Findings from Visa Consumer 360 research, surveying 14,250 consumers across 14 Asia Pacific markets, point to growing interest in stablecoins.

SINGAPORE, Oct. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Visa, a world leader in digital payments, today released new survey findings on stablecoin awareness and consumer sentiment in Asia Pacific. The research reveals growing interest in practical uses such as everyday spending, travel and cross-border money movement, while limited understanding and concerns around trust remain barriers to wider use.

As stablecoins move beyond their crypto-native roots, consumers are beginning to view them less as a crypto-trading instrument and more as a potential tool for everyday spending, travel and cross-border transfers. Yet misconceptions remain widespread, with close to half believing stablecoins can only be used to buy or sell other cryptocurrencies. Turning this interest into everyday utility will depend on making stablecoins easier to understand and use through trusted, familiar and regulated payment experiences.

“We’re seeing a meaningful shift in how consumers across Asia Pacific think about stablecoins,” said Nischint Sanghavi, Head of Digital Currencies, Asia Pacific at Visa. “Consumers are beginning to see how stablecoins could support the ways they already spend and move money, particularly through online purchases, travel and cross-border transfers. The opportunity now is to turn that interest into trusted and familiar payment experiences that work at scale.”

Consumers show rising interest in everyday stablecoin use

Across Asia Pacific, 46% of consumers say they are likely to use stablecoins within the next five years, compared with 16% who have used them in the past 12 months. Interest extends to everyday online purchases, travel spending and overseas shopping, pointing to potential use beyond investment or crypto trading. Cross-border money movement is another area of potential, with 49% believing stablecoins could become a common way to move money across borders within five years.

This points to possible relevance for remittances, international transfers and other payment needs. Yet understanding has not caught up with these emerging use cases: 49% of consumers who are aware of stablecoins still believe they can only be used to buy and sell other cryptocurrencies.

Market-level findings show where stablecoin awareness and intent are strongest across Asia Pacific. Hong Kong (84%), India (80%) and Thailand (77%) recorded the highest awareness, while Vietnam (67%) and India (67%) showed the strongest intent to use stablecoins within the next five years. These findings highlight the importance of making stablecoins available through secure payment experiences consumers already recognise and trust. Visa is already working with banks, regulated financial institutions and payment partners to connect stablecoin capabilities with familiar ways to pay and move money.

Stablecoin awareness is mainstream, but trust and understanding remain barriers

Stablecoins have entered mainstream awareness across Asia Pacific, with 66% of consumers aware of them. Yet only 6% demonstrate an accurate understanding of how stablecoins work, while misconceptions remain with 41% believing that stablecoins always increase in value.

Trust is also holding consumers back. Among those who are aware of stablecoins but have never used them, 38% cite concerns about fraud or scams, while 36% point to a lack of understanding. Consumers show the strongest preference for regulated institutions, with government or central bank-linked entities (27%) and banks or regulated financial institutions (26%) ranking as the most trusted providers.

While interest is growing, adoption will depend less on awareness alone and more on whether stablecoins can be made understandable, secure and useful in everyday payment contexts. The findings underscore the need for trusted and familiar ways to access stablecoins. Visa is working with banks, regulated financial institutions and payment partners to bring greater security, compliance and usability to stablecoin-enabled experiences, including through the Visa Stablecoin Platform, which helps clients mint, move and manage stablecoins.

“This research confirms what we’ve been building toward,” added Nischint. “Consumers want stablecoins to feel like a natural part of the payments they already trust, not a separate system. Our role is to connect emerging stablecoin technology with the secure, familiar payment experiences consumers rely on every day.”

About Visa Consumer 360 study

The Visa Consumer 360 study was commissioned in 2026, with fieldwork conducted between June and July 2026. The study surveyed 14,250 consumers aged 18 to 65 across 14 Asia Pacific markets: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Australia and New Zealand.

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.

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SOURCE Visa Worldwide Pte Ltd

Payward has integrated SGB Net, Singapore Gulf Bank’s real-time clearing network, allowing institutional clients in Asia and the Gulf region to settle instantly at any hour. SGB will also onboard Kraken Prime as an additional source of digital asset liquidity.

SYDNEY, Oct. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Payward, the unified financial infrastructure platform behind Kraken, and Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB), a fully licensed digital bank regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain, today announced a strategic partnership to bring always-on settlement to institutional digital asset markets available to specific jurisdictions only. 

With this partnership, Payward has integrated SGB Net, SGB’s real-time multi-currency clearing network. It allows institutional clients of both firms to now settle transactions instantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The settlement offering initially starts with US dollar transactions for a select number of clients, with plans to expand to more clients and additional currencies over time.

Settlement between banks and trading venues have historically taken days and been held to fixed cut-off times, even as digital asset markets trade around the clock. Through SGB Net, an SGB client can deposit funds with Payward and put them to work instantly, at any hour. SGB is also partnering with Kraken Prime, Payward’s full-service prime brokerage solution, to access liquidity for its digital asset offerings. Over the coming months, it will draw on Payward’s markets to price trades for its own customers.

SGB launched SGB Net in 2025 for digital asset businesses with growing operational needs, and the network has since scaled to process more than $20 billion in fiat transactions each month. SGB is backed by Mumtalakat, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, and by Singapore’s Whampoa Group, and it onboards corporate clients digitally across markets.

“Exchanges, payment providers, OTC desks and fintechs all run into the same banking constraint. Settlement stops when the business day does, while their markets do not. SGB has built settlement infrastructure that reflects the future of digital asset banking and payments,” said Mark Greenberg, Chief Commercial Officer of Payward. “Every regulated bank we connect with this way brings us closer to a world where settlement and cross-border payments happen in real time, wherever our clients are.”

“Access to liquidity is only useful if clients can move funds when they need to,” said Shawn Chan, Chief Executive Officer, SGB. “By connecting SGB Net with Payward and partnering with Kraken Prime, we are bringing settlement and liquidity closer together, giving clients more flexibility in how they fund and manage their digital asset activity.”

To support clients across borders and asset classes, SGB offers corporate and personal banking accounts to businesses and individuals worldwide, combining multi-currency accounts, international payments and remote account opening with access to digital asset services.

The partnership is part of enhancing Payward Banking, the money layer behind the Payward platform, which modernizes how clients move cash across deposits, payments, cards, custody, and lending. As digital asset markets and traditional banking offerings converge, clients expect their cash to move as quickly as the assets they trade. Working with leading regulated banks lets Payward bring that speed to new markets, and Payward will keep adding banking partners to offer a broader suite of banking services to clients worldwide.

About Payward:

Payward, Inc. is a unified financial infrastructure platform that powers a family of products advancing an open, global financial system. Built on a single shared architecture, Payward enables customers to hold, trade, earn, pay, and invest across asset classes without friction or fragmentation.

At its core, Payward provides the infrastructure layer behind Kraken and a growing set of purpose-built products, including NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, and CF Benchmarks.

Payward separates infrastructure from product expression. Each product surface is designed for a specific customer segment, regulatory regime, and use case, while operating on the same global foundation:

One global liquidity poolOne unified risk and margin engineOne collateral and settlement systemOne compliance and licensing framework

This shared architecture allows Payward to scale efficiently, launch new products at low marginal cost, and serve diverse global markets while maintaining consistent risk management, regulatory integrity, and operational resilience.

For more information about Payward, please visit www.payward.com.

About Singapore Gulf Bank:

Singapore Gulf Bank (SGB) is the bank for all of finance, serving businesses and individuals worldwide. Backed by Whampoa Group, a Singapore-based investment holding company, and Mumtalakat, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, SGB is fully licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain.

For more information, visit https://www.sgb.com/

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New framework delivers independent risk transparency for onchain investment vehicles, furthering S&P Global’s offerings across the DeFi space

SINGAPORE, Oct. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — S&P Global Ratings, a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), today launched its Vault Risk Assessment (VRA), a new analytical approach that delivers independent, forward-looking insights into the risks associated with digital asset lending vaults. The initiative brings institutional-grade transparency to the rapidly evolving digital asset ecosystem and supports informed decision-making for market participants.

What is a vault?

Digital asset lending vaults are investment vehicles that operate on a blockchain. They pool investor deposits and deploy them according to defined strategies, working much like managed fixed income funds. Total deposits in vaults reached US$10 billion as of September 2026, demonstrating rapid growth from US$1.5 billion two years earlier. While blockchain-based activity enables point-in-time transparency, strategy and risk disclosures for vaults have typically been limited.

The VRA Analytical Approach

S&P Global Ratings’ VRA is a forward-looking opinion about the overall relative risk of impairment to an investor’s position in a lending vault. The VRA provides a comprehensive view of a vault’s overall risk profile across six key risk factors:

Portfolio credit quality risk
Liquidity mismatch risk
Curator risk
Blockchain risk
Protocol risk
Vault security and governance risk

A VRA is not a credit rating and does not comment on yield levels. To read more about the VRA analytical approach, including the letter-based scale, visit spglobal.com/ratings/en/products/vault-risk-assessments.

“As digital assets continue to institutionalize, the demand for independent risk assessments that bridge traditional finance and decentralized innovation is paramount,” said Yann Le Pallec, President, S&P Global Ratings. “Our commitment to bringing transparency and rigorous analysis to all financial markets extends to this rapidly growing segment. The Vault Risk Assessment will empower investors and foster greater confidence and stability as capital flows into these new digital structures.”

The VRA analytical approach moves beyond transaction transparency to deliver essential risk transparency, enabling institutions to enhance their investment governance and selection processes and supporting broader adoption of the vault market.

“Digital asset vaults represent a significant evolution in onchain finance, offering new avenues for pooled investment and capital efficiency,” said James Wiemken, Executive Managing Director and Head of Global Ratings Services. “However, the inherent complexities and varying disclosure standards in this nascent market create a clear need for a standardized, independent risk perspective. The VRA fills this critical gap, providing market participants with the deep insights necessary to navigate vault investments with greater clarity and confidence.”

S&P Global Ratings will publish initial Vault Risk Assessments in future announcements.

A Strategic Focus on Digital Assets

S&P Global has established itself as a bridge between traditional finance and decentralized finance, leveraging its legacy of trusted risk frameworks, benchmarks, and analytical standards to support the institutionalization of digital asset markets.

Recent firsts include:

The industry’s first Stablecoin Stability Assessments
The first credit rating of a DeFi protocol (Sky Protocol)
Its first rating of a structured finance transaction backed by bitcoin: “Ledn”.
S&P DJI and Kaiko tokenize the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index on the blockchain.

In September 2026, S&P Global announced an agreement to acquire OpenZeppelin, the security standard for onchain finance. Earlier the same month, S&P Global led a strategic investment in Kaiko, the independent leader in digital asset market data, indices and data infrastructure. For more information on S&P Global’s capabilities in digital assets, visit: spglobal.com/ratings/en/products/solutions/digital-assets   

Notes to Editors

What are Digital Asset Vaults? Digital asset lending vaults are investment vehicles that operate on a blockchain. They pool investor deposits and deploy them according to defined strategies, working much like managed fixed income funds.
Functionality: These strategies can be fully automated via smart contracts or managed discretionarily by human managers.
What is a smart contract? A self-executing program on a blockchain that enforces the terms of an agreement automatically, without an intermediary. In a vault, smart contracts hold the pooled capital and enforce the allocation and risk parameters the curator sets.
Ownership: Depositors receive share tokens that represent their proportional claim on the vault’s assets and any accrued returns.
Role in Finance: Vaults are designed to replicate functions typically performed by traditional financial institutions, such as money market funds, private credit funds, private equity funds, and hedge funds, but within a blockchain environment. They enable pooled investment vehicles to exist directly onchain.
Growth: The market for digital asset lending vaults, although nascent, has expanded significantly, with total deposits reaching approximately US$10 billion as of September 2026, demonstrating rapid growth from US$1.5 billion in September 2024.
S&P Global Ratings Digital Assets Primer: How Vaults Can Shape The Capital Markets Of Tomorrow (May 25, 2026)

Media Contacts

Russell Gerry, S&P Global Comms, London, russell.gerry@spglobal.com 
Jeff Sexton, S&P Global Comms, New York, jeff.sexton@spglobal.com 
Michelle Lei, S&P Global Comms, Beijing, michelle.lei@spglobal.com

About S&P Global Ratings

At S&P Global Ratings, our analyst-driven credit ratings, research, and sustainable finance opinions provide critical insights that are essential to translating complexity into clarity so market participants can unlock opportunities and make decisions with conviction. By bringing transparency to the market through high-quality independent opinions on creditworthiness, we enable growth across a wide variety of organizations, including businesses, governments, and institutions. S&P Global Ratings is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI). Learn more at www.spglobal.com/ratings.
 

About S&P Global

S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) enables businesses, governments, and individuals with trusted data, expertise and technology to make decisions with conviction. We are Advancing Essential Intelligence through world-leading benchmarks, data, and insights that customers need in order to plan confidently, act decisively and thrive in a rapidly changing global landscape.

From helping our customers assess new investments across the capital and commodities markets to navigating the energy expansion, acceleration of artificial intelligence, and evolution of public and private markets, we enable the world’s leading organizations to unlock opportunities, solve challenges and plan for tomorrow – today. Learn more at www.spglobal.com.

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SOURCE S&P Global Ratings