How is innovation in blockchain technology, specifically the growing interest in stablecoins and tokenized deposits, creating ways for banks and financial services companies to offer new services, engage current customers better, and introduce new potential revenue sources?
Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Ark, caught up with Chris Nichols, President of Institutional Banking at SouthState Bank, earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego. At the conference, Nichols gave a keynote address on the emergence of agentic AI as a new frontier in financial services and discussed ways that agentic commerce will reshape the retail landscape. More specifically, Nichols explained how the combination of tokenization and agentic AI could create major opportunities for banks and financial institutions, enabling 24/7 settlement, smart contracts, programmable money, and more.
In this conversation, Ramirez and Nichols discuss SouthState Bank’s dual token strategy that embraces both deposit tokens and stablecoins, payment orchestration and the future of treasury management, as well as how AI and tokenization are shortening development times from months to days.
What’s really interesting to us, and our number one use case, is the store of value internationally. The customers—specifically the non-US customers of our customers—have subsidiaries in places like Australia or Mexico. These subsidiaries have expenses in dollars that must be converted into local currency, such as Mexican pesos. They then generate revenue and have to convert it back to dollars to repatriate that money. It’s much more efficient to hold some of that capital in a US dollar stablecoin.
As President of Institutional Banking for SouthState Bank, Nichols supports innovation, artificial intelligence, digital assets, loan pricing, asset-liability management, open banking, payments, and fintech investing for the bank, in addition to capital market activities. He produces the Banker-to-Banker blog and is a frequent host of The Community Bank Podcast.
Headquartered in Winter Haven, Florida, SouthState Bank is a $67 billion, publicly traded regional bank with a network of more than 379 branches throughout the southeastern and south-central US. The institution has grown significantly via merger and acquisition in the past few years, most recently acquiring Texas-based Independent Bank Group in 2025.
Photo by Freddy G on Unsplash
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