A dirham token bought groceries in Abu Dhabi this week, and a bank in Minneapolis spent the same week testing how to freeze a dollar of its own making. Both ran over public networks, which is the part worth sitting with: the same wiring now carries money that’s yours outright and money that ships with an off switch.
- Marks & Spencer and Lulu Hypermarket took a dirham stablecoin at the counter, on the card terminals they already had.
- US Bank sent its own dollar token between its North American and European arms over Stellar.
- $100 million has already moved through PayPal’s new platform for businesses minting their own branded dollars.
- Singapore handed Gemini a payments license, cross-border transfer permissions attached.
Four answers to one question, which is whose terms your dollar carries: a central bank’s, a commercial bank’s, a payment company’s, or nobody’s at all. The choosing is the new part.
Two UAE stores start taking a dirham stablecoin
Source: TechAfrica News
Network International has opened the UAE’s first in-store pilot for dirham-backed stablecoin payments, running at a Marks & Spencer in Dubai Festival City and a Lulu Hypermarket at Khalidiyah Mall in Abu Dhabi. Shoppers scan a QR code shown on the payment terminal, confirm in a supported wallet, and the till registers the sale the way it registers any other.
The token is DDSC, pegged one to one against the dirham and licensed by the UAE’s central bank, settling on ADI Chain. Merchants choose whether the money lands in their wallet as DDSC or arrives as dirhams.
Network’s chief executive Murat Cagri Suzer framed the goal as “reducing the cost and complexity of money movement” for the shops taking it. The company plans to widen DDSC acceptance across its UAE merchant base once the pilot finishes.
Zypto take: The tell here is the hardware, because nobody swapped out a terminal to make this work. A payment method that runs on the till a shop already owns has stopped being an experiment, and that’s the whole design premise of Zypto Pay: settle in local currency or crypto, 0% merchant-side processing fees.
US Bank moves its own dollar token on Stellar
Source: Cointelegraph
The fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States has completed a live cross-border payment with a stablecoin it built itself. USBDC moved between US Bank’s North American and European entities on Stellar, a public network, with the bank issuing and transferring the token rather than handing that job to anyone else.
The pilot deliberately exercised minting, redemption, freezing and clawback. US Bank has been working on it with PwC and the Stellar Development Foundation since November 2025, and set up a Digital Assets and Money Movement unit the month before that.
Next on its list, per the bank: cross-border treasury operations, liquidity management, and moving collateral onchain. It didn’t disclose the size of the transfer.
Zypto take: Freezing and clawback were in the test plan, which tells you precisely what this token is: a bank dollar with the bank’s controls still attached, now running somewhere anyone can watch. Worth knowing the difference, given Stellar carries assets in the same wallet that nobody can reach into.
PayPal lets any business mint its own dollar
Source: Crypto Briefing
PayPal switched on PYUSDx, a platform that lets a business launch a branded stablecoin in days instead of months. It’s built with the token specialist M0 and the payments firm MoonPay, and it went live on Tuesday after being trailed back in February.
Each custom token is backed one to one by PYUSD, PayPal’s own stablecoin, which Paxos issues against dollar reserves. Issuers pick their own fee structure and incentives, and can deploy across multiple chains.
Three crypto-native firms launched with it, Saturn, Concrete and Cap, bringing more than $100 million of processed volume between them. Saturn’s token, USDat, has roughly $65 million in circulation.
Zypto take: Every branded dollar minted here rests on PYUSD, which rests on Paxos reserves, so the terms you’re holding are set three companies away from you. That’s the thing to read before you hold one, and the reason a stablecoin balance is a claim on an issuer rather than an asset with no one behind it.
Singapore licenses Gemini to move money across borders
Source: Blockonomi
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has granted Gemini Digital Payments Singapore a Major Payment Institution license, covering digital payment token services and cross-border money transfers. The grade matters: MPI holders operate without the transaction-volume caps a standard payment institution works under, and carry closer supervision in exchange.
It closes a two-year process. MAS gave in-principle approval in October 2024, Gemini shifted its Singapore customers into a locally incorporated entity in April 2025, and that entity now holds the full license.
Tyler Winklevoss called Singapore “a strategic hub” for the company, serving retail and institutional customers there.
Zypto take: Read which license Gemini went and got: a payments license with cross-border transfer permissions, because moving money on someone else’s behalf is the regulated part. Moving your own asks no one, which is what keys held on your own device buy you in Zypto App. Download Zypto App.
Key Takeaways
- Stablecoin acceptance is arriving on card terminals that are already installed, which puts the rollout cost for a shop near zero.
- A bank issuing on a public network is still a bank issuing. Mint, redeem, freeze and clawback all shipped with the pilot, by design.
- When a branded dollar is backed by another dollar backed by a reserve, the terms you hold sit several companies away from you.
- The regulated activity across all four of these stories is moving money for other people. Moving your own remains yours to do.
- The next round of these announcements will compete on convenience. The ones worth your balance will compete on how plainly they state who can reach it.
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