USDT Maintains Payment Dominance While USDC Gains Ground in Merchant Checkout

USDT still anchors the merchant side of the stablecoin market, but USDC is quietly eroding that lead on a measured share of payment traffic, according to NOWPayments data cited this week by industry outlets. For payments teams routing dollars on-chain, the signal is less about ideology and more about which rail is winning checkout conversion right now.

Where USDT Still Wins — and Where It Doesn't

NOWPayments, a crypto payment processor that sits between merchants and multiple stablecoin networks, reports that USDT continues to dominate its business settlement volume. That has been the default outcome for years: USDT has the deepest liquidity, the broadest exchange footprint, and the widest cross-chain presence, which is what processors optimize for when they configure merchant payouts.

The same dataset, however, shows USDC climbing into a larger share of "preferred payment" selections at checkout. In practical terms, end users — particularly those operating inside regulated US corridors or using Circle-issued balances — are increasingly choosing USDC when given the option. For a treasury team, that translates into split settlement workflows rather than a single-rail assumption.

Context for the Payment Stack

The broader picture is consistent: stablecoins continue migrating from trading collateral into invisible payment infrastructure. Standard Media reporting from Africa documents stablecoins functioning as routine settlement for remittances and merchant flows in markets where banking rails are thin or expensive. Separately, an industry forecast cited by CoinMarketCap — drawing on Bloomberg analysis — projects stablecoin payment volumes reaching $56.6 trillion by 2030. That figure is a projection, not transaction data, but it frames the ceiling payment teams should be planning around.

For platforms deciding which stablecoins to list, the short-term calculus is unchanged: keep USDT as the primary settlement asset because that is where counterparty liquidity concentrates. Add USDC as a secondary rail for users and jurisdictions where it is the default. The cost of dual-rail routing is small compared to the cost of losing a checkout because the buyer's preferred dollar token was not offered.

What to Watch Next

Two data points will determine whether USDC's share gain is structural or seasonal: NOWPayments' quarterly breakdown by region and counterparty type, and any shift in merchant fees or refund handling between the two tokens. Either variable can flip routing logic overnight.

For TradFi integration teams, the working assumption should be that the digital dollar settles on more than one rail at once, and that reconciliation, not custody, is becoming the binding constraint. Operators who have already rebuilt back-office plumbing for multi-token payouts will absorb the volume shift cleanly; those still hardwired to a single stablecoin will see friction at the moment end-user preferences turn.

For deeper context on how transaction-layer infrastructure is being benchmarked across the broader machine-learning and deployment stack — the same operational discipline tradFi teams are now applying to settlement — this deployment-data breakdown tracks the practical signals worth tracking.