Pavel Kashuba, Strategic Leader at Coinspaid Solutions, used his main-stage
address at Stablecon USA 2026 in Washington, D.C., to examine the operational
work required to make crypto a routinely used payment method.
His session, “Four in Ten American
Businesses Take Crypto. Most of Their Customers Never Notice,” placed payment
design at the center of the adoption debate. Kashuba argued that availability
alone provides a limited measure of success. Real adoption appears in completed
transactions and repeat customer behavior.
Adoption
is Already Visible at Checkout
A Harris Poll survey for the National Cryptocurrency Association
found that 39% of surveyed U.S. merchants accept crypto at checkout. Among
those merchants, crypto represents 26% of total sales. Another NCA study found
that 26.8 million Americans use crypto to shop and pay, equivalent to 40% of
U.S. crypto holders.
Kashuba placed these figures within the wider stablecoin economy. A
McKinsey analysis conducted with Artemis estimated annual stablecoin activity
at up to $35 trillion. Actual stablecoin payments ran at about $390 billion
based on December 2025 activity, leaving payment use at roughly 1% of total
volume.
For Pavel, this gap shifts attention toward the practical conditions
surrounding each payment.
Four
Decisions Determine Real Usage
Kashuba organized the challenge around four operational decisions.
Placement determines whether customers see the crypto option at checkout.
Currency and network coverage influence transaction cost and processing time.
Settlement design governs when merchants receive funds and the form in which
they arrive. Custody establishes who controls the assets and carries
responsibility for them.
For banks, PSPs and acquirers, these are the design choices behind
any crypto offering they extend to their merchants.
The framework draws on the operating experience behind Coinspaid
Solutions. Infrastructure used by its clients has processed more than €100
billion in volume and over 200 million transactions.
At that scale, checkout visibility and network selection have
measurable effects on payment completion. Settlement configuration shapes the
merchant’s exposure after each transaction. Kashuba’s approach gave the session
an operational basis grounded in live payment environments.
Settlement
and Custody Define the Operating Model
More than 70% of businesses settle crypto payments in fiat,
according to figures presented by Kashuba. Configured for automatic conversion
into U.S. dollars or euros, the setup lets merchants receive familiar treasury
assets without holding crypto. Settlement is provided by regulated entities or
licensed banking partners; availability varies by jurisdiction. Blockchain
transfers operate outside the card chargeback mechanism, while refunds remain a
separate merchant-controlled process.
Custody carries a wider set of operational consequences. “The choice
depends on how much control your business wants and how much infrastructure it
can manage,” Kashuba said.
This division of responsibility is also central to the enterprise
infrastructure model developed by Coinspaid Solutions. Financial institutions
operate under their own regulatory framework and retain control over
transaction signing. Coinspaid deploys and maintains the underlying technology,
allowing institutions to preserve their customer relationships and operating
models. The structure reflects Kashuba’s broader point that control, security,
compliance and operational capacity need to be designed as one system.
A Framework
for Agentic Payments
Pavel Kashuba closed by applying the same framework to agentic
payments. Amazon’s Buy for Me and Google’s Universal Cart already allow AI
systems to complete purchases for users. The x402 protocol has recorded more
than 100 million transactions on Base. Autonomous commerce will still depend on
visible payment options, suitable network coverage, reliable settlement and
clearly assigned custody. Kashuba presented the experience gained from live
crypto payment infrastructure as a practical foundation for designing that
emerging layer.
Across the session, Kashuba’s central message remained grounded in
execution: payment infrastructure creates value when it converts market demand
into reliable, repeatable usage. Coinspaid
Solutions’
experience at scale gave that argument a practical foundation, connecting
today’s crypto payment realities with the infrastructure requirements of the
next phase of digital commerce.
This article was written by FM Contributors at www.financemagnates.com.
