Payment giants build their own blockchain to replace Visa and SWIFT?

Nowadays, the cryptocurrency market seems to be flooded with news about “new chains” every day. Payment giant Stripe collaborates with Paradigm to launch Tempo; Stablecoin issuer Circle is also unwilling to fall behind and subsequently announced the launch of Arc. Going back, Plasma and Stable announced funding to develop a chain specifically for USDT services; Many participants in the tokenization field, from Securitize to Ondo Finance, have also revealed plans to build their own blockchain.

This trend is not simply about showing off technology, but the inevitable result of strategic layout. Stablecoins and tokenized assets are gradually being seen as two areas with great growth potential in the cryptocurrency economy. They are directly connected to the flow of funds in the real world and traditional financial markets, and are expected to develop into an asset class with a scale of trillions of dollars in the future. Scenarios such as cross-border payments, round the clock clearing, and tokenized trading of bonds and stocks are reshaping financial infrastructure, and controlling the “chain” is like controlling a new financial track.

Martin Burgherr, a senior executive at Sygnum, a cryptocurrency bank, bluntly pointed out that “establishing one’s own first layer blockchain (L1) is for control and strategic positioning, not just for technical considerations. ”In his view, the competition in the field of stablecoins and tokenization is not simply about market share, but involves a comprehensive game of settlement speed, compliance, fee structure, and dominance.

In the eyes of giants, the real competition is no longer about “whether it can operate”, but about “who will control the track”.
The ‘required course’ for giants to layout blockchain
The companies that build their own blockchain are not trying to create wheels from scratch, but rather driven by their core need for blockchain as a ‘settlement layer’. Their requirements for a chain mainly focus on the following aspects.Performance and predictability
Building a self built chain allows giants to isolate unrelated transactions and ensure that performance always meets their own business standards. Both stablecoin payments and tokenized bond trading involve high-frequency and low latency settlement requirements. If using existing chains, it means competing for bandwidth with thousands of other assets and applications. Once the network is congested, the payment experience will be immediately compromised.
Rebalance of Costs and Benefits
On chains such as Ethereum or Tron, every transfer requires payment to miners or validators. For payment giants like Stripe or Circle, this is equivalent to giving away potential profits. After controlling the underlying chain, they can not only internalize fee income, but also issue their own gas tokens, creating a new economic cycle. Guillaume Poncin, Chief Technology Officer of Alchemy, bluntly stated, “The revenue opportunities brought by having a settlement layer will far exceed the profit margins of traditional payment processing
Compliance and Embedded Supervision
One of the biggest challenges faced by traditional financial institutions entering the cryptocurrency field is meeting regulatory requirements. Measures such as Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti Money Laundering (AML), and transaction monitoring are usually patched at the application layer. And self owned chains can directly embed these regulatory requirements at the protocol level, making regulation no longer an external shackle, but an internalized rule of the chain itself. This provides giants with a stronger voice when communicating with regulatory agencies.
Strategy and Security
Relying on chains such as Ethereum or Tron means bearing the risk of governance decisions, technological upgrades, and even security vulnerabilities. For a network with an annual settlement amount that could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, this external dependence is unacceptable. Self owned chains can provide higher controllability and elasticity, ensuring stable cash flow even in extreme situations.

Morgan Krupetsky of Ava Labs has pointed out that the value of custom chains lies not only in technology, but also in enabling companies to view blockchain as a “middle and back office” and truly integrate it into their operational systems. This means that blockchain is transforming from an experimental field for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to an infrastructure for multinational corporations to operate.

Why not directly use the existing public chain?

Since Ethereum, Solana, and other chains already have a huge user base and mature ecosystems, why do giants have to start anew?

Control issue
Ethereum is a globally neutral public network, driven by foundations, developers, and communities. For payment companies or financial giants accustomed to complete control, relying on the voting and upgrading pace of external communities for their fate carries too much risk. Although Solana is known for its high throughput and low cost, it also means sharing network resources with various applications such as NFT and DeFi, and payment and settlement scenarios cannot tolerate this uncertainty.

Differentiated demand. Issuing stablecoins on public chains can quickly obtain liquidity, but it is difficult to build a moat.

Nowadays, both USDT and USDC are circulating on networks such as Ethereum and Tron, but users have extremely low loyalty to the underlying chain and only recognize the tokens themselves. To stand out in the competition, self built chains provide the possibility. It is not only a settlement tool, but also an independent ecosystem built around tokens, enabling issuers to upgrade from mere “asset providers” to “infrastructure providers”.

Of course, this does not mean that public chains will be marginalized. Coinbase analysts point out that Circle’s Arc and Stripe’s Tempo may directly challenge Solana’s position in terms of performance, but Ethereum, with its large institutional user base and verified security, is unlikely to be shaken in the short term.

Sygnum’s Bergh emphasizes that the migration of liquidity and trust often takes several years. That is to say, even if giants launch their own chains, it is not easy to attract truly large-scale trading volume overnight.

This also explains why many new chains choose to remain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Compatibility with EVM means that developers can seamlessly migrate existing applications, reduce cold start difficulty, and also interoperability with mainstream public blockchains. This is a strategy of “being both independent and connected”: being able to control one’s own network without being isolated from the encrypted world.

Driven by Stripe, Circle, and a series of tokenized nouveau riche, blockchain is moving from an “open experimental field” to an “enterprise level middle and back office”. The motivation behind building a self built chain ultimately lies in the pursuit of control, efficiency, and profit. Their requirements for blockchain go far beyond the technology itself, and are more related to compliance, business models, and strategic security. In the eyes of giants, the real competition is no longer about “whether it can operate”, but about “who will control the track”.
This new blockchain ‘competition’ has just begun.