Direct crypto settlement falls to 39% of companies in FinteqHub's first-half data

The headline figure depends on a definition. FinteqHub counts a payment as direct only when it is a settlement in digital assets between payer and recipient with no automatic conversion and no dynamic route selection ^[6]. Between the two periods, the share of companies using automatic crypto-to-fiat conversion went from 28% to 46% ^[9] and the share settling in stablecoins from 34% to 54% ^[10], a 20-point rise ^[15] against a 23-point fall in direct settlement ^[14]. Because a single company could use several instruments at once ^[5], those two moves cannot be netted against each other. Still, a company that went from paying USDC straight to a supplier to paying it through a router would leave the direct count and enter the stablecoin count holding the same asset. FinteqHub's own reading is that businesses are not exiting digital assets ^[7].

The cause FinteqHub gives is tighter regulation, compliance uncertainty and operational risk ^[22]. It is also a Lithuania-based payment orchestration provider ^[1], and its figure for smart routing and orchestration use rose 26 points ^[16]. That is a vendor measuring adoption of what it sells. The Paypers' summary does not say how many companies were surveyed or which rules drove the change ^[1].

Among assets, the moves are close to mirror images. USDT lost 13 points ^[17] and USDC gained 14 ^[18], yet USDT is still used by more companies, by three points ^[19].

What companies are doing less of is choosing an asset. FinteqHub says predictable payment value, liquidity and ease of settlement now matter more to them than access to any particular crypto asset ^[8], and the routing systems pick a route per transaction by weighing cost, channel availability, processing speed and compliance requirements ^[12]. Stablecoins and traditional cryptocurrencies together are 31% of orchestrated flows in its estimate ^[20].

We think the 37% relative fall in direct settlement ^[21] largely records payments moving into routed stablecoin settlement. The opposing reading, that companies are cutting crypto use outright, fits the same 23 points, and share-of-companies data cannot tell the two apart. We would be wrong if the share of companies using any crypto, routed or direct, fell as well.