Stablecoins might not really be for humans to use, but for AI agents.

$Circle(CRCL.US) $Visa(V.US) $Mastercard(MA.US) Why are Visa and Mastercard pushing stablecoin payments so hard?
Because they've discovered that stablecoins can become new fuel to maintain their own toll booths.
In traditional card swiping, merchants pay 1.5%-3% in fees, which funds various cashback rewards for users. Blockchain was supposed to allow merchants to directly receive stablecoins, with a few cents in gas fees settling instantly, completely bypassing intermediaries.
But now Visa's approach is: users use stablecoins on the front end, which looks very crypto and innovative; in the backend, Circle and Stripe automatically convert the stablecoins to fiat for merchant settlement, resulting in merchants still paying roughly the same fees.
Users think they're using the future of payments, while merchant costs and processes remain almost unchanged, and Visa continues to steadily collect its tolls.
In a nutshell:
In human-centric payment scenarios, stablecoin payments are currently more often "co-opted" by card networks into old wine in new bottles.

What truly best matches stablecoins might actually be AI Agents. I won't go into detail about how suitable it is here, just give a brief introduction. Agents require high-frequency, small-amount, 24/7, human-free micropayments (paying for APIs, buying data, renting computing power, settling between agents). Credit cards simply can't handle this, while the low cost, real-time, and programmable nature of stablecoins perfectly fits the bill.