Bam Azizi and Balint Lakatos - Mesh Demo - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Every once in a while, a technology comes along that changes everything. That's what happened when Apple reinvented the phone. That's what happened when crypto reinvented money. Today we are going to reinvent payments. But before talking about what mesh has done, I would love to walk you guys through quickly through the payment history.

In 1970s, we had credit cards. They found the product market fit and we had companies like Ammex, Mastercard, Visa that reinvented payment and how we pay for things. 20 years later we had a new phenomenon called the internet. We had PayPal, Amazon, eBay that they build multi-billion and trillion dollar companies on top of the internet. We called it e-commerce like email but for money.

20 years later again we reinvented payments. Um, we had a new technology called the smartphone and we had Shopify, Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Square, you name it. They made payment instant. You could all of a sudden pay for things on the go on your phone. So, credit cards made payment simple, internet made payment fast, and mobile made payment instant.

But we had one big problem that was the fragmentation. So we are living in a world that we are like going toward like a more global economy and we have a lot of fragmentation. Um and we need something that is decentralized that is global and accessible everywhere. Um and I think it's about time for us to reinvent payment again after 20 years. So you can see that if you look at this global like map you can see that there is no border.

So why we should use borders for payments. Um the problem is every city every state every country has its own rules and regulation. So as a result of that we have a stripe in US we have vchhat in China revel in Europe and new bank in Brazil. So it's very fragmented. We need one network that connects all these little islands together.

And the key word here is a network. But what are the characteristics for that network? It needs to be fast, global as I mentioned and decentralized. We don't want anyone to own that network that everyone is using for the payment. So uh let's say we need this global network but how we can solve that how we can build that network apparently we solved it already and it's not the blockchain it's not the b word it's the I word it's the internet decades ago we solved this problem we connected billions of people to be able to interact and communicate with each other so blockchain and stable coins are bringing money onto the existing network it's not about building a new protocol.

It's not about building a new network. It's about using what actually works for decades. So, if we use blockchain as the payment network, we want to talk about a little bit about the the potential of this network. I want to show you two numbers. First, I want to show you number of users.

We have 600 million crypto owners. So this massive network that worked for decades now has blockchain built on top of it has hundreds of millions of users using it every single day and this is more than number of PayPal users it's more than number of Ammex card holders. So if you are a PSP or you're a merchant and you're showing PayPal or Amx and you're accepting them on your checkout whether on your website or on your physical store you have to show crypto payments as well. The second number I want to show you is the usage. So 5 years ago we had Visa uh that processed 11.

6 trillion in terms of the transactions. Mastercard was a 6.45 45 and a stable coin was a small little dot on the map. It was less than 200 billion, less than 1% of Visa and Mastercard combined. 5 years after that date, the usage is exploding.

Stablecoin went from that little dot to the bigger dot on the map. So 27.6 trillion, which is more than Visa and Mastercard combined. It's 3x almost 3x of Visa, 2x of Mastercard. But the problem with a stable coin is it's less than 1% of global money supply.

Less than 1% but it's moving more money than Visa Mastercard combined. So if this was a science class and I want to kind of make it a little bit more fun and we had one molecule that would move more than 99% of the volume scientifically we call that the term for that is hot. Stcoin is the hottest topic on the planet. Maybe next to AI. So um if this is so good, what is the problem?

What are the problems and shortcomings of stable coin? Well, first you can see that users hold crypto. They don't own a stable coins. Merchants on the other side, they want to accept only a stable coins or fiat. So pay with bitcoin is so 2019.

Merchants don't like to get paid in bitcoin anymore or any other cryptocurrency. They want to they want to make sure it's stable. So as the previous speaker was mentioning, stable coins has all the beauties of blockchain. It's fast, cheap, and instant. And also none of the downside, which is the volatility of the crypto.

So if you look at the number, it kind of makes sense. The crypto market cap is about 3 trillion. So if I check it now, probably it's 3.1 mill trillion. So you get it.

It's just changes every single second. Uh so we cannot really build a payment network on on an asset that changes every single second. So we need more stability. So stable coin market cap is 250 billion. It's less than 10%.

So if you want to build a payment global payment network, you need to make sure that basically this imbalance gets at rest. So users can pay with whatever assets they have and then the merchant on the other side of it can get paid in a stable coin or fiat. So we're talking about a groundbreaking payment network. But what are the characteristics of that payment network? We talked about the global economy.

So it needs to be global. It needs to be easy to use and it needs to be cost efficient. So we want to compare this new payment network with traditional one. So let's assume that all the networks payment networks that we have whether it's traditional or blockchain based they are global. Let's assume that let's focus on easy to use and cost efficient.

Uh to make it more fun let's assume that this is a business class. So we go back to business 101. So we have this easy to understand chart. So we have easy and hard in one part and low cost and high cost on the other side. So you can see that the current payment networks, they're not so easy to use and they're not so costefficient.

For instance, credit cards are extremely expensive and they're not so easy to use. I I I don't know any one of you loves punching in 16-digit card numbers uh when you're shopping. And when you and and also they are super expensive. You don't pay for the fees. It's baked already baked into the price of the merchandise.

Um and if you go to other payment networks, it even gets worse. So we have a debit wire that they've been uh built decades ago. They are uh not for current economy that we are living in. Nobody wants to accept it. It's like not many merchants wants to use that as as a payment method.

And it kind of like we went extra mile to make it instant. It just doesn't work. It stinks. like nobody wants to use that for payment use case. It was built for bank-to-bank transfers not for consumer focused or facing payments.

So we thought like if you want to solve this problem at mesh we need to sit in the upper right corner of this chart. It needs to be extremely easy to use and it needs to be as costefficient as possible. So the easy to use part we call it the grandma test. So it should be so easy that your grandma should be able to use it and it needs to be so cheap that like for merchants for consumers it kind of makes sense to use that versus other payment networks. That's what we are going to announce today.

We call it Mesh [Music] Pay. I've been waiting for this moment for 5 years. We have been working on this days and nights for last five years and it was not easy to build this. Uh we had to build hundreds of integrations with different wallets and exchanges. We needed to work with um networks, chains, tokens and bring all of them under one unified API and then also go to PSPs and merchants and enable them to accept crypto payments.

And as a result of that when you as a consumer walk into the store you just simply connect tap pay or if you go to the website you can simply connect your account and pay with whatever assets you have behind the scene the we do all the magic and we are working on a patent pending technology called smart funding that basically does all the magic behind the scenes so you don't have to go through manually processing everything yourself. So we're going to show you a very very nice demo. Uh for this demo we wanted to pick something that is extremely simple. There is no learning curve and probably every one of you has used it today or like you're using it on a day-to-day basis. Ladies and gentlemen, Apple Pay meets crypto.

For the first time ever, we are using Apple Pay to pay with crypto. There is no Visa card or Mastercard involved. There's no traditional financial networks involved in this demo. It's just simply I'm going to pay with crypto and then the merchant on the other side of it is going to get paid in a stable coin. Let's go to the demo, shall we?

So, we have Thank you. We have Balind here. Uh, hi Baland. Hi. Would you like to get a coffee?

Yeah, but we're not there yet. So, I want to explain one more thing for you guys. So, if this was a traditional crypto payments, I had to scan a QR code, copy and paste that wallet address, find the right place to paste it, and then go through a bunch of hoops like picking the network, calculating the gas fee, and and even if you do all of that, uh, it takes you 10 minutes and you have to pray to God for the merchant to get the stable coin on the other side of it. So, you want to kind of make it as simple as possible. So we are like this is just imagine that this is a coffee shop and Balint is our handsome barista.

Uh hi Balint. Hi. Uh do you have coffee? Yes. Okay.

Can I get a cappuccino? Sure. So you can see on the screen that this is just a simple pose. Um and uh do you accept crypto? Of course.

Would you like to give a tip? I feel generous today. So I'm going to pay 25% tip. And I click on continue I guess. So what's going to happen here?

I'm going to show you my phone. I will go to airplane mode. So I'm on airplane mode. So there is no connectivity between my phone and the internet. So I will connect I will tap my phone and then you will see the card pops up and then I will pay with with Apple Pay.

So let's go to the locker screen. can see my cute dog there. His name is Paco. So I will tap face ID and then you can see that that there is a card and I need to do the double click to confirm. I did the face ID.

Done. And you can see that in a second if the the demo god allows us the payment goes through. There you go. Done. As simple as that.

[Applause] And you can you can print the receipt. Can I see the receipt for a second? This is the first receipt of crypto payment. I'm going to NFD this and then sell it in the auction. So it was too quick.

So I want to show it one more time because we have time. So um new order. So, let's pick another one like like Americano. And then this time I pay 10% tip. Continue.

So, it's ready. I just go here, double click, face ID, tap, and done. So, let's see what's happening behind the scene. Uh, so if you go to the Coinbase, this is my Coinbase account. So, if you refresh that, you can see that the transaction is already done.

So, we had um $3.75. So, is it the first one, Bal 303? Yes. So 3.

75 is completed and then the other one which is the second one I bought a lot of coffee this month. So and you can see that the transaction is completed. This is basically happening this USDC over base. So it's super fast. This is the merchants trust wallet and you can see that they already received the USDC on their account.

As simple as that. And now I can drink my coffee. Thank you, Valin. Coffee tastes better when you pay with crypto. Okay, so stable coins are cheaper, faster, better.

So what's the hold up? And we saw that it actually works. So the problem with stablecoin is it is an amazing technology but it's not ready for the prime time. You need to be able to custody. It's not a traditional finan uh financial asset.

So you cannot hold it in your bank yet. So I know that's changing. So you need to work with companies like bridge, bnk, paxus that they're all our partners. Um, so and if you're a global merchant or PSP, you need to work with 20 of them because you need to have different MTLS in different jurisdiction, you need to take care of the security. So if you're not a crypto company, it's hard to make sure it's secure.

And also the most important part is the technology. So we collected crypto with one line of code. So we did the hard work so you don't have to. So if you're a developer, if you're a hacker, if you're a stable issuer, if you're a card issuer, if you're a merchant, if you're a PSP, whatever you're doing in crypto payment, we would love to talk to you. This is a good news for you.

So it can decrease your de development time by a lot. So we are excited to talk to you all. Come find us and talk to us. A stable coins internet change communication. a stable coin are changing money.

If you are building in this space for the future of payment, you cannot ignore it. This is mesh. My name is Bam Azizi and thank you all for your attention. Enjoy the rest of the conference.