This article was produced with the support of Absa
Artificial intelligence and stablecoins have a curious habit of appearing in conversations about the future of corporate treasury. At this year’s Treasurers Roundtable in Washington, both featured prominently in discussions around liquidity, cross-border payments and operational efficiency. That may seem like an unlikely pairing, but the more those discussions unfolded, the less surprising it became. AI and stablecoins are solving different problems, and yet both are asking treasury to reconsider something it has largely taken for granted for decades: that the way work gets done, and the way money moves, are fixed constraints rather than processes capable of being fundamentally reimagined.
AI is being touted as a solution to many of the challenges treasury functions are trying to solve, including, but by no means limited to, stablecoin adoption, although it has also prompted many to ask whether it will become their best friend or their worst enemy.
Much of that concern stems from the misconception that AI is here to replace treasurers, when its real value is in automating many of the manual, repetitive, and often time-consuming tasks that consume so much of the treasury function, allowing treasurers to spend less time on administration and more time applying the oversight and strategic thinking that technology cannot replace. That is precisely why AI is far more likely to become treasury’s best friend.
While AI is reshaping how treasury functions operate, stablecoins are increasingly reshaping how value moves.
While many organisations are still asking whether stablecoins belong within treasury, others are already focused on how best to use them.
Our experience at Absa reflects much the same pattern, with the clients that have begun exploring stablecoins doing so largely outside Africa, suggesting that while the technology is already beginning to find practical application elsewhere, Africa’s treasury market may only now be approaching a similar point.
Stablecoin transactions exceeded US$34 trillion globally in 2025, while in Sub-Saharan Africa they accounted for 43% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume, making them the dominant digital asset class across the region. More than US$300 billion in on-chain value moved through Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, accompanied by the highest stablecoin ownership rate globally, with 79% of African respondents to a recent survey indicating they hold stablecoins. The continent has also recorded the fastest growth in stablecoin ownership, driven largely by activity in Nigeria and South Africa, suggesting that while many treasury functions are only beginning to consider what stablecoins could mean for their operations, the underlying market is already evolving at considerable pace.
Stablecoins are not something treasurers should fear, because they have the potential to deliver significant cost savings and improve efficiencies. They are coming, or arguably are already here, whether organisations are ready or not, making it far better to embrace the opportunity than resist it.
This is not to say that the concerns surrounding stablecoins are not valid.
From this year’s Treasurers Roundtable, and in our engagements with clients at Absa, the concerns raised most consistently centre on fraud and regulatory compliance, but there are also practical questions.
Many stablecoins are US dollar denominated, which immediately raises foreign exchange considerations for businesses operating in markets where the dollar is not the natural currency. A corporate treasury function may be perfectly comfortable settling in local currency, but if a stablecoin transaction first requires exposure to the US dollar before ultimately converting back into another currency, that additional foreign exchange layer inevitably becomes another risk to manage, particularly in jurisdictions where businesses are already contending with exchange controls, liquidity constraints, or currency volatility.
There is also the cost element, which can be a significant deterrent, because many treasury functions are already operating under tighter budgets, and introducing stablecoins requires investment, not only in the technology itself, but also in adapting systems that are often already deeply embedded within the organisation, so the hesitation is often around whether the advantages of stablecoins justify the cost, time, and disruption that inevitably comes with change. Regulation is another important consideration, particularly for businesses operating across Africa, where each market has its own regulator and its own approach to digital assets. While some jurisdictions have become more open to stablecoins, others are considerably more cautious, making compliance far more complex for treasury functions operating across borders and increasing the consequences of getting it wrong.
Whether the conversation is about stablecoins or AI, the underlying question is ultimately the same: how treasury functions can operate more efficiently without compromising governance or judgement. The answer is unlikely to lie in resisting either. Stablecoins are changing how money moves, while AI is changing how that movement is managed. Both deserve to be taken seriously, not because they promise to replace the treasury function, but because they have the potential to fundamentally improve it.