SoFi Plots Crypto Comeback With Stablecoin, Payments Rail, and Tokenized Loans
The publicly traded neobank behind student loan refinancing and zero-commission stock trading is staging a full-scale return to digital assets—with a stablecoin, crypto payments, and tokenized loans all on the roadmap. SoFi Technologies, a roughly $30 billion San Francisco-based online bank, outlined an expansive crypto strategy that reaches across its consumer and enterprise businesses. Speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia + Technology Conference 2025 earlier this month, CEO Anthony Noto said crypto will touch “every part of our business, payment capabilities, lending capabilities, investing capabilities, tech platform capabilities,” according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of his remarks.
SoFi previously dipped its toe into the sector with a retail trading product, only to pause the service in 2023 amid regulatory uncertainty. At the time, the company migrated those crypto customers to Blockchain.com while it reassessed the environment. Now, SoFi is stepping back in with a broader plan. The company expects to relaunch buy, sell, and hold features for major tokens before year-end, then build toward crypto-enabled payments and, ultimately, its own SoFi-branded stablecoin, per the same transcript.
Noto framed the forthcoming stablecoin as an internal and partner-facing settlement rail first, describing it as a medium of exchange designed to move value between SoFi and crypto-native partners faster and more efficiently than legacy systems. He said the SoFi stablecoin would “be the means of economic value transfer, which is faster, cheaper and more secure than the systems they have today in the traditional investing world.” Over time, that same infrastructure is expected to underpin consumer use cases such as international transfers through SoFi Pay.
That vision dovetails with SoFi’s recent moves in cross-border functionality. The company has already enabled international fiat transfers over the Bitcoin Lightning Network via a partnership with Lightspark, a step that foreshadows how a SoFi-issued stablecoin could streamline settlement and reduce fees for global remittances and merchant payments. If executed as described, the coin could serve as a unifying bridge between SoFi’s consumer wallet, its merchant services, and its tech platform partners.
Noto emphasized that shifting regulatory signals in the U.S. have opened a window for mainstream financial institutions to press forward on digital asset initiatives. He argued that SoFi’s regulated status provides a strategic edge, noting the company holds a national bank charter through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). That positioning could be meaningful as other crypto firms scramble to secure bank licenses or align with banks to operate under clearer rules. For SoFi, having the charter in place may shorten the path from pilot to production on stablecoin payments, lending against crypto collateral, and other activities that must sit comfortably within banking oversight.
While the company has not yet disclosed a launch date or the precise technical design of its stablecoin, Noto outlined the economic incentives he believes could drive adoption—particularly among merchants. He said SoFi plans to encourage stablecoin acceptance by effectively removing interchange fees and potentially sharing yield with those who participate in the network. “When we bring in and we develop SoFi stablecoin, and we have a dollar for dollar back stablecoin, we could deposit that in our Fed banking account, earn 4% that we can give away to all the participants to take our product versus someone else.” The yield, as described, would come from interest on dollar reserves backing the coin. It remains to be seen whether those economics would be reserved for merchants using the stablecoin for payments, or whether they would extend to all holders.
Beyond consumer payments, SoFi is also scoping out a corporate banking opportunity built around digital assets. Noto said the company sees potential in serving large e-commerce platforms with integrated fiat and crypto treasury services, offering them settlement, custody, and cash management solutions that move across traditional and blockchain rails. If SoFi can make cost of acceptance lower and settlement faster while keeping compliance tight, that could help it compete for enterprise accounts that want simpler, cheaper cross-border flows and programmable money features.
The stablecoin
