9/13/25 ![[Screenshot 2025-09-13 at 8.13.49 PM.png]] I recently dug into Bridge’s custom stablecoin issuance product ([link](https://apidocs.bridge.xyz/platform/issuance/custom)). You, the fintech, can issue your *own*, *custom*, *branded* stablecoin using Bridge’s APIs - custom ticker and all. **Why not just consolidate on the standard (eg. USDC)?** Who needs McDonaldsCoin? Both my regular USD and USDC seem more useful than that. For a fintech, denominating balances held on your platform *in your “own” stablecoin* does two things: * it entitles you to more of the yield that customer deposits generate, than if you were to store in eg. USDC (whose prime beneficiary is Circle) * consequently lets you pay more “rewards” to customers who choose to store money with you This works well with Bridge’s core offering: orchestrating in and out of different stablecoins and fiat currencies. Sure, hold on-platform balances in your own stablecoin. As soon as you want to send it out as USDC, or via ACH, or via SEPA, just make an API call to Bridge. Your custom stablecoin will be converted, and sent on its way via open-loop payment rails (including fiat ones). ### **What surprised me** **You cannot actually send your branded stablecoin *out of your own Bridge instance*!** Your stablecoin is not interoperable with crypto payment rails, other than after Bridge converts it to a public stablecoin (eg. USDC)! You can send out *other* public stablecoin (eg. USDC), or fiat currency — but *your* stablecoin is only usable within the confines of your Bridge instance and platform. Stripe describes USDB, Bridge's own branded stable, as a ["closed-loop stablecoin"](https://docs.stripe.com/crypto/stablecoin-financial-accounts#add-money-to-your-stablecoin-balances). Figuring this out sent me into a spiral of questioning, as a “crypto kid” dating back to the pre-stablecoin era. ### What is this *actually* - given its non-interop with open-loop crypto payment rails? This is certainly a new way to offer **“stored value”** financial products with rewards. But this is already doable under the traditional Banking-as-a-Service / partner bank structure, which fintechs use today. This is your Starbucks rewards account, or Mercury business account, or Wise wallet: ultimately held at Column Bank, Lead Bank, Evolve Bank, etc. A more thorough read is that it’s a way to do that kind of stored value product, but: * without doing costly, bespoke work with the “real” banking system * still inheriting 1:1 backing by eg. US treasuries and MMF at BlackRock * which - [if you squint at it](https://www.moneyness.ca/2023/09/there-are-now-two-types-of-paypal.html?m=1) - might even be worth *more* than the bank deposit You can convince a real bank to let you open virtual (FBO) or real (DDA) bank accounts in the name of each of your customers. This is the typical – hard-won, high-cost – BaaS/partner bank setup. Or, you can trivially create ETH wallets on Bridge – simple private keys and balances on a permissionless ledger – to ***store*** customer money, and *only* get a bank involved at the point at which you’re bringing in customer *fiat* deposits in, or pushing *fiat* out - ie. when money must be ***transmitted***. What would formerly require two programs in banking - stored value, and money transmission - suddenly just needs money transmission. You can now store elsewhere, more easily. Zach Abrams, the founder of Bridge, recently [described](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBA1UF-b74A) stablecoin as a sort of “layer 2 network” on top of the "layer 1" fiat system. Fiat is a more expensive, cumbersome, slow, but “real” settlement layer; stablecoin is an optimization for efficiency and connectivity, that still *settles* back to L1 eventually (in bulk / less frequently). The layman usually thinks of this in terms of moving money from A to B quickly, globally, programmatically. I think what "custom stablecoin" anchors on, that is not already *broadly* priced in, is stablecoin as a similar L2 for B2B **“stored value”**: which is how *consumer* utility in emerging markets *already* looks. People in emerging markets use USDC not just for — not even *that* *much* for — paying counterparties, whose acceptance is still inconsistent. They do it to *store* USD without an American bank account, and melt it into local currency when they’re ready to spend. It is *similarly* costly and difficult for the American fintech to *hold and manage* regular (customer) US Dollars — and so it follows that they would equally benefit from a stored value "layer 2." What makes that hard for them to justify and implement, if that is in fact a problem? Among other things: the partner bank is still going to offer me far more yield than Circle or Tether, and my customers are storing with me *for that yield*. That’s why “branded" stablecoin matters, and why Bridge is going after it. It is a way for you, the fintech, to offer usable "stored value" easily, for the same rewards, ***without old-school partner banking***. In that way, it is the thing that will shift fintech-wide incentives towards adopting the "stablecoin L2".