Citi and Coinbase have expanded their partnership with two new products designed to let businesses move between stablecoins and traditional dollars without building separate infrastructure, t
Citi and Coinbase have expanded their partnership with two new products designed to let businesses move between stablecoins and traditional dollars without building separate infrastructure, the companies announced on Sunday.
Citi is one of the world's largest banks, moving approximately $6 trillion in payments daily. Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN) is the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange.
A stablecoin is a digital token pegged to a traditional currency like the U.S. dollar, widely used for payments and moving money across borders.
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The first product, Coinbase Virtual Accounts, uses Citi's Banking-as-a-Service infrastructure to give Coinbase's payments customers bank-account-like functionality.
Businesses can accept, hold and pay funds through the account, with incoming dollars automatically converted into stablecoins, a feature the companies describe as an industry first.
The second, built through Citi's merchant platform Spring by Citi, works in the opposite direction.
It lets Citi's institutional clients accept stablecoin payments at checkout, with Coinbase handling the crypto side. Citi automatically converts the stablecoins into dollars and settles as the bank of record.
Merchants never need to hold, custody or manage digital assets directly. The companies say the feature could serve over 150 million stablecoin holders globally.
Both products launch first in the United States.
The partnership addresses a practical problem: businesses that want to operate across both traditional finance and crypto currently need to build and manage separate systems for each.
The Citi-Coinbase setup handles the conversion layer in the middle, letting each side's customers transact without worrying about which rails they're touching.
"Citi is exactly the kind of regulated banking partner the digital asset economy needs to move from experimentation to everyday commerce," said Brett Tejpaul, Head of Coinbase Institutional.
The deal sits within Citi's broader push into digital asset infrastructure, which includes its recently launched 24/7 USD clearing service and Citi Token Services for real-time cross-border payments.
Citi banks 90% of the top e-commerce companies and 15 of the world's 20 largest fintechs.
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