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One hundred episodes in, Pet Berisha took the chair for this one, with Elise Soucie Watts, Former Regulator and Policy & Regulatory Specialist, returning as guest co-host, returning as guest co-host while Simon Taylor and Cuy Sheffield were away. Both guests brought an announcement with them:

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Modern Treasury’s non-custodial wallets are in early access across the US and more than 90 countries. They connect stablecoin balances with ACH, RTP and FedNow, complementing a custodial offering live since February. The question is which companies can use it without rebuilding their operations.

Morse represents fintechs putting stablecoins behind a new customer experience. European platform Depa represents payment companies buying access to US banking rails. Traditional businesses lag. Around 30% of Petrit Berisha’s syndicate wanted to fund with stablecoins, but the platform could not accept them.

Near-term buyers are fintechs embedding digital dollars into products or connecting them to existing payment systems. Operational readiness remains concentrated.

Latitude raised a $35 million Series A after spending roughly 18 months building licences and compliance operations, bringing total funding to $43 million. The sequence explains why regulatory clarity comes before payment volume.

US money-transmitter applications require product explanations, regulator engagement and state approvals. Software can connect providers faster than an enterprise compliance team can approve them.

“Everyone also says, ‘More important than one API is one onboarding,’” Cyril Mathew said.

A single API can still leave a customer onboarding 15 counterparties, turning integration into a two-year process. Latitude now covers more than 50 markets and is growing, but Cyril rejected the idea that stablecoin flows work across 100-plus countries today. Many markets lack the required liquidity and regulatory clarity.

Coverage matters less than the corridors where compliance, liquidity and local delivery support production volume.

OpenFX invested in Latitude’s round, but Latitude uses several liquidity providers. A payment can be divided across specialists.

A local payout provider may bundle conversion with fiat delivery and charge a 15 to 20 basis point liquidity spread. Cyril said OpenFX could provide the conversion at roughly 2 to 3 basis points, while Latitude retained its bank or payment partner for local delivery. Latitude manages the customer and regulated payout workflow; OpenFX supplies onchain FX liquidity; the local provider delivers the recipient’s currency.

Compliance determines which stablecoins are eligible; liquidity and cost decide which one gets used. A customer requesting pesos need not know whether USDC, USDT or USDG moved in the middle. That split lets liquidity providers compete on price, and leaves the question of who a customer chases when a payout fails with the regulated institution that delivered it.

MoneyGram’s stablecoin-linked Visa card in Colombia combines Rain’s card infrastructure, Crossmint’s wallet technology and Stellar’s network with around 60 million active customers across more than 200 countries and nearly 500,000 retail locations.

Cyril’s experience expanding Uber in Africa supplied the operating context. Cards are not the default payment method in many markets, which makes MoneyGram’s physical cash network more useful than a card-only product. Yet many locations are run by third-party agents, and Cyril's view was that incumbents rarely adopt a technology shift fast enough. The footprint is the moat and the constraint at once.

Rain is expanding the digital side from payouts in more than 80 countries and 50 currencies toward 95 and 60 by year-end, with a physical card for ATM withdrawals planned for late 2026.

Cyril's strategic read was that the same network could be sold rather than only used. MoneyGram has a chance, he said, to be a B2B player for companies like his, letting fintechs enabling cross-border trade leverage the network instead of building their own last mile. Matt expected every company in MoneyGram's position to be watching this and the Western Union news and asking what their version should be.

Whether that happens depends on the same agents. A network sold as infrastructure has to work on the days someone else's customer walks in.

Visa reported a $20 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate, up 15 times year over year, alongside more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programmes and nearly 200% growth in card volume. Those figures make dollarization a commercial decision for banks handling cross-border flows.

Elise’s personal view leaves room for a split market.

She made a related point later. Launches land in the global South because cross-border demand already exists there. In markets such as the UK, providers often retrofit stablecoins to problems domestic rails already solve.

Cyril supplied the commercial mechanism. Banks in India and Brazil may resist greater dollar use, but easier payments could expand corridor volume enough to outweigh the objection. His comparison was ride-sharing, where lower friction increased total trips rather than reallocating a fixed taxi market. If cross-border flows approach the 10-fold expansion he described, banks can earn more from FX, custody, compliance and payouts while remaining uneasy about dollarization.

Colombia combines existing cross-border demand with enough regulatory clarity to put these products into market. The durable institutional position belongs to providers that can make an eligible stablecoin behave like local money.

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