Accelerating Stablecoin Innovation in US Banking

The stablecoin market has become a global center of attention, with total market capitalization surging to over $250 billion today (including $155 billion by Tether, and $60 billion by Circle) from $120 billion just 18 months ago. What's more, according to McKinsey¹, the stablecoin market is forecast to reach more than $400 billion by the end of 2025 and $2 trillion by 2028. This rapid growth, however, brings considerable opportunities and challenges.

In the U.S., the landscape is undergoing a major transformation following the approval of the GENIUS Act in July 2025-the first federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins. The act requires fully backed reserves, monthly disclosures, independent audits for major issuers, and robust user protections. By removing key barriers, it enables banks to issue stablecoins, integrate them into core payment and settlement systems, and to develop new digital assets, products, and services.

Several strategic initiatives are already reshaping digital-asset banking, from interbank settlements to retail services. For example:

• Consortium stablecoin: Major banks are exploring a jointly issued stablecoin for interbank settlements, using a private blockchain to facilitate high-volume transfers.

• Fiserv partnered with Circle and Solana to launch a stablecoin platform for approx 3,000 community and regional banks.

While these projects use blockchain for on-chain transactions, they also require a robust off-chain data layer to handle complex banking operations at speed and scale. MongoDB provides the foundation for rapid development of stablecoin-enabled banking solutions, offering flexibility, scalability, security, resilience, and development agility.

How does MongoDB enable stablecoin implementation?

Blockchain networks handle on-chain data, immutable transaction records, and smart contracts, but stablecoin applications in banking demand more: user management, compliance reporting, real-time analytics, and integration with legacy systems. MongoDB operates as a powerful layer above the blockchain, managing off-chain data and complementing the blockchain's strengths. MongoDB's document model, scalability, and secure architecture align perfectly with the needs of new stablecoin banking platforms, acting as a bridge between blockchain's decentralized ledger and banking operational requirements.

Here are key ways MongoDB empowers the data layer of new stablecoin banking systems:

Flexible data model for diverse banking needs

Stablecoin platforms manage diverse data types, such as user profiles, new and advanced types of KYC/AML records, transaction metadata, reserve balances, and several regulatory audit logs, which blockchains are not optimized to handle due to their focus on immutable records.

MongoDB's flexible schema document model excels at managing this sort of dynamic, heterogeneous data by storing complex, nested structures-like user wallets with transaction histories-in JSON-like documents, enabling fast queries without predefined schemas. This adaptability allows banks to iterate quickly, adding new fields for compliance or other requirements without costly schema migrations, unlike rigid SQL databases.

MongoDB's flexibility is particularly critical for complex off-chain workflows, such as user onboarding, comprehensive new KYC/AML required in the crypto high fraud risk ecosystem, and compliance reporting, making it an ideal solution for evolving stablecoin applications that must adapt to market conditions and evolving regulatory frameworks.

Highly scalable off-chain data enablement

Blockchains provide high throughput for on-chain transactions, but off-chain data, such as customer dashboards and real-time balances, demands equally fast processing and scalability to support banking applications. MongoDB delivers horizontal scaling via sharding and distribution of data across clusters, efficiently handling high transaction volumes for digital assets platforms; MongoDB can manage millions of customer interactions with low latency. The ability to scale horizontally complements blockchain's transactions, ensuring seamless user experiences and making MongoDB a perfect fit for supporting stablecoin banking platforms.

Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S., has effectively leveraged MongoDB to significantly enhance its platform scalability across 700 MongoDB clusters and overcome high volumes of unpredictable market traffic spikes.

Seamless blockchain network integration

Stablecoin platforms require tight integration between on-chain and off-chain systems to function effectively. MongoDB facilitates this with its robust APIs and connectors, enabling real-time syncing through change streams that capture off-chain data updates, such as user profile changes, and align them with blockchain events, ensuring data consistency. It also supports hybrid data storage by managing off-chain data like KYC records and transaction metadata while referencing on-chain transaction hashes, reducing blockchain bloat. MongoDB's ability to bridge blockchain and legacy banking systems, through an operational data layer, enables seamless integration with existing infrastructure, making it a scalable off-chain data layer that offloads non-critical data from the blockchain while maintaining interoperability, streamlining stablecoin operations.

Robust security of sensitive banking data

Banking-grade stablecoin platforms demand robust security to protect user data and compliance records. MongoDB provides end-to-end encryption, both at rest, in transit or even in use, to safeguard sensitive information like wallet addresses and reserve balances. Its fine-grained, role-based access controls ensure that only authorized systems or personnel can access critical data, while change streams and logging support compliance by tracking data modifications to align with reserve transparency requirements. MongoDB's enterprise-grade security complements blockchain's cryptographic integrity, creating a trusted environment for stablecoin issuance and ensuring banks meet stringent security standards.

AI-powered real-time insights

AI is no longer optional-it's foundational for any new platform, including digital assets and stablecoin banking. MongoDB empowers AI data layers through seamless AI integration and Atlas Vector Search, embedding, and reranking, enabling applications to deliver intelligent real-time services.

By storing structured data alongside unstructured data, vector embeddings, MongoDB supports deep semantic search, similarity matching, and context-aware decisioning. This allows platforms to detect fraud, automate KYC/AML checks, and personalize experiences with high precision. MongoDB's scalable, AI-ready architecture unlocks agentic AI to deliver actionable insight and instant risk management to ensure digital asset platforms can respond to threats, opportunities, and user needs with intelligence, agility, and efficiency.

Multi-region deployment for global reach

Stablecoin platforms often operate across jurisdictions, particularly for models targeting global settlements. MongoDB Atlas supports this with multi-region distributed clusters that ensure low-latency access for international users, critical for cross-border stablecoin use. Its automated backups and replica sets protect against outages, ensuring uninterrupted service for 24/7 crypto operations and no downtime for any data structure changes. MongoDB's global scalability complements blockchain's decentralized nature, enabling banks to expand stablecoin services worldwide with reliability and efficiency.

Developer agility for rapid deployment

With tight deadlines for stablecoin platform rollouts, banks need tools that accelerate development. MongoDB excels by offering a flexible schema design that allows developers to build and iterate quickly, adapting to new stablecoin features or blockchain protocols without delay. and to prototype and deploy stablecoin features quickly, staying ahead of the competition.

Stablecoin opportunities and challenges ahead

Opportunities

Stablecoin platforms offer significant potential for U.S. banks, and MongoDB helps support these advancements. Opportunities include faster money transfers, enabling instant local and international cross-border payments for both retail and corporate clients, as well as interbank payment settlements, significantly reducing settlement times compared to traditional systems.

In capital markets, stablecoins facilitate instant or same-day clearing and settlement, unlocking liquidity currently constrained by T+1 cycles, which could lead to a substantial increase in trading volumes, an area often constrained by intermediaries.

Stablecoins simplify asset tokenization, enabling fractional assets, digital asset lending/staking, and opening new investment opportunities. By adopting stablecoin platforms, banks can lead the industry and establish new payment rails, positioning themselves as innovators in digital assets and open finance.

Challenges

Several potential challenges may need to be addressed in the adoption of stablecoin platforms. Interoperability could present issues, as stablecoins, including those pegged to the U.S. dollar and other currencies, may not be easily convertible, though ongoing industry developments and a coalition of banks/parties, this challenge might have less impact over time. The growing number of stablecoins raises considerations about which ones will gain prominence as well.

Developing scalable and trusted custody solutions is complex and resource-intensive, which could pose new types of risks and challenges for banks. Additionally, existing cybersecurity and fraud detection systems in traditional banking require enhancements to fully support stablecoin transactions as the blockchain ecosystem has a higher risk exposure. Interacting with underlying blockchain networks may involve complexities due to the decentralized nature of distributed ledgers, potentially introducing both technical and regulatory new considerations.

A solid foundation for digital assets

MongoDB is the ideal off-chain layer for stablecoin platforms in U.S. banking, complementing blockchain networks with its flexibility, scalability, security, and AI-ready capabilities. Whether powering stablecoins for interbank transactions for retail consumer support, MongoDB enables banks to manage complex data structures, seamlessly integrate with blockchain networks, and deliver real-time secure services.

As stablecoin adoption accelerates, it will inevitably bring regulatory uncertainty, heightened risk exposure, and increased demands for real-time compliance and fraud detection. MongoDB empowers financial institutions to adapt stablecoin platforms with confidence, paving the way for a broader adoption of digital assets and cryptocurrencies across banking in the future.

1 The stable door opens: How tokenized cash enables next-gen payments; Matt Higginson, McKinsey & Company; July 21, 2025; https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/the-stable-door-opens-how-tokenized-cash-enables-next-gen-payments.