Citi's institutional clients can accept stablecoin payments through Coinbase without holding tokens

Coinbase expanded its deal with Citi to add stablecoin payment services for the bank's institutional clients. Coinbase connected its payments infrastructure to Spring by Citi, the bank's merchant payment platform. Coinbase converts the stablecoins into fiat. Citi settles the funds as the bank of record. Coinbase also tapped Citi's Virtual Account Wallet to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts. Those accounts let businesses building on Coinbase accept, hold and send money much like a bank account. Incoming fiat, such as U.S. dollars, is automatically converted into stablecoins. Both features are launching first in the U.S. The companies said more capabilities are planned in the coming months. Coinbase pegged the potential audience at more than 150 million stablecoin holders worldwide. Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional, said Citi is exactly the kind of regulated banking partner the digital asset economy needs to move from experimentation to everyday commerce. The expanded deal builds on a partnership the companies announced in October 2025. The companies said then they would work on fiat pay-ins and payouts to smooth crypto on- and off-ramps for Citi's institutional clients. Citi announced plans in August to add Bitcoin custody to its Custody+ suite. Coinbase rolled out fixed-rate USDC loans against Bitcoin last week, powered by Morpho. Coinbase launched tokenized stocks on Base in August for non-U.S. users. Base is Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network.