Questions about deposits, liquidity and payment infrastructure, through a banking lens.
If value can be stored, transferred and settled 24/7 on digital infrastructure, how will the role of deposits, liquidity and traditional payment infrastructure change?
In the early stage of the digital asset market, stablecoins were often seen as a tool for crypto trading. That view is not wrong, but it is incomplete. This report looks at stablecoins through a banking lens — for educational purposes only, not investment advice.
A stablecoin is not the same as a bank deposit. A deposit is a liability of a commercial bank, sits on its balance sheet and is supervised. A stablecoin is a liability of an issuer, backed by reserve assets; the holder depends on the legal structure, redemption rights and the quality of the reserves.
Stablecoins do not compete with the entire deposit base. The first pressure falls on transaction balances — money waiting to fund payments, transfers and digital asset transactions, rather than savings or mass-market domestic current accounts.
The most convincing use cases sit in high-friction corridors. Remittances, cross-border payments, merchant settlement and digital asset market flows — not mass-market retail payments. Stablecoins only need to deliver on speed, cost and 24/7 availability to affect part of the traditional fee pool.
An operational advantage is not a comprehensive advantage. A faster payment rail is not automatically safer. Banks still hold the protective layers of identity, anti-money-laundering, transaction error handling and depositor protection. When money moves 24/7, the risks of fraud, bank runs and contagion can also accelerate.
The banking response need not be to stay on the sidelines. Tokenized deposits and regulated layers of tokenized money are one path: banks can respond with digital money infrastructure inside the supervisory perimeter, rather than letting an entire new payment layer sit outside the banking system.
One point deserves emphasis from the outset: stablecoins and bank deposits have a different legal nature. A bank deposit is a liability of a commercial bank to its depositor, recognised on the balance sheet and operated within a framework of capital adequacy, liquidity, risk management and customer protection.
A stablecoin is usually a liability of an issuer, backed by reserve assets such as cash, bank deposits, treasury bills or other short-term assets. The holder depends on the legal structure, redemption rights, the quality of the reserve assets and the governance capacity of the issuer. It is precisely this difference that makes stablecoins important for the banking sector.
| Criterion | Bank deposit | Stablecoin |
|---|---|---|
| Legal nature | A liability of a commercial bank to the depositor. | A liability of the stablecoin issuer to the holder. |
| Recognition & backing | On the bank’s balance sheet, under regulatory supervision. | By reserve assets: cash, deposits, treasury bills or other short-term assets. |
| Safety framework | Capital adequacy, liquidity, risk management, customer protection. | Depends on the legal structure, redemption rights and the governance capacity of the issuer. |
| The holder relies on | Depositor protection mechanisms and the supervisory framework. | Redemption rights, the quality of the reserve assets and the issuer’s standing. |
A stablecoin does not need to replace deposits to matter — it only needs to change where part of transaction money is held and moves.
Stablecoins do not compete with the entire bank deposit base. They first compete for part of transaction balances — money waiting to fund payments, transfers, digital asset transactions, digital commerce or activity on global platforms.
A customer who receives a salary, saves, takes out a home loan or uses a domestic current account still needs a bank. But a small business that needs fast international transfers, a freelancer receiving payments from abroad, a user trading on a digital platform, or a startup running a cross-border product may see stablecoins as a more flexible payment tool than a traditional account.
The first segment affected is not necessarily the mass-market domestic current account, but the higher-friction segments — where speed, cost and 24/7 availability make a clear difference.
The clearest stablecoin use case today is not mass-market retail payments but high-friction payment corridors. Nigeria is a notable example: according to the IMF (2026, drawing on Chainalysis data), the country received around USD 59 billion in crypto inflows over the period July 2023 – June 2024. The demand is tied to the search for faster, cheaper transfer channels in a region where the average cost of remittances is around 9%, higher than the global average of around 6%.
Asia is a region to watch closely. Chainalysis records APAC as the fastest-growing region for on-chain crypto activity in the 12 months ending June 2025, with total value received up 69% — from USD 1.4 trillion to USD 2.36 trillion — with India, Vietnam and Pakistan playing notable roles.
Vietnam is one of the most important corridors to watch. According to Chainalysis, in 2025 Vietnam ranked fourth globally for crypto adoption at the user level; by some estimates, around 21.2 million adults (close to 17% of the adult population) have used digital assets — even though almost all transactions take place on foreign platforms. At the same time, Vietnam is among the world’s ten largest remittance-receiving countries. This is exactly the kind of high-friction corridor described above: large remittance flows, high demand for cross-border payments and a base of users already familiar with digital assets.
This data does not mean stablecoins have become a mainstream means of payment in Vietnam. It does, however, show that digital financial behaviour in the region is changing fast, and Vietnamese banks should monitor this shift before the impact becomes visible on the balance sheet or in fee income.
The operational advantage of stablecoins comes from their infrastructure design. The BIS notes that stablecoins trade on public, permissionless blockchains, where users can gain access through hosted wallets or unhosted wallets with nothing more than an internet connection. But an operational advantage is not a comprehensive advantage.
A faster payment rail is not automatically a safer system. When money can move 24/7, operational risk, fraud risk, bank-run risk and contagion risk can also accelerate. This is why stablecoins need to be viewed through a banking lens, not only through a technology lens.
In the traditional banking model, many risks are internalised within a supervised system. Stablecoins redistribute that risk among users, issuers, wallet platforms, exchanges and the banks that hold the reserves. For banks, the following four impacts are the most notable:
Stablecoins may not draw away large-scale savings in the short term, but they can become a place to hold transaction money in some highly digitalised segments. When that happens, the bank loses part of its transaction data, demand balances and payment relationship with the customer — the foundation of the customer relationship.
Stablecoins can compress certain steps in the payment value chain, especially in high-cost international corridors. Banks do not necessarily lose their entire role, but they may have to shift from being a traditional payment intermediary to being a trusted infrastructure provider: on/off-ramp, custody, compliance, reserve management, settlement and risk management.
A digital financial system that runs continuously changes the assumptions about how fast money moves. Funds can leave a platform, an issuer or a jurisdiction far more quickly. For banks that take part in the stablecoin chain, real-time liquidity management becomes a more important requirement.
Stablecoins can move through hosted wallets, unhosted wallets, exchanges, blockchain bridges and many applications. Each layer raises questions of identity, source of funds, monitoring, sanctions screening, the travel rule and reporting obligations. Scaling the infrastructure is only sustainable if compliance is designed in from the start.
Stablecoin risks are especially sensitive for emerging economies. The BIS has warned that stablecoins can create systemic risk, including risks to monetary sovereignty and the danger of capital flight in emerging markets.
For countries facing exchange-rate pressure, capital controls or dollarisation risk, USD-pegged stablecoins can make the policy question more complex. Stablecoins can be useful for international payments, but widespread domestic use can weaken the role of the local currency in payments and savings.
The Basel Committee has finalised a disclosure framework for banks’ cryptoasset exposures — requiring qualitative disclosure of related activities and quantitative disclosure of capital and liquidity for these exposures. Digital assets are no longer a story outside the banking system; they have become a matter of risk management, disclosure, capital and liquidity.
The banking response need not be to stay outside stablecoins. Another path is to build forms of tokenized money that sit within or close to the banking system. Tokenized deposits are one example: commercial bank deposits represented as tokens for use in payments, settlement and transactions in tokenized assets.
Hong Kong is a market worth watching: the HKMA has moved Project Ensemble into a pilot phase to support real-value transactions involving tokenised deposits and digital assets in a controlled environment.
This approach shows that the banking system is not forced to choose between “accepting” or “rejecting” stablecoins; it can actively shape the layer of digital money that remains within its control.
For Vietnam, stablecoins should be approached with caution but without avoidance. The practical question is not whether Vietnamese banks should issue a stablecoin in the short term, but where they should monitor stablecoins. The five strategic questions below are a starting point:
Can stablecoins affect transaction balances and CASA in highly digitalised segments?
Can stablecoins reduce the bank’s role in certain international payment corridors?
Should the bank take part in the stablecoin value chain through custody, reserve banking, on/off-ramp or compliance infrastructure?
Can tokenized deposits become the bank’s long-term response to stablecoins?
What risk management capabilities does the bank need to prepare if digital assets gradually enter the balance sheet, fee income and the customer relationship?
These questions are no longer entirely hypothetical. Effective 1 January 2026, the Law on Digital Technology Industry recognises, for the first time, digital assets as a category of asset under Vietnamese law — but not as a legal means of payment. Resolution 05/2025/NQ-CP establishes a five-year pilot programme for the crypto-asset market, with the requirement that transactions and settlement be conducted in VND and that issued assets be backed by real-world assets (RWA).
Notable for the banking sector: most of the entities that passed the pre-qualification round to operate the pilot market are banks and financial institutions, while stablecoins and the related compliance framework are being studied within the sandbox. In other words, digital assets are being placed right inside Vietnam’s financial system. (Tokenized deposits and RWA will be analysed in more depth in later issues of the series.)
The final strategic question is not whether stablecoins will beat banks. The better question is: in a financial system where money can be tokenized, programmed and moved 24/7, where do banks want to stand in the value chain of money, payments, custody, settlement and risk management?
AIVA Digital Assets Research is building a research series on stablecoins, tokenized deposits, RWA tokenization and digital financial infrastructure from a banking perspective.
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This report is an educational document that brings together public sources and reinterprets them through a banking-first lens for Vietnamese readers.
| Source | How it is used |
|---|---|
| DeFiLlama (industry data, May 2026) | Global stablecoin market cap (~USD 321 billion) and its growth. |
| BIS — Bank for International Settlements | Stablecoin infrastructure, hosted/unhosted wallets, systemic risk, monetary sovereignty & capital flight. |
| Basel Committee (effective 1 Jan 2026) | Disclosure framework for banks’ cryptoasset exposures. |
| Chainalysis | Growth in APAC on-chain crypto activity (12 months to June 2025) and Vietnam’s crypto adoption ranking (2025). |
| IMF (2026) & Chainalysis | Crypto inflows into Nigeria and regional remittance costs. |
| HKMA — Hong Kong Monetary Authority | Project Ensemble, tokenised deposits and digital assets. |
| World Bank / SBV | Scale of Vietnam’s remittances (~USD 16 billion, 2024) and regional remittance costs. |
| Law on Digital Technology Industry & Resolution 05/2025/NQ-CP | Digital asset regulatory framework in Vietnam — effective 1 Jan 2026 and the crypto-asset market pilot programme. |
| AIVA synthesis | Interpretation for the Vietnamese market and the implications for banks. |
Figures are cited to their respective sources. Charts are redrawn for educational purposes and should not be treated as precise forecasts. The views are AIVA’s interpretation and are not investment advice.
AIVA Digital Assets Research provides research and educational content only. This is not investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, brokerage, custody, token issuance, trade execution, or distribution of financial products.
Digital assets carry significant risk; stablecoins carry reserve, issuer, redemption and regulatory risks. Tokenized money and crypto-assets may carry legal, custody, liquidity, operational and technology risks.
Readers should do their own research and seek professional advice where needed.
AIVA Digital Assets Research provides research and educational content only. This is not investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, brokerage, custody, token issuance, trade execution, or distribution of financial products.