The news: The Bank of North Dakota and Fiserv launch the “Roughrider Coin,” the first stablecoin from the state of North Dakota.

Why this matters: The Roughrider Coin represents the first stablecoin issued by Fiserv on its digital asset platform on behalf of another entity. 

Fiserv launched its own FIUSD stablecoin and announced a partnership with PayPal and Mastercard to build future interoperability between FIUSD and PayPal USD (PYUSD). Mastercard will offer merchant settlement in FIUSD and stablecoin-powered payment cards.

Where we go from here: Fiserv could point to the Roughrider Coin’s rollout as a proof of concept for businesses interested in issuing their own stablecoins, particularly large retailers. 

Players like Walmart, Amazon, or Starbucks could preserve more of their margins by taking their business off of traditional payment rails, eliminating interchange fees. But the GENIUS Act bars non-financial institutions from issuing stablecoins on their own. 

If Fiserv can demonstrate the Roughrider Coin’s success, it could use that to convince retailers to work with it instead of other payment providers that are launching stablecoin issuance platforms of their own, like Stripe. 

Our take: The Roughrider Coin joins Wyoming’s Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) as yet another stablecoin entering an increasingly cluttered field of tokens with limited acceptance networks. 

While its individual use case may be limited, it opens the door for a stablecoin issued by Fiserv on behalf of a major retailer with significant use case for processing sales. A retailer like Starbucks would be a prime candidate—it’s already ingrained the habit of loading a wallet that can only be used at Starbucks in its most loyal customers. In that case, a limited network isn’t nearly as much of a liability—it’s the whole point.

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