Freelancers Demand a Payment Revolution: Stablecoins

By Edward Woodford, CEO, Zero Hash

When my wife and I got married nearly two years ago, we hired several freelancers across the globe to help with design and logistics. One freelancer that we got to know well throughout the process was May, a designer in the Philippines. As we learned a little about her life, she shared that payments from the platform we used to pay her would often take three days to be received in her accounts. This created uncertainty for her in her income. May’s experience isn’t unique. In fact, it’s the norm, with many people often waiting even longer for their overseas payments to settle into local bank accounts. With an estimated 1.57 billion freelancers worldwide, traditional payment systems are in need of a radical shake-up to keep pace with the global, digital-first workforce.

A recent survey commissioned and conducted by the independent research agency Centiment spoke to 2,500 freelancers across the US, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and the UAE and underscored a possible alternative: 93% of respondents expressed a desire to receive part of their income in cryptocurrency or stablecoins. That might sound radical. But for freelancers across the world grappling with payment delays, high fees, and inefficient foreign exchange processes, stablecoin payment solutions aren’t a novelty - they’re a necessity.

The Global Payments Bottleneck

The financial infrastructure that freelancers rely on does not meet the demands of an increasingly global workforce. The number of freelancers is growing alongside an ever more remote and distributed workforce. For example, the company that I run illustrates this shift: prior to Covid, our entire team was based in the US. Today, just over half of our staff are US-based, with remote workers making up the rest. The data paints a clear picture of systemic issues:

• Nearly 60% of surveyed freelancers report local banking systems fail to meet their needs.
• Around 65% have lost money or missed opportunities due to slow and expensive foreign exchange processes.
• Almost half experience regular payment delays, disrupting cash flow and business momentum.

These inefficiencies stem from an outdated global payments system. Correspondent banking, a framework developed in the 18th century, adds layers of complexity to cross-border transactions, increasing both costs and delays. In short, stablecoins are a competitor to the global SWIFT network.

As the global economy shifts towards an on-demand, borderless digital economy, freelancers need a financial system that moves at the speed of work, not at the pace of our legacy banking networks.

A Stablecoin Future

For freelancers like May, getting paid is only the beginning. After finally receiving their funds, freelancers can often face foreign exchange fees, limited banking options, and local currency inflation eroding their earnings. In markets like Argentina and the UAE, over 80% of freelancers now prefer stablecoins over local currencies - not just for payments but as a hedge against volatility and a tool for long-term financial planning.

By way of context, a stablecoin is a form of digital cash that serves as a proxy for sovereign currencies like the US dollar and can be used for digital payments. Stablecoins are built on the same infrastructure as crypto, but do not fluctuate in value. As a result, they are growing in popularity - particularly in emerging markets - as a cheap and instant way to access hard currency without relying on creaky local banks. Though in its nascency, stables are no longer fringe. In 2024, stablecoins on-chain transfers totaled $27.6 trillion, surpassing the $23.8 trillion combined payment volume of Visa and Mastercard (per Yahoo Finance).

The pace of this distribution of stablecoin technology cannot be ignored. Mainstream fintech apps like Nubank, which serves over 100 million users, recently enabled freelancers to receive, hold, and spend stablecoins seamlessly. It’s telling that this feature is growing in popularity, with the amount of USDC - a dollar-fixed stablecoin - held by customers growing tenfold in 2024, according to Nubank. It’s not alone: in the past two years, Venmo, Paypal, CashApp, Robinhood, and Revolut have all enabled stablecoin accounts, with others now looking to enter the space. Additionally, payment and payroll companies are increasingly looking toward global stablecoin payouts, with recent launches including Stripe and Remote.com (full disclosure, both are powered by Zero Hash).

To put that into perspective, if May had been paid in stablecoins - let’s say, a dollar stablecoin - she would have received the payment into her designated banking app or self-custodial wallet within hours. She then would have two options - she could keep the stablecoin in her stablecoin wallet for savings, using the dollar-tokens to hedge against local inflation and to potentially earn interest. Or, she could off-ramp the stablecoin immediately into her local fiat currency for a marginal fee, to spend as needed. The impact of these options cannot be understated in a volatile economy, alongside the continual flux that often defines freelance employment.

The Next Payment Evolution

Freelancers are driving nearly half of the global workforce, yet their payment systems remain stuck in the past. Addressing this gap is not just for convenience, it’s economically empowering. A modernized, borderless financial system isn't a future vision - it’s an immediate necessity.

Excitingly, stablecoins can also break down existing paradigms. For example, all employees accept that they are paid every two to four weeks – effectively extending a loan to employers as they work. This loan is one that many cannot afford - 56% of Americans are unable to cover a $1,000 emergency expense with savings (per BankRate’s 2025 Report). A big reason for this structure is the current high cost and complexity of paying someone daily. Stablecoins, which are low-cost and programmable, are a solution. Someday, we might live in a world where we have “streaming” payments for work as it is done and have no need for payday advances - an industry where 12 million Americans spend approximately $9 billion annually on fees for loans often used to cover work already completed.

The reality is that no single payment method will work for everyone or is itself a silver bullet. We are excited to see the meaningful impact on people globally from building a flexible, unified infrastructure that integrates multiple payment options - fiat, crypto, and stablecoins - while reducing fees and increasing settlement speed.