There is a segment of your user base that holds stablecoins. Some hold a small amount as a hedge. Some hold significant balances and actively spend them: paying merchants online, settling invoices with international contractors, and making cross-border purchases. Almost none of them are doing any of this inside your app.
This is not a niche segment. Research across European and North American markets consistently places the share of neobank users who have held or transacted in stablecoins in the past 12 months at 15 to 25 percent. Among the 25 to 40 age cohort, which represents the highest lifetime value segment for most neobank platforms, that figure is consistently higher.
The commercial implication is significant. A large and growing portion of your existing user base is conducting payment activity in a product category your platform does not support. They are not churning. But they are not consolidating either. The full commercial relationship you could have with these users is being captured, in part, by a competing product. WalletConnect Pay is the tool that allows neobanks to close that gap without building a crypto product from scratch.
Understanding the spend gap
Neobank users who actively spend stablecoins typically maintain a split financial life. Their neobank account handles fiat spending, card payments, and everyday banking. Their stablecoin spending happens through a separate product: a crypto-native wallet with merchant integrations, a centralised exchange with a spend card, or a dedicated stablecoin payment app.
From your product analytics, these users look relatively normal. Their fiat balance is maintained. They make regular card transactions. Their engagement metrics are acceptable. What the analytics do not show is that their stablecoin spending, often a significant and growing share of their total payment activity, is happening in a product your platform cannot see.
This spend gap rarely announces itself in standard neobank KPIs. It tends to show up instead in:
- Lower-than-expected account balance growth among users in the 25 to 40 cohort
- Infrequent international transfer activity for users who are known to have international connections
- High app engagement without corresponding growth in transaction volume
- Users maintaining minimal fiat balances despite stable income profiles
If these patterns appear in your data, they are likely reflecting the same dynamic: users who are financially active, but not spending fully on your platform.
What happens when you close the gap
When a neobank enables stablecoin checkout payments via WalletConnect Pay, the behavioural shift among existing users follows a consistent pattern. Users who were managing stablecoin spending through a separate product begin consolidating that activity inside the neobank:
- Users who previously paid merchants using a separate crypto wallet begin initiating those payments from their neobank app
- Business account holders who were settling cross-border invoices through a crypto exchange begin using the neobank's stablecoin payment product instead
- Freelancers who received stablecoin payments from clients begin managing that income inside the neobank alongside their fiat balance
- Users making regular cross-border purchases shift to stablecoin checkout where available, reducing FX costs and settling near-instantly
Each of these shifts increases transaction volume, deepens the primary account relationship, and reduces the likelihood that the user consolidates with a competitor. The neobank moves from being one account in a user's financial stack to being the primary financial interface for a wider range of payment activities.
Why WalletConnect Pay is the right integration
The spend gap described above is a product gap with a specific solution. Your users want to spend stablecoins at checkout. Merchants increasingly want to accept them. The missing piece is payment tooling that connects the two inside your platform, without requiring a blockchain engineering team or a crypto product build.
WalletConnect Pay provides exactly that. It is a complete, compliant crypto payment method built on the world's largest wallet network, connecting to over 500 million users across 700+ wallets through a single APM-style integration. Built on infrastructure that has powered over $400 billion in volume, it is designed to fit directly into an existing payment stack.
For wallets and neobanks specifically, the value proposition is clearly stated: let your users spend crypto and stablecoins at merchants across POS and e-commerce, retain full control of the UX, earn interchange-like revenue, and WalletConnect Pay handles PSP compatibility behind the scenes. The integration does not require changing how payments operate today. It adds a new payment method in the same way any APM is added.
The minimum viable product is narrower than most teams assume
When stablecoin payment features come up in neobank product roadmap discussions, the scope is frequently overestimated. Teams assume the product requires an exchange integration, a staking feature, a token listing, or a full crypto asset management suite. None of that is required for the stablecoin checkout use case.
The minimum viable stablecoin checkout product for a neobank built on WalletConnect Pay covers three things:
- The ability for users to initiate a stablecoin checkout payment from within the neobank app, via QR code scan or in-app checkout flow
- A stablecoin balance that is visible and spendable alongside the fiat balance
- Transaction history that records stablecoin payments alongside standard payment records
These three capabilities, delivered in a product experience that feels native to the existing neobank UI, are sufficient to begin capturing the stablecoin spending behaviour currently happening outside your platform. The WalletConnect Pay wallet integration is designed to support exactly this scope, with clear documentation, reference implementations, and operational dashboards that align with how traditional payment products are built and managed.
Designing for mainstream users
One of the most common product mistakes when neobanks launch stablecoin payment features is designing the checkout experience for crypto-native users and alienating the mainstream segment. Most of your users who will benefit from stablecoin checkout are not deeply engaged with crypto. They hold stablecoins as a practical financial tool. They want to spend them the same way they spend fiat.
WalletConnect Pay's payment infrastructure is designed to support this abstraction, so the experience your users see is built around familiar payment conventions, not crypto mechanics. In practice that means:
- A checkout flow that mirrors card payment UX: amount, confirm, done
- Token and network selection is handled within the payment flow, not exposed as a technical choice to the user
- Instant confirmation notifications using the same patterns as existing payment confirmations
- Stablecoin balance displayed in local currency equivalent by default
- Merchant receipts that look and feel identical to standard payment receipts
The user does not need to know that a blockchain is involved. They need to know that the payment was fast, cheap, and accepted. WalletConnect Pay handles the payment infrastructure. Your product team owns the experience on top of it.
The competitive dynamics are moving faster than most teams realise
The neobank competitive environment in 2026 includes a growing number of crypto-native platforms that have built credible fiat payment features and merchant checkout integrations. The moat that traditional neobanks held by owning the everyday payment relationship is narrowing. Meanwhile, the stablecoin spending activity currently flowing through separate apps represents customer payment behaviour a well-integrated neobank platform should own.
The neobanks that build stablecoin checkout capability in the next 12 months, with payment tooling like WalletConnect Pay that connects to the wallets and networks users already use, will capture consolidation from existing high-value users and establish the default payment relationship with crypto-active users entering the market.
Payment behaviour is sticky. Changing it requires a materially better product, not just a comparable one. The window to be that product is open now.
Want to bring your users' stablecoin spending inside your platform? WalletConnect Pay can show you exactly how. Read the documentation or book a call with the team.