Citi Merchants Can Now Take Stablecoins Through Coinbase

Coinbase Global , the crypto exchange, said it has deepened its collaboration with Citigroup on two fronts. Citi's institutional clients using Spring by Citi, the bank's payment acceptance platform, can now take stablecoin payments at checkout through Coinbase's payments infrastructure without holding stablecoins themselves. Coinbase converts the tokens into fiat, and Citi settles the funds as the bank of record. Coinbase shares were down 0.38% intraday, as of 10:30 a.m. ET.The second piece runs the other way. Coinbase chose Citi's Virtual Account Wallet, part of the bank's banking-as-a-service offering, to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts. These give payments customers bank-account-like functionality to accept, hold and send funds, with incoming fiat converted automatically into stablecoins.Coinbase said the services will launch first in the U.S., with more capabilities to follow in the coming months, and pitched the merchant side as reaching a market of more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide. Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, said Citi is the kind of regulated banking partner the industry needs to move digital assets "from experimentation to everyday commerce."