Coinbase and Moov to connect community banks and credit unions to stablecoin payments, integrating custody and settlement into existing financial networks

On September 10, local time, Coinbase announced a partnership with payments infrastructure company Moov to enable U.S. community banks and credit unions to offer stablecoin payments, settlement, and asset custody within their existing systems. Moov provides financial institutions with infrastructure for merchant card payment processing, card issuing, and connections to real-time payment networks. Its existing financial institution customers number more than 1,000 across the United States. The partnership will integrate custodial wallet accounts and payment application programming interfaces (APIs) from the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP) into Moov's existing payments platform. Coinbase will provide the regulated digital asset infrastructure required for asset custody and stablecoin transfers, while Moov will connect it to the payment systems that financial institutions and their customers already use. The proposed use cases include consumer stablecoin payments, merchant payment acceptance and settlement, and disbursements to businesses and merchants.

Coinbase said local financial institutions can add these capabilities to their existing services without building a separate crypto technology stack from scratch. Moov co-founder and CEO Wade Arnold explained the background to the partnership: business customers of local financial institutions are being asked to accept stablecoin payments, but currently have to use services outside their primary financial institution to do so. Arnold identified uninterrupted real-time money movement, including on weekends and holidays, as the next step. The announcement did not specify when services would begin at individual financial institutions or identify institutions that had actually adopted them.

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The significance of this partnership lies in its attempt to give local financial institutions a way to offer stablecoin payments within existing financial relationships, without sending customers to external crypto services. Connecting Coinbase's custody and payment capabilities to Moov's payment infrastructure can lower the adoption burden for smaller financial institutions, which would otherwise have to build a separate technology stack themselves. However, even if the customer relationship remains with the local financial institution, the storage and movement of funds rely on Coinbase's custodial accounts and APIs. The institution a user deals with and the underlying infrastructure that actually handles the assets are therefore distinct.

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