Western Union has significantly expanded its digital asset infrastructure in 2026, launching the dollar-backed USDPT stablecoin on the Solana blockchain and rolling out the Stablecard across 37 markets on August 4, with plans to reach more than 60 countries by year-end.
Issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally regulated crypto bank in the United States, USDPT is fully backed by US dollar reserves and currently has a circulation of 7.4 million tokens across 162 wallets. Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan said the token was launched as "an alternative to the interbank SWIFT settlement network that we use today," positioning it primarily as settlement infrastructure rather than a consumer product. Solana Foundation President Lily Liu said the network's high-throughput, low-latency design enables assets like USDPT to move with required speed and reliability.
The company also introduced its Digital Asset Network, which connects crypto wallet companies to Western Union's cash-out services in more than 200 countries and territories and 130-plus currencies. The card, developed with stablecoin payments infrastructure firm Rain, lets users spend USDPT at roughly 175 million merchant locations, with Apple Pay and Google Pay support. Western Union selected Fireblocks for custody and transfer infrastructure, while competitor MoneyGram is pursuing a USDC-based settlement strategy and Stripe is expanding its stablecoin payment infrastructure.
At the same time, a New York Federal Reserve staff paper published in August found that wallets linked to countries experiencing currency or banking crises were 1.8% more likely to receive dollar stablecoins during the week a crisis began. Researchers Pablo Azar, Maryam Farboodi and Nish Sinha studied nine episodes across eight countries between 2021 and 2025, including Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The paper concluded that stablecoins provide an alternative route to dollar exposure outside domestic banking channels, complicating traditional capital-control enforcement.
The stablecoin market has grown beyond $300 billion and is expected to reach trillions of dollars before the end of the decade. The New York Fed research suggests that as blockchain-based dollar rails expand, central banks may face harder choices during future currency crises, even though major stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether retain some ability to freeze addresses and regulated exchanges can be required to restrict transactions.
