Are treasury departments ready for stablecoins? A major financial industry trade group has teamed up with a fintech firm to establish a new professional certification aimed at helping corporate treasurers get up to speed on the newly emerging digital currency.
On Tuesday, the Association for Financial Professionals and San Diego-based cloud treasury provider Kyriba announced the creation of a new stablecoin certification course intended to close a “critical gap facing finance and treasury leaders today,” they said in a joint press release.
The four-module course, which the two parties billed as a “historic first,” covers risks, governance and other matters related to stablecoins, which are a type of cryptocurrency that’s often pegged to a fiat currency, such as the U.S. dollar. The course will officially launch in June.
In an email to CFO.com, AFP President and CEO Pat Culkin said his group took up Kyriba’s idea to partner on the certification due, in part, to member demands.
“AFP was hearing from members of its community that they’re being asked to serve as the stablecoins expert within their organizations,” Culkin said. “This certificate is designed to meet that moment — connecting practitioners with clear, practical guidance they can apply right away.”
He noted that AFP and Kyriba have developed a “strong relationship over many years.”
While the certification is largely geared toward treasurers, it’s open to all types of financial professionals, including CFOs, according to Bob Stark, Kyriba’s global head of market strategy.
“CFOs who want to understand how they can apply stablecoins to current day challenges such as delayed cross-border payments, real-time liquidity, reducing (foreign exchange) costs and managing cash in non-deliverable currency markets will find that this collaboration between AFP and Kyriba offers the only course designed to meet this need," Stark said in an email.
The AFP-Kyriba certification comes at a time when businesses and consumers are still determining how – or even if – they’ll use stablecoins. According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, stablecoins are still rarely used in standard payments, such as peer-to-peer payments or business-to-business transactions. Payments comprise less than 1% of current stablecoin use, according to that study.
However, the study found greater use of stablecoins for transfers, which includes corporate treasury money movement. Just over a quarter of stablecoin use (29.3%) was for transfers, according to the Kansas City Fed.
“There are many choices in blockchains, tokens, issuers and wallets that may or may not fully align with corporate governance and internal controls,” Stark noted. “CFOs need to understand the impacts and risks of this emerging class of assets so they can make informed choices. Not all stablecoins and on-chain transactions are the same, and we believe it is important for CFOs to be empowered with the right insights to support and defend their financial decisions.”
