Swiss National Bank warns stablecoins may disrupt monetary policy

The Swiss National Bank has added a new item to its list of worries. It’s not inflation or the franc this time. It’s stablecoins.

Speaking at an event in Zurich on September 30, 2026, SNB Governing Board member Petra Tschudin warned that large stablecoins could interfere with how monetary policy reaches the real economy. Her prescription was regulation, designed so that central bankers keep their hands on the controls.

What Tschudin actually said

Tschudin’s central concern is something economists call monetary policy transmission. When a central bank changes its policy rate, it counts on that move rippling outward. Commercial banks adjust what they charge for loans and pay on deposits, and eventually households and businesses feel the change.

That chain runs through what’s known as the two-tier financial system. The central bank sits at the top and deals with commercial banks. Those banks, in turn, deal with everyone else.

Tschudin argued that stablecoins operate outside this structure. If deposits drift away from commercial banks and into stablecoins, the argument goes, the pipes the SNB uses to steer borrowing costs could get leakier.

The endgame, in Tschudin’s framing, is that the SNB’s influence over borrowing costs could be undermined.

She didn’t dismiss the technology outright, though. Tschudin acknowledged that stablecoins can modernize payments, including by offering lower costs for international transfers.

Her point was about guardrails, not bans. Regulatory measures, she said, are crucial to ensure the central bank can continue to fulfill its mandate.

A warning the SNB has been building toward

This wasn’t a bolt from the blue. The SNB flagged stablecoin risks in its July 2026 financial stability report, which pointed to two main dangers.

The first was disintermediation, the fancy word for money bypassing banks. The second was run risk, meaning a stablecoin backed by inadequate reserves could face a wave of redemptions it can’t meet.

The same report offered some reassurance on the home front. The market for Swiss franc stablecoins remained small as of mid-2026, with a market cap under $50 million.

Given that size, the SNB judged domestic risks to be manageable for now.

Switzerland’s parallel tracks: licenses and CBDC experiments

Switzerland is creating a new license category called a “payment instrument institution” for issuers of fiat-backed stablecoins. The license is part of amendments to the Financial Institutions Act.

Meanwhile, the SNB continues to test its own alternative. Through Project Helvetia III, the bank is experimenting with a wholesale central bank digital currency, or wCBDC, a tokenized form of central bank money meant for use between financial institutions.

The project has been extended until at least 2028.