CICC Research Report: Stablecoins have limited impact on existing businesses such as WeChat Pay, and cross-border applications have greater potential

CICC recently released a research report pointing out that the current domestic third-party payment system is highly mature and efficient, and the necessity for large-scale popularization of stablecoins in China is not high, and the impact on existing businesses such as WeChat Pay is limited.

The report believes that domestic third-party payments are essentially a "quasi-stablecoin" mechanism anchored to the RMB: platform funds are managed by legal institutions, currency stability is guaranteed by 100% legal currency reserves, and the fee rate is as low as a few thousandths, which is far lower than the handling fee level of several percent on overseas platforms. In this context, blockchain stablecoins independent of the existing payment system are difficult to form a practical alternative in China.

However, the report also pointed out that cross-border scenarios may become the first-mover field of stablecoins, especially for Internet companies with global users and mature payment scenarios, which have natural advantages. CICC listed three favorable conditions:

Broad user base: Platforms such as Amazon and TikTok have hundreds of millions of users and high-frequency payment scenarios, which is conducive to promotion;

Strong technical research and development capabilities: Internet companies have the technical reserves to develop wallets, blockchain interfaces and compliance systems;

Ecological closed-loop synergy: A closed loop can be formed between B-end supply chain finance and C-end consumer payments to enhance the stablecoin network effect.

CICC believes that there is still broad space for the exploration of stablecoins in vertical scenarios such as cross-border payments and supply chain financing in the future, and the layout of related companies deserves continued attention.