Tschudin Warns on Stablecoins and Policy

On 30 September 2026, Swiss National Bank Governing Board member Petra Tschudin spoke at the KOF Prognosetagung in Zurich. The SNB Tschudin stablecoin monetary policy September 2026 remarks welcome payment innovation and, in the same breath of the record, warn about scale. Both the SNB slides and Reuters say that large stablecoins detached from the two-tier banking system make monetary-policy transmission harder and can impair the central bank's mandate. Design and regulation are the decisive point.

What happened

The speaker is Petra Tschudin. Her role, in both accounts used here, is Governing Board member of the Swiss National Bank. The date is 30 September 2026. The setting is the KOF Prognosetagung in Zurich. Those are the facts that locate the speech. This article does not add other speakers, a vote, or a new SNB rule issued that day.

What the slides and the Reuters account share is a paired judgment. The SNB welcomes payment innovation. The welcome is not a blank check for every form a stablecoin might take. Large stablecoins that are detached from the two-tier banking system are the case that draws the warning. "Large" is the word both accounts carry. Neither account, in the facts used here, supplies a threshold that turns a coin from small to large. This article will not invent one.

Detachment is the condition that matters in the warning. The coins at issue are those standing apart from the two-tier banking system. Both pages tie that condition to two consequences. Monetary-policy transmission becomes harder. The central bank's mandate can be impaired. Transmission, in this setting, is the path from the central bank's decisions to the rest of the financial system. If that path is harder, the bank's ability to do what its mandate requires can be weaker. The accounts state the risk. They do not, in the material used here, walk through a particular rate decision or a particular coin.

Design and regulation are the decisive point. That sentence is doing a specific kind of work. It says the outcome is not settled by the mere existence of a stablecoin. It is settled by how the instrument is built and by how it is regulated. A design that stays inside the two-tier system is not the case the warning describes. A design that leaves that system, at large scale, is. The slides and the wire story agree on that fork. They agree that innovation itself is welcome.

Why it matters

The speech is easy to misread as a ban, or as a product endorsement. Neither reading is supported. Welcoming payment innovation means the central bank is not, in these remarks, treating new payment tools as unwelcome by default. The warning is narrower and more institutional. It is about large stablecoins detached from the two-tier banking system, about transmission, and about the mandate. A reader who keeps only the welcome has dropped the warning. A reader who keeps only the warning has dropped the welcome. Both halves are in the slides and in the Reuters report.

The two-tier reference is the hinge. Tschudin is not, on this shared record, talking about every payment experiment at every size. She is talking about instruments that sit outside the arrangement in which the central bank and the banking system both have a role. When those instruments are large, both accounts say, the central bank's decisions travel less reliably, and the mandate can suffer. That is a claim about the plumbing of policy, not a claim about the price of any token. This article will not turn it into one.

Calling design and regulation decisive also limits what the speech can be said to have done. It did not, on these pages, announce a prohibition. It did not announce an approval of a named coin. It identified the variables the SNB treats as decisive: how a stablecoin is designed, and how it is regulated. Future arguments about a particular project have to be arguments about those variables, at least if they want to stay faithful to this speech. Size and detachment are the conditions that trigger the concern. Design and regulation are where the concern is supposed to be resolved.

The mandate point should stay in the central bank's own terms. Both accounts say impairment is possible. They do not, in the sentences this article relies on, redefine what the mandate contains. Adding a checklist of goals would go beyond the speech as reported. The news is that a Governing Board member, speaking in Zurich on 30 September 2026, put large detached stablecoins on the list of things that can get in the mandate's way, while saying payment innovation is welcome and that design and regulation decide the question.

What's next

Nothing in the shared record converts the speech into a statute, a licensing decision, or a market instruction. The SNB has stated a view through a Governing Board member's remarks and through the slides that accompanied them. Reuters reported the same core: innovation is welcome, large stablecoins outside the two-tier banking system make transmission harder and can impair the mandate, and design and regulation are decisive.

Anyone summarizing the day should be able to say those things and stop. A numerical size cutoff is not part of the account given here. The speech leaves the policy question open in the way the decisive-point sentence implies. Design and regulation have not, in these pages, been completed by the remarks themselves. For related stablecoin context, see Circle MiCA review and OpenUSD launch.

The Reuters report is here. The SNB slides are here.