Stablecoin Transaction Volume Exceeded ACH Volume as of Feb 2026

According to NY-based analytics firm Artemis (which offers a "Bloomberg-style" terminal for crypto), stablecoin volume exceeded US Automated Clearing House volume for the first time in Feb 2026 (stablecoins: $7.2 trillion versus ACH network volume of $6.8 trillion).

Automated Clearing Houses are a backbone of the payments industry. The first automated clearing house was BACS (Bankers' Automated Clearing System) which started processing payments in April 1968. It operated from the start on a net settlement basis (to minimise the number of individual exchanges).

However, stablecoins don't use the ACH network and instead trade on crypto exchanges (centralised exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, Binance), decentralised exchanges (Uniswap, Curve, Maverick) which settle on-chain using the native settlement mechanism of the relevant blockchain and brokers/OTC desks.

Despite the threat of stablecoins, ACHs still have an effective monopoly over salary payments.

Agentic Commerce Gets Lift from Santander and MasterCard PoC

Santander and Mastercard have completed an agentic payment, billed as Europe's first agentic commerce transaction within a regulated banking environment. It was conducted using Mastercard Agent Pay.

Agentic commerce is an emerging ecommerce category.

The grand vision is to allow purchases to be conducted using Mastercard's payment rails within conversational interfaces.

Ernst and Young unable to locate $2.1bn of cash in German Wirecard

The $2.1bn corresponds to 1.9 billion euros. Shares of the Munich-based company (Germany's largest fintech) dropped 62%. Its financial statements release due June 18th has been postponed.