MoonPay executive discusses loyalty rewards for branded stablecoins

Caroline Pham sees branded stablecoins functioning like loyalty programs, letting users earn and exchange rewards across merchants onchain Caroline Pham has a vision for stablecoins that sounds less like a monetary policy debate and more like your credit card points finally becoming useful. The former acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, now serving as Chief Legal Officer and Chief Administrative Officer at MoonPay, laid out that vision in a January 13, 2026 podcast interview, predicting that branded stablecoins will function as loyalty and rewards vehicles for onchain commerce. The core idea: brands issue their own stablecoins, customers earn them through purchases, and those tokens flow across merchant networks the way airline miles theoretically do, except without the blackout dates and the soul-crushing redemption experience. Loyalty programs, but actually interoperable Pham’s framing draws a direct comparison to existing rewards ecosystems. The difference she envisions is that branded stablecoins would live onchain, making them programmable, transferable, and usable across different merchant platforms without a central clearinghouse deciding what counts as...