Yesterday I came across a post: Samsung Wallet had added USDC directly to the wallet app that comes preinstalled on its phones. No need to download another crypto app—just open the wallet that holds your bank cards and boarding passes, and you can buy, store, and send USDC. It reaches around 82 million Galaxy devices in the US (according to Decrypt’s November 5 report).
It sounds seamless, but my first reaction was to check two details. First, credit card top-ups incur a 4% fee, so you’re down $4 before you even start if you add $100. Second, Samsung itself says that paying with stablecoins directly, both online and in stores, is still “being explored.” In other words, the money is on my phone, but when it’s time to check out, I still have to convert it back to fiat and use the old payment rails.
Over the past few years, I’ve tried quite a few products that put stablecoins in a wallet. Almost all of them ran into the same roadblock: holding them is easy; paying with them without manually converting currencies or figuring out networks and fees ahead of time is the hard part. Being able to buy doesn’t mean you can spend, and being able to transfer doesn’t mean you can check out.
So what’s really worth watching here isn’t “another big company entering stablecoins.” It’s that the point of entry has changed—stablecoins have moved into a phone’s built-in wallet for the first time, appearing right alongside bank cards. Once the barrier to holding them drops to “no need to learn how to use a wallet or manage private keys,” the competition shifts from “who can help you buy them” to “who can make it so you don’t have to think when you pay.” The company that first makes “funds arrive and are ready to spend” work smoothly—with no need to choose a network, calculate whether the 4% fee is worth it, or worry about refunds not going back the way they came—will be the one that truly captures the advantage of this new entry point.
Would you put some of your everyday spending money in a stablecoin account in your phone’s built-in wallet? Or would you wait until you can pay by scanning a code directly?
#稳定币 #CryptoPayments
It sounds seamless, but my first reaction was to check two details. First, credit card top-ups incur a 4% fee, so you’re down $4 before you even start if you add $100. Second, Samsung itself says that paying with stablecoins directly, both online and in stores, is still “being explored.” In other words, the money is on my phone, but when it’s time to check out, I still have to convert it back to fiat and use the old payment rails.
Over the past few years, I’ve tried quite a few products that put stablecoins in a wallet. Almost all of them ran into the same roadblock: holding them is easy; paying with them without manually converting currencies or figuring out networks and fees ahead of time is the hard part. Being able to buy doesn’t mean you can spend, and being able to transfer doesn’t mean you can check out.
So what’s really worth watching here isn’t “another big company entering stablecoins.” It’s that the point of entry has changed—stablecoins have moved into a phone’s built-in wallet for the first time, appearing right alongside bank cards. Once the barrier to holding them drops to “no need to learn how to use a wallet or manage private keys,” the competition shifts from “who can help you buy them” to “who can make it so you don’t have to think when you pay.” The company that first makes “funds arrive and are ready to spend” work smoothly—with no need to choose a network, calculate whether the 4% fee is worth it, or worry about refunds not going back the way they came—will be the one that truly captures the advantage of this new entry point.
Would you put some of your everyday spending money in a stablecoin account in your phone’s built-in wallet? Or would you wait until you can pay by scanning a code directly?
#稳定币 #CryptoPayments