InvestiFi: Meta’s Crypto Plans Could Destabilize Deposits for Credit Unions, Banks

By Roy Urrico

As of early 2026, the stablecoin market included over 100 different varieties. Soon Meta will reportedly re-enter the crypto crowd as well, shifting from its own Libra/Diem projects to integrate existing third-party stablecoins for in-app payments. If successful, the pivot particularly in terms of deposit retention and customer relationships, warned InvestiFi.

With billions of users already transacting within Meta’s apps, embedding instant stablecoin payments could encourage consumers and small businesses to keep funds within Meta wallets rather than traditional financial institutions (FIs).

Sean Ristau, vice president of digital assets at InvestiFi.

 “If users and small businesses can hold stablecoin balances in a Meta wallet and spend or pay directly from it, more money stays in-app longer, and less of it flows back to their institution. The network effects of three billion users transacting inside a single ecosystem may pose a bigger threat to deposit retention than any stablecoin paying yield,” said Sean Ristau, vice president of digital assets at Dover, Del.-based InvestiFi, which developed an “investtech” platform designed to allow for trading cryptocurrency to and from deposit accounts.

Ristau recently sat down with Finopotamus to analyze the potential outcome.

The Meta Deal

In late February 2026, Meta sent a request for proposal (RFP) to third parties to build stablecoin-based payouts and payments into its existing payments stack, with a wider rollout targeted for the second half of 2026. Meta’s seeking a partner for the plumbing while keeping distribution and the user experience (UX) in-house, according to InvestiFi.

Meta divulged having 3.58 billion daily active people (DAP), as of December 2025, across its “Family of Apps,” which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. On a monthly basis, this reach extends to approximately 3.98 billion unique monthly active users (MAU), representing nearly 70% of the world's active internet users.

“If you think about it, you have (more than) three billion users already open on a daily basis. Before they actually log into like their credit union or their bank, they are logging onto social media. So, you already have that user sucked into that experience…that volume could eventually flow through a Meta wallet versus a debit card, credit card, et cetera,” Ristau told Finopotamus.

“When you look at how many people log into Facebook, Instagram, (and) all the other apps that Meta now owns, the idea is they want to add this payment bridge into their ecosystem,” pointed out Ristau. “So that natively inside the app, whoever I want to send money to, I can send money to those parties.”

The Payment Within

“In the U.S. we have a lot of options when it comes to payment rails, (Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, wire, ACH,” noted Ristau. “Now, the problem is that there is an intermediary in the middle of all of those. (By) doing things with a stablecoin, you remove the intermediary.”

Ristau continued, “When stablecoin transfers become the native payment method on WhatsApp and Instagram, billions of users get onboarded to whatever stablecoin stack Meta chooses, and that distribution advantage is nearly impossible to reverse. Members and customers won't switch back to ACH if a tap inside WhatsApp settles instantly.”

Meta introduced the Libra stablecoin, later renamed Diem, in 2019, only to shut it down amid regulatory scrutiny in early 2022. Unlike its earlier attempt with Diem, Meta is not expected to issue its own token; and is not painting a regulatory bullseye on itself, Ristau explained. “By letting partners like Stripe handle the stablecoin infrastructure, they sidestep the political baggage and focus on what they do best, owning the user relationship, making it a more durable threat than Libra ever was.”

Destabilizing FIs

“Right now, banks and credit unions need to give their members a reason to keep their digital asset activity inside their institution before someone else owns that relationship. Financial institutions (FIs) must offer cryptocurrency and digital asset services to their members through their digital banking platform, instead of losing deposits to a Meta wallet or a third-party app,” Ristau said.

Meta's entire strategy is to own the user experience, and financial institutions can counter this by serving as the trusted, regulated front door for digital assets, something a social media company cannot replicate, Ristau maintained. “Members trust their bank or credit union with their money, and that trust is a competitive advantage, but only if you give them a reason to use it.”

This plays against the Meta threat as it firstly (and importantly) keeps deposits in-house, advised Ristau. “When members can buy, hold, and eventually transact with digital assets through their credit union or bank, the money does not need to leave the account to go to a Meta wallet or Coinbase account. The deposit relationship is retail.”

Under current regulations, federally regulated credit unions and banks are generally prohibited from paying interest on payment stablecoin balances. “So, any float or any money that is sitting in a Meta wallet, that is not sitting at a credit union inside of a savings account or a checking account,” Ristau told Finopotamus.

Therefore, there is no interest accrual on balances being earned, the credit unions and banks lose visibility into those transactions, and they lose potential interchange revenue, he noted. “Also, now they are outside of the actual credit union's ecosystem. So, their ability to cross sell is much less than what they were able to do before.”

Ristau added that a deposit loss could also weaken core business models for credit union and banks. He pointed out, without a steady flow of deposits, traditional FIs cannot lend money, manage daily operations, or sustain financial stability. “If you do not have the deposits, you have less money to lend out against. So, your loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR) values are going to be out of whack. it is a constant cycle that credit unions are definitely going to have to continue to address as the overall ecosystem evolves.”

Offering Digital Assets

“Financial institutions that currently offer digital asset services, before Meta's rollout takes hold, will already have members comfortably transacting through their FI, preventing their members from building new financial habits inside someone else's ecosystem,” Ristau said.

He continued, “Stablecoins are becoming embedded in the platform’s members use every day. The overarching question is not whether a financial institution's members will interact with digital assets, it is whether they will do it through them or through Meta.”

One of the big things that InvestiFi advocates for is converting stablecoins into fiat and then posting it to savings accounts, “Because that's really the only way you can monetize on the interest currently,” Ristau said.

Ristau recommended, “It's important for (credit unions), if they're not addressing this currently, it's something that you need to start becoming familiar, because anybody that's watching the pace at which stuff is changing is pretty wild and it's hard to keep up with.”