Citi and Coinbase partner to offer institutional stablecoin payment and conversion services.

Citigroup and Coinbase are partnering to help Citi’s institutional clients, including large multinational companies, accept stablecoin payments and automatically convert them into dollars for settlement through Citi. The collaboration connects Citi’s payment network and banking services with Coinbase’s digital-asset infrastructure, including fiat pay-ins and pay-outs, payment orchestration, and routes between traditional currencies and onchain assets. Some Coinbase payments customers will also be able to use a Citi banking product that converts incoming cash into stablecoins held at Coinbase and currently offers a 3.75% annual reward. The partnership’s launch date and participating merchants have not been disclosed.
The partnership follows the Senate’s September 15 procedural vote against the Clarity Act, which failed 49-50 despite needing 60 votes. A dispute over stablecoin rewards was among the issues that helped sink the bill.
The rewards feature has drawn criticism from banking groups: eight groups urged senators to ban stablecoin rewards, warning that interest-paying tokens could pull deposits away from banks. Citi CEO Jane Fraser chairs one of the signatory groups, the Financial Services Forum.
Citi is also expanding a separate digital-cash initiative, bringing its private blockchain for moving company funds to Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
Citi operates in 94 markets and has access to more than 300 clearing systems, a scale that could support the partnership’s reach across institutional payment networks.
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