Philippines Leads Five-Market Stablecoin Payments Survey

A five-market survey found that 20% of Philippine business respondents already use stablecoins for cross-border payments, the highest current-use share among the markets covered.

The survey covered 150 business operators and payments decision-makers in the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Vietnam. Current use stood at 17% in Singapore and 14% in Hong Kong, while respondents in Indonesia and Vietnam reported no current use.

The result puts existing Philippine adoption ahead of the other markets and shows that stablecoin use was already an operating choice for a substantial group, rather than only a planned integration. Its findings connect adoption to four operating requirements: settlement time, transaction costs, access to local currency and regulatory compliance.

Why are payment delays and fees pushing adoption?

Payment delays were a financial-planning concern for 83% of Philippine respondents. For 77%, international invoice payments took at least two business days to reach domestic bank accounts; 23% faced waits of four to seven business days.

Cost was another pressure point: 60% said intermediary bank charges and currency-conversion spreads consumed at least 3% of their international earnings. For payment decision-makers, that combination turns payment execution into a measurable operating issue, with arrival time and intermediary costs affecting the resources available on the other end of an invoice.

The results give stablecoins a practical role in the payment workflow: quicker settlement addresses invoice delays, while a separate digital route can preserve continuity when a conventional transfer is delayed or blocked. The survey supports the case on operating reliability, but it does not treat those benefits as a substitute for regulatory compliance.

Across the full survey, 87% had encountered at least one banking disruption in the previous year, including an unexpected payment delay or a blocked international wire. A total of 94% considered an alternative payment route a valuable operational backup.

Taken together, the two figures frame redundancy alongside efficiency. A business that expects delays, blocked wires or material intermediary costs has a reason to test an alternative route before a payment fails, rather than adding one only after disruption.

How large is the Philippine adoption pipeline?

Another 43% of Philippine respondents were evaluating stablecoin integration for the next 12 to 24 months. Together with current users, they represented 63% of the Philippine sample using or assessing these payment options.

Local access was the strongest adoption lever among evaluators. Among Philippine respondents considering stablecoins, 81% said the ability to convert and withdraw funds instantly in Philippine pesos would have a very high impact on their confidence. That was the largest share among the five markets.

All Philippine respondents identified regulatory compliance as essential. For the 43% evaluating integration, compliance therefore sits alongside speed and peso access as a condition of adoption, not a downstream consideration after technical implementation.

Renna Ba, director of operations at Morph, said: “Faster settlement matters, but so does the ability to plan around the money.”

The quote matches the survey’s numerical results. Respondents rewarded speed, but the 81% confidence finding tied that speed to the ability to move funds immediately into Philippine pesos; the compliance finding added a universal constraint. Stablecoin integration, in other words, has to solve access and governance together if payment operators are to move beyond the current-user cohort.

Over the 12-to-24-month evaluation window, the market-structure test is whether the 43% evaluation group converts into regular cross-border use while retaining instant peso access and meeting the compliance requirement cited by every Philippine respondent. If that conversion occurs, stablecoins would move from a contingency payment route toward routine regional business infrastructure; if it does not, adoption may remain concentrated among the respondents already using them.