Stablecoin Linked Cards Are in Hyper Growth Mode

Sy Taylor  0:10  

Welcome to Tokenized, the show focused on stablecoins and the institutional adoption of tokenized real-world assets. My name's Simon Taylor. I'm your host, author of FinTech Brain Food and head of market tai over at Tempo, and my co-host, as always, is my colleague, my friend, Kai Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa. How you doing,

Cuy Sheffield  0:27  

sir? It's good to be back together. Feels like it's it's been a few weeks, and time is fine. But we've got a packed house today. Let's jump into it.

Sy Taylor  0:35  

We do. Joining us this week, making a debut, is Luke Tussle, who's the CPTO at MoneyGram. How you doing, Luke?

Luke Tuttle  0:43  

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Sy Taylor  0:44  

Thank you. Making a long-awaited debut is Charles Uno, who is the co-founder and CTO over at Rain. How you doing, Charles?

Charles Yoo-Naut  0:53  

Great. Thank you.

Sy Taylor  0:55  

Congrats on all your recent success. And last, but by no means least, we're also joined by Debutant to talk on our first story today. This is Darko Heydukovich, the head of digital markets infrastructure for London Stock Exchange Group. Darko, how are you doing, sir?

Darko Hajdukovic  1:11  

I'm doing very well, thanks. Great to be here.

Sy Taylor  1:13  

Before we dive into your story, I've just got to remind everybody that views and opinions of our contributors today are their own and might not reflect those of companies they represent, and please don't take anything we say as tax, legal, or financial advice. Stay safe and always do your own research. And I'm happy to remind you that this episode is brought to you by our friends at Modern Treasury. Shout out to those guys. This episode is sponsored by Modern Treasury. Stablecoins are here, and so are checks and ACH. They're not going away. RTP and Fed now and new types of payments rails are emerging all the time. The challenge now is integrating all of these without slowing down. Modern Treasury offers one single API for fiat and stablecoins, helping teams launch payments products in days, enter new markets, and serve more customers. Trusted by companies like Procore and Navan and Morse, and backed by over $600 billion in payments history, learn how to adapt to changing payments rails with scale and confidence at moderntreasury.com. All right. So the London Stock Exchange is planning nighttime trading in a dedicated venue, which is launching in H1 of 2027, as well as fully tokenized digital gilt, the UK government debt instrument called Digit. So the separate nighttime exchange will launch early next year, and the main 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. venue is unaffected by this. The launch covers more than 2,600 ETPs already listed on the London Stock Exchange, including funds tracking UK and US markets. Individual stocks are excluded at launch due to regulatory timing and complexities, per the CEO. And regarding digit, this was one that I really want to dive into with Darko because I think it's very interesting for our audience. Digit is the digital issuance of UK government debt. In the UK, we call those gilts, but you can think of them a bit like US treasuries in the United States. But this 100% digital token is natively issued as a token by HSBC, and the London Stock Exchange is acting as the investor side. So the UK government can be issued as a token, bought as one, and traded as one. With plans to take this live in the near future. Darko, congratulations on both of these stories. I'm really curious to get your perspective. Take me inside the journey in the last couple of months getting to these announcements.

Darko Hajdukovic  3:50  

Well, thank you. They are they are big big announcements, and they're really showing how we are thinking about the future and where Elseg on the Stock Exchange Group is thinking about market development. So LSC 24, just to be clear, starts first as in a traditional sense. So we're not. This is not going to be done on digital rails on day one, but we are certainly looking at the future, and we're certainly looking at how our digital securities repository that we are building will enable further digitization and further securities on on this venue. In relation to Digit, we have signed the MOU with HSBC, and that MOU envisages HSBC or I and LSEG DSD creating a link. The role we play there is an investor DSD, which gives investors optionality. It's it's actually it's extremely innovative. It's really interesting. We are building this asset together, and it's the first of a kind that we are that we are exploring. You are right in in calling out this as a digitally native gilt instrument issued by the H. And there is also a potential listing of that on London Stock Exchange as well, and the as the that is banned.

Sy Taylor  5:09  

I want to throw it to the group really for questions. Kai, jump in.

Cuy Sheffield  5:13  

Yeah, as I say, this seems like a huge step forward and super exciting. How do you think about the use cases for the digit and like who are the initial customers that are looking for this tokenized treasury that you see it going to market with?

Darko Hajdukovic  5:26  

Yeah, so maybe I just pause for one second, just explain what the DSD is. I appreciate that it's a UK concept. It's a concept that exists within the digital sandbox that's created by Bank of England. So maybe just just a word on that, and that kind of answer will hopefully answer your question, Kai. So, digital securities depository. Think of it as an on-chain settlement mechanism that enables digital native securities to achieve settlement finality on-chain, and that is really important statement because it is getting that settlement finality and getting the chain as a legal record under English law, which is really important. So, when we think about the potential investors and use cases, it's opening up the guilt to the network. You have a very trusted infrastructure that enables this, and you have a network that can then use it for whatever use cases you use digitally native instruments. And just to be clear and be precise, HSBC here is the issuer DSD, which means that the guild gets issued on that platform, and we are the investor DSD, and that means that the investors that come into guild can settle on our platform, but they can also settle on HSBC platforms. So it is really opening up the the ecosystem broadly for digital investors and investors who are going to become digital in the future.

Sy Taylor  6:48  

Darker, my understanding is this is somewhat different from the way the DTCC has solved things in the United States. In that, what they're largely doing is creating digital twins, and the depository is still the legal record, but the digital twin can trade as as a token. What you're talking about is that the legal record is on chain itself. Have I understood that correctly?

Darko Hajdukovic  7:09  

That is right. That is right, and that will be on that the issuer DSD, the the Orion. That's where the digital record is going to sit, and we are assets that we bring investors. But can I just also say the way how we think about the DSD. Of course, it will enable digital native security settlement. That's almost table stakes. But we are also building a DSD that will enable the world that you are also describing. Let's not forget, 99.9% of real world assets are still existing in the world that is not digital, and we need to cater for that as well,

Sy Taylor  7:41  

but you could have a legal record on chain, and I think you're sort of heading towards that future, Charles. I want to come to you in this because treasuries are such a big part of the stablecoin market already, but they're such a big part of payments in general and and corporate treasury. I know Luke, as you think about your own business, your CFO will be dealing with them day in and day out. So, what are your reflections on stories like this, and the role of potential UK debt in in the ecosystem versus US Treasuries and others?

Luke Tuttle  8:09  

For me, what's interesting on some of these conversations is the degree at which the regulator and the regulation we operate under, how do they recognize this? So, for example, in the US, holding monies and stablecoin doesn't yet satisfy some of the safeguarding requirements that we might have, so it's attractive on one side, but it's not yet recognized as a way to hold funds from a treasury perspective. So I was curious, Darko, in terms of the journey with the regulator there, how are they viewing this? Is it equivalent to holding the actual asset versus the representation of the asset, which it sounds like you've done, you know, not being the twin, it sounds like it's more of a direct ownership. How is that going in those conversations?

Darko Hajdukovic  8:52  

So this is done within the framework of the digital sandbox within that is Bank of India and FCA sandbox. So through that, as you as you know, current regime sees that the trades in are settled on a in a CSD, and that's covered by a CSDR regulation. In this new world, that that settlement for nationality through the legislation that is going to be done within this sandbox will will be on on the DSD, and can I just say the DSD is not just about gilt. It's not just about fixed income. It's also about every other instrument, including equities, and that's I think that's kind of also giving you kind of a pathway where we are going. You can see that there will be a multiple types of instruments that will be on a platform. So in terms of the of the regulator, it is really that finality that is achieved on the platform, and as Simon, as you say, registered on chain, and therefore you derive legal certainty out of that.

Sy Taylor  9:53  

Charles,

Charles Yoo-Naut  9:54  

yeah, I think all these developments are always very exciting in terms of our progression towards. Digitizing and tokenizing the financial system, like stablecoins, are really the gateway for a lot of people in getting their assets on chain. But really, it's just how do we chip away and bringing all these things on chain? And when you have more and more assets on chain, you get the global nature of it. You you actually get the programmatic nature of it, the permissionless nature. There's so many benefits of having these assets available to people 24/7 eventually, so it's it's progress. It's going to take time with regulation with technology to get there. All of these are important steps to that goal.

Darko Hajdukovic  10:29  

Well, I think one of the key sort of differences here to other places is when we do issue these instruments, and there will of course digit is one of them, and it's it's going to probably be amongst the first. But there will be other ones coming very very shortly after that, even though this is called a sandbox, it's actually temporary permissions regime that then through sandbox becomes a permanent permission regime. So that is really interesting innovation that currently exists in the UK, where you are in the sandbox, you do things, but you do things in live environment. So you actually conduct a transaction, and transaction is done and busted, even though we did it in a sandbox. But then the idea is once you've proven that works, that becomes a permanent way of doing things, and that is really powerful mechanism of taking the industry forward, and that's certainly what we are leaning into.

Sy Taylor  11:15  

Yeah, and and you talk to other assets there, Darko and and other things that are coming. I mean, I know LSE plays a major role with some of the largest financial institutions in the world, helping them, and and is really part of the UK infrastructure. And as I think about how they view collateral and how they think about margin and cross margining and 24/7, this has been the dream I think for people for quite some time that you would have some of the most high-quality liquid assets available to transfer 24-seven, but if it is directly issued government debt and it's not a claim on somebody else that's issued it, and then somebody else has tokenized it, people are starting to think about that. I think a little bit more differently, and the scale of institution that could come in could be quite different. So, what does the roadmap look for for digit and and the LSE.

Darko Hajdukovic  12:03  

So obviously I can't talk about digit too much because it's HMT, it's an HMT instrument, and they are going to be driving that. But in terms of where the market is going, we're certainly seeing a lot of conversations around. Okay, now the instrument is in a digital form, and I always sort of love everything is digital today. This is actually on deal rails now, so this is now new. the The new thing here isn't that it's digitally represented. It is that you can now do things which you couldn't do before. 24/7 is a good example. Doing things on chain, doing things on public chains eventually as well. So we really need to think of all of that. And I should so let me just put one overall legal preface over all of that, saying all of this is subject to regulatory approval. I probably should have started with that, but obviously we are working. The industry is working very closely to make sure that we do this in a robust and safe way. And everything that I've said, including LSC 24 and and of course digit and all of that, is subject to regulatory approval.

Sy Taylor  13:01  

I'm so curious to see this, Darko. I know I know you have to drop now, but I want to thank you on behalf of everyone at Tokenized. And as a Brit, I'm quite excited to see this innovation coming out of the UK around the legal clarity. And I think it is going to bring a different level of institution into the market when the actual legal record moves on chain. So, congratulations to you and HSBC and HMT. Thank you, Darko, very much for being with us today.

Darko Hajdukovic  13:27  

Thank you very much.

Sy Taylor  13:29  

All right, I'm just going to take a quick pause here while we hear from our sponsors, and we'll be right back. This episode, if it's not obvious, is brought to you by our friends at Visa, a global leader in payments, Visa's tokenized assets platform VTap uses smart contracts and cryptography to help banks bring fiat currencies on chain. VTap allows financial institutions to issue fiat-backed tokens, improving financial efficiency and enabling programmable finance. You can check out the links in this episode's description to express your interest in VTap. This episode is sponsored by Stripe. Internet commerce is evolving pretty rapidly, and agents are now becoming economic actors. They're managing spend and transacting autonomously, and stablecoins are becoming the default for them to do so, thanks to their programmable, instant, global, and low-cost nature. With Stripe, your business is ready for this new agentic economy. Accept stablecoin payments from agents, equip your agents with wallets, and issue stablecoin-backed cards so they can spend, all through a single integration, from Shopify to RAM businesses, trust Stripe to get ready for agentic commerce. Learn more at stripe.com forward slash crypto. Tokenized is also sponsored by Fireblocks. Fireblocks is the stablecoin infrastructure of choice for global businesses. From Visa to Wolpay to Bridge to Revolut, with over $100 billion in monthly stablecoin volume, Fireblocks powers stablecoin strategies at scale with infrastructure that enables PSPs, fintechs, remitters, and banks to issue, move, hold, and manage stablecoins. It's all done securely at scale with secure built-in compliance. With Fireblocks, you get complete control to build your own stablecoin orchestration layer, create payment accounts, manage liquidity, and access on and off ramps in over 60 currencies. Makes it easier for you to build and scale and expand your business globally. Learn more at firebox.com. All right, story number two this week was about Marketta partnering with ZeroHash to bring stablecoin spending programs to their 10s of millions of issuers, and therefore through merchants. They're integrating the ZeroHash infrastructure so that any customer can add stablecoin spending to new and existing card programs without rebuilding their systems. Marquessa, just for some sense of scale, processed nearly 400 billion in payment volume in 2025, and existing customers include Square, Western Union, DoorDash, Uber, Affirm, Klarna, and Ramp, and some of those already have stablecoin products that they might want to port to the cards. So this is going to be really interesting to watch. I would be remiss if I didn't come to Charles first on this one. Charles, I think you guys created this category to some extent, but I think what Rain does is somewhat different to Marketa. So, do you want to just walk me through some of the key differences between who Rain is and who Marketer is, and and why somebody might see those two things as different?

Charles Yoo-Naut  16:52  

Yeah, I think on the surface it might seem very similar, and there are similarities. But Rain is a full stack issuer. We're processor agnostic. We work with multiple processors, including Hematology, Lithic, Episode Six. We're starting to partner with Marquette as well, but we're in this typical card issuing stock. We exist at the bottom and also the top, which is maybe unique in that we are principal member of Visa and also Mastercard. We're the program manager for a lot of our programs, and then processor-agnostic multi-processor setup. So we can work with Marketa, or we can work with any other processor as well. I think what what this announcement is doing is exciting because anything that is promoting stablecoin adoption is good for the whole ecosystem. Like we're still so early in this space. It's about Pi expansion. It's about getting more people onboarded and using stablecoins, but fundamentally, it's solving one piece of of the use cases that we see, which is people have stablecoins for a variety of reasons, whether it's a remittance or it's dollar access, and they want to spend it. What we've developed at Rain is really a vertically integrated solution where spending stablecoins is one of the things we enable, but we're also feel like reinventing the entire stack from the ground up on the chain using stablecoins. There's so many efficiencies you see. Like we've partnered closely with Kai and his team and Visa to do seven day a week settlement on on stablecoins, only possible on the blockchain. Not really possible with traditional legacy rails, which you're kind of missing if you're just focused on the spending piece and not on the new capabilities that are actually enabled by building natively on chain the entire stack. So it's a really important development, and we celebrate it. But it's kind of agnostic or or slightly tangential to what we focus on.

Cuy Sheffield  18:36  

Yeah, I think for for me, it's we've said this 1000 times. Of stablecoin link cards are in hyper growth mode, and it is just incredible to watch. And like every week, there are new programs that are going live. There are new enablers that are coming in the space. There's more competition. There's more innovation, and it's awesome. Like it's like a new era for fintech. And so when I see this, it's it's cool to me that Marketta they played such a big role in earlier fintech 2.0 and powering many of the the most successful fintech programs, and I think now like this line between fintech and stablecoins is just completely blurring, and so we're going from it used to be that the only companies issuing stablecoin cards were net new startups that were just designed around stablecoins, and now it's just becoming apparent that any fintech that wants to operate globally is going to want to have a stablecoin-like card. And now, I think question for you, Luke, is like, it feels like there are some approaches that are like, how do we create a brand new product that's separate from our core offering, that's a stablecoin native wallet with a card, but uses our brand and our distribution. Versus, how do you integrate stablecoin wallets inside your existing product? If you have an existing card, adding stablecoins is another spend mechanism. Like, how how have you thought about this inside MoneyGram as you guys have have really? And been on the forefront of how to integrate stablecoins into a an existing scaled remittance business.

Luke Tuttle  20:07  

Absolutely, and my main answer is from the cust the consumer perspective, right? The ease of use and how well that product is integrated to the existing experience. What's really hard to understand when you read announcements like this and our competitors or companies like us, when they announce a stable card, is within their interface. Is it on the side? Meaning, do you need to quote transfer money to your card? Is it a completely different kind of concept within the suite of services being provided? And as we think about our own not custodial wallet, which has the advantage of being able to deploy globally, as we all know here, that gives a distinct advantage over working with sponsor banks. That's a tremendous advantage, and I know that this is something that Visa and Rain have done a lot of work on: is is how can you enable the company that is using the stable card to work with less other companies that have an opinion on how to run their business. So sponsor banks provide a very valuable service, powers a lot of fintech, but it is another party that's the decision maker in your risk and compliance profile as you think about the customers you served. So for me, ultimately, as we think about our Noxodia wallet and embedding a balance within MoneyGram, is that it needs to be absolutely seamless. Whether using a stablecoin connected card, whether you're directly paying through a direct to bank, and you're scanning a QR code in a store in Colombia, that the payment there shouldn't be additional thought to it. So that for me is the key for anyone reading about an announcement like this is yeah there's a capability but as an add-on does it augment something I'm already doing that's excellent towards the customer or am I you know as a product manager inside one of these companies, am I ticking a box to say I'm doing stablecoin now? And for us, it's us that seamless experience, and also providing the benefit back to the customer around some of the efficiencies that one can gain by having less parties involved in your stack as you deliver a payment service.

Sy Taylor  22:19  

I think that experience thing is so important, right? Like I know, for example, Luke, you work with M Zero and many others to Fireblocks. You've kind of gone down to the metal a little bit more, I think, than than most people have. In a way that I think is, you know, really driven by that gives you the control. You can bake it into your app and and make it feel seamless. Whereas there are others who you know potentially are taking a self custodial wallet, but also a full stack from from another provider like Bridge, and they're still because of the nature of a self custodial wallet like Privy or Dynamic, can create a pretty good experience. But ultimately, if there's a sponsor bank at the bottom of that and their risk appetite says no, then that's it. Your your experience is still driven by that sponsor bank. So I think the innovation of something like Rain is quite interesting in that they, as a principal member, sort of help set some of that risk appetite and and economics in in a really unique way. Kai, any other thoughts on this and the role of zero hash here?

Cuy Sheffield  23:21  

Yeah, I was gonna say the other part of the story, and shout out to Edward and ZeroHash team. Of it's an interesting partnership where you have ZeroHash customers, and ZeroHash is the regulated orchestration kind of payment provider, many of whom may want cards, and so now being able to have a path for them to help enable cards, and then you've got Marketa with many companies that have cards but don't necessarily have stablecoins, may not have the licenses that they need to be able to hold stablecoins in a custodial way. Being able to plug into that with zero hash, and so I think over time I expect every major card enabler that cares about fintech to have some stablecoin partnership and integration, and I expect every major stablecoin payment provider that cares about getting to mainstream kind of real world payments to have some card integration, and I think that that's great. And like this is the the best example of these two worlds coming together, and I think it's going to be what the space needs yet to get to the next level of adoption.

Sy Taylor  24:17  

Yeah, it was interesting. I think Charles, you mentioned working with Lithic Episode Six and Paymentology was it? If I'm not mistaken, I think of those as Gen Two and a half, Gen Three issuer processors. Marketer and would be a classic Gen two issuer processor. Maybe a Thesis is a Gen One, some something like that. Just as a rough non-commenture. So the innovators obviously start to move quicker in the stablecoin card space. Then sort of the at scale players who've got an existing business start coming in. That to me is like a window or a time shift where now look, it's gotten bigger, and so that's going to be pretty validating to the rain business that you guys are there duking it out in in a whole. Bunch of ways, but I'm interested in what are the types of companies coming to you. Per Kai's suggestion, is it changing broadly, or is it neo banks for the global south?

Charles Yoo-Naut  25:11  

It's really shifted in the last 12 months. So our bread and butter 12 months ago was those global neo banks. I think today, if you're a neo bank starting out, you're basically always going to be thinking stablecoin first and thinking global first. So that use case has been locked down for the last 12 months. Of hey, we're going to go stablecoin first if we're doing this. Ever since genius and progressively month over month, as more people are making announcements, we're seeing more traditional fintechs, global platforms start dipping their toes into stablecoins, some are more aggressive. Like MoneyGram is actually rethinking the entire business and like how we can actually achieve all these efficiencies and monetize differently and and reach new places. Some people are bolting on something to the side, like Luke mentioned, or maybe it's just giving someone a little access to stablecoins. But we're seeing people that we wouldn't really imagine 12 months ago. Now approaching us to think about how they could design a stablecoin program, and we're trying to really be partners with them and not just think about, hey, how do you bolt on stablecoins? But actually, how do you do something that you couldn't do previously because you have stablecoins inside your product? How do you go to a new market? How do you unlock a new use case? How do you monetize your business differently, or how do you bring something that was a cost center and then make it a revenue center? So it's it's not just around hey, how do I launch a stablecoin card? It's how do I actually think through my entire business from a perspective where I have this new technology that unlocks a lot for me. It makes my product easily to to launch globally. It brings down my cost center. So conversations are changing a lot as well.

Sy Taylor  26:42  

Well, canonically, I think you know the remittance companies have been able to monetize the beneficiary with a card first, and it's a product that consumers understand. Luke,

Luke Tuttle  26:50  

absolutely. And one of the things with remittance companies in general is they didn't consider the receiver as beneficiary as a customer, which is somewhat mind blowing, but if you roll the clock back many years and you think about the cost and the ability to service that receiver in 200 countries, if you were thinking about providing a balance example, for example, to the receiver, you needed to figure out a sponsor bank and a regulatory framework, and more that could work in those countries, and now with the Knoxville wallet allows a single stack. You know, the regulatory framework, of course, is can vary, but to a much less degree than the traditional product. So the efficiency to deliver it has greatly improved, and then having that single tech stack means you can scale it so one investment can work with a much wider range of customers than it could have before. So, so I see that as being one of the big changes in the ability for a remittance company like us to serve that beneficiary.

Sy Taylor  27:57  

You guys were naturally historically global, but it was hard going. But to have something that is a little bit more global by default as a technology is very powerful. I'm going to move us to the next story, though. This is about Ramp bringing their stablecoin accounts and payments to all of their customers. So this is enabling businesses to hold balances, earn yield, pay vendors, reconcile transactions in stablecoins in the same pane of glass that they use for cards, bills, reimbursements, and fiat. So they had 150 beta customers across non-crypto industries that adopted these, including like a farming business holding its treasury in stablecoins and a church accepting parishioner donations. I love that they included that. Ramp built the product with Stripe using Bridge and Privy for the issuance orchestration and wallet management. And of course, Treasury detail I love here is every stablecoin transaction auto syncs to the company's accounting system with the same categorization, receipts, and audit trailers fiat payment. If you're listening to this and you want to know more about what Ramp did from the horse's mouth, we have an exclusive interview with Ramp's stablecoin team, Alex and Andrew, that went live last week. So check that out on all of the podcast players or on YouTube. Kai, thoughts on this?

Cuy Sheffield  29:18  

I think it's just incredible how quickly Ramp is is shipping, and their product velocity across the board with everything they're doing, and and I think what's notable here, my understanding is this feature and this capability is going to general availability, so this isn't like oh we we launched a pilot you know to test stablecoins. It's they already did that they they did they did the pilot. It's like now you know they've gotten to the point where this is just going to become a default feature for their customers, and so one of the the main takeaways is I think if you're a bank today and you care about B 2b spend and your business customers and innovation on the B 2b side, like you have to be watching every. Everything that Ramp does, I think their pace of growth and and just the the expectations that they're changing in the market and being able to like I still think about Ramp and I think about oh yeah if you're a tech startup you're going to use Ramp, the fact that there are farmers and churches and towing companies and used electronics retailers that are starting to use Ramp, like if that's not like a wake up call to a lot of banks to say, hey, the companies that are leaning in to integrating new technologies with the combination of AI and stablecoins are starting to move from just serving Silicon Valley to serving Main Street businesses all over the country, and it's not that it's just stablecoins, but it's stablecoins have a role to play as as part of this, and they should just be one feature that's natively integrated and is compatible with everything else that a business is is doing. And so it always brings me back to like when you talk to banks, they're like, "Oh, none of our customers are are asking you know for this. Like, why why would we do this? You're like, do you see what the fastest growing business Theo Bank is shipping and the types of customers that are coming to them? And I think you've got to have some pull to say this is going to become an expectation that customers have.

Sy Taylor  31:13  

Yeah, your customers aren't asking you because they're going to ramp, and they're asking ramp instead. And and what Andrew said on the podcast was that it was Spotify and Airbnb and Uber that asked for this, and my guess is at some point they've probably had this conversation with their larger traditional bank, and the larger traditional bank sort of gave them a yeah you know like a a nice no or a maybe, and they went to Ramp and we said, "Oh yeah, we'll ship it. We'll get it done. And that's the difference. You lose 100% of the business you don't listen to, and that you can't ship against. Really interested in your views on this, Luke, as somebody who's had to probably help people pay vendors internationally before, and this product experience as well for Ramp is quite unique.

Luke Tuttle  32:02  

Yeah, I think part of what those companies probably asked for was faster onboarding, more transparency. That things that they needed to operate their business more quickly, they probably didn't ask for stablecoin specifically. I think of the same thing with our own customers. That are they asking us for stablecoin or are they asking us for a low-cost way to hold, or actually a way to even provide rewards to them to store a balanced monogram and the movement of the money, and I think that's some of the distinct advantage, particularly with Ramp starting new, that they can reimagine their stack from the bottom up, and that's what we're seeing. Like we've swapped out a lot of software in the last 18 months because the incumbents they just have so much momentum of their old world, and a company like a ramp who rebuilds from the beginning can provide such a better service with an improved stack. When it comes to payments, what we found is that, or you mentioned about like syncing with someone's treasury. So when we implemented Fireblocks, I told the team we're not going to do this unless stablecoin and our fiat and our bank accounts is operated the same. So if you're kind of looking down from the top from finance and you say what's the cash position of MoneyGram, that can't be two reports. That can't be a spreadsheet on the side. It can't be another department. It needs to be the exact same thing in our cash management system. So we plumb that in from the beginning. So it's I would say it's not even synced. It is just integrated in the exact same way that we get automated API connections to our banks. Can you imagine we have accounts all over the world? That's done the exact same way with our wallets and fireblocks, so for us it doesn't matter, and this is the key thing I think what ramps doing a good job. It doesn't matter to us. You want to settle in stables? Fantastic. Is there an economic advantage to both of us? Yes. Then let's do it. If fiat's working, fiat works great in many places. Continue to do that. It doesn't matter. What's the most efficient? What's the most economic beneficial way to do it? But what we have found a lot of people talk about using stablecoin, and we say we'd like to pay you, and that we don't take payments in stablecoin. So there's still you need a counterparty; they need to work with you to do that. But that is rapidly changing, and the the key piece is the market is moving at different speeds in different parts of the globe, and we use whatever method of settlement works best there. But for sure, with stablecoin, the advantages of the seven days a week and any hour of the day, we're seeing a lot of distinct advantages because you can imagine the amount of settling that we do with our partners, and partners and aggregators and such, and that is sharply accelerating the speed to which or the degree to which that we use stablecoin and settlement ourselves.

Cuy Sheffield  34:50  

Yeah, Charles, how do you see like some of the B 2b use cases right now? I think I remember you or Farouk telling you about you had some like someone who was buying manufacturing. Like car parts, yeah. Who was doing like 10s of 1000s of dollar kind of sized transactions on their card because they wanted to spend from a stablecoin balance, but the supplier didn't accept stablecoins, and so it was almost like cards being used as a B 2b payment just to facilitate stablecoins. Are you seeing more of those use cases today? Like inside Rain, as you all have grown, are you paying any vendors in stablecoins? Like, how's your own B 2b payment behavior changed over the past few years?

Charles Yoo-Naut  35:29  

Well, this is a very full circle moment for us at Rain because when we first started in 2021, the whole like simple pitch was Ramp for DAOs. So to see Ramp now announce this and. it's it's definitely a crossing the chasm moment. Where 2021 early adopters were mostly digital native companies like DAOs or funds, protocols, and now you're seeing farmers across the world wanting to adopt stablecoins. And this one and Marketa seem like dominoes starting to fall in the traditional fintech world, towards stablecoin adoption, which is exciting for us. Once you go outside the U.S. the B 2b fintech infrastructure is not as sophisticated as it is in U.S. You don't have the ramps of the world in Bolivia, for example, which I think is the example that Faru gave of that person we saw importing car parts and wanting to place a supplier using stablecoin, so people have resorted to these new digitally native global expense management programs that are competing with Ramp outside of the U.S. And and for Ramp, this is an opportunity for them to also build on top of stablecoins and go global. So we've seen a lot of adoption outside of the U.S. B 2b wise, just because there's not a lot of competition.

Sy Taylor  36:43  

So interesting to watch this one evolve. Real shout out to the rant guys again. Just a reminder, you can check out that episode wherever you get your podcast. One one thing I want to throw back at you, Charles, very quickly is I did see a comment on X when I posted that podcast that it was really about the line I think Andrew used, and I posted a clip that said customers wanted something that was better and faster and cheaper, and we found that stablecoins were a good way to do that. And one reply said, "This man does not understand international payments, and it was by somebody who runs an international money and payments business. And I suspect there is some nuance in there that, like, it's not obvious that stablecoins are always cheaper.

Charles Yoo-Naut  37:23  

What we've seen is, for a lot of larger enterprises, a lot of times they've already designed their whole business, especially if they're mobile first, like like MoneyGram. They've already probably designed their treasury management system to be global. They've figured out how to do intra-company transfers, and if you try to sell them on, hey, stablecoins can make your inter-company transfer process cheaper or faster. They're like, we've already figured this out. They have teams that are automating this. To them, a compliance headache and maybe the regulatory lift of dealing with stablecoins is not worth it. But when you're a new startup or you're a small business and you have that first international customer, or you're doing something very convoluted. Like a lot of times, the tools that are available to larger enterprises are not available to the average small business that needs to go global, and they have to do something very expensive or high fees to do it. And stablecoins are just accessible to anyone, no matter what size business you are. So, for larger companies, we have seen that they don't really see the value sometimes in stablecoin B 2b payments because they've already figured out workarounds and they've gotten pricing at scale that is very cheap and they've gotten speed to be what they want. But for the vast majority of smaller businesses globally, that's just not the case.

Sy Taylor  38:38  

Yeah, it's so interesting the difference between the customer view and the the company, because the pricing at scale a MoneyGram can get for its own business is very different to what it can necessarily provide or what customers can achieve in B 2b. And so, what stablecoins give you is that differentiated access to to those marketplaces. And I also think about markets where you're making a small number of transactions, where historically setting up that level of sophistication in the treasury probably wasn't worth it, but you have these very expensive one-off occasional vendor payments. So now you have something that's much faster and much more efficient. Speaking of financial institutions, I'm going to bring us to the last story. This is about Augustus, who raised $180 million Series B-that's like a rain-sized Series B at a billion dollar valuation to build the global dollar bank. Tiger Global led, and investors were Hummingbird QED, Soma Capital, and many others. And it's now raised 210 million across all rounds. They are pursuing an OCC federal charter alongside Ripple, BitGo, Paxos, and many others, and its core banking platform Marble offers 24/7 settlement, API first virtual accounts, and its goal is to be the 24/7 correspondent bank supporting stablecoins alongside Swift, ACH, and. They also plan to expand into Latin America, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Africa. Super interesting one, Luke. I don't know if you saw this and if you had any chance to look at it, but to me, it looks like they're directly trying to compete with Citi Transaction Services and J.P. Morgan's payments business. Like this is a a cash management bank startup. Did did you read it like that? And what are your thoughts?

Luke Tuttle  40:25  

I read it as someone that is you know attacking the market without the baggage of the existing infrastructures. And and the way that we're dealing with this a little bit from the other topic today is even as a large enterprise who has a highly efficient treasury, we get a distinct advantage working from new players, particularly some of these aggregators and markets that we work with. That from the very beginning say the only way we settle was stablecoins. These are the exchange we work on. There's economic advantages there, so I think Augusta is going to have the exact same opportunity to create a much more efficient infrastructure from the ground up. When you think about even just systems that settle in batch, like any bank today, the core of their system is batch settlement on banking days, connected to the Fed, etc. And then you have to layer these other kind of real-time components around it, these memo posts and other kind of structures that exist in these large systems. So for them to be able to rethink that from the ground up is a big advantage. But I also see that right now we're making a lot of moves that allows us to have all the same advantages that they're describing there that we're able to access because we're big. So for us, it may not be as as beneficial. But to Charles's point, folks that are less able, or as your point, it's the one off. It's not worth it, or it becomes worth it for the the smaller player. That Augustus could certainly serve in a different way what these banking customers need. So we all know it's it's very difficult to build at scale a large regulated institution, but I think the idea of someone starting from scratch with AI and blockchain to do it could mean something big is going to come out of it.

Cuy Sheffield  42:14  

Yeah, as as I've said many times on the show, I just love to see more competition in banking. It's just it's amazing. Like, and who knows? Like, we any individual you know bank or or company here, like whether they'll succeed or fail. But having talented teams take ambitious shots at at rebuilding regulated banks from first principles, I think that's how you get innovation, and and that's what pushes the whole ecosystem forward. And for many years, how many headlines would you see of a new bank being launched? Like it just like didn't really happen.

Luke Tuttle  42:50  

20 years ago, I was at the last one. Was BMW Financial Services?

Cuy Sheffield  42:53  

Yeah, so

Luke Tuttle  42:54  

Utah-based bank. It was like a 20-year drought of a new bank. So I mean, it's pretty awesome

Cuy Sheffield  42:59  

that the OCC now there is a path to have charters, and then just looking at the team, I mean, you've got Ferdinand DeBits, who's 25 years old, will become the youngest CEO of a federally chartered bank in the modern era.

Darko Hajdukovic  43:14  

Mind, Lord,

Cuy Sheffield  43:14  

to me that's awesome. Like that's great. We we should want to encourage talented people to start a regulated bank, and then you've got ex someone who spent two decades at the OCC and was CEO at Green Dot. You've got someone from Column Bank and HSBC. So having talented, ambitious people have the opportunity to try and compete and start a new bank from first principles. And it looks like this could be more a clearing kind of B 2b bank versus direct to consumer. I think that is what it takes to get more innovation, and so excited to just see like so many new banks. It's it's not just stablecoins. It's not just fiat. Just becoming if you're starting a bank in 2026 and beyond, in the initial charter from the beginning, it's it's going to be both, and that's just going to be more of the the template of of what a bank looks like,

Sy Taylor  44:01  

I think it's so interesting in an age post Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic that we're almost seeing, you know, Erebor arrive now. Augustus and this new generation of financial institutions that are digitally native and that can serve those types of companies, like large technology companies, reach a point where the top four or five banks will bank Stripe and Uber and all of those guys to some degree because they get so big they need those big banks and that's probably always going to be the case to to some extent and those banks are very good at some stuff in in in that way but to have something that was historically just attacking the consumer franchise, you think about Revolut and Chime and SoFi. You know, it's consumer and SMB. This is going after that wholesale side, which is really the bread and butter of where these banks make a lot of money. The J.P. Morgan stock price has been on an all-time great run for the past decade, and a lot of that is. Driven by their cash management and transaction services business, it's again the jewel in the crown of what Citibank is. To have something going at that is, as as a banking nerd, it's really exciting, really interesting. As a banking nerd as well, I also think that growing too fast for these things is also a little bit worrying. I do worry whenever I see financial services companies growing insanely fast. It's like the guaranteed way to grow fastest is to have the worst compliance regime and just let all of the fraudsters in and create a sanctions nightmare, and then you're going to jail. So I just hope that's not what's going on here. And it sounds like you know with somebody from Green Dot and XOCC, it's very much not the case, and I think this generation does does seem to have its act together. Charles, your thoughts on this story?

Charles Yoo-Naut  45:48  

Like your point, we've seen with Arabor and just their deposit growth that there is so much latent demand for new banks and new types of banks, and a lot of banks in the U.S. have grown through acquisitions and acquisitions, and the tech stocks inside those banks are nightmares if you go behind the scenes, and to be able to start fresh with first principles of what a bank in the in 2026 should look like on stablecoin rails and on building on top of modern APIs. Like to Kai's point, just we need innovation in this space, and it's exciting to see that people are taking those bets and not scared to build. I think if you talk to people five years ago, everyone would have told you you should not build a bank. And then now I feel like that advice is probably changing. There's a lot of opportunity. Fun

Sy Taylor  46:30  

fact: I lost a bet with an investor saying exactly that almost to the day five years ago that it was saying within five years everybody's going to want to be doing this. It was like, how did you know, man? How did you know? It was for $1. I'm not a big betting guy. Well, look, that's kind of all the stories we had time to cover this week. There were a couple of other things that happened because fintech and crypto never sleep. Telegram plans the largest rollout of a non-custodial wallet in human history. They're going to distribute it to their 1 billion users. Interesting to see what the adoption looks like on that. Morpho launches its fixed rate lending protocol Midnight on base, and we had an exclusive interview with the Morpho CEO Paul Frambo on our YouTube channel. So check that out if you want to know more about it. Super interesting product, allowing institutions to kind of set their own rates in the marketplace versus traditional DeFi, which did it with an algorithm. And I want to thank everybody for watching and and listening. Kai, if people want to learn more about you and Visa, where do they go to do that?

Cuy Sheffield  47:31  

On X at Kai Sheffield, visa.com/crypto.

Sy Taylor  47:34  

Luke, you and MoneyGram,

Luke Tuttle  47:36  

corporate.moneygram.com, and also our socials on X and LinkedIn,

Sy Taylor  47:42  

and Charles, you and Rain,

Charles Yoo-Naut  47:44  

Rain.xyz and C N A U T on on X.

Sy Taylor  47:47  

You can find me at S Y Taylor on all of the socials, screaming into the void at fintechbrainfood.com, and of course at tempo.xyz, where we just dropped some banger reports and research. I would love it if you check that out. If you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to this podcast because that will help you find a lot more of this show. And please tell all your friends to do the same too. And if you can spare a minute, leave us a review or a comment. That's really going to help the show. Thank you, and we'll catch you next time.