Paxos

At a glance

What it does

Issuer-as-a-service means a regulated firm mints a token and holds its reserve, while another company puts its brand on it and owns the customer. Paxos does the regulated half. It holds the reserve in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts, mints and burns on 1:1 redemption, and handles compliance. The brand, such as PayPal, handles the product and the users.

Paxos runs this for several partners. It launched PYUSD with PayPal on 7 August 2023. On 4 November 2024 it launched USDG with the Global Dollar Network, a group whose founding members were Anchorage Digital, Bullish, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Nuvei and Robinhood; OKX joined in July 2025. USDG launched in the EU in July 2025. Paxos also issues USDP, its own dollar token, and PAXG, a token backed by physical gold worth about 1.9 bn USD in September 2026.

The client list spans both worlds. On the crypto side it includes Coinbase, Kraken and OKX through the Global Dollar Network; on the traditional side, Paxos names Mastercard, Interactive Brokers, Mercado Libre and Charles Schwab. That mix matters, because an issuer-as-a-service business grows only as fast as its partners distribute.

Around issuance it has built infrastructure. Paxos acquired Fordefi, a wallet and custody firm, in November 2025, has run crypto trading for Charles Schwab since April 2026, and registered Paxos Securities Settlement Company with the SEC as a clearing agency in May 2026.

How it is different

Paxos sells regulation. It held New York's first limited-purpose trust charter for digital assets from 2015 and converted it into a national trust charter supervised by the OCC on 12 December 2025, the day the OCC approved the application. It also holds a Monetary Authority of Singapore payment licence since 2022. For a brand that wants its own dollar without becoming a bank, Paxos is the shortest route.

Circle keeps its own brand and pays distributors; Paxos lets distributors carry their own brand and earns from the service. Bridge's Open Issuance now offers a similar product to Stripe's customers, which makes that the most direct competition.

Where it fits

Who's who in stablecoins explains issuer-as-a-service. Under the hood covers minting, reserves and redemption. How stablecoin issuers make money shows how the reserve income is split. A short history of stablecoins tells the BUSD story. Related profiles: PayPal, Robinhood, Anchorage.

Risks and open questions

Brand-issuer risk is the danger that a regulator stops a token because of the partner, not the reserve. BUSD, the Binance-branded token Paxos issued, had about 16 bn USD in circulation when New York's regulator ordered Paxos on 13 February 2023 to stop minting it. The order concerned Paxos's oversight of the Binance relationship, not the quality of the reserve. Holders could redeem until February 2024.

Paxos has also closed products on its own terms. It wound down USDL, a yield-paying token, between October and December 2025, converting balances to USDG and citing a market shift toward regulated, bank-integrated stablecoins.

Partner tokens can shrink quickly when the partner's incentives end, as PYUSD did after its 2026 rewards campaign. Paxos carries the regulatory load either way.

What to watch next

• How Paxos uses its national trust charter under the GENIUS Act rules, including for partner-branded tokens.
• USDG's growth against USDC, since the Global Dollar Network's members are also large exchanges and brokers.
• Competition from Bridge Open Issuance for brands that want a white-label dollar.
• Paxos Settlement's first clients, which would move Paxos from tokens into securities infrastructure.