Stablecoin Showdown: Will Walmart & Amazon Make Your Wallet Obsolete?

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What to know:

  • Stablecoins could finally make card fees—and those mysterious “processing surcharges”—vanish faster than your paycheck after a Walmart run.
  • If Amazon or Walmart jump on the stablecoin bandwagon, banks might need to get a new side hustle. Sorry, Visa and Mastercard, maybe try a food truck?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Walmart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN)—yes, the same folks who can get you a pool float in 24 hours—are thinking about rolling out their very own stablecoins in the USA. Ah yes, nothing says American innovation quite like “why don’t we just invent money ourselves?”

Picture this: corporate coins tied to the good ol’ U.S. dollar, or whatever currency your uncle swears is about to collapse. Merchants get lower fees, payments go zoom, and big banks get a little heartburn. It’s the financial shakeup you didn’t know you needed, unless you’re Visa’s CEO, in which case—you might want to lie down.

Only catch? They need Congress to pass the Genius Act (no, that’s not a Mel Brooks script, it’s real), which recently shuffled a step closer to actually becoming law. Once that happens, Walmart and Amazon can officially launch their own shiny coins and get you arguing about “Prime Points vs. Rollback Bucks” at the family BBQ.

Right now it’s just a lot of “we’re considering our options” and hush-hush boardroom meetings (“Should we call it ZamazonCoin?”). Partnerships, private coins—so many choices, so little regulatory clarity.

Walmart’s even lobbying to spice up the credit card market, maybe so they can dominate that too. Because if there’s one thing Walmart hates, it’s competition—or aisles organized by logic.

Pressed for comment, Walmart and Amazon gave reporters the classic corporate response—by not responding at all. 🤐

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2025-06-13 14:25