Stablecoin payment volume hits a new high, but the real share of merchant transactions in the numbers you see may be less than 1%. The other 99% is exchange internal transfers, arbitrage bots, and smart contract loops — and has very little to do with "buying things".
A February 2026 report from McKinsey and Artemis Analytics breaks this down: out of about $35 trillion in annualized stablecoin transaction volume, only about $390 billion represents real end-user payments, such as supplier invoices, cross-border remittances, payroll, and card spending. Real payments are about 1% of the total. The rest is mostly noise.
How to View the Real Merchant Transaction Share
The key data is in one table:
| Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Annualized stablecoin transaction volume | ~$35 trillion |
| Real payments (including B2B/B2C/C2B) | ~$390 billion (about 1%) |
| B2B share of real payments | $226 billion (about 58%), up 733% year over year |
| Payroll/remittances in real payments | $90 billion |
| Card spending in real payments | $4.5 billion (up 673% year over year, but from a tiny base) |
Source: McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, February 2026
B2B is the main driver of real payments, not ordinary people swiping stablecoin cards at the supermarket. Consumer card spending that actually counts as "merchant transactions" was only $4.5 billion for all of 2025. Compared with global payments of more than $2 quadrillion per year, that is about 0.00002%.
Two Trends Are Pulling This Share in Opposite Directions
Trend one: consumer activity is growing, but from a very small base
Data from a16z shows that stablecoin C2B (consumer-to-business) transaction counts rose 128% year over year in 2025, from 125 million to 285 million. Stablecoin-linked card spending reached $759 million in July 2026 alone, 2.5 times the $306 million in the same month a year earlier. USDC accounted for 58% and USDT for 26%. Dollar stablecoins have taken the share that euro stablecoins once had.
Trend two: total volume is huge, but the real merchant share is still extremely low
A monthly volume of $759 million is still a drop in the bucket next to an annualized on-chain total of $35 trillion. Dune data shows that in the first half of 2026, USDT settled about $95 billion in identifiable commercial payments, while USDC settled about $14 billion. USDT accounted for about 92% of B2B payment volume. On Tron, about 93% of USDT supply sits in ordinary wallets rather than on exchanges.
How to Read It: Don't Be Fooled by Total Volume
If you want to see the "real merchant transaction share":
Look at the McKinsey/Artemis "real payments" measure — about 1%.
Within that measure, B2B is the largest part (58%), and C2B is still small.
Stablecoin card spending for all of 2025 was only $4.5 billion.
If you want to see the "growth trend":
Monthly real payment volume rose from $5 billion in January 2024 to more than $30 billion in early 2026 — a 6x increase.
Visa stablecoin settlement reached an annualized run rate of $4.6 billion, up about 18x since the start of the year.
Monthly stablecoin card spending grew from less than $1 million in October 2023 to $759 million in July 2026.
Both stories are true, but when you ask about "share," the first one is what you are seeing.
Key Warning
In global stablecoin on-chain transactions, real payments are less than 1% of the total. This figure is broadly consistent across sources — McKinsey/Artemis puts it at about $390 billion out of $35 trillion, or roughly 1.1%, matching the calculations used by industry experts. Consumer activity is indeed growing, but it is still far from mainstream. Most stablecoins are still moving between exchanges and DeFi protocols, rather than flowing through merchant checkout counters.
