EN | What Will Payments Look Like in Ten Years? Trends, Risks and Opportunities | MERGE Madrid 2025

Well, hello everyone and thanks merch for this space. I'm Dodas. I'm the head of crypto of the Argentine Fintech Chamber, one of the main organizations in Argentina with more than 400 and 400 companies including crypto, BASP, uh, tokenization, lending, payments, but we are here not to talk about me to talk about payments and web3 payments. And we have a little bit time. So, let's start.

Here with me are Paola Petit, VP of strategy and growth of range, Stevan Saduri, director of digital assets and blockchain in checkout, Andreas Takwitz, head of solution, Pel, sorry I don't know how to to spell your your surname, CEO of not and Damian Fontanil, business development of associate general force. Let's start with Stean, right? Well, Checkout has been at the forefront of digital assets adoptions and has a very complete suite of payments products. How do you see the role of stable coins and tokenized money evolving in global payments flow over the next few years? Few years only few years a few months if you prefer.

Thank you and thank you for having me. Uh we see a large adoption already in our ecosystem. First companies like Czecha.com or others offering some sort of stable coin services to our merchants such as stable coin settlement for instance and we also see right now Fireblocks or circle creating their own payment networks partnering with major institutions across the globe and uh on our end is very important cooperating with business and Mastercard. So we also see them uh creating a lot of use cases where we could potentially connect to them and also use stable coins to provide more or faster settlements to our merchants.

Um on on that side we see also the request from our merchants is okay we process payments for you in fiat whether you're using your Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and then we collect those funds from the schemes. they settle to us the next day and then we have to settle those funds to the merchants and where we see more requests from merchants is there where they want to receive their funds perhaps in stable coin. Erh, another part is obviously the schemes sending us stable coins as I mentioned before or where we see also interest is consumer payments where global companies ask check out okay we want to expand to emerging markets what kind of payment methods or local pay methods are you offering there and stable coins become one of the questionables there

and a few minutes ago we were talking about Argentina but I want to ask about Argentina about Latin America. How do you see in Latin America payments but crypto payments?

So we operate with global companies and one of their key markets of course are Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and particularly in Argentina they are asking a lot around crypto about stable coin especially because it's a market that has a lot of volatility and as they want to move also money across the globe across their global cost centers I think stable coin is a very good use case for them. Yeah, in Argentina we don't have a very high flow of crossber payments but yes in terms of crypto adoptions and every use uh crypto apps for for the people to to use daily. Well, Andrea, sorry if I pronounce bad your surname. It's

okay.

What the advantage does the network like Hera offer compared to traditional blockchains payments?

So I think when we people are coming to Hideera, they're fundamentally coming for institutional trust. The way that traditional blockchains tend to work is you have many anonymous validators who are sort of held together loosely by economic incentives. Whereas with the Hideera network, you have Fortune 500 companies like Google, IBM, Dell, names that you trust, people that you want to do business with. So people tend to want to engage with us on the basis of our institutional backing. There's also uh the fixed fee component of our chain.

So most traditional blockchains are the fees that you pay for transactions are decided by a fee market which can have spikes depending on congestion. In Hideera, a transaction fee is always 100th of a penny denominated in US dollars. So for like a CFO, it makes it a little bit easier. I I know I can build my use case. I know how much it's going to cost me to uh run my use case no matter what happens on the network.

And like the the last thing that people think about when they think about Hideera is is fairness. So because Hideera because of the unique hashgraph algorithm there is no uh we're not beset by things like minor extractable value or front running attacks things that that happen in other networks. You know that when you submit your transaction it will be ordered fairly and uh you'll get the result that you expect.

Well that's a huge advantage the the map right. um how do you see challenge related to fragmentation in the tokenized asset industry?

So it's been really exciting this last year as somebody who's been in the blockchain space for a long time. Uh five years ago we have a a panelist here from Sockgen Forge. Five years ago so gen was maybe like the only player the only big institutional player trying to uh put stable coins out in the world. Now every investment bank, every central bank, every payments provider, everybody is either issuing a a stable coin or they have their own stable coin strategy. And that will be create a challenge because you have all of these different coins on different rails.

And we when we really want to get full industry adoption, we need to make it so that individuals uh on the retail level don't have to think about what chain they're using. So that like treasures and companies don't have to think okay I have a little bit of cash on this chain a little bit of cash on this chain it just it needs to be seamless

we are in the stable corn era

right now

absolutely

it's another stage of crypto landscape

well pel no pelle pelle right pelle

um why do you think that B2B payments are the the most significant opportunity for stable coins

so Well, first of all, a little bit bit of background about what we do is that we help companies uh at least in the beginning the main thing we do, we help companies implement the travel rule for for crypto. And to do that, we've built essentially swift for crypto over the last 5 years. And we're we are working with 250 to 300 different institutions who are transacting every day, processing around 5 billion dollars uh of transactions a day. on our network and through that and through our conversations with a lot of different people um around the world whether it's PSBs banks almost universally B2B payments is what everyone wants to solve for and when I say B2B payments B2B crossborder payments but there's been a lot of challenges um that people have faced creating u good functional products for for B2B payment so far for example Um, crypto like Swift is a push payment mechanism, meaning that the sender of the funds have to initiate a transaction. To be able to get B2B payments working, we really need a pull payment flow, which is also what the credit card networks do where companies can initiate transactions from their internal business flows.

And that's one thing that we're launching now. There's a massive opportunity. there's a lot of interest in it because we can start taking the benefits of stable coin meaning instant settlement uh and also then apply it to business transactions and also lower the internal costs that companies have with payments today whether it's swift or stable coins.

Can you provide an example of B2B payments because probably anyone knows a little bit about B2B payments. So one example.

Yeah. So so typically uh like an example that like if we talk about the Latin American flow for example

a a very common flow is a um a Latin American business that is invoicing a customer in a business customer in the US or in in APAC or the other way around. So as part of that you send an invoice and you hope you get paid and if you get paid you hope it goes to the right place and the right you know you can match it to your accounts receivable so you can close your books and you can process a shipment for example. Uh so that is kind of the core of B2B payment flows. It's business payments and that's it's a I've seen lots of different estimates. I'll just take kind of the middle of all the estimates.

I see I see that these kinds of payments is about $120 trillion a year over swift of these kinds of payments. Um again I see so many different numbers from 50 50 trillion to 190 trillion. I guess it depends on I'm not sure the reality of it but it's it's a large number. I think we can all agree on

it's a very big number. and what are the most significant challenge found by by these companies operating?

So for the companies that are currently operating in the stable coin space, we've all we've all heard stable coins are great. They eliminate all the problems of cross crossber banking except most of the companies that are building solutions using stable coins have to are forced to to be a forced to implement essentially crossber banking and it's a bit of a irony u that they have to do that but to be able to implement a the famous fiat stable coin sandwich where for example you send money from a from a Spanish bank account via SEPA into a payment provider who then sends stable coin to Argentina and out the other side in local banking system.

Not not local banking in Argentina yet.

Stable coin in local banking Argentina. I think allowed Argentina is a great case. I use it because people will prefer actually having a stable coin.

People prefer stable coins instead of of USD. But but but but what happens is that people are looking to to build these bilateral relationships to be able to support all of these these fiat links. And that means bilateral agreements, a lot of very complicated due diligence on both sides, preunding, technical and product integrations. It's a very expensive part of it. But having an open payment network like not to Ben, it means that you can focus on your local market and then you can use the the benefits of the travel rule which allows you to trust the other institution on the other side just like with a swift payment just like with a sepa payment you don't have to perform KYC of that company there and that it gives you the right to eliminate a lot of these complexities that people are forced to do to implement stable coins today.

Well, thanks Damian. Um, so that generally it's okay, right?

Um, is one of the of the major banks issuing regulated stagons, right? So, how can stable coins facilitate payments?

Yes. So, uh, we started issuing stable coins in 2023. So, so forge is the digital asset subsidiary of the sociinal group. So, our DNA is really about banking standard trust and compliance with regulation. And so, we started early in the game as you rightly pointed out by being the first subsidiary of a bank issuing a stable coin, complying with the French regulation, now complying with the EU regulation since July of last week, last year.

And we started with Euro in June. we launched on uh on the dollar. So we now have two stable coins available on various networks. Ethereum, Salana and two other networks will will come soon. And uh they are ideal for payments because when you think about it a lot of B2B payments are sometimes struggling depending on the currency and the corridor obviously but people are asking where is the money?

the issuer will say I've sent the instructions but the receiver still after a few days would not have received payments. The beauty of uh public blockchains is that you can send the proof that effectively the stable coin was sent from this wallet to the recipient wallet in a matter of of few instance. And so you have a new way of transferring value, transferring money because by law this is electronic money and in full compliance with with rules and regulation and and the true game changer is really that stable coins are bearer instruments. You have them in your wallet. You don't need a bank to operate it.

You can send it to the recipient wallet of your choice and you are in full control of your transfer of money. That being said, you need many asset services around this. Notini being one of them and as well payment service providers to incorporate in the distribution rails because issuing a product is one thing making it available to the users is another one. That's why we are very keen on on building up partnership with exchanges uh brokers, payment service providers and fintexs in order for users that we don't know being able to acquire stable coin and transfer it do the on and off ramp and complete the full cycles. So that in some instances stable coins are more efficient than traditional rails.

It's not the solutions to every payment but it is on specific cases and where we stand out is really our banking DNA. Stable coins have been issued by private company to start but now you're seeing growing interest from banks to also being the supplier of cash on a new infrastructure structure called blockchains with the transparency of transactions and that's where I think the banks are expected to come in not only the banks you there's also a lot of discussions around CBDC but these won't be made available to everyone you also have tokenized deposits which are alive and performing well But they are constrained within a bank network and stable coins have this ability to transfer easily between uh between parties

and you speak about adoption right so how can banks collaborate with fintex and defy to to drive adoption

so adoption uh with with fintex in a wider sense it's going to be as I mentioned payment service provider exchange broker ers entities providing offen and ramp that provide access to the stable coin monitor the transactions for uh regulatory uh disclosure or for tax monitoring and that's all this ecosystem of services that we partner with or sometimes we don't know of that allow customers to make the best uses of of their stable coin. One of the uh criticism that was made about stable coin is that by regulation they are not allowed to pay yield and that's that's a true issue. We recognize that that's why uh we have supported the launch of two morph vaults. So we're entering the world of defi allowing people to earn yield on their stable coins. So they can lend and borrow stable coin against other crypto assets.

uh and that's that's a great opportunity to either perform payments with stable coins or invest with stable coins and uh really get the benefit of both worlds traditional finance and defy.

At the end of the day, we all want to use the benefits of DeFi.

Yes.

In our daily but in in a regulatory framework, right? So at the end of the day, we we expect that. Well, PA um we talk about adoption, we talk about payments technology. Now, what is in your opinion the bottleneck today for adopting crypto stable coins flows into payments?

Um yeah. Um hi Paula from Range. Um yeah, so we did talk about the technology um and the regulation and the UX. So from my point of view, I think the technologies been solved for a bit. We've had stable coins for a bit.

They've been starting to be more proven over time. This past year, we had a huge boom in the regulation side. Tons of clarity came through. So I think those two stepping stones have been made huge movements towards being solved. So yeah, to many of the points already said here, um I think UX is really the next step and that comes from the user point of view, that comes from the integration point of view.

It needs to be easy for wallets, banks, normal users to both implement it and um utilize it. And to Andrew's point as well, I think, you know, we are seeing this boom in so many stable coin products and rails and coins coming out right now, which is great, but a little kind of everywhere. So, we also need to have kind of concise ways to be able to monitor all these things to continue to be compliant. Um so just calling to actually some of the stuff that we've done at range. Um we did launch our explorer um or our stable coin explorer which does bring in a hundred over a 100 chains and all the major crypto um stable coins.

Um so you can see it all from one panel rather than having to go to all the different chains. So I think movement like that towards becoming more chain agnostic will be um pretty good there. And then yeah, just making it so you can transact through any stable coin, make it compliant, and you know, the user doesn't have to worry about it. So I think that's the next big hurdle. Um, but I'd say the industry is moving pretty quickly through these.

So excited to see where they go.

Um, what data should the the CFOs for example and risk teams uh demands from a stable compayment rail?

Um, yeah. Um, so two sides. So the CFO side is obviously the financial side. So you want to make sure that um any stable coin transactions are efficient, that you know you know what gas fees you're going to pay, the FX fees, um any bridging fees that go alongside that and that those are clear from the beginning of the transaction and that you're pulling the best pricing. Um so we can be, you know, very competitive against standard FX rates that are currently paid.

Um so that's kind of on the CFO side. And then kind of from the risk monitoring side, you want to make sure um that you are travel rule compliant, which is I think something that Nota is helping quite a bit with and you know, we've integrated into our compliance flows. Um yeah, that you're travel rule compliant, that you're not interacting with wallets with counterparty risk, wallets on the sanction list, blacklist. So you do want to make sure that you are working compliantly. So those kind of are the two major things that I would suggest CFOs and um kind of the risk monitoring um teams look at before integrating anything.

Well, we have time for only one question uh for all. So to conclude the panel, I I want to ask every of you what impediments uh do you see to a stable consumptions in Europe or in Latin America? The the impediment. Yeah. the stopper if you want to start.

um it's uh where you there is adoption and that's where we see is in countries where you have difficulties with traditional banking rails in Europe you have separat that is quite efficient so for European transfer things are running smoothly you can have this instant payments that happens uh quite often so I think uh it will be for some corridors some jurisdictions some type of actors that face difficulties in stable coin would be a good alternative Yeah, efficiency is is a is a big deal for particularly for cross border as I said I agree 100% with what you say like in Europe SEPA works great u for for many use cases but then getting that efficiency across is really what where stable coins come. So, so SEPA there's also the you know PICSS in Brazil for example that's doing great on that particular front but a lot of these can only really be done with you know a centralized government mandate and you can't really implement that level of efficiency using traditional means for crossber and that's where stable coins come in and it's it's a big it's a really big improvement

efficiency right

probably similar way that my colleague spoke is

you can repeat the answer

I mean it's we are I think that a trend from our global merchants going to emerging markets asking for local payment methods like Peter mentioned about PICSS is becoming I think 90% penetration in the market. So I think stable coins kind of jump into that alternative pay method mechanism but it's more global where merchants can implement the same way they implement for instance in Brazil or Argentina. They could go the same way to Africa, Nigeria or emerging economies uh with the same mechanism and standard. Well, something in Argentina, we use stable coin to pay to pigs in Brazil. When Argentinian people goes on holidays to Brazil, the Argentinian pay using the the wallet, an Argentinian wallet, but in the back it's an stable coin swap between real and and USDT, USDC or whatever.

I missed the question when you first asked it. Can you repeat it? I'm so sorry. with um what impairments do you see in terms of crypto eto stable cons option?

Um yeah, so I mean it's really just kind of making it um yeah efficient and simple. So for us it's it's making it where you can transact in stable coin across any wallet. Um yeah, that's why we we made kind of our our Faraday API which um allows everything to be compliant and swift and easy. Um so yeah I think it's just making it easy for the next

so um everybody talked about efficiency and and of course efficiency is important but the uh people often think about efficiency in terms of like people will quote uh this stable coin transaction costs uh hundth of a penny I'm guilty of this in the same way and they will compare that to uh a credit card transaction or an a transaction and say look the the fees are 50,000 times cheaper or whatever it is. But that's not really a fair comparison because what the um what credit cards are baking in are things like chargebacks and fraud protection and and things that are really useful uh user protections and user like things that allow the for user safety and a good user experience. So when we're able to build up uh our stable coin solutions to have user experiences that are comparable to what currently exists in the traditional banking sector, I think that that will really accelerate uh our adoption.

Well, we are running out of time. So I want to say thanks to all of you and see you in the next panel.

Thank you.