Digital dollars on Stellar, explained

Stablecoins on Stellar are tokens pegged to a national currency, mostly the US dollar, that live natively on the Stellar network. The largest by far is Stellar USDC, issued by Circle since February 2021, with about 300 million units in circulation at our latest check. PayPal’s PYUSD, Circle’s euro coin EURC and MoneyGram’s own MGUSD have joined it, and smaller issuers cover the Australian dollar, the euro and, in tiny amounts, the yen.

Stellar was built for payments, so stablecoins are its natural cargo: fees of 0.00001 XLM per operation, settlement in about five seconds, and a network of anchors that can turn tokens into cash. This guide lists the stablecoins that matter, explains how much value really sits on the chain (two trackers give two different answers), and shows how to hold and send USDC on Stellar without falling for copycat tokens. The live panel above reads USDC and PYUSD supply straight from Stellar’s Horizon API.

The Stellar stablecoin list

Below are the fiat-backed stablecoins with meaningful supply or Asian relevance at our latest check. Supplies come from StellarExpert and DefiLlama and change daily, so read them as a snapshot.

Two yield-bearing dollar products also live on Stellar: Ondo’s USDY (since September 2025) and Figure’s YLDS (since May 2026). They pay holders a return, which makes them closer to tokenised funds than to payment stablecoins; we cover them in our guide to tokenised real-world assets.

Stellar USDC: the workhorse

USDC on Stellar went live on 2 February 2021 (SDF). It is issued by Circle from the account GA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KZVN, and that issuer is the only thing that makes a token “real” USDC. At our latest check StellarExpert showed about 300.7 million USDC circulating and more than 2.5 million trustlines, of which roughly 727,000 were funded.

USDC on Stellar is what most real payment products use. MoneyGram’s cash-in and cash-out service works with it, UNHCR used it for aid to displaced Ukrainians, and Wirex settles Visa card spending in USDC and EURC on Stellar. If you are building or using a payment app, cross-border payments on Stellar are in practice USDC payments, with XLM covering fees.

PYUSD, EURC and MGUSD: the newer arrivals

PYUSD on Stellar

PayPal’s dollar stablecoin, issued by Paxos, went live on Stellar on 18 September 2025 (SDF). It uses the Stellar Asset Contract, so it works both in classic Stellar payments and in Soroban smart contracts. Supply is still modest, around 18 million at our latest check against roughly 300 million for USDC, so treat PYUSD on Stellar as early rather than major.

EURC on Stellar

Circle launched its euro stablecoin EURC on Stellar on 26 September 2023, at SDF’s Meridian conference in Madrid (Circle). Its Stellar supply is small, under 5 million at our check. Société Générale-FORGE’s EURCV, announced for Stellar in February 2025, is currently the larger euro token on the network by DefiLlama’s count.

MGUSD (MoneyGram)

MoneyGram launched MGUSD on Stellar on 2 June 2026. According to the launch announcement, it is issued by Bridge, a Stripe company, minted through M0 and held in custody by Fireblocks, with the US as the first market. It is notable because a global money-transfer company now runs its own dollar token on Stellar instead of relying only on a third-party coin.

How much stablecoin value is on Stellar?

There is no single official number, and the two main trackers disagree. At our latest check DefiLlama counted about $337.8M in dollar-pegged stablecoins on Stellar, plus about $22.6M euro-pegged, $2.0M Australian dollar and $0.21M yen. rwa.xyz showed a stablecoin market cap of $371.53M, with about 750,000 holders and $17.39B in transfer volume over 30 days.

The gap comes from which tokens each site counts. DefiLlama’s Stellar list did not include PYUSD or MGUSD at our check, which together add over $40M, and the two sites use different methods to decide what counts as a stablecoin. A fair summary is “roughly $340M to $370M in stablecoins on Stellar”, always with a date.

The live panel above gives a third view, straight from Horizon. It adds up every place a token can sit on the network: balances held directly in Stellar accounts, tokens locked in smart contracts (such as Soroban DeFi protocols), classic liquidity pools and claimable balances. When we checked, about 201 million USDC sat in accounts, about 97 million in smart contracts and about 2.6 million in liquidity pools, which together match StellarExpert’s roughly 300 million. If an explorer or wallet shows a much lower figure, it is probably counting only the account bucket.

Why issuers pick Stellar

For a stablecoin issuer, Stellar offers three things at once. The first is cost and speed: a payment costs a tiny fraction of a cent and is final in about five seconds, which suits high-volume, low-value flows. The second is built-in issuer controls. Stellar lets an issuer revoke authorisation for an account (a freeze) and, if enabled, claw tokens back, without writing a smart contract. Regulators often expect those powers. At our check, Horizon showed both USDC and PYUSD with revocable authorisation, and PYUSD also with clawback enabled.

The third is distribution. Stellar’s anchor standards and the MoneyGram network give issuers a path to cash, and Visa added Stellar to its stablecoin settlement networks in 2025 (The Block). Our page on Stellar anchors and fiat ramps explains how those ramps work. On the DeFi side, USDC is also used in lending pools such as Blend’s; see DeFi on Stellar.

The trade-off is worth stating plainly. A stablecoin is only as good as its issuer’s reserves and its legal promise to redeem, and the same controls that reassure regulators allow an issuer to freeze a balance.

Pan-chan says

A stablecoin is a promise from a company, recorded on a blockchain. Know who makes the promise, and keep only what you need in any single coin.

Stablecoins or XLM: which should you send?

For moving value, the two do different jobs. XLM is the network’s native asset: every account needs at least 1 XLM, and every transaction pays its fee in XLM. Its price moves with the crypto market, which you can follow on our live XLM price page, so holding it for days between paydays adds risk most families and small businesses do not want. A stablecoin keeps the amount steady while it travels.

You do not always have to choose. Stellar’s built-in path payments let a sender pay in one asset while the recipient receives another in the same transaction, using the network’s order books and liquidity pools. Someone holding XLM can therefore send it so the other side receives USDC, with a minimum amount set in advance so a bad rate makes the payment fail instead of underpaying. The network fee stays at the same tiny level either way; our page on XLM fees and transfer speed has the details.

How to hold and send USDC on Stellar

Holding USDC on Stellar takes one extra step compared with XLM: a trustline. Here is the full flow in a self-custody wallet.

1. Activate your account
   Create a Stellar account in a wallet from our Stellar wallet guide and fund it with at least 1 XLM, the minimum balance, plus a little for fees.
2. Add a USDC trustline
   Choose “add asset” and pick USDC from Circle, checking the issuer starts GA5Z and ends KZVN. This locks 0.5 XLM as a reserve.
3. Get USDC
   Receive USDC from an exchange that supports withdrawals on the Stellar network, or swap XLM for USDC in the wallet. Make sure the exchange is sending on Stellar, not another chain.
4. Send it
   Paste the recipient’s address and, if they receive at an exchange, the memo. The recipient also needs a USDC trustline, or the payment will fail.

MetaMask made Stellar a default network in October 2026, and its support page warns that funds bridged to an account without the matching trustline can be lost. That warning applies everywhere: check the trustline before anyone sends you a Stellar token.

Risks of holding stablecoins on Stellar

Stablecoins feel like cash, but they carry risks of their own. The biggest is the issuer. Your token is only worth a dollar if the company behind it holds the reserves and honours redemptions, so read who issues a coin and where it publishes its reserve reports. The second is control: an issuer that can freeze or claw back tokens can do so to your account if it believes the law requires it.

Then there are user-side mistakes. Sending Stellar USDC to an exchange that expects another network, or forgetting a memo, can delay or lose funds. Putting stablecoins into DeFi adds smart-contract and configuration risk. In February 2026 an attacker drained about $10.2M in XLM and USDC from one community-run Blend pool by manipulating a thin market its price oracle relied on. It was a pool configuration problem rather than a failure of USDC or of Stellar, but depositors in that pool were still exposed. Finally, rules for stablecoins are still being written across Asia, and what is permitted can change.

Copycat tokens: verify the issuer, not the ticker

On Stellar anyone can issue a token with any code. At our latest check, explorer searches showed unofficial tokens on the network using the same codes as real assets, including AUDD and GYEN, from issuers unrelated to the real companies. A token called “USDC” is only Circle’s USDC if it comes from Circle’s issuer account.

Two habits keep you safe. First, compare the issuer account with the one the official issuer publishes, or check it on StellarExpert. Second, check the home domain: MGUSD’s is mgusd.moneygram.com and AUDD’s is audd.digital. If someone offers you a stablecoin at a discount, or a wallet shows an unknown “USDC” you did not add, assume it is fake. Our regulation and safety guide covers other common scams.

Stablecoins for Asia: yen, Aussie dollars and the gaps

For Asian users the honest picture is thin. Australia’s AUDD went live on Stellar in November 2022 (SDF) and is the main Asia-Pacific fiat stablecoin on the network, at about 2.9 million AUDD. Japan’s GMO-Z.com Trust announced GYEN and ZUSD for Stellar in 2022, but GYEN supply is tiny (around ¥33.5 million) and we could not confirm its current status or how it fits Japan’s newer stablecoin rules. Newer regulated yen coins such as JPYC are not documented on Stellar.

We found no Korean won, Indonesian rupiah or Vietnamese dong stablecoin on Stellar. In South Korea the bill that would govern won stablecoins had not passed at our latest check, and private won-token pilots run on other chains. In Japan, XLM itself is widely listed on registered exchanges, but local-currency stablecoins on Stellar are not part of the picture yet. For now, Asian businesses using Stellar mostly price in USDC and convert at the edges.

Keep exploring

⚓ AnchorsHow cash gets onto and off the Stellar networkRead guide 🏦 RWA tokenizationFunds, Treasuries and credit tokenized on Stellar.Read guide 🌏 PaymentsHow Stellar remittances and payouts really workRead guide 🌀 DeFi & dAppsDEX, AMMs, lending and yield on Stellar.Read guide