SAN DIEGO—At the moment, you’re unlikely to use stablecoin to pay for your new lawnmower or for the mocha latte to give you the energy to use it. But will that always be the case? Molly Woodman sees a day when things will be different.

“People need to understand it a little bit better before using it, and that includes the merchants,” said Woodman, Senior Policy Advisor at the Digital Sovereignty Alliance, a nonprofit focusing on advocacy and education in the digital economy. 

“I think once we get there, and there’s more comfortability, I don’t think people are going to be as concerned with ‘is this stablecoin or is this coming from my checking account,’” said Woodman. “I do think we will have multiple options. That’s the important thing.”

At the April 27 Smarter Faster Payments 2026 session “The Stablecoin Shift: What It Means for Money, Movement, and the Future of Payments,” Woodman said “wide merchant acceptance” is crucial. But that’s going to require involvement from Capitol Hill. 

“I think once we get more regulation, merchants will want to use it more, because right now I don’t think they feel protected. There’s a lot of misunderstandings with stablecoins,” said Woodman. 

Among the potential uses for stablecoins, Peter Tapling, Managing Director, PTap Advisory, LLC, recalled a company that offered newspaper articles for 50 cents or 70 cents, but failed in part because “there was no efficient way to move 50 cents.” Had there been stablecoins it might have fared better, because stablecoins, Tapling said, offer “an opportunity to create really efficient ways to do micropayments, to do payments for purely digital exchanges of goods.” 

Whatever uses stablecoins are put to, Tapling cautioned the payments professionals in the audience not to pooh-pooh them. 

“If in 2005 you knew that PayPal would have created the market that peer-to-peer is today, what would you have done differently? Because that’s what you have to do relative to stablecoin,” said Tapling. “You don’t get to choose when, and where, and how your customers are going to spend their money, and if any number of customers are going to spend their money in stablecoin you can ignore it—in which case you will lose out—or you can support it—in which case they will look at you as the center of their financial universe.”