Stablecoins as Development Infrastructure

Recent policy developments, including the GENIUS Act, have helped establish a more credible and regulated corridor for dollar-denominated stablecoins. While this represents an important step toward mainstream adoption, functional access for EMDE markets remains uneven. Design features such as reserve requirements, constraints on yield, and account structures can limit practical usability for SMEs, particularly those operating in less-developed financial ecosystems. At the same time, the question of how these instruments interact with domestic financial systems is becoming increasingly relevant.

This session will explore which stablecoin corridors are genuinely operational for cross-border SME use, what recent regulatory developments mean in practice for financial institutions in EMDEs, and how stablecoins can evolve as part of development infrastructure. It will also examine the implications for monetary policy transmission and financial stability, and how frameworks can balance innovation with the need to safeguard local monetary sovereignty.