Samsung is preparing to place dollar-linked stablecoin transfers inside the digital wallet already installed on eligible Galaxy phones in the United States. The company said the capability will open in the final week of October and will begin with USDC, letting qualifying users move funds without downloading a separate crypto application or handling private keys themselves.
Woncheol Chai, executive vice president and head of the digital wallet team in Samsung’s mobile experience business, framed the change as an effort to make cross-border sending feel as ordinary as the payment tools people already open on their phones.
At launch the feature is expected to reach devices that Samsung counts as compatible with its wallet app, a group the company put at 82 million units in the US.
Eligibility is limited to US residents 18 or older who hold a Samsung account, use a supported Galaxy handset running Android 13 or later, complete identity checks, and set up biometric authentication.
Users will be able to send USDC from the wallet to compatible external crypto wallets or exchange accounts on supported networks.
Samsung said it will not charge a fee on those outbound transfers, though recipient platforms may, and arrival times will depend on network conditions.
Transfers into sanctioned jurisdictions are blocked.
Separately, the same wallet will support payments to qualifying bank accounts in more than 60 countries, with the recipient receiving local currency.
Fees for those bank transfers will vary by destination and amount and will be shown, along with an estimated delivery window, before the sender confirms.
Not every bank or account type will qualify.
The rollout extends an existing relationship with Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN).
Samsung Pay already appears as a funding option inside the Coinbase app, and certain Samsung Wallet users can access Coinbase One benefits.
For the new stablecoin service, custody and movement sit with regulated partners rather than with Samsung itself.
Bastion, which holds a New York trust charter and has received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter, supplies the cross-border payment framework.
Bastion has named Coinbase as sub-custodian, so USDC held through the feature is safeguarded in Coinbase Prime Vault.
Galaxy devices serve as the access point; transfers require biometric confirmation on a registered phone.
Samsung stated that it is not a bank, money transmitter, or digital-asset custodian and does not hold customer funds.
USDC is the first stablecoin the wallet will support, with infrastructure and network connectivity supplied by additional partners that include Solana and Sui.
Later features under consideration include paying merchants online or by tapping a compatible Galaxy device in a store, and expanding the service into other countries as local rules allow.
The Samsung announcement arrives while Coinbase is also expanding regulated derivatives and institutional infrastructure.
In early October the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Market Oversight issued no-action relief that lets designated contract markets remove expiration dates from perpetual-style futures linked to broad-based security indices.
The relief responded to an October 1 request from Coinbase and is available to any qualifying exchange that gives position holders at least five days’ notice, preserves other material terms, and supplies risk disclosures.
It effectively allows contracts Coinbase Derivatives had listed with expiries stretching as far as 25 years to function as true perpetuals that rely on periodic funding payments rather than a maturity date.
The staff position expires on October 20 and followed the agency’s deemed approval of a related Kalshi contract.
Separate staff relief earlier in the year had already addressed similar conversion of certain digital commodity futures.
Coinbase’s chief business officer, Shan Aggarwal, has separately described large banks increasing their bitcoin exposure and pointed to custody of most bitcoin exchange-traded products as a foundation for wider advisor access if new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules open that channel.
On the revenue side, Coinbase’s subscriptions and services line reached about $555 million in the second quarter of 2026, or 48 percent of net revenue, up from a negligible share five years earlier.
Analysts note that stablecoin-related income, custody, and staking account for most of that segment, with data and index licensing a smaller but growing portion, while the company’s paid Coinbase One membership has passed one million subscribers. Together the developments place Coinbase infrastructure behind both a consumer wallet feature on tens of millions of phones and a broader shift toward non-transaction revenue and regulated perpetual products.