OKX Pay - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

out.

That's quite a crowd. I'm sure everyone's here for me, right? Good. Good. Thanks for the validation.

Um, so thanks everyone for coming here. I think um I want to start with the following. First off, I think the industry together, we've built such a massive sort of infrastructure to process trillions of dollars of trading volume. We're able to move billions of dollars of liquidity around. We can do so much in our industry, but what's fascinating is that I imagine most of us here, nobody uses crypto payment apps for your daily payment needs.

It's still fascinating that the last mile of adoption, crypto adoption, hasn't happened yet. So, I want to focus this session on talking about what the world will look like 10 years from now, 5 years from now, where perhaps there's a little chance where we all start using crypto in our daily lives for payments. So, with that said, I want to start my first thing with with Sam. Sam, welcome to the stage.

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. Sam, you've been now the head of crypto payments at OKX.

Previously, you were at Circle.

Yes.

And I want to start with you. What do you think is sort of the biggest challenge in making people use crypto as their primary choice for payments?

Oh, you're asking a very good question. I've been thinking this for the whole year. So, short answer is I think simplicity. the simplicity of crypto in people's hands. Then they can just transaction by themselves.

I think this this part of the work has not been done yet, but we're building it.

I see.

So um tell me this. What does it take Sam for us to have the right interfaces for people to feel really comfortable with using stable coin and not fiat for say buying a coffee or taking Grab to get to this event and what have you. Um, that's a good question. In the past year, I've traveled around 20 different countries, just sit right beside the users who claim they use stable coins. And I look at them and say, "How you use it?"

And the more I get interact with them, I notice that they are using stable coins across all different kind of applications. But they want stable coin, they want dollar, they want yield, they want spend their stable coins at a coffee shop. They just don't have that application yet. But to build that application, we need a lot of technology built on the behind. And that's the thing I think the industry, everyone is trying to build right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. But Sam, think about it this way. There's billions of dollars of values, you know, in send and receive that we we we send each other. Yeah. But there's no consumer interface that is popular enough.

Yes.

That people can use. So tell me about some of the stuff that you've been building at OKX and how do you think we can shape the interface so people here are actually motivated to use you know say the OKX pay app.

Okay.

For payments.

Yeah. So we debuted OKX Pay app in Singapore yesterday. Right. So what we've been thinking about is there's so many tokens there are so many stable coins different chains. is very very complicated.

How can we make this very simple? You don't have to understand all the things underneath the hood. You just say I want to use USDC. I want to use USDT. I want to use USDG to pay to get a cup of coffee.

Right? So we spend the whole year we build 70 different rails across 40 different countries so people can deposit the fiat to the app very easily the store and then we provide users four part 4.4 4.1% 5% APY no effort needed you just put your stable coin

wait when you say no effort needed let's talk about that I know you like it

traditional banking world you know I live in the US

Mhm. If I want to earn any yield, I have to take my money and put it in a CD.

Yes.

And therefore, my money is locked in there for earning the yield, right? And I get maybe 4% if I'm lucky.

So, you're saying there's no lock up period in this.

There is no lock up period. You just hold a stable coin. You just have this app and then 4.1% 5% is in your hand and everywhere in the world. That's it.

So I know we launched OKX Pay back in Dubai. We initially announced it.

Yeah.

And it was uh available we made it available in offshore markets.

That's right.

Now Singapore becomes the first onshore market to to offer this solution. So you know for folks who live and reside in Singapore, you can actually download this app. You can use it to say take grab or buy coffee.

Yeah. Let's talk about group payments in that context because that's as you know one of my favorite features y in in the US

when you're young and you have to split split your bill with your friends you use an app called splitwise.

That's right.

Tell me how this actually kills splitwise.

Okay. So you are giving away the features we're building here but we are trying to create the easiest experience where users can easily just share and split among themselves not through a app but through chat. So in the chat app in the chat interface you can just do social payments to your families to your friends or even to your fans. So assume that you have a lot of fans and you want to say, "Hey, I want to reward my fans and I want to give them 10 USDCs or I want to split uh some kind of event with those fans." You can just do that in the chat.

And there are a lot of hard work behind that, but it's going to be coming very soon. Yes,

I see. And what does the interface look like? I I I see you talk about this a lot internally that payments need to almost look like you're sending a message to a friend. Tell me about that.

Yes, I hope that would happen right now because I do think that payments happens every day when we're communicating with each other, right? It happens like Haidider were talking about let's go to dinner tonight and then we finish that and say hey uh how much do I owe you? I should not just take out another app and say hey and let me make a calculation so on so forth. It should be just automatic calculated and then stable coin split it. That's it.

That's it. make it very very simple, super simple. So that's the direction we're building into. I think there are many others who are trying to build such kind of solutions, but I believe we're better.

When I took Lando out to dinner, actually, it's really great because last he didn't even asked if we could split it. He just walked out and left me to pay for it. So this is great. Revolutionizing the experience, splitting dinners.

Speaking of splitting dinners, is this true? Did you like did you like just bounce on your bill? No, I always get the bill normally. Um Scotty over here, uh he has, you know, he has a good living in in snowboarding, but um I'm I'm just one of his best friends, and I always like to help out help out my friends, you know, and Scotty's one of those guys that I always want to get dinner for and take him out and and things like that. But um I mean, I'm in the life I live the life where you just want things to be as easy as possible.

So, whatever makes helping out my friends easier, it's priority.

Lando, let's talk about making things easy. You have to travel so many countries. You have 24 races in any given season.

Yeah.

It's a lot of countries.

It's a lot.

And I know you've got people helping you, but when you go from one country to another, naturally, you're spending your your your you know, your money at restaurants or getting a coffee or buying new clothes or what have you.

What's some of the biggest pain points? Like just at a very basic level, nothing technical, but you know, what bothers you about the current payment systems? Is it fees? Is it, you know, that things are slow? I'm just curious like in a very norm.

What is the stuff that you know is is a pain for you today? Um, uh, I mean, I think things in in big groups like I mean, you're on that topic already, but you know, anything where where I'm with friends, I mean, you know, to go down to the the shop and buy a coffee, like that is the most simple thing that most people in the world does do every single day. Um, but I think anything that's in big groups, you know, like in the end you're like, uh, sometimes you just keep it simple and you get the bill or whatever it is, but anything where you can, um, you're with a big group, you know, whether that's five people or 20 people, 30 people. Um, anything that can simplify how you you you uh sell out the order for this whole group, how you can maybe split the bills, those kind of things. That's things which are just always complicated, hard to get everyone on board on.

Um hard to get everyone to have the same apps or or currencies, whatever it may be. So, anything that can simplify how um you can spit the bill and it automatically changes currencies or whatever they may be, that's uh that's something that's always just trickier than it needs to be.

Yeah. And and I would add to that is look, I think your experience with current banking works.

Yeah.

You know, everything works. There's there's nothing broken there. So, when you think about crypto payments, I imagine people in your circle are looking at this and saying, "Well, if I'm going to adapt a crypto payment app, it's got to be materially better than what's already working for me." Is that a fair thing?

Uh, I would say that's a fair thing. And, um, I think you still have, you know, your your fair share of people out there who are probably a little bit afraid of using crypto and even getting into it in the first place. But the more people that you can, you know, start to introduce ease and simplicity to, um, the more you can try and make it like it is your everyday banking app, like you can just go out and,

you know, um, Google Pay, whatever it is, you know, you can just tap your phone against the counter, whatever you you you want to make it that easy where you don't even look at your phone, you just take it out, tap it, and and carry on.

Um, when you get to that level, I think more and more people are going to want to use it. Do you think that younger people have a higher affinity or probability to experiment with crypto? Like, do people in your circle feel more intrigued with crypto or they're just like, "Ah, it doesn't really matter. Our stuff works." So, they I think you got 50/50.

You got people who don't care about it so much, and you have people who who know the the powers and the capabilities of what what crypto can do for for anyone, whether it's like uh investing or or the long-term future, those kind of things. Um, but I I think for youth, if they just know it works, they'll just use it. So, uh, at least that's that's my way. Like, if I just know it's a simple easy thing, um, if it works exactly the same as any banking app where you can just tap your phone

or better

or better uh or more simple and and you know, easy interfaces, those kind of things, people just catch on to whatever the the trend, the easiness is, the simplicity of things. So, uh, whatever you can just make better than anything else, people are going to want to use it. No, no matter what it is.

I see. Scotty, I'm going to bring it to you. You also travel maybe almost as much as Lando. Tell me about your experience and take the same vantage point. Stuff works today.

You know, you and I, we we exchange value from time to time. If we go to a dinner or what have you,

things work. Why would you consider crypto as a pay a form of payments? what would make you intrigued by it?

Yeah, I think um yeah to soundboard what Lando said, I think uh as many of us in the room, I mean technology, finance, everything is always evolving and I would say the next generation, us included, and then the kids um that are coming up. I have a one-year-old, so I'm sure he's going to be very savvy with all of this um probably in the next few years and be teaching me as well as the OKX app will. But yeah, I would say um yeah, naturally having a busy life, traveling around the world, you're always looking for different ways to create efficiency. Um speed up the process. Um yeah, eliminate any factors that can slow things down.

And yeah, for me, that's where yeah, I think the efficiency is a big thing.

Can I tell you what's the most annoying thing for me is when I go to a different country and I purchase coffee and then it gives you that prompt. Do you want to settle in USD or or Singaporean dollars or dirhams or what have you? And I just want that stuff to just be easy. I don't want to make that choice because then I start doing the math. If I it's a big purchase, you start to wonder is a conversion rate in my favor or not.

Yeah.

But with stable coins, you don't have to worry about that. It's one flat amount regardless of which country you go to.

Mhm. Is that one of the things that you know would would intrigue you to want to try something like this?

Um, I mean I would say so. I think it's one of the biggest like I think there is is always one of the big questions you know when you're

you're at an ATM or you're at a coffee shop and

you're at Brunello.

I never I never know if you're going there maybe. Um but it's basically I mean if you're making a large payment if you're making a large payment um

and you have to make that decision. I mean for some people they maybe don't care about it. they click either one. But for some people, they want to know which one is better for them. Um, and sometimes it's hard to do that on the spot.

It maybe takes a few minutes to look at whatever the best conversion rate is.

Uh, those kind of things. So, again, for for a lot of people, um, if you want to save these little bits of money every everywhere you go, uh, that's important. And I think, um, for them not having to worry about that or at least maybe having just a clue or an idea of what it may be so they can click quicker or or know what to choose, then that's a good thing.

All right, I have another use case. Let's see if which one of you guys can answer this one. Say your wife or your girlfriend says, "Hey guys, Orlando Lando, you're in Monaco. I want this thing and it's going to cost $20,000 and I want you to send it."

Yes or no?

All right, you're the wrong person. Scotty, you're going to send it to Chloe and there's a credit card limit on your, you know, on your app and you can only share about, say, $5,000. What do you do in that case? Do you send a wire? Yeah, my limit's about a thousand.

Um, intentionally.

I guess I'm spoiling my wife.

Yes, exactly. Um, what would I do? I would say got a couple Bitcoin. Here they are. Go.

Well, I would advise you don't send Bitcoin. That's the last thing you want to send.

Um, no. I mean, yeah, it depends. You probably have to be educated on the app. And I think that was a actually a question I was going to ask Sam off the stage before we came out here. It was hectic back there.

But what I've always really liked about the platform with OKX is how informative it is. I think there's a lot of things that we need to adapt to, specifically with technology. And I think it's fair to say Lando and I obviously are professional sports people. We're up here resent uh representing OKX, but we don't have a wealth of knowledge. We're always learning.

And I've always found with the with the application, whether it's this um the new interfaces now, I've always found my experience at least with the app is that it's always really informative. If I'm unsure about something, it'll always come up with a slide and actually tell me what it means.

So I was having a question to you Sam is

is that, you know, with with this um with this new uh tech on the on the application, is it is it pretty informative? That's that's one of the very important effort we're putting in here. Scotty, just you mentioned you have a one years old, right? I have a three years three and a half years old. So when I build this app, my feeling is we're building this for next generation.

We're building this as we're treating our babies, right? We're building this as we talk with them. So they wouldn't understand what is USDC, USDT. But fun fact is my my son asked me hey daddy can you give me 10 USDC one day. So he kind of slowly slowly pic it up three and a half years old.

So when we try to do all these kind of things what we're trying to do is we're trying to make the interface more interactive more informative there are a lot of new technology here like AI agent right we're not there yet but this is one of effort we're trying to become in that way and to your point Haidider you mentioned about you asked Scotty this question about if you don't have enough money what you send right uh I just want to share one of the examples that one of the real customer have. So, I went to Brazil. I asked them, "Hey, when you travel uh outside of Brazil, how do you make a payment?" They told me, "Hey, I'm sorry, but for every $100 spending, I'm going to lose about $3 or $4 for all kinds of reasons, frictions." And then we come up and say, "Hey, we can tell you, we can educate you.

There is a better way using stablecoin, using stable coin card." And then instead of losing three or $4 for every transaction, now you can get 99.9 uh dollars out of the 100. Do you like it? And my Brazilian friends are like, "Yeah, we like it.

This is the best thing we have ever we've ever had." So that's the the the education we talk about. The education from how we build the app easier, more interactive, and the education about how we really bring value to those people. and they're willing they're willing to learn.

I think our vision is that ultimately people using these things don't even see USDT or USDC or stable coins. They just see a payment app, a payment app that is crossber efficient. It's cheaper. It's faster. You can do group payments.

And by the way, if you want to buy your girlfriend a, you know, something special, you could actually like send a big amount crosser and not have to worry about it. Yeah,

I'm sure she's watching it. He's going to call you after this.

So, let's switch to sports. The Olympics are coming up. Scotty, tell us about your plans for the Olympics.

Yeah, we have uh the Olympics coming up in February next year. Um and yeah, I'm excited. It'll be my fifth Olympic Games, which is I feel very vintage and um my bones and muscles hurt when I say it, but yeah, it'll be my fifth games, which will be cool. and um yeah, been able to have some good success there in the past, but one thing le one stone left unturned, which is to win. So, I'm um yeah, setting up for that and really looking forward to it and happy to be here in Singapore and yeah, feeling good on the on the approach.

And you're going to be rocking OKX there,

of course. Always always rocking OKX in a big

We're going to be rooting for you,

Lando. Big big weekend for you. It's been a really interesting season.

Yeah. to a degree you can share with us what's going to happen or what you're predicting this weekend. We'd love to hear from you.

Sure. Um I mean every weekend's a big weekend at the minute. Uh it's a big weekend for us as a team because uh it's our second opportunity this year to to try wrap up the constructor's championship. Uh last year was our first one since 1998. So that was a great achievement.

Uh back to back two years in a row is uh is our next one. So, um, we're definitely going to do it at some point this year, but, uh, we'd love to do it here in Singapore. It's a great event to to do it. Um, and I think just a better atmosphere to do it than a lot of the others. So, a special one for us as a team.

Um, cuz it's a big big milestone for us and and it's part of history. So, a big weekend for us as a team. Um, but also as uh as a team, but for the drivers. I mean, for for both Oscar and myself,

uh, we have a good competition. We have a healthy competition. Uh it's a weird one cuz you're teammates and you're against each other. So it is a it's an odd situation to be in, but I think uh we enjoy being against each other and working together at the same time, working together as a as a great team that we are. Um but yeah, every every weekend every little point is is is helping.

Um at the minute I'm the one that needs a few more of the points, but uh every weekend you don't know what's going to happen. It's you're split by hundreds and thousands, you know. So, um, the tiniest little of margins, a meter here, a meter there, uh, can can make all the all the difference by the end of the year. So, an exciting one in Singapore is for me, uh, one of my favorites of the year. So, I'm I'm excited to get back on on track on Friday.

I don't know if you remember this, but we've been on this stage a few times.

Yes.

Two or three years ago, it was kind of hard. I wouldn't even ask you questions about the weekend, so it's fun now.

Yes. You guys are leading on the constructor. I'm sure it's going to be extremely competitive for the driver championship.

Y,

you know, we're rooting for you in a big big big way.

But this weekend is really special because historically we've performed, you guys have performed really well here.

Yes.

Especially with the OKX liveries. I know we're not doing a livery this year.

I know.

But the liveries have been really

last year it worked.

Yeah.

Um, you know, when you want when you want to

when you want to drive fast, it's always important to look good. Yeah. Um, and quite often when we've looked good and the car's been great, we've had our OKX delivery on.

Car looks good.

Um, yeah, we always look great. But, uh, you know, when when we've had the OKX delivery on, um, we've normally always had great great weekends. So, uh, it's been nice to see our evolution from, you know, where we were a few years ago. It's much easier to have these kind of conversations now than it was back then. But, uh, you know, Singapore last year was a great event.

We managed to get the win. Uh, Monaco, one of my favorites. This year, I managed to get my first. That was my favorite because you did the fastest lap in Monaco.

And I want everyone to give a big applause because that's no small feat.

Uh, Lando, that was an incredible incredible lap.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Incredible lap.

Um, and I hope I hope you do something really special. You have our support.

So, Scotty, anything you want to add before we wrap it up?

I did see Lando do that in Monaco and it was impressive and I've never told him that and I will tell him that now. was impressive and I'll never tell him that again. Um, that's all from me.

Lovely. Well, thank you gentlemen.