Citi's institutional clients can now accept stablecoin payments at checkout and receive settlement in fiat, under an expansion of the Wall Street bank's October 2025 partnership with Coinbase announced Monday.

Through Spring by Citi, the bank's merchant payment platform, Coinbase's rail accepts tokens at the point of sale, converts them to dollars and hands settlement back to Citi as the bank of record. The arrangement lets corporate customers take digital-asset payments without holding the assets themselves.

What changes for merchants on Spring by Citi?

Merchants that use Spring by Citi gain a stablecoin acceptance option without any direct exposure to wallets, custody or private keys. Coinbase handles token receipt and conversion; Citi handles the fiat balance and the regulatory perimeter. Stablecoins, which are dollar-pegged tokens that settle 24/7, function as the payment leg of the transaction rather than as an end-state treasury asset.

The companies described the U.S. as the launch market and said additional capabilities would follow in coming months.

How does the Coinbase Virtual Account work?

In the reverse direction, Coinbase is now built on Citi's Virtual Account Wallet, the banking-as-a-service product inside Citi's Services organization. Coinbase Virtual Accounts let businesses accept, hold and send balances in a way that resembles a bank account. Incoming fiat converts into stablecoins automatically.

The architecture links a regulated bank ledger to a crypto-native application layer, and it gives corporate users a working balance that can move on blockchain rails without a separate custodial onboarding step.

How large is the addressable base?

Coinbase put the potential audience at more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide. The figure frames the commercial logic: rather than courting crypto-native firms, the bank targets the corporate side of payment flows where stablecoins already circulate as a settlement medium.

Who is saying this and what did the partnership look like before?

"Citi is exactly the kind of regulated banking partner the digital asset economy needs to move from experimentation to everyday commerce," said Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, in a statement accompanying the announcement.

The two firms first disclosed their collaboration in October 2025, with an initial focus on fiat pay-ins and payouts to smooth on- and off-ramps for Citi's institutional clients. The Monday update formalizes two of those rails.

Where does this sit inside Citi's broader digital-asset push?

The expansion arrives as the bank widens its digital-asset footprint. In August, Citi disclosed plans to add Bitcoin custody to its Custody+ suite, a move that positions the bank against incumbents such as BNY and State Street in the institutional custody market. The Spring integration and the Virtual Account product sit upstream of that custody offering, focusing on payment flow rather than asset storage.

What else is Coinbase building alongside this?

Coinbase has used 2025 to broaden its revenue lines beyond spot trading. Last week the company rolled out fixed-rate USDC loans against Bitcoin collateral, powered by the Morpho lending protocol. In August it launched tokenized equities on Base, its Ethereum layer-2 network, for non-U.S. users. The Citi tie-up adds a payments-and-banking leg to that diversification.

What to watch next

The next milestone is geographic. Both companies framed the U.S. as the first market and signaled that additional jurisdictions will follow, though they declined to name the next region. The expansion will test whether a bank-led merchant rail can convert the 150 million stablecoin holders Coinbase cited into recurring transaction volume, rather than one-off settlement events. Watch for an updated roadmap from the two firms once the U.S. rollout is live.