USDT’s grip on Asia-Pacific stablecoin payments loosens to 91%

Tether’s USDT still runs the stablecoin payments show in Asia-Pacific. It just runs slightly less of it than before. A CoinDesk Research report found that USDT’s share of identified stablecoin payment volume in the region fell from 98% in early 2025 to 91% as of July 2026. The cause is not a collapse. It is a slow migration toward stablecoins built around compliance and regulatory approval, with Ripple’s RLUSD cited as an example. What the numbers show Ripple commissioned the report, and CoinDesk Research published it on September 15, 2026. Updates on RLUSD’s growth followed through early October 2026. The headline finding is about geography. Asia-Pacific accounted for 51.2% of global identified stablecoin payment volume in the dataset, totaling $30.9 billion. That volume moved across 426 corridors in 28 countries. Within that regional market, USDT’s share dropped 7 percentage points over roughly a year and a half. A 91% share is still dominant, but it means 9% of identified volume now flows through other stablecoins, up from just 2% in early 2025. The report also broke down what the payments were for. Business-to-business transactions made up 37.1% of Asia-Pacific stablecoin payme...