From Financial Inclusion to Financial Freedom - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

There is a revolution in money at the moment and the new age of this revolution is based on stable coins. Stable coins are uniting us in a way that was never done before across borders, generations and economies. And we they are giving us the opportunity to build this new financial system not on banks and governments but actually on people and the use cases are all over the world. Stable coins in Argentina and Turkey means protection from the devaluation of their currencies. in Philippines means remittances in Africa is leaprogging and leaprogging banking system offload banking system and in order um despite this revolution in progress actually trillions of USD are still trapped in uh flawed and broken system and I would like to spend some time speaking about how this broken system works um in Treadfi banks are still saving uh still keeping saving account uh with little to known APY for their retail users and so inflation is eroding this saving account badly in Europe we have 11.

5 trillion um idol in saving account and in the US I was yesterday at the panel of Mr. Donald Jran Jr. uh American citizen are facing the same problem. On the other hand, hedge fund if you think about it are exclusive by design. So the 99% of course is cut out from re optimal risk adjusted strategies and then came defy with the promise of course of access but then FDX Luna crashes and trust and billions were evaporated and there's also a Binance research of 2024 saying that 46% of people that actually have access to this platform abandon platform due to pure X and Pure UI.

So we have this paradox trade gives you safety but no access and defy give you access but lead to non-safety. So I would like to ask to Nishin today how do you see and how visa is um bridging the gap from exclusion to inclusion.

We have been following the moments for digital currency for a long time over five six years now and it's not a trend it's already here. At Visa, we want to be the bridge between the digital currency ecosystem and all our traditional players. We have traditional players of 15,000 plus financial institutions and more than 150 million merchants. We want to play that role to bridge the technology and make sure that every person and keep it inclusive, right? So, everybody should be able to transact with digital currencies in a very safe and secure manner.

And there are three reasons why we think the next run of stable coins is here, right? Firstly, adoption. We've already seen it happen like the number of transactions in the last 12 months has been more than $8 trillion

and this is on an adjusted basis. This has moved more than 100% year on year over the last few years and this growth is staggering. The second point regulators are now taking notice and we've seen an accelerated development or updated regulations especially after the Genius Act and this is going to happen very fast in the AP in the next 12 to 18 months. Third thing, we are seeing a lot more new innovation coming in the market. We are seeing programmability, we are seeing interoperability which are big challenges and now we have many fintexs across the globe trying to solve for these and we have been working very closely with our teams to see how visa can play a role in interoperability of the fragmented ecosystem that we have today.

So I think there is a lot going on and I think you brought a great point on exclusion uh and how we can make this system inclusive. I would love to hear about that as well from you. Yes, actually stable coins, we have to use stable coins as a layer. But then as Mr. Arduino also yesterday said, we need to build infrastructure on top of that.

That's why actually we created Cleos. Cleos is our crypto invest investment solution. Basically what we did with Cleos is u we created a platform that can uh empower free people from this broken system. If you think about it and more importantly uh Cleos at the forefront of this uh new um infrastructure honestly um we are facing uh an incredible uh moment and um I really believe that we can uh um build a new financial system based on Cleos and um the the reality of this new venture that we are doing is that why we create clios we create to bridge people from the traditional finance into the crypto world and we wanted to create uh an interface that can be simple to use also for non-crypto um adi for non-crypto savvy uh users and um we created a sleek interface and uh we created a sleek interface uh banking rails and ultimately uh spendability through um the Visa cards and now I would like to ask Mr. uh Nishint how do you visa see the integration and how we build uh we transfer the stable coins through uh base layer into uh everyday money people can actually spend.

Yeah, I think the key point here is trust, right? I think today we have many ways where people are able to use this stable coin but are all of them trusted and today we look at Visa as one of the trusted player and it's also about the user experience in the end. So I think one of the first products that we had were stable coin and cryptobacked cards. Cryptoback cards have been there for quite a few years. Uh it's kind of moved into the stable coin space today with stablecoin back cards.

It's also moving into the commercial space and it's a simple product. It's it's a product where any digital currency uh company can work with us to issue Visa cards to provide their users to spend at any of 150 million merchants globally. And this is a very easy way for users to spend their digital currency whether it's crypto or stable coin and also have the same safe secure experience that they used to. So from a users's perspective nothing really changes. They can swipe the card, they can tap the card, they can use the Apple Pay or Google Pay and from the merchant they don't need any new infrastructure.

They can keep the same POS machine. They don't need any new investments. No new QR code and if there is any problem or dispute you go through the same exact situation. So it's a very easy fast way for us to build. But this was the first step for us.

What we've done after that is also build a settlement infrastructure which allows us to settle in stable coins. So today our partners, our issuers, acquirers can settle with us in USDC and many other tokens. And this is something we started a couple of years back. We've done $225 million of volume. But we are aiming to grow this rapidly.

Uh 2 days back we announced uh our fora with Visa Direct, which is one of our fiat money movement solutions and how we can use stable coins to improve that and make access available to many of our clients. And this is not it. We also have technology platforms today which can allow even financial institutions to create their own stable coins and eventually have this interoperable layer. So I think we're doing a lot of work in this space and we understand it's going to be always a partnership model where we cannot build everything but we see many fintexs doing very cool products and you know getting on the forefront of innovation and we need to make sure that as an industry we partner with the right players but also offer a very safe secure environment for our users. So again like I want to bring that back to you and what do you think about this?

So how we see financial inclusion at Cleos is basically we think about financial inclusion with no minimum capital entry requirements for our investment and no paperwork and bureaucracy. And for us financial freedom is providing to the user access to institutional grade strategies reduced lock up period. We have an liquidity product that is 48 hours and return paid in stable coin and immediately spendable through the visa network. But in order to create real adoption and massive scale adoption in the stable coin world, I really feel that we have to be more than a yield. We have to educate the traditional finance user to come into this new financial world and how we can educate them.

So the reason why we kept the IBAN for example and a banking rail inside our app is to actually start with something that they already know and that they already comfortable with and that's also why the Visa the Visa partnership for us is so important and we need the infrastructure that needs to be a bridge and the simplicity also of the app is going to be huge. We are going to show in a moment in a little uh clip of 30 seconds where basically we are going to show how the app is working. And um what we are really what I really want to um say um that there are moments in history you know when um there are different breakthrough in technology. Internet was one uh mobile massive adoption was another one for sure and now is AI and money itself and stable coins give us the foundation. Cleos can be uh with other exciting projects here the infrastructure and visa will give us the possibility to spend everywhere and it's also a layer of trust for this user to to to to explore this new venture but you know I don't want to uh leave you with just words and I'd like to show you how we reduced the time for you.

So this is our app. This is uh your crypto wallet where actually I want to show you USDC just received at the moment here. And then in a few click you will see the earning section. Exactly. You can choose between all these divers diversified investment strategies that are made and polished for you.

Just 10 USDC for example. Here is an example of a minimum um investment and in a few click your deposit is gone. And all this paperwork that I brought here on stage, these are the subscription doc just for applying to one of the funds that we on boarded. And not to mention also the millions of USD that we had to uh deploy and to commit in order to access this optimal risk as adjusted strategies for the retail user. So this is not a vision.

This is reality and this is where financial inclusion and financial freedom stop being a myth and they become a collective right. And I think that this is where they become yours. I want to thank you Mr. Nishin to be here with us today and uh thank you for the audience for attending this panel.