The news
Citi Coinbase stablecoin payments are expanding: on September 28, 2026, Citigroup (C) and Coinbase (COIN) said businesses using Citi can accept stablecoin payments through Coinbase and receive dollars, without holding or managing digital assets themselves.
The expansion builds on a partnership the companies first announced in October 2025, Decrypt and The Block reported. According to the companies' joint press release, it has two parts and launches first in the United States, with additional capabilities planned in the coming months.
The first part connects Coinbase's payments infrastructure to Spring by Citi, the bank's platform for institutional merchant payments. Citi clients can accept stablecoins, which are digital tokens pegged to a currency such as the dollar. Coinbase converts the tokens to fiat currency, and Citi settles the funds as the bank of record.
The second part, Coinbase Virtual Accounts, uses Citi's Virtual Account Wallet technology so that businesses on Coinbase can accept, hold and send money much like a bank account. Incoming fiat payments are automatically converted into stablecoins, the companies said.
"Citi is exactly the kind of regulated banking partner the digital asset economy needs," said Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, in the release. Ashish Bajaj, Citi's head of services for North America, said the bank aims to build payments infrastructure that works across both traditional and digital instruments and networks.
Neither the release nor the news reports disclosed pricing, the specific stablecoins supported or the names of early clients. The companies said the merchant service lets businesses serve more than 150 million stablecoin holders globally.
The numbers
- Partnership first announced
- October 2025
- Initial market
- United States
- Stablecoin holders cited by the companies
- More than 150 million
Why CEOs should care
For CFOs and heads of receivables at merchants and platforms, this lowers the barrier to accepting stablecoins. If a large bank settles the dollars, the company does not need its own crypto wallets or custody. Before signing up, ask which stablecoins and blockchains are supported, the all-in fee compared with cards and wires, how quickly funds settle, how refunds and disputes work, and how the payments will appear in your reconciliation and accounting systems.
For treasurers, the virtual accounts point the other way: fiat arriving at a business on Coinbase is converted into stablecoins automatically. Companies that hold stablecoins should have a written policy covering which tokens are allowed, how much can be held, how reserves are verified and how quickly balances can be turned back into dollars. Audit committees should also ask how stablecoin balances will be classified in the financial statements and who approves counterparty limits for each issuer.
For compliance leaders and CISOs, stablecoin acceptance adds new counterparties. Ask how payers' wallets are screened for sanctions and fraud, which party handles know-your-customer checks and what logs you will receive for audits.
The bigger picture
Banks and crypto firms spent late September building bridges between deposits and digital dollars. On September 22, 2026, Binance invested $100 million in stablecoin issuer Circle and renewed its commercial agreement with Circle for five years, under which Binance will promote the USDC token. On September 24, The Clearing House picked Quant to run a bank-led network for tokenized deposits, which are bank deposits recorded on a blockchain. Citi is also taking part in other bank-led efforts: Banking Dive reported on September 1 that Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citi were among the banks backing an upcoming stablecoin, and Citi was among the institutions named when The Clearing House unveiled its tokenized deposit effort in June.
The design choice is explicit. The Block reported that the service is meant to give merchants bank-account-like functionality without requiring them to hold or manage digital assets directly. That makes the bank and the exchange, rather than the merchant, the parties that bridge stablecoins and dollars, and it gives Citi a role in stablecoin payment flows alongside its involvement in the bank-backed stablecoin and tokenized deposit projects.
What’s next
Watch for the first named merchants and platforms using the service, the stablecoins and networks supported, expansion beyond the United States and pricing disclosures. Also watch whether competing banks respond with their own stablecoin acceptance or tokenized deposit offerings for corporate clients, and whether card networks adjust their own stablecoin settlement programs in response.
What “Fact-checked” means
Fact-checking means testing a story’s facts against the evidence before it is published. This story went through at least two separate checks before this version was published.
- What we checked
- Its names, figures, dates, job titles, quotes and who said what were checked against the story’s sources, including its main source where it could be opened. The headline was checked for accuracy and overstatement.
- How
- A first check reviewed the whole story. If it passed, a second, skeptical check went back to the sources to look for mistakes in the most important facts. If a check flagged the story, it was edited to fix the problems found, and a separate re-check then reviewed the whole story again.
- Who
- The checks are made with our newsroom’s technology tools, as steps kept separate from the writing, under rules set by our editor, Hussein Mukhtar. A story the checks still flag is not published automatically; it is held for the editor, who decides whether it is fixed, published or dropped.
- If something is wrong
- “Fact-checked” does not mean error-free. If a material error is found after publication, we correct the story and add a note saying what changed. Report an error
