According to Cointelegraph, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand's oldest commercial bank, announced that it will cooperate with fintech company Lightnet to provide customers with stablecoin cross-border payment and remittance services.
The service will allow customers to conduct cross-border transactions around the clock and reduce transaction costs. Lightnet CEO Tridbodi Arunanondchai emphasized that this project promotes financial inclusion and provides unique value to retail, corporate and institutional customers.
The service has been tested under the Bank of Thailand’s regulatory sandbox, which allows financial institutions to experiment with digital assets under looser restrictions.
According to a Chainalysis report, dollar-denominated stablecoins are increasingly being used as a store of value in developing countries. The report shows that stablecoins account for about 43% of crypto transaction volume in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In Venezuela, crypto payments account for 9% of remittances in 2023, with more than 50% of digital assets being stablecoins. This trend is also seen in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico.
In March 2024, Mastercard released a report stating that remittances in South America are growing faster than other parts of the world, and predicted that blockchain assets such as stablecoins will continue to increase their market share and promote the development of the digital economy.