Samsung’s plan to put stablecoin transfers into the wallet app already sitting on 82 million Galaxy phones did not come together overnight. According to Lu Yin, head of APAC at the Solana Fou
Samsung’s plan to put stablecoin transfers into the wallet app already sitting on 82 million Galaxy phones did not come together overnight. According to Lu Yin, head of APAC at the Solana Foundation, the deal was years in the making.
“Samsung announced today (Oct. 7) that they will offer stablecoin payments as a service in the Samsung Wallet natively and then the settlement rails will be using Solana,” Yin said in an interview with TheStreet Roundtable at Token2049 in Singapore. “I think that Samsung’s use case is going to really impact other mass adopters in this space as well.”
The announcement came on Oct. 7. Samsung Wallet will support cross-border USDC transfers beginning the last week of October, letting eligible U.S. Galaxy users send dollars to compatible crypto wallets in seconds with no transfer fees, or to eligible bank accounts in more than 60 countries. Solana and Sui provide the network infrastructure, while Bastion, a licensed stablecoin custodian, powers the transfers with Coinbase Prime safeguarding the USDC as sub-custodian.
Image for representation purposes. Source: TheStreet.Asked why the product is launching now, Yin pointed first to Washington.
“The passing of the GENIUS Act has really facilitated and I think been a catalyst for corporations, financial institutions to kind of come into the space,” he said.
The GENIUS Act, signed July 18, 2025, created the first federal framework for payment stablecoins. Issuers must back every token with liquid assets such as U.S. dollars or short-term Treasuries and disclose their reserves publicly each month, according to the White House. Only issuers approved by a federal or certified state regulator can operate, they must follow anti-money-laundering rules, and they cannot pay interest directly to holders. For Samsung, that means a clear rulebook for a feature that moves real dollars. Yin said wallet, security and liquidity vendors are “all coming together at the right time.”
Samsung’s footprint is the draw. Galaxy smartphones have about a billion users globally, Yin said, but the stablecoin feature starts in one market.
“It will start with the United States only, which has only 82 million (users),” Yin said.
Rather than chase immediate sign-ups, Yin said the focus is on a smooth first experience for people who have never touched crypto.
“I think what we’re really focused on is actually getting the adoption first,” he said. “We will start to open it up, I would say, in different stages. Obviously, our goal is to shoot the highest penetration as possible. But I think in cooperation with the Samsung team, I think we should be able to find meaningful traction.”
New features will be added over time so first-time users can get comfortable holding and spending digital assets, and Samsung has said future capabilities could include paying with stablecoins online or in stores.
The market Samsung is entering is enormous. Cross-border remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached an estimated $685 billion in 2024, according to the World Bank, and the global average cost of sending money was 6.36% as of the third quarter of 2025. A phone-native dollar that moves in seconds, without transfer fees to compatible wallets, is aimed squarely at that cost.
Stablecoins themselves have also scaled. The total stablecoin market is now worth about $303 billion, led by USDT at $183.5 billion and USDC at $72.8 billion, according to DefiLlama. USDC is the first stablecoin Samsung Wallet will support.
Solana comes in with momentum: stablecoin supply on the network is up nearly 20% year over year, and it has processed more than $5.25 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2026 alone, according to the Solana Foundation.
Asked how long the two companies had been working together, Yin said Samsung had been exploring the space for multiple years and that Solana had been building in payments just as long. “You can count this in years as well,” he said of the deal itself.
The first real test comes in the last week of October, when the feature switches on across 82 million U.S. Galaxy devices.
Related: Samsung taps Solana to bring stablecoins to 82 million devices
