Banks have started putting stablecoins into their card network backends, but this time they’re not using USDC.
Market participants claim that SoFi has moved its entire card program to its own stablecoin, SoFiUSD, for backend settlement. This is currently a single-source claim and still needs verification.
If this pans out, it means a bank-issued coin is being used—not the most widely circulated, compliant U.S. dollar stablecoin.
Around the same time, the U.S. has been discussing efforts to promote the overseas use of dollar stablecoins. The target is the “dollar stablecoin” category, not any single issuer. One week after Arc mainnet went live, the project team said on-chain circulation is 624 million USDC and cumulative transfers total 68 billion.
But USDC’s circulating supply contracted by about 3 billion in the first half of 2026. A comparison commonly cited in community discussions is that it fell from a March peak of about 81.1 billion to around 74 billion. The latter figure is according to market participants’ estimates, and no multi-source confirmation has been found.
Derivatives markets barely reacted: USDC/USDT perpetuals were up just 0.037% over 24 hours, trading at 0.9998; the 1-hour RSI is 78.2; and the funding rate is 0.0018%. Price isn’t telling the same story.
So the question is: if banks can issue their own coins for settlement, is USDC’s moat the distribution network—or that reserve pool?
Market participants claim that SoFi has moved its entire card program to its own stablecoin, SoFiUSD, for backend settlement. This is currently a single-source claim and still needs verification.
If this pans out, it means a bank-issued coin is being used—not the most widely circulated, compliant U.S. dollar stablecoin.
Around the same time, the U.S. has been discussing efforts to promote the overseas use of dollar stablecoins. The target is the “dollar stablecoin” category, not any single issuer. One week after Arc mainnet went live, the project team said on-chain circulation is 624 million USDC and cumulative transfers total 68 billion.
But USDC’s circulating supply contracted by about 3 billion in the first half of 2026. A comparison commonly cited in community discussions is that it fell from a March peak of about 81.1 billion to around 74 billion. The latter figure is according to market participants’ estimates, and no multi-source confirmation has been found.
Derivatives markets barely reacted: USDC/USDT perpetuals were up just 0.037% over 24 hours, trading at 0.9998; the 1-hour RSI is 78.2; and the funding rate is 0.0018%. Price isn’t telling the same story.
So the question is: if banks can issue their own coins for settlement, is USDC’s moat the distribution network—or that reserve pool?