Branded stablecoins could serve as loyalty and rewards vehicles for onchain commerce, according to Caroline Pham, Chief Legal Officer and Chief Administrative Officer at MoonPay. In a January 13, 2026 podcast interview, Pham, a former acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, described a model in which brands issue their own stablecoins, customers earn them through purchases, and the tokens circulate across merchant networks.
Loyalty programs with interoperability
Pham compared the concept to existing rewards ecosystems but said branded stablecoins would live onchain, making them programmable, transferable, and usable across different merchant platforms without a central clearinghouse determining valid redemptions.
MoonPay has been building infrastructure for that use case. In November 2025, the company integrated with M0 to enable the issuance and management of customized, interoperable stablecoins, launching enterprise stablecoin services for issuance and transaction use. The goal is to let businesses issue stablecoins without navigating compliance and operational complexity alone.
Market context and network
MoonPay cited a stablecoin market capitalization of approximately $320 billion by early 2026, along with annual transaction volumes of about $33 trillion for 2025 and over $28 trillion for the first quarter of 2026 alone. The company said its enterprise network spans more than 30 million users and over 500 enterprise partners.
Pham joined MoonPay in December 2025 after serving as acting CFTC chair from January through December of that year. The company has since announced a partnership with Deel aimed at facilitating cross-border payroll through stablecoins, announced around February 2026, followed by a collaboration with XO Cash focused on athlete bonuses in approximately March 2026.
Programmable rewards
MoonPay also announced a PYUSDx launchpad designed to support programmable rewards, an initiative that operationalizes Pham’s thesis around branded tokens serving as the substrate for loyalty mechanics. Programmable stablecoins can carry conditions—such as earning double rewards on specific product categories, expiring if unused within a quarter, or unlocking additional perks when a spending threshold is crossed—built into the asset itself rather than maintained in a loyalty platform’s database.
Pham’s hire was itself a statement of intent, bringing a former federal regulator to MoonPay as stablecoin legislation in the US moves through Congress.
