The Stablecoin Report
The State of Early-Stage Stablecoin Infrastructure Q2 2026
Every data element is clickable — click a stat, bar, or heatmap cell to see the underlying companies.
5,265
Early-stage companies tracked across 12 categories, pulled from Harmonic's saved-search universe. Megacaps (Circle, Tether, Paxos, PayPal, Ripple, MoonPay) are out of scope by design.
43%
Operate primarily outside US and Europe, of 4,106 companies with a disclosed operating region. The emerging-market share of early-stage stablecoin infrastructure is larger than the consensus narrative admits.
693
Cross-Border B2B Payments companies. The single largest early-stage category, 13% of the tracked universe.
116· 16% EM
Agentic Payments companies. 84% are concentrated in US and Europe, a frontier without geographic competition yet.
Key findings
Ten signals from the data
Each card maps to an exact slice of the universe — click any finding to drill into the underlying companies.
01 · Emerging Markets
43% of stablecoin infrastructure is built outside US/Europe
1,759 of 5,265 tracked companies operate primarily in LatAm, Africa, or APAC. The narrative that "crypto is a US story" stops matching the data.
02 · Use Case
Cross-Border B2B Payments is stablecoins' biggest use case
693 companies — 13% of the entire universe. 42% are emerging-market-first. The remittance replay is live.
03 · The Tooling Layer
Infrastructure outnumbers issuers 15.2-to-1
1,080 companies build tools, middleware, and platforms for stablecoins vs. only 71 that directly issue one. Most of the market is fighting over the tooling layer, not the mint.
04 · Youngest Category
Agentic Payments is the newest layer of the stack
Median founding year: 2024. Every other category medians 2021–2023. The agent-payments buildout is happening in real time.
05 · Geographic Gap
Agentic Payments is still a US/Europe story
Only 16% of 116 agentic-payments companies are EM-native. A frontier with no geographic competition yet.
06 · LatAm
LatAm is a payments-first region
LatAm's biggest stablecoin category is Cross-Border B2B Payments (87 companies), 2.6× its RWA count (33). Money movement wins, tokenization lags.
07 · Africa
Nigeria is 36% of Africa's stablecoin universe
131 of 364 tracked African companies operate in Nigeria. Kenya (35) and South Africa (34) trail distantly. Africa's stablecoin story is effectively a Nigerian one.
08 · Regulation
Compliance tracks regulation, not markets
85 Compliance/RegTech companies in Europe vs. 56 in the US. The regtech layer follows MiCA and FCA clarity, not where the users are.
09 · Maturing Layer
Wallet Infrastructure is among the oldest categories
Median founding year: 2021 (tied with On/Off Ramps at 2020). As both layers commoditize, margin will compress — watch for consolidation.
10 · The Real Issuers
71 companies directly issue a stablecoin
After filtering adjacent tooling, the actual issuer universe is small and global. Non-US issuers outnumber US ones (35 vs. 13). The multi-currency stablecoin era is here.
Volume by category
Where the stablecoin universe concentrates
Each bar is total tracked companies, segmented by primary operating region. Click any segment or label to drill in.
US
Europe
LatAm
Africa
MENA
APAC
Unspecified
Category × Region heatmap
The geography of each stack layer
Darker = denser. Africa clusters at rails (Cross-Border, On/Off); Agentic Payments has barely landed outside US and Europe.
| US | Europe | LatAm | Africa | MENA | APAC | Unspecified | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cross-Border B2B Payments | 180 | 144 | 87 | 73 | 18 | 85 | 106 |
| Agentic Payments | 26 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 65 |
| Stablecoin Issuance | 13 | 13 | 10 | 6 | 1 | 6 | 22 |
| Stablecoin Infrastructure | 223 | 202 | 96 | 37 | 36 | 160 | 326 |
| Merchant & Payment Processing | 255 | 246 | 126 | 120 | 51 | 141 | 281 |
| RWA Tokenization | 90 | 91 | 33 | 10 | 16 | 42 | 67 |
| Wallet Infrastructure | 120 | 130 | 53 | 47 | 24 | 69 | 102 |
| On/Off Ramps | 32 | 60 | 16 | 20 | 5 | 19 | 51 |
| Crypto Banking | 54 | 69 | 29 | 17 | 17 | 18 | 34 |
| Treasury / FX / Orchestration | 93 | 110 | 51 | 19 | 29 | 58 | 41 |
| Compliance / RegTech | 56 | 85 | 14 | 6 | 10 | 39 | 56 |
| Consumer Remittances | 19 | 22 | 9 | 8 | 4 | 13 | 8 |
| Region total | 1,161 | 1,186 | 528 | 364 | 214 | 653 | 1,159 |
Maturity by category
What stage of company dominates each category
Stage distribution by last known funding round. Excludes companies with no disclosed funding data. Click a segment to see those companies.
Cross-Border B2B Payments
Agentic Payments
Stablecoin Issuance
Stablecoin Infrastructure
Merchant & Payment Processing
RWA Tokenization
Wallet Infrastructure
On/Off Ramps
Crypto Banking
Treasury / FX / Orchestration
Compliance / RegTech
Consumer Remittances
Pre-seed
Seed
Series A
Series B+
Public
Category breakdown
What sub-sectors make up each category
Each category splits into more granular sub-sectors from Harmonic's classifier. Hover a category name for a one-line description. Click any sub-sector to drill into its companies.
Cross-Border B2B Payments
693 companies · 5 sub-categories
Cross-Border Payments
684
Payment Rails
6
Crypto Payment Processing
1
B2B Payment Rails
1
Trade Finance
1
Agentic Payments
116 companies · 1 sub-category
Agentic Payments
116
Stablecoin Issuance
71 companies · 1 sub-category
Stablecoin Issuers
71
Stablecoin Infrastructure
1,080 companies · 4 sub-categories
Issuance Platforms & Tooling
593
DeFi Protocols
484
TradFi Convergence
2
CBDC Infrastructure
1
Merchant & Payment Processing
1,220 companies · 3 sub-categories
Payment Processors
1,073
Merchant Acceptance
146
Crypto Commerce
1
RWA Tokenization
349 companies · 1 sub-category
RWA Platforms
349
Wallet Infrastructure
545 companies · 3 sub-categories
Wallets
321
Developer Tools
223
Custody
1
On/Off Ramps
203 companies · 1 sub-category
On/Off Ramps
203
Crypto Banking
238 companies · 2 sub-categories
Crypto Banking
237
Banking Infrastructure
1
Treasury / FX / Orchestration
401 companies · 4 sub-categories
Embedded Finance
266
Treasury / FX
80
Lending / Credit
54
Credit Processing / Treasury
1
Compliance / RegTech
266 companies · 1 sub-category
Compliance / RegTech
266
Consumer Remittances
83 companies · 1 sub-category
Remittance Services
83
Category age
When was each category born
Distribution of founding years per category. Darker cells = more companies founded that year. Median year highlighted. Agentic Payments is the clearest post-2023 wave; Wallet Infra pre-dates most of the stack.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | MEDIAN | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cross-Border B2B Payments | 36 | 36 | 49 | 54 | 81 | 60 | 59 | 81 | 2 | 2022 |
| Agentic Payments | 3 | · | 1 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 12 | 15 | 1 | 2024 |
| Stablecoin Issuance | 1 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 6 | · | 2022 |
| Stablecoin Infrastructure | 39 | 42 | 75 | 106 | 91 | 93 | 90 | 107 | 9 | 2022 |
| Merchant & Payment Processing | 81 | 56 | 64 | 107 | 111 | 83 | 81 | 50 | · | 2020 |
| RWA Tokenization | 16 | 18 | 21 | 42 | 39 | 40 | 31 | 34 | 3 | 2022 |
| Wallet Infrastructure | 37 | 26 | 37 | 57 | 55 | 41 | 44 | 18 | · | 2021 |
| On/Off Ramps | 16 | 16 | 7 | 17 | 27 | 8 | 8 | 4 | · | 2020 |
| Crypto Banking | 25 | 12 | 16 | 20 | 26 | 20 | 25 | 17 | · | 2021 |
| Treasury / FX / Orchestration | 21 | 25 | 33 | 35 | 53 | 33 | 43 | 28 | 3 | 2021 |
| Compliance / RegTech | 16 | 10 | 10 | 22 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 20 | 1 | 2021 |
| Consumer Remittances | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | · | 2019 |
Geographic granularity
Which countries anchor each region
Top countries within each region by company count. Click a country to see the underlying list. The US dominates North America, but LatAm and Africa each have clear anchor markets.
US
1,161
United States
935
Canada
122
Europe
1,186
United Kingdom
326
Switzerland
115
France
67
Germany
51
Estonia
48
Lithuania
47
LatAm
528
Brazil
125
Mexico
46
Argentina
33
Colombia
29
Chile
18
Panama
17
Africa
364
Nigeria
131
Kenya
35
South Africa
34
Ghana
14
Uganda
8
Cameroon
6
APAC
653
Singapore
141
India
84
Australia
56
Hong Kong
51
South Korea
30
China
30