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For years, the dominant narrative around stablecoins was simple: they move dollars across borders faster and cheaper than banks. That story was useful. It was also incomplete.
New data from a16z crypto published in April 2026 points to a structural shift that changes how stablecoin infrastructure should be built. Intra-country stablecoin transactions have grown from roughly half of all payment volume in early 2024 to nearly three-quarters by early 2026.¹ The implication is significant: stablecoins are not primarily a cross-border instrument anymore. They are becoming local payment infrastructure that happens to run on global rails.
For Latin America, this shift creates both a gap and an opportunity. The gap: the region accounts for less than $1 billion in stablecoin payment volume, a fraction of Asia's two-thirds share of global activity.¹ The opportunity: the infrastructure to close that gap does not need to be built in dollars.
Why local currency matters more than most assume
The conventional stablecoin stack is dollar-denominated. USDT and USDC account for the vast majority of global stablecoin supply, and for many use cases: cross-border treasury, crypto trading, dollar savings; that makes sense.
But Latin American businesses do not operate primarily in dollars. Payroll is in pesos, reais, or soles. Supplier invoices are denominated in local currency. Tax obligations, lease agreements, and day-to-day operating expenses all settle in the currency of the country where the business operates.
When a company in Colombia needs to pay a supplier in Argentina using dollar-denominated stablecoins, it introduces two unnecessary FX conversions: Colombian peso to USDC on one end, and USDC to Argentine peso on the other. That friction compounds across every transaction.
A local-currency stablecoin eliminates that friction entirely. Value moves as COLt, settles as ARGt, and neither party touches a dollar in the process. The payment is faster, cheaper, and settled in the currency both parties actually use.
The Brazil signal
The clearest evidence that this model works comes from Brazil. According to a16z crypto's April 2026 data, monthly transfer volume in BRLA, a Brazilian real-backed stablecoin, grew from near zero in early 2023 to roughly $400 million per month by early 2026.¹ Integration with Brazil's instant payments network PIX was a key driver.
The lesson from Brazil is not that one stablecoin succeeded. It is that a local-currency stablecoin integrated with local payment infrastructure can scale. The Real does not need to be converted to a dollar and back to be useful on a blockchain. It just needs to be there.
This is the model Twin has built across Latin America: local-currency payment stablecoins integrated into the financial infrastructure of each market, designed to move value in the currency people and businesses actually use. See the full network of Twin stablecoins.
What Twin has built
Twin issues fully backed payment stablecoins in seven Latin American currencies: ARGt (Argentine peso), BRAt (Brazilian real), COLt (Colombian peso), BOLt (Boliviano), CHLt (Chilean peso), MEXt (Mexican peso), and PERt (Peruvian sol). Learn more about each instrument at twin.finance/stablecoins.
Each stablecoin is fully backed by high-quality liquid reserve assets in an amount equal to or greater than the value of tokens in circulation. The tokens are payment instruments and units of account. They do not pay interest or yield to holders. Each token is redeemable at its fixed local-currency value on demand.
The network enables same-day local-currency settlement across borders in Latin America without requiring conversion to the US dollar as a bridge currency. A company paying suppliers in six countries can settle each leg in the supplier's local currency, on any day of the week, without depending on banking hours.
What this means for finance teams
The a16z data shows that consumer-to-business stablecoin transactions more than doubled year-over-year in 2025, growing 128% to 284.6 million transactions.¹ Business-to-business volume dominates by absolute size. Both segments are expanding.
For treasury and finance teams operating across Latin America, the practical question is no longer whether stablecoin infrastructure is ready, the data suggests it is. The question is how to integrate it into existing workflows.
Local-currency stablecoins add a settlement layer that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without the liquidity gaps that occur between banking hours in different countries. They make it possible to pay a supplier in Bolivia on a Saturday afternoon and have the payment settle before Monday morning.
The infrastructure is available now. Exchanges, wallets, and fintechs operating in Latin America can integrate Twin's stablecoin network and offer local-currency settlement to their users and clients.
The shape of what comes next
The a16z report closes with an observation worth noting: stablecoins are "global by design, yet increasingly local in practice."¹
That sentence describes exactly what Twin is building in Latin America. The rails are global. The currencies are local. The payments happen in the currency of the market where they belong.
Latin America is underpenetrated relative to Asia and North America in stablecoin payment volume. That gap will not close with more dollar stablecoins. It will close with infrastructure denominated in the currencies people here actually use.
Twin issues fully backed local-currency payment stablecoins and tokenizes real-world investment assets. Our infrastructure is designed for exchanges, wallets, fintechs, and asset managers operating in Latin America. To learn more or explore integration, contact us.
Twin's payment stablecoins are not investment products. Reserves are independently verifiable. See twin.finance for reserve documentation and redemption policy.
Sources
¹ Robert Hackett and Jeremy Zhang, "9 charts on what stablecoins are becoming," a16z crypto, April 24, 2026. https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/stablecoin-data-charts