CHF stablecoin business models

Interoperability 3 — Reaches holders through regulated custodians, banking APIs and major wallets, but the design deliberately avoids permissionless DeFi venues, so reach stops at whitelisted rails.

Operational complexity 2 — Issuance itself is simple, yet daily attestation, 1:1 reserve segregation and 24/7 redemption windows require bank-grade treasury and reporting operations.

Risk 5 — Full reserve at the SNB or in short-dated CHF instruments, no credit or duration transformation and no leverage; the residual risk is operational rather than financial.

Regulatory feasibility 5 — Cleanest fit with FINMA Guidance 06/2024 and the deposit-token logic: full backing plus a bank guarantee or a banking licence leaves no unresolved supervisory question.

Economic viability 2 — Negative-to-zero CHF carry means reserve income cannot fund the model; revenue depends on issuance/redemption fees or a strategic sponsor.

Interoperability 4 — Combines a public L2 leg with banking rails, ERP connectors and whitelisted venues, so corporate treasuries can settle without leaving their existing stack.

Operational complexity 2 — Corridor liquidity, FX hedging, nostro replacement and 24/7 market-making across time zones make this operationally heavy despite a simple token design.

Risk 4 — Institutional counterparties and full backing keep credit risk low; the open exposures are corridor liquidity gaps and settlement timing on the foreign leg.

Regulatory feasibility 4 — Bank or consortium issuance sits inside BankG/FinIA with a clear supervisory home; complexity comes from foreign-leg licensing, not Swiss law.

Economic viability 4 — High ticket sizes, measurable savings against correspondent banking and tiered yield pass-through give real willingness to pay.

Interoperability 4 — Wallet, telco and payout-network distribution plus public-chain settlement give broad consumer reach across corridors.

Operational complexity 2 — Per-user onboarding, sanctions screening, fraud monitoring, support and last-mile payout partners in each destination country dominate the run cost.

Risk 3 — Retail AML, fraud and consumer-protection exposure is materially higher than in B2B, even with full reserve backing.

Regulatory feasibility 3 — Swiss issuance is workable, but retail distribution triggers consumer-protection duties and licensing in every receiving jurisdiction.

Economic viability 3 — A very large addressable market with thin per-transaction margins; only cheap distribution and scale make the unit economics close.

Interoperability 3 — Deep integration with regulated venues, custodians and prime brokers, but deliberately restricted to permissioned settlement environments.

Operational complexity 3 — Institutional-only access keeps onboarding volumes low; the work sits in DvP integration, venue connectivity and intraday liquidity.

Risk 4 — Professional counterparties, whitelisted transfers and atomic DvP settlement remove most settlement and counterparty risk; smart-contract and finality risk remain.

Regulatory feasibility 4 — Serves regulated venues under an established FinIA/DLT-Act perimeter with a clear supervisory home.

Economic viability 4 — Healthy income on large institutional balances and venue fees; the ceiling is set by tokenised-securities volumes, not by cost.

Interoperability 4 — Listed on public chains and major exchanges with broad wallet support, giving retail traders a CHF settlement asset wherever they trade.

Operational complexity 3 — Token operations are standard, but exchange listings, market-making agreements and retail support add continuous overhead.

Risk 3 — Retail conduct risk, volatile redemption flows and dependence on exchange counterparties offset the fully backed reserve.

Regulatory feasibility 4 — The bank-guarantee route is well-trodden in Switzerland and gives a predictable path for a retail-facing payment token.

Economic viability 2 — CHF trading pairs are shallow; listing fees and market-making cost can exceed the spread and reserve income earned.

Interoperability 5 — Built as shared infrastructure: native across ledgers, PSPs, banks and wallets, with SDKs and open APIs as the core product.

Operational complexity 1 — Multi-party governance, shared ledger operation, uniform compliance standards and joint incident management make this the heaviest model to run.

Risk 3 — Full backing limits financial risk, but concentration and systemic importance raise the impact of any operational or governance failure.

Regulatory feasibility 3 — Legally sound, yet consortium governance, competition questions and possible systemic-infrastructure treatment lengthen the approval path.

Economic viability 4 — Network effects and per-transaction infrastructure fees give the highest long-run ceiling once critical mass is reached.

Interoperability 4 — Works through existing POS terminals, acquirers and wallets, so merchants adopt it without replacing hardware.

Operational complexity 1 — Terminal certification, merchant onboarding, refunds and chargeback handling, loyalty and BNPL services create a very wide operating surface.

Risk 3 — Fully backed, but consumer fraud, refund abuse and merchant credit exposure through supplementary services add real risk.

Regulatory feasibility 3 — Payment-token issuance is feasible; the supplementary services (credit, loyalty, BNPL) each pull in additional regulatory duties.

Economic viability 2 — Swiss card fees are already low and Twint is entrenched, so payment fees alone cannot fund the model.