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Internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare announced on September 25 its plan to launch its own stablecoin, NET Dollar, marking a new phase in the enterprise stablecoin trend. This move aims to address inefficiencies, high costs, and lack of autonomy faced by large enterprises in payment processes.
Motivation for Issuance: Cloudflare's CEO stated that the next-generation internet will be driven by microtransactions. Enterprises issuing stablecoins prioritize optimizing payment flows within their own ecosystems rather than pursuing universal circulation, enabling them to control settlement processes and reduce reliance on traditional financial intermediaries.
Core Advantages:
Efficiency Gains: Cross-border payments can be shortened from days to minutes, with costs dropping from an average of 6% to below 1%.
Process Automation: Integrated with smart contracts, automatic settlements for supplier payments, platform commissions, and other conditions can be achieved, reducing manual intervention.
Cost Transparency: On-chain transaction fees are simpler and more predictable compared to the complex fee structures of traditional finance.
Industry Applications:
E-commerce Platforms: Used for保证金 management, real-time commission settlements, and cross-border refunds, supporting micro-payment scenarios.
Manufacturing: Building a unified payment network for global suppliers simplifies multi-currency settlements (e.g., Tesla could issue "Tesla Coin").
Content Platforms: Enables instant settlement of global creator revenue sharing, promoting micro-payment models like pay-per-article.
Cloud Services: Supports high-frequency, small-amount payments between AI models and IoT devices (e.g., Cloudflare's x402 protocol developed with Coinbase).
Future Challenges & Trends:
Interoperability: Different enterprise stablecoins need to form B2B payment networks via swap protocols, but liquidity and pricing mechanisms require refinement.
Regulatory Compliance: Regulations like the U.S. GENIUS Act and Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Ordinance mandate reserve custody and auditing, making compliance the foundation of trust.
Business Transformation: Stablecoins may catalyze an autonomous machine economy (e.g., Google’s AI payment protocol AP2), reshape banking roles, and spur industry alliance coins.
Enterprise stablecoins represent not just an upgrade in payment tools but a critical step toward重构 commercial order. By deeply integrating payments with business processes, they lay a new foundation for the digital economy.
(Expand)
Authored by: Sleepy.txt
You may not have heard of Cloudflare, but it is almost impossible to use the internet without encountering its services.
This company is an "invisible giant" of the web. Whether you order food delivery, scroll through short videos, check email, or log into company systems, there's a high probability your data passes through its network. It acts like a massive digital shield and accelerator, providing security and content delivery for nearly one-fifth of the world's websites.
When web pages load instantly or your favorite apps withstand hacker attacks, Cloudflare is often working behind the scenes. It is truly the internet's "water, electricity, and gas"—the underlying infrastructure supporting the efficient and secure flow of global data.
On September 25, Cloudflare made a landmark strategic decision, expanding its infrastructure footprint into a new dimension by announcing its own stablecoin: NET Dollar.
Why Issue a Stablecoin?
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince provided the answer: "For decades, the internet's business model has been built on advertising platforms and bank transfers. The next era of the internet will be driven by pay-per-use, fractional payments, and microtransactions."
With annual revenue exceeding $1.6 billion and handling trillions of requests daily, Cloudflare is akin to the internet's foundational utility. Yet, within this vast digital network, payments remain the only critical环节 not under its control. This lack of autonomy is troubling more and large enterprises.
Apple settles tens of billions of dollars annually with App Store developers, Amazon handles massive cash flows for third-party sellers, and Tesla manages payments with over 3,000 global suppliers. All these giants face the same frictions: lengthy settlement cycles, high fees, complex cross-border compliance, and, most critically, a loss of control over their core closed loops.
As business becomes increasingly digital and automated, this outdated financial infrastructure becomes a bottleneck. Thus, large enterprises are responding directly: if the old system cannot be changed, they will build a new one themselves.
Why Big Tech Needs Its Own Stablecoin
The emergence of NET Dollar prompts a rethinking of the motivation behind issuing stablecoins. Unlike USDT or USDC, which aim for universal circulation, Cloudflare's approach is more pragmatic—it first seeks to solve payment issues within its own business ecosystem.
The differences are significant. USDT and USDC target the entire crypto market from the outset, relying on broad acceptance to accumulate scale. NET Dollar, for now, appears more like an "internal currency," tailored for Cloudflare's commercial network.
Of course, boundaries are not fixed. PayPal's PYUSD is a prime example. Initially launched in 2023 to serve only PayPal's internal payment system, it now supports exchange for hundreds of cryptocurrencies, far exceeding its original scope. Enterprise stablecoins will likely follow a similar path, potentially evolving from internal efficiency tools into broader circulation scenarios.
The key difference lies in motivation. Traditional stablecoin issuers primarily profit from reserve investments, whereas enterprises issue stablecoins to optimize processes and gain autonomy. This different starting point influences their design, application, and future trajectory.
For large enterprises, payments have always been the "last mile" of the commercial闭环, but this segment is controlled by banks and payment institutions, plagued by the problems mentioned earlier. Thus, internalizing payments into their own systems and rebuilding a controllable闭环 with stablecoins becomes a strategic choice for big tech.
The true value of enterprise stablecoins lies not in pursuing lofty narratives but in their ability to surgically address pain points in processes, significantly enhancing efficiency.
This value is even more apparent in supply chain finance.
International supply chain finance is inherently a system full of friction. A payment from the U.S. to Vietnam must cross multiple time zones, currencies, and banks. According to World Bank data, the global average remittance cost remains above 6%.
[Image: Average transaction cost of sending remittances to specific countries/regions (%) | Source: WORLD BANK GROUP]
Enterprise stablecoins can compress this process to minutes. A U.S. company can send payment directly to a Vietnamese supplier in minutes, reducing costs to below 1%. The in-transit time for funds is drastically shortened, improving the turnover efficiency of the entire supply chain.
More importantly, the locus of settlement power shifts.
Previously, banks acted as intermediaries, controlling transaction speed and cost. In a stablecoin network, the enterprise itself主导 this critical环节.
Beyond efficiency, cost is another burden enterprises cannot ignore. Exchange rate losses, bank processing fees, and card network通道 fees in cross-border payments may seem like零星 expenses, but cumulatively they can erode competitiveness.
This is the significance of enterprise stablecoins: they bypass traditional financial intermediaries,重构ing the cost structure. The change is not just a reduction in absolute amount but also a simplification and increase in transparency. Under the traditional model, enterprises face complex fee structures—fixed fees, percentage fees, exchange rate spreads, intermediary fees—with opaque calculation methods making precise prediction difficult.
In a stablecoin network, costs are almost reduced to one item: on-chain transaction fees. They are public, predictable, and relatively stable. This allows enterprises to accurately calculate expenses and profits, leading to more confident decision-making.
[Image: Traditional financial global payment环节 vs. Stablecoin payment环节 | Source: SevenX Ventures]
Furthermore, cash flow management itself can be transformed. Traditional methods rely on manual operations and banking systems, resulting in complex processes, low efficiency, and a high error rate.
When enterprise stablecoins integrate with smart contracts, fund flows can execute automatically based on preset conditions. After a supplier delivers goods and passes inspection, payment is automatically released; when a project milestone is reached, corresponding funds are disbursed instantly. Enterprises no longer need to manually monitor accounts and initiate transfers but can encode rules into contracts.
This mechanism brings more than just efficiency gains. Transparent, immutable payment logic reduces trust costs between cooperating parties and helps resolve potential disputes proactively.
When more partners are incorporated into the same payment system, network effects emerge. Suppliers, distributors, partners, and even end-users settling in the same stablecoin exponentially increase the network's value.
This value is manifested not only in scale but also in a lock-in effect. Once deeply integrated into an enterprise's stablecoin ecosystem, the cost of switching to another system becomes high—not just technically, but also in terms of learning, relationships, and opportunity costs.
This stickiness becomes the enterprise's most稳固 moat. In intense competition, companies with stablecoin ecosystems can not only better control costs and cash flow but also solidify long-term advantages through network effects.
How Enterprise Stablecoins Enter Various Industries
Different industries have their own pain points, and enterprise stablecoins are being considered as potential solutions. They may not yet be deployed at scale but already demonstrate the potential to address real-world business challenges.
E-commerce Platforms: Automation of保证金, Commissions, and Refunds
For e-commerce platforms, stablecoins are becoming experimental tools for building the next generation of payment infrastructure. Shopify's partnership with Coinbase allows merchants in 34 countries to accept USDC settlements, but this is just the beginning.
保证金 paid by merchants upon入驻 can be directly written into smart contracts—automatically deducted for violations and refunded upon contract expiration. Platform commissions can be settled in real-time; with each completed transaction, the system automatically transfers funds from the merchant's stablecoin account to the platform.
The refund环节 is also重塑ed. Traditional cross-border refunds often take weeks and pass through multiple banking layers; with stablecoins, they can be completed in minutes, offering a completely different experience.
Furthermore, stablecoins can support micro-payment scenarios. Consumers could pay for viewing product pages, personalized recommendations, or priority customer service—transactions that are nearly impossible in traditional payment systems but feasible in a stablecoin environment.
Manufacturing Giants: Unified Networks for Supplier Payments and Inventory Financing
Manufacturing is highly globalized, with supply chains often spanning dozens of countries. For companies like Apple and Tesla, coordinating payments, financing, and保证金 for thousands of suppliers is a massive logistical challenge in itself.
If these companies issued their own stablecoins, they could establish efficient, low-cost payment networks internally. Payments to upstream suppliers, inventory financing arrangements, and quality保证金 management—processes that previously required跨 banks,跨 currencies, and heavy manual intervention—could be completed instantly within the same network.
More importantly, this digital payment system can integrate with existing enterprise management systems. When an ERP detects a shortage of components, it can automatically trigger orders and complete payments; when a quality inspection system identifies a faulty batch, it can instantly deduct funds from the supplier's保证金.
Taking Tesla as an example, it has over 3,000 suppliers across more than 30 countries. Using a stablecoin like "Tesla Coin" for unified settlements, with Tesla handling USD conversions, would not only reduce costs but also意味着 stronger control over critical环节.
Content Platforms: New Paths for Revenue Sharing and Micro-payments
The content industry is undergoing a creator-driven重构. Whether it's short video platforms like YouTube and TikTok or text-based platforms like Substack and Medium, the biggest challenge is how to distribute revenue to global creators efficiently and fairly.
Enterprise stablecoins are seen as a potential solution. They could enable platforms to settle revenue shares with creators worldwide instantly, avoiding reliance on complex cross-border banking systems and high fees. Going further, micro-payment mechanisms allow for更精细 revenue distribution.
YouTube pays creators tens of billions of dollars annually, but payment methods vary by country, exchange rate fluctuations affect real income, and tax processes are extremely cumbersome. A platform-owned stablecoin network could enable truly unified global settlements.
This mechanism might also spawn new business models: readers could pay per article, viewers per video clip, listeners per song. Finer value distribution not only provides creators with more direct rewards but also incentivizes higher-quality content production.
Cloud Service Providers: Testing Grounds for the Machine Economy
Cloudflare's NET Dollar is a typical case of cloud service providers experimenting with stablecoins. With the development of AI and IoT, communication and transactions between machines are becoming increasingly frequent. They are characterized by high frequency, small amounts, and full automation—attributes traditional payment systems cannot support.
In such scenarios, an AI model might need to pay for calling another model's API, an IoT device might need to settle its consumed computing power, or a self-driving car might need to pay for map services. These payments might be worth just a few cents or even fractions of a cent but could be triggered thousands of times per second.
Stablecoins, especially those like NET Dollar designed for programmable transactions, can support such high-frequency, low-value automated payments. Machines can autonomously decide payment timing, amount, and recipient based on preset rules, without human intervention.
To this end, Cloudflare co-founded the x402 foundation with Coinbase to develop a protocol enabling direct payments between machines. When one AI model calls another's service, fees are settled instantly. Such explorations are building the necessary payment infrastructure for the future machine economy.
Internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare announced on September 25 its plan to launch its own stablecoin, NET Dollar, marking a new phase in the enterprise stablecoin trend. This move aims to address inefficiencies, high costs, and lack of autonomy faced by large enterprises in payment processes.
Motivation for Issuance: Cloudflare's CEO stated that the next-generation internet will be driven by microtransactions. Enterprises issuing stablecoins prioritize optimizing payment flows within their own ecosystems rather than pursuing universal circulation, enabling them to control settlement processes and reduce reliance on traditional financial intermediaries.
Core Advantages:
Efficiency Gains: Cross-border payments can be shortened from days to minutes, with costs dropping from an average of 6% to below 1%.
Process Automation: Integrated with smart contracts, automatic settlements for supplier payments, platform commissions, and other conditions can be achieved, reducing manual intervention.
Cost Transparency: On-chain transaction fees are simpler and more predictable compared to the complex fee structures of traditional finance.
Industry Applications:
E-commerce Platforms: Used for保证金 management, real-time commission settlements, and cross-border refunds, supporting micro-payment scenarios.
Manufacturing: Building a unified payment network for global suppliers simplifies multi-currency settlements (e.g., Tesla could issue "Tesla Coin").
Content Platforms: Enables instant settlement of global creator revenue sharing, promoting micro-payment models like pay-per-article.
Cloud Services: Supports high-frequency, small-amount payments between AI models and IoT devices (e.g., Cloudflare's x402 protocol developed with Coinbase).
Future Challenges & Trends:
Interoperability: Different enterprise stablecoins need to form B2B payment networks via swap protocols, but liquidity and pricing mechanisms require refinement.
Regulatory Compliance: Regulations like the U.S. GENIUS Act and Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Ordinance mandate reserve custody and auditing, making compliance the foundation of trust.
Business Transformation: Stablecoins may catalyze an autonomous machine economy (e.g., Google’s AI payment protocol AP2), reshape banking roles, and spur industry alliance coins.
Enterprise stablecoins represent not just an upgrade in payment tools but a critical step toward重构 commercial order. By deeply integrating payments with business processes, they lay a new foundation for the digital economy.
(Expand)
Authored by: Sleepy.txt
You may not have heard of Cloudflare, but it is almost impossible to use the internet without encountering its services.
This company is an "invisible giant" of the web. Whether you order food delivery, scroll through short videos, check email, or log into company systems, there's a high probability your data passes through its network. It acts like a massive digital shield and accelerator, providing security and content delivery for nearly one-fifth of the world's websites.
When web pages load instantly or your favorite apps withstand hacker attacks, Cloudflare is often working behind the scenes. It is truly the internet's "water, electricity, and gas"—the underlying infrastructure supporting the efficient and secure flow of global data.
On September 25, Cloudflare made a landmark strategic decision, expanding its infrastructure footprint into a new dimension by announcing its own stablecoin: NET Dollar.
Why Issue a Stablecoin?
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince provided the answer: "For decades, the internet's business model has been built on advertising platforms and bank transfers. The next era of the internet will be driven by pay-per-use, fractional payments, and microtransactions."
With annual revenue exceeding $1.6 billion and handling trillions of requests daily, Cloudflare is akin to the internet's foundational utility. Yet, within this vast digital network, payments remain the only critical环节 not under its control. This lack of autonomy is troubling more and large enterprises.
Apple settles tens of billions of dollars annually with App Store developers, Amazon handles massive cash flows for third-party sellers, and Tesla manages payments with over 3,000 global suppliers. All these giants face the same frictions: lengthy settlement cycles, high fees, complex cross-border compliance, and, most critically, a loss of control over their core closed loops.
As business becomes increasingly digital and automated, this outdated financial infrastructure becomes a bottleneck. Thus, large enterprises are responding directly: if the old system cannot be changed, they will build a new one themselves.
Why Big Tech Needs Its Own Stablecoin
The emergence of NET Dollar prompts a rethinking of the motivation behind issuing stablecoins. Unlike USDT or USDC, which aim for universal circulation, Cloudflare's approach is more pragmatic—it first seeks to solve payment issues within its own business ecosystem.
The differences are significant. USDT and USDC target the entire crypto market from the outset, relying on broad acceptance to accumulate scale. NET Dollar, for now, appears more like an "internal currency," tailored for Cloudflare's commercial network.
Of course, boundaries are not fixed. PayPal's PYUSD is a prime example. Initially launched in 2023 to serve only PayPal's internal payment system, it now supports exchange for hundreds of cryptocurrencies, far exceeding its original scope. Enterprise stablecoins will likely follow a similar path, potentially evolving from internal efficiency tools into broader circulation scenarios.
The key difference lies in motivation. Traditional stablecoin issuers primarily profit from reserve investments, whereas enterprises issue stablecoins to optimize processes and gain autonomy. This different starting point influences their design, application, and future trajectory.
For large enterprises, payments have always been the "last mile" of the commercial闭环, but this segment is controlled by banks and payment institutions, plagued by the problems mentioned earlier. Thus, internalizing payments into their own systems and rebuilding a controllable闭环 with stablecoins becomes a strategic choice for big tech.
The true value of enterprise stablecoins lies not in pursuing lofty narratives but in their ability to surgically address pain points in processes, significantly enhancing efficiency.
This value is even more apparent in supply chain finance.
International supply chain finance is inherently a system full of friction. A payment from the U.S. to Vietnam must cross multiple time zones, currencies, and banks. According to World Bank data, the global average remittance cost remains above 6%.
[Image: Average transaction cost of sending remittances to specific countries/regions (%) | Source: WORLD BANK GROUP]
Enterprise stablecoins can compress this process to minutes. A U.S. company can send payment directly to a Vietnamese supplier in minutes, reducing costs to below 1%. The in-transit time for funds is drastically shortened, improving the turnover efficiency of the entire supply chain.
More importantly, the locus of settlement power shifts.
Previously, banks acted as intermediaries, controlling transaction speed and cost. In a stablecoin network, the enterprise itself主导 this critical环节.
Beyond efficiency, cost is another burden enterprises cannot ignore. Exchange rate losses, bank processing fees, and card network通道 fees in cross-border payments may seem like零星 expenses, but cumulatively they can erode competitiveness.
This is the significance of enterprise stablecoins: they bypass traditional financial intermediaries,重构ing the cost structure. The change is not just a reduction in absolute amount but also a simplification and increase in transparency. Under the traditional model, enterprises face complex fee structures—fixed fees, percentage fees, exchange rate spreads, intermediary fees—with opaque calculation methods making precise prediction difficult.
In a stablecoin network, costs are almost reduced to one item: on-chain transaction fees. They are public, predictable, and relatively stable. This allows enterprises to accurately calculate expenses and profits, leading to more confident decision-making.
[Image: Traditional financial global payment环节 vs. Stablecoin payment环节 | Source: SevenX Ventures]
Furthermore, cash flow management itself can be transformed. Traditional methods rely on manual operations and banking systems, resulting in complex processes, low efficiency, and a high error rate.
When enterprise stablecoins integrate with smart contracts, fund flows can execute automatically based on preset conditions. After a supplier delivers goods and passes inspection, payment is automatically released; when a project milestone is reached, corresponding funds are disbursed instantly. Enterprises no longer need to manually monitor accounts and initiate transfers but can encode rules into contracts.
This mechanism brings more than just efficiency gains. Transparent, immutable payment logic reduces trust costs between cooperating parties and helps resolve potential disputes proactively.
When more partners are incorporated into the same payment system, network effects emerge. Suppliers, distributors, partners, and even end-users settling in the same stablecoin exponentially increase the network's value.
This value is manifested not only in scale but also in a lock-in effect. Once deeply integrated into an enterprise's stablecoin ecosystem, the cost of switching to another system becomes high—not just technically, but also in terms of learning, relationships, and opportunity costs.
This stickiness becomes the enterprise's most稳固 moat. In intense competition, companies with stablecoin ecosystems can not only better control costs and cash flow but also solidify long-term advantages through network effects.
How Enterprise Stablecoins Enter Various Industries
Different industries have their own pain points, and enterprise stablecoins are being considered as potential solutions. They may not yet be deployed at scale but already demonstrate the potential to address real-world business challenges.
E-commerce Platforms: Automation of保证金, Commissions, and Refunds
For e-commerce platforms, stablecoins are becoming experimental tools for building the next generation of payment infrastructure. Shopify's partnership with Coinbase allows merchants in 34 countries to accept USDC settlements, but this is just the beginning.
保证金 paid by merchants upon入驻 can be directly written into smart contracts—automatically deducted for violations and refunded upon contract expiration. Platform commissions can be settled in real-time; with each completed transaction, the system automatically transfers funds from the merchant's stablecoin account to the platform.
The refund环节 is also重塑ed. Traditional cross-border refunds often take weeks and pass through multiple banking layers; with stablecoins, they can be completed in minutes, offering a completely different experience.
Furthermore, stablecoins can support micro-payment scenarios. Consumers could pay for viewing product pages, personalized recommendations, or priority customer service—transactions that are nearly impossible in traditional payment systems but feasible in a stablecoin environment.
Manufacturing Giants: Unified Networks for Supplier Payments and Inventory Financing
Manufacturing is highly globalized, with supply chains often spanning dozens of countries. For companies like Apple and Tesla, coordinating payments, financing, and保证金 for thousands of suppliers is a massive logistical challenge in itself.
If these companies issued their own stablecoins, they could establish efficient, low-cost payment networks internally. Payments to upstream suppliers, inventory financing arrangements, and quality保证金 management—processes that previously required跨 banks,跨 currencies, and heavy manual intervention—could be completed instantly within the same network.
More importantly, this digital payment system can integrate with existing enterprise management systems. When an ERP detects a shortage of components, it can automatically trigger orders and complete payments; when a quality inspection system identifies a faulty batch, it can instantly deduct funds from the supplier's保证金.
Taking Tesla as an example, it has over 3,000 suppliers across more than 30 countries. Using a stablecoin like "Tesla Coin" for unified settlements, with Tesla handling USD conversions, would not only reduce costs but also意味着 stronger control over critical环节.
Content Platforms: New Paths for Revenue Sharing and Micro-payments
The content industry is undergoing a creator-driven重构. Whether it's short video platforms like YouTube and TikTok or text-based platforms like Substack and Medium, the biggest challenge is how to distribute revenue to global creators efficiently and fairly.
Enterprise stablecoins are seen as a potential solution. They could enable platforms to settle revenue shares with creators worldwide instantly, avoiding reliance on complex cross-border banking systems and high fees. Going further, micro-payment mechanisms allow for更精细 revenue distribution.
YouTube pays creators tens of billions of dollars annually, but payment methods vary by country, exchange rate fluctuations affect real income, and tax processes are extremely cumbersome. A platform-owned stablecoin network could enable truly unified global settlements.
This mechanism might also spawn new business models: readers could pay per article, viewers per video clip, listeners per song. Finer value distribution not only provides creators with more direct rewards but also incentivizes higher-quality content production.
Cloud Service Providers: Testing Grounds for the Machine Economy
Cloudflare's NET Dollar is a typical case of cloud service providers experimenting with stablecoins. With the development of AI and IoT, communication and transactions between machines are becoming increasingly frequent. They are characterized by high frequency, small amounts, and full automation—attributes traditional payment systems cannot support.
In such scenarios, an AI model might need to pay for calling another model's API, an IoT device might need to settle its consumed computing power, or a self-driving car might need to pay for map services. These payments might be worth just a few cents or even fractions of a cent but could be triggered thousands of times per second.
Stablecoins, especially those like NET Dollar designed for programmable transactions, can support such high-frequency, low-value automated payments. Machines can autonomously decide payment timing, amount, and recipient based on preset rules, without human intervention.
To this end, Cloudflare co-founded the x402 foundation with Coinbase to develop a protocol enabling direct payments between machines. When one AI model calls another's service, fees are settled instantly. Such explorations are building the necessary payment infrastructure for the future machine economy.
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