DDSC and Network International have launched an in-store payment pilot in the United Arab Emirates, marking the first trial of its kind for a central bank-licensed dirham stablecoin in the country. The program allows customers to pay with the DDSC stablecoin at selected retail stores using existing point-of-sale terminals. According to the source, DDSC is licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE and is pegged to the UAE dirham. The pilot is designed to test how stablecoins can be used in everyday retail payments rather than in purely on-chain or trading scenarios. The rollout focuses on physical merchant locations and existing payment hardware, putting the stablecoin into a conventional checkout environment.

Ripple executive Reece Merrick said stablecoins handled $33 trillion in 2025, twice Visa’s annual volume. Growth in emerging markets, B2B payments, and new on-chain dollar infrastructure is pushing stablecoins deeper into global finance.

New 13F filings show Abu Dhabi-backed Mubadala and Al Warda Investments held a combined 20.9 million shares of BlackRock’s IBIT worth about $1.139 billion at the end of 2025.

Digital asset law in 2026 is moving into execution. The US is advancing the Clarity Act, China is tightening control over yuan stablecoins and RWA tokenization, and the UAE is refining licensing and stablecoin rules.

Ripple says stablecoins processed $33 trillion in 2025, with rising use across cross-border B2B payments, remittances, payroll, and treasury operations. The company is positioning RLUSD as a dollar-backed, enterprise-focused product for institutional clients.

Ripple says stablecoins processed $33 trillion in 2025, with rapid growth in users, market cap, and enterprise adoption across cross-border payments, remittances, payroll, and treasury operations.

ADI Chain is positioning itself differently from the typical public chain or Layer 2 playbook. Instead of starting with crypto-native activity such as DeFi, NFT trading, memecoins, or airdrop-driven user growth, the project is targeting governments, banks, financial institutions, and enterprise use cases from the outset. Its strategy is to bring existing real-world financial flows on-chain first, then let those flows create recurring utility for $ADI. The model is most visible in stablecoins. The article highlights $DDSC, a dirham-pegged stablecoin tied to FAB, IHC, ADQ, and a UAE central bank authorization framework, as well as $PUSD, a Shariah-compliant stablecoin aimed at treasury departments, exchanges, and payment processors. IHC previously disclosed a 110 million dirham transaction on ADI Chain via $DDSC, described as one of the region’s largest single stablecoin transactions. Beyond payments and settlement, ADI Chain is also mapping out institutional asset infrastructure through custody, issuance, and tokenization partnerships. BNY, Finstreet, and the ADI Foundation plan to offer institutional-grade digital asset custody within ADGM and extend it to ADI Chain, while SettleMint is involved in digital securities infrastructure under the same regulatory framework. The broader thesis is that $ADI’s value depends less on narrative alone and more on whether these financial entry points can evolve into sustained on-chain settlement, asset issuance, and capital movement on the network.

BNY Mellon is preparing to launch digital asset custody in Abu Dhabi with Finstreet and ADI Foundation. The initial offering will cover Bitcoin and Ether, underscoring Abu Dhabi’s growing role as a hub for institutional crypto infrastructure.