Circle Arc and Tempo.

Payment networks bought into orchestration in 2025 and 2026. Stripe closed its $1.1 billion purchase of Bridge in February 2025, and Mastercard closed its acquisition of BVNK for up to $1.8 billion in August 2026, after Zerohash turned down a Mastercard offer in January.

Issuers and issuance platforms

Circle: USDC, a payments network and its own chain

Circle issues USDC, the second-largest dollar stablecoin at $74.3 billion on 3 October 2026. The OCC gave final approval on 10 July 2026 for First National Digital Currency Bank, which trades as Circle National Trust. It starts with custody for Circle itself, and managing the USDC reserve is planned for later. Circle's Arc chain went live on 16 September 2026, with USDC as the gas token. BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, Visa and Standard Chartered are among its founding validators. It also runs the Circle Payments Network for banks and payment companies.

Tether: the largest stablecoin, plus a US version

Tether's USDT is the largest stablecoin at $184.0 billion, 58.8% of dollar supply. On 27 January 2026 Tether launched USAT, a separate coin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank to fit the GENIUS Act, with Cantor Fitzgerald holding the reserves. USAT had about $180 million in circulation on 3 October 2026. USDC vs USDT compares the two largest coins.

Paxos: USDG, PYUSD and issuance for partners

Paxos issues USDG and PayPal's PYUSD, with $3.1 billion and $2.9 billion in circulation on 3 October 2026. USDG runs through the Global Dollar Network, where partners earn by minting, holding or accepting the coin. In December 2025 the network had more than 100 partners, including Kraken, Robinhood and Worldpay, and more than 90% of earnings on stablecoin holdings went to partners. Paxos received conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank in December 2025 and bought the wallet company Fordefi in November 2025.

Ripple: RLUSD and treasury software

Ripple issues RLUSD, which had $2.5 billion in circulation on 3 October 2026, and runs Ripple Payments for cross-border transfers. It bought GTreasury for $1 billion in October 2025 and launched Ripple Treasury in January 2026, which connects corporate treasurers to RLUSD payments and tokenized money market funds. Ripple received conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank in December 2025.

Bridge: stablecoin issuance for brands, owned by Stripe

Bridge lets companies issue their own branded stablecoin and move dollars and stablecoins through one API, and its Open Issuance product issues MetaMask's mUSD. Stripe bought Bridge for $1.1 billion in February 2025. The OCC gave Bridge conditional approval for a national trust bank on 12 February 2026, covering custody, issuance, orchestration and reserve management.

Payment and orchestration APIs

BVNK: stablecoin payments for payment companies, now Mastercard's

BVNK builds stablecoin wallets, pay-ins, payouts and conversion for payment companies and enterprises, and reported $30 billion in annualised volume for 2025. It holds an e-money licence and a MiCA licence in the EU. Mastercard completed its acquisition in August 2026. BVNK suits payment companies moving stablecoins at volume. Best crypto payment gateways covers it alongside merchant-facing options.

Zerohash: crypto and stablecoin APIs for brokerages and fintechs

Zerohash runs stablecoin and crypto infrastructure for brokerages, neobanks and payroll apps, which offer trading, payouts and stablecoin balances under their own brands. In January 2026 it walked away from Mastercard takeover talks valued at $1.5 billion to $2 billion and moved to raise $250 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. It applied to the OCC for a national trust bank charter in March 2026. The OCC returned that application in July without a decision, and Zerohash refiled a narrower one on 18 August 2026, which was still pending in October. It suits regulated platforms that want one licensed provider for trading and stablecoins.

Coinbase: payments, wallets and stablecoins for brands

Coinbase sells several infrastructure products through its developer platform. Coinbase Payments lets merchants, including Shopify stores, take USDC on Base, and CDP Embedded Wallets give apps wallets with keys held in secure hardware. US developers earn up to 3.85% in USDC rewards on CDP wallet balances. It suits apps that already build on Base.

Custody and settlement

Fireblocks: custody and movement for institutions

Fireblocks secures digital assets for more than 2,400 institutions with MPC key management and processed $6 trillion in stablecoin transfers in 2025. In April 2026 it launched Earn, which lets clients put idle stablecoins into a Sentora-curated vault on Morpho or into Aave. It bought the embedded wallet company Dynamic in October 2025. Wallet as a service providers compared covers Fireblocks and 11 other wallet companies.

BitGo: chartered custody

BitGo received full OCC approval in December 2025 to become BitGo Bank & Trust, a national trust bank. It offers custody, wallets and staking to fintechs, banks and stablecoin issuers. It suits companies whose compliance teams want a federally chartered custodian.

Anchorage Digital: a crypto bank that issues for others

Anchorage Digital Bank holds a federal bank charter and offers custody, settlement and staking to institutions. It's also the issuer of Tether's USAT.

Tempo: a payments chain from Stripe and Paradigm

Tempo, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, launched its mainnet on 18 March 2026. Fees are paid in stablecoins, there's no native token, and it launched with the Machine Payments Protocol for payments between AI agents and services. Circle's Arc competes for the same flows.

Who can earn on stablecoin balances?

Holders of a payment stablecoin can't be paid interest by its issuer under the GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025. The ban takes effect by January 2027 at the latest. The money still earns in four other ways, and each one sits with a different company.

The rules are still being written. In March 2026 the OCC proposed a GENIUS Act rule that presumes a violation when yield reaches holders through affiliates or related third parties. The CLARITY Act, which would also have restricted rewards, stalled when a Senate cloture vote failed 49 to 50 on 15 September 2026. Yield a depositor earns from a vault's own lending or Treasury holdings is a separate structure from an issuer paying holders. How the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts reshape stablecoin yield and stablecoin regulation cover the detail.

The earn layer: stablecoin vaults and Earn products

A stablecoin vault is a smart contract that takes deposits in a coin such as USDC and puts them into a set strategy. Depositors get shares that rise in value as the strategy earns. The strategy can be as conservative as tokenized money market funds holding T-bills, or it can lend on DeFi markets or run basis trades. Withdrawals come back in the same coin, on the schedule each vault sets.

Vaults reach businesses in two ways. A custodian or wallet provider lists vaults inside its own app, as Fireblocks, Fordefi, Privy and Turnkey now do through their Earn products. Or a fintech integrates a vault provider's SDK and shows the vault in its own Earn tab, under its own name.

Upshift: stablecoin vaults from tokenized money market funds to DeFi

Upshift is onchain yield infrastructure that lets fintechs and asset managers offer yield inside their own products. Partners start with 24/7 tokenized money market funds and add higher-yield strategies, from lending to basis trades, on the same integration. A professional curator runs each stablecoin, BTC or ETH vault within risk limits set in advance, and depositors keep custody of their vault shares throughout.

Upshift has held more than $550 million in deposits at peak. It runs 50+ vaults on more than 30 chains for more than 66,000 users. Vaults sit in three risk bands, Conservative, Core and Enhanced, and curators include Sentora and Gamma Research. Distribution runs through the same layers this list covers. Institutional teams on Fordefi have been able to deposit into Upshift vaults from Fordefi Earn since 8 September 2026. Kraken Institutional clients reach permissioned Upshift vaults from inside qualified custody, and Tria runs Upshift vaults in its app through the SDK, live two weeks after it started integrating.

Every Upshift vault is priced and settled by Upshift, which validates the curator's net asset value before it reaches depositors. Curators who run their strategy through the Upshift prime stack also get a policy engine that limits activity by chain, protocol, token and contract function, access to an institutional lender network, and execution across onchain protocols and centralized venues from one smart contract account. Depositors hold their vault shares in their own wallets throughout.

For payment float, an Atomic Redemption Vault redeems in the same transaction as the card payment or payout that needs the money. Other vaults process redemptions daily, and some offer instant redemption for a fee, subject to liquidity. The contracts have been through 11 smart contract audits by 6 independent firms, and Upshift raised a $10 million Series A led by Dragonfly in March 2025.

What payout providers can do with idle float

Payout providers hold two kinds of idle stablecoins. One is client prefunding waiting for payday, and the other is their own USDC and USDT on each chain, kept there so payouts leave instantly. Both sit in wallets earning nothing between payments. A provider can put the part it won't need this week into a conservative vault, such as one holding tokenized money market funds, and keep the rest as a buffer. It can also offer the same vaults to its own clients as an Earn feature and take a fee. What is PayFi covers payment float in detail, and how Upshift, Veda, Midas and Morpho compare sets the vault platforms side by side.

Vault yields vary and aren't guaranteed. Vaults carry smart contract, strategy and liquidity risk, with no deposit insurance, and stablecoins can trade below their peg.

Always make sure to do your own research and be aware of the above and any other risks before depositing.

Frequently asked questions

What is stablecoin infrastructure?

Stablecoin infrastructure is the companies and software that let a business issue, move, hold and earn on stablecoins: issuers like Circle and Paxos, payment APIs like BVNK, custodians like BitGo, settlement chains like Tempo, and yield providers.

Who are the biggest stablecoin companies?

By supply on 3 October 2026, Tether ($184.0B USDT) and Circle ($74.3B USDC) issued over 80% of dollar stablecoins. Paxos, Ripple and World Liberty's USD1 followed at $2.5 billion to $4.4 billion each.

Can a business issue its own stablecoin?

Yes, through issuance platforms. Bridge issues MetaMask's mUSD, Paxos issues PYUSD for PayPal, and Anchorage issues USAT for Tether. Under the GENIUS Act, the issuer itself must be a permitted payment stablecoin issuer.

Which stablecoin companies have US bank charters?

As of October 2026, Circle and BitGo had final OCC approval for national trust banks and Anchorage held a federal charter. Paxos, Ripple and Bridge had conditional approval, and Zerohash's refiled application was pending.

Can businesses earn yield on stablecoin balances?

Yes, through partner programmes, platform rewards, custodian Earn products or stablecoin vaults such as Upshift's, though the issuer can't pay holders interest under the GENIUS Act. A vault's return comes from its own lending or Treasury holdings.

Keep reading

• Banking as a service providers compared. The bank accounts that sit next to stablecoin rails.
• The safest stablecoin. Reserves, issuers and redemption across the major coins.
• What a MiCA licence covers. The EU licences BVNK, Crossmint and others hold.
• Best treasury management software. Where corporate idle cash goes, from money market funds to tokenized funds.