The Quiet Impact of Stablecoins: Why Slow Rate and Offer Changes Now Create Immediate Attrition Risk

A Shift in How Money Moves

Over the past year, several of the world’s largest financial institutions have released projections that point in a single direction: the velocity of money is increasing, and the infrastructure carrying it is changing.

BNY now forecasts that stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and digital money market funds could reach $3.6 trillion in value by 2030, not as fringe instruments, but as a parallel layer of digital cash operating alongside traditional balances.

Executives at Standard Chartered have said they expect most transactions to settle on blockchain-based rails over time, a view consistent with the industry’s movement toward shorter settlement windows and 24/7 liquidity.

Meanwhile, U.S. Bank is exploring stablecoin-enabled trade finance, and Western Union has disclosed plans for a USD-backed token to support faster international transfers. Payments companies, money-transfer providers, and several global banks are quietly building similar initiatives.

EY-Parthenon’s research adds another dimension: while only 13% of corporates and FIs use stablecoins today, 54% of non-users expect to adopt them within 6–12 months, and over 40% of current users report 10%+ cost savings, largely due to operational efficiency in cross-border flows.

This is not a one-off. The momentum is coming from several directions simultaneously.

Banks will feel the impact in how they compete for deposits, payments, and relationships.

Why Faster Money Raises the Stakes for Offer Execution

The most immediate impact of these developments is not that every bank must issue a tokenized deposit tomorrow. The more urgent reality is that customers, retail and commercial, will have credible alternatives that move funds faster than many banks can adjust their own offers.

When value can move in minutes instead of days, the tolerance for slow pricing cycles shrinks. If a bank needs weeks to launch a deposit offer, modify a card incentive, or update a fee structure, the market will not wait.

Three pressure points are emerging:

Deposit Retention

As programmable money and higher-yield alternatives become more accessible, depositors can shift funds with far less friction. Delayed rate changes or slow offer cycles become a direct contributor to attrition.

Card and Spending Behavior

If competitors or new platforms can introduce incentives or adjust pricing quickly, and do so with consistent disclosures, card usage follows. Slow internal updates translate into lost spend and weaker interchange.

Operational and Regulatory Exposure

Speed without governance introduces risk. When each change requires manual updates across systems and teams, inconsistencies in disclosures and product terms become more likely and more visible during examinations.

Banks rarely struggle with strategy. They struggle with the execution framework needed to implement that strategy consistently and safely.

The Real Gap: Insight vs. the Ability to Act

Across institutions, the pattern is consistent. Leaders know the moves they would make if the process allowed it:

• More frequent APY/APR adjustments

• Timely deposit offers as conditions move

• More tailored product variants for targeted customer needs

But the path to market is slow:

• Pricing lives in multiple systems.

• Disclosures update channel by channel.

• Approvals move across email threads and spreadsheets.

• Documentation is recreated for each exam cycle.

These delays were tolerable when settlement took days and customer expectations were tied to batch processing. They are harder to defend in an environment where liquidity and payments can reallocate quickly.

Slow execution now has a measurable financial impact:

• Offers go live after the moment has passed.

• Campaign ROI declines because customers acted elsewhere.

• Regulators see fragmented documentation and unclear ownership.

• Leadership teams know the cost and opportunity cost of every delay.

Internal friction becomes a competitive disadvantage, and in a faster-money environment, a structural one.

How Leading Banks Are Responding

The institutions treating this shift seriously are not focusing on “digital asset products.” They are focusing on the underlying operational capabilities that determine whether they can respond quickly, safely, and consistently, regardless of whether the trigger is a rate change, a new offer, or a new form of settlement.

Several themes are emerging:

Unifying the Offer Process

Banks are consolidating product, pricing, rules, and disclosures into a single governed workflow. Defining an offer once and allowing that definition to carry through to every channel removes rekeying and reduces misalignment.

Shortening the Change Cycle

Institutions are mapping the entire path from idea to market, identifying handoffs that create delay, and replacing informal processes with structured, trackable steps. This often reduces execution cycles from months to weeks, sometimes days.

Preparing for Higher Change Volume

Even without issuing tokenized deposits, banks anticipate the need to adjust products more frequently. Those adjustments require systems that maintain lineage and auditability as the volume of changes increases.

Linking Execution to Financial Outcomes

Execution capability is being reframed as a P&L and balance sheet topic rather than a technology initiative. Faster cycles defend deposits. Better governance reduces the cost of change. Consistency across channels reduces operational and regulatory exposure.

The conversation has shifted from “innovation strategy” to operational readiness.

What Executives Should Be Asking Now

For leadership teams, a few questions help clarify where the institution stands:

• When rates move, how quickly can the bank adjust pricing and disclosures across all channels?

• How long does it take to launch a meaningful new offer?

• How many systems must be touched for a single change, and how much of that work is manual?

• Could the current execution process support a world where customers move money in minutes, not days?

• If alternatives continue to accelerate, will the bank see signs of attrition before it can respond?

The answers vary, but the trend does not: as money moves faster, the cost of slow change rises.

Banks do not need to adopt every new rail. But they do need the capacity to act quickly and consistently when conditions shift.

Offer execution, long treated as an operational detail, is becoming a strategic differentiator.

If faster settlement and rising customer expectations are putting pressure on your change process, we can outline the operating models institutions are adopting to shorten cycles without adding risk.

[1] BNY Mellon. Report projecting that the combined market for stablecoins + tokenized cash could reach $3.6 trillion by 2030. https://cryptobriefing.com/bny-forecasts-stablecoins-tokenized-cash-3-6t-2030/

[2] EY‑Parthenon. “Stablecoins in focus: navigating the new digital financial landscape” — survey of 350 institutions showing 13% usage, 54% plan to adopt within 6-12 months. https://www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-unified-site/ey-com/en-us/insights/financial-services/documents/cs-eyp-stablecoin-survey.pdf?