Beyond Borders, Beyond Banks: Payments in a Web3 World | Money Rails 2025 | Polygon Labs

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Thank you very much for being here. So uh today I'm having a fantastic roster of panelists. Um I let them um briefly introduce themselves but um I'm really honored and happy to have here you know one of the closest partners we have in the region especially in Argentina for the payments use case especially on the cross border and you know the remittances corridor. Uh I let them introduce themselves. I will start with Roio. >> Hi everyone. Thank you very much Manu for having us. I'm very sorry about my voice. I didn't go to the Oasis concert.

Um I didn't go partying last night but my voice didn't get the memo. I'm Rosio. I lead stable coin vertical at the local. We are a NASDAQ listed company that works in 45 countries in emerging markets and we do uh collection dispersement payings payouts on and off ramps for uh different types of companies. >> I'm Sebastian Srano. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Ripio. We're one of the first crypto companies in Latin America. We operate across all all the continent uh from Argentina to uh the end of Latin America which is Orlando and we have a retail app exchange and also offer B2B

services to some of the largest fintex banks in the region. >> Hi, this is Manuel CEO co-ounder of BO um leading well is a digital wallet that allows people to live in crypto every day. We launched pretty much four years ago with this idea of blending two worlds operating now in Argentina, Brazil and the possibility of open accounts in 12 countries. So yeah, pretty excited to be here. >> Hello everybody. My name is Edo Dandas. I'm going to need a sign remember Edu Kame here. Uh we offer crossber payment solutions mainly for wallets and merchants. We are enabling uh

Argentinian wallets to permit their users to pay in Brazil with pics and also to collect uh with pics as well. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you guys very much for making the time for being here. So um we are going to do this in in like two parts. One part is going to be like you know generic questions where I will throw to the four of you and ideally we we get some conversation around it. I don't want each one repeating the same stuff. And then finally I will ask like one specific question for each of you that's if that's okay. So um I as we have you know like a really like good roster of the companies and projects behind crossber onchain crossber remittances and payments in in and from

Argentina. I would like to know to start from the from the primitives for from for the basic like what's the like the core problem we are trying to solve and basically like why the why behind like is it more about you know h the traditional race are you know slow are they expensive uh what problem are we solving by moving money on chain >> okay I can I can take it I think we're talking about three core four problems here, speed, cost and um access. So for us for example that we work with several uh merchants that are crossber merchants that are moving money all the time. You

giving them a rail that's 247 with no weekends um no cut off times, no banking holidays. That's crazy. You're allowing them to move at the pace of the internet, not at the pace of the traditional banking systems. When we talk about cost as well, you can move funds from a fraction of the money, not even a dollar uh instead of now what what traditional systems are doing it. And then accessibility, you're allowing your users or anyone actually in the world without even a bank account to open a wallet and to interact with crypto and with stable coins in any country in the world. For me, that's one of the main things.

>> I I think that there are multiple use cases. Some of like we started as a way for people to be to get access to um Bitcoin and like be able to solve uh um protecting their wealth. And that is also a use case that in crypto with the appearance of a stable coins also grew more because especially in countries like Argentina we have a lot of demand of these of dollars and this is an alternative uh an alternative to to get dollarized. Um and with the sheer volume of people using the stable coins we started to use and see uh more crossber

payments and like this crossing between the the traditional system that has grew in our platform tremendously. Today we do 80% of our volume in the stable coins. Uh polyon is one of the main chains that is that is used uh for for transfers. We have also help uh partners to build uh be beyond other things of payments. We help Merced to issue me dollar with their stable coin that power their loyalty program. So uh this this stable coin pro uh powers the loyalty program of the largest fintech in in the region. So it is starting to cross more and more use

cases and now we are starting to focus we think is the the time to um start um tokenizing all real world assets local currencies local bonds and local equities and we that has been the focus of the last few months. >> Fantastic. Yeah, I think uh um we're kind of in this in the brinks of a new era into which um obviously you know stable cocon check the boxes of all these you know characteristics that we want to kind of have but I think that the more interesting thing is that we are entering an area into which humans are starting to uh operate and think and

need different stuff different from the last 500 years and that means human plus agents and I think that is where in a way we are building the primitives for that to happen the needs for the next human are going to be much much different purely digital 247 and if you think that you will still be using swift to move money crossberally you are just stupid you know so okay how do we basically build those rates for the future um and then do a lot innovation across the intersection of you know this um taking the words of Antonia uh or or sorry the guys from Mastercard kind of

stitching the past with the present but thinking about how you create the future because stitching is okay but it won't last forever we need to build new bonds as as of saying no >> yes I I completely agree with the benefits of stable coins especially especially for crossber payments. But there are also other initiatives local such as pix in Brazil or transferencia tonto here with fiat rails with traditional rails that also solve the problem of costs of instant payments. So I see that there's a a possibility where onchain transactions can fill this

gap by connecting this um local systems because they work perfectly well for locals paying locally but whenever they need to make a crossber transaction that that instant payment can be made. So here is where I think onchain transactions and blockchain technology can can take this opportunity of of connecting these uh RTPs real-time payment systems. >> Yeah, super super interesting. I want to to double down on on two things like the first one is on agentic payments. I I 100% agree with what Manu is saying that this is you know set for disruption. For instance, at Polygon, we are supporting the X402,

you know, primitive together with our friends from from Coinbase and other partners. And we are seeing like yet not massive uh growth, but we are like setting the stage for that to happen. And then the other thing I wanted to double down is on on what you guys also like mentioned between the lines which is right now we are in a sense like patching uh we need you know local correspondent banks. We need to many times use even swift we sometimes need to like the the onchain liquidity circuits rely too much on on the traditional systems. uh and I wanted to to get your thoughts on on if you think you know creating a

fully onchain experience without relying on some of the traditional counterparties is is something that is going to happen or not and second how far are we away from that h future so I think I've been thinking about this a lot so my re in general I'm really against this we should go to web I think that's Uh I think it's more on how you actually build stuff that will give the user not any chance that to be in web3. So it's kind of uh building that that segue into which people will drive directly effortless and if you

think in terms of you know money it's liquidity you know uh if everything is on chain you don't need to go the other way so real world assets I think it's one of the biggest challenges you know 99% of the money it's on you know bonds gold stocks etc. ETA. So I think that that is kind of the big uh price that you we should be going for and then you know things will eventually scale and and reach you know common people and and I think on on the norm on the normies let's say it's on you know actually building stuff that solve their problems you know uh so I think it's really

important to innovate and think in the future but with one foot in the present also you What? >> Uh, no. I agree with everything that you're saying, Manu. I think we're not ready yet. >> We need to disagree a little bit more. >> Next question. Maybe >> you didn't invite last night, so I'm kind of >> um, no, what what I I do believe that also native web3 companies are going a lot into the fiat world. we see with circle payment network. We're seeing Fireblocks network borderless integrating the same things. So I think that we are finding a bridge between the crypto world and the fiat world and there are companies like all of us that

are connecting both of them and in a way that it's very easy both for users and for merchants and that's where we are aiming to go. It's not going to be all fiat. It's not going to be all web three onchain or at least that's my view. I I think like the technology needs to disappear for the user. I I think like the next frontier that we have uh is to be a lot less technical to the to the end user. Um and that that is maybe one of the the largest challenges. We also have like like the the things that Rosio mentioned as benefits of this technology are the benefits of using a distributed ledger. We have a lot of electronic

payment systems that can be really good like uh can be Eduardo mentioned picss or transparencia 3 3.0 here in Argentina. These are centralized ledgers that if run uh properly and efficiently they can be really good. Um the things that a distributed ledger provide is the compos the composability of the of the assets, the programmability of the assets. These these are things that enable for example the aentic payments that that Manu uh mentioned and I think that are like the things that are going to enable new ways of using money in the future. Um we do have a lot of things to

uh to tackle. I think like the on boarding today uh it's it's very difficult for a normal person like most people do their lives in the local currency not in USDC or USDT they don't have their economy dollar denominated they make their living in pesos they make their living in real so we do need to find like we need to get traction on local stable coins we think that is going to be to really good ramps that do 101 uh to uh to local to local stable coins. And then we also have two a two large um challenges ahead. One is uh having effects markets that run on

chain. Today all liquidity against crypto to local currencies is against fiat in traditional systems. It is not there is no liquidity for effects on chain. And the other thing that this technology has naturally it is that it works really well for small transactions. Yeah, >> we have really good like we can do a lot of small transactions really cost effective 247 no bank holidays but when you go into larger transactions if you want to trade millions of dollars the traditional system still beat us like it's cheaper to use swift for a large transaction than using uh the trading

through crypto >> um and that is one of the challenges that we we need to sort you know, in order to uh get like more like uh larger transactions happening on chain. >> I I would like to to double down on on that specific use case on the forex on chain because it's something that you know we are also like you know breaking our brains on on how to make it like more scalable and so on. Um like for us what we are seeing is that or the question I'm I'm throwing to the panelist is do you guys think there needs to be like a new D5 primitives to be created in order to allow for big forex onchain transactions to happen or

this is like basically what I'm saying is that the traditional you know AMMs or even like liquidity pools >> don't work there or or it's a a different problem. The issue with the AMMs is they're not capital efficient. So uh the the impermanent loss uh is too is too large for for forex to make sense and and that that is something that is it is today a challenge. It is really good for illquid assets. So like I I don't think there is a better technology than um automated money markets for illquid assets and that's why we see so many assets and so many meme coins.

Yeah. And all these >> um >> I was about to say crap uh but let's call it another >> you can say that >> other ways but but it is a really good technology for illquid illquid assets. Um I'm hopeful that we will be able to get uh like the like the hooks primitive from unis swap is very interesting uh to rebalance the the amm and and there are more and more indexes that work with order with order books on chain that the the things that Hyperlid is doing and like all these um >> decentralized exchanges that have things in memory but settle on on a on a

leisure might get us there but but this is still on progress. I don't think we're we're there. >> I think there is also one big problem that we have seen in the last couple of years which is fragmentation. So when you want to move $1 trillion dollars uh I mean you need to put all that money together and maybe it's not in the same asset in the same chain you know uh so starting to have bigger bags of the same asset on the same chain uh start to become kind of a need in a way uh because if not how are you going to make that jump from microtransactions to yeah billions transactions or more you

know so I think that's something to take into account also >> is this in your opinion is this a problem that is solved by a winner takes it all market like basically you know like one one big chain or one big stable coin that you know gets like if I want to do more than 100 million transaction then I need to use Ethereum and USDT for instance or do you think this can be solved through real I'm sorry about saying this word like interrup solutions both from a blockchain and from a stable coin perspective. What's what's the your opinion on that?

>> Yeah, I'm not a wholesaler banker like JP Morgan. Um so maybe I don't have a right direct answer there but definitely I think something between coordination and incentives it's needed to happen. Um I think the worst case the worst thing that can happen is to be abducted by CBDC's >> you know. >> Absolutely. >> So we need to put together and you know kind of let's go uh forward and and and kind of make this really really big because if not I think uh we are going to end up you know in 1984. You know >> I I have no worry about CDBCs. I think

like central banks across the world have been really bad at product and developing technology. There are a few counter examples but but it's that's not that's not the norm. Um so not not so worry um uh about that. Uh I think like um if you look if you try to do a parallel with the traditional finance custody is very segregated like it's fragmented across thousands of banks across the world. Um there is every country has at least 20 banks even in the most concentrated countries. The US has 5,000 uh so

custody all over the world is like very fragmented. But if you look into payment networks that that it is very concentrated like you have only two large flags for for cards you have two correspondent banks uh and and that and I think networks have network effects that's what they call network effects uh and so so if that is a parallel likely there will be few few winners Um there I think it's going to be more than one but it's not going to be many.

>> Yeah, I totally agree actually on the on the CBDC stuff you mentioning like like actually like fully regulated uh stable coins h will get eventually closer or similar to what a CBDC can be. No, so in the end it's a it's a different way instead of being built top down they are being built like bottom up but in the end we can reach to a similar erh product or situation. I would like to ask Eduardo like um in your opinion like just generally speaking you have been doing like crossber kam pay has been doing like cross border payments for quite a few quite a a few years already like in your opinion what can what what big unlock can happen

from an industry perspective in order for you to scale 100x the volumes that kami pay is already Good question. 100 is a lot. >> 100x. Yes. >> So 50 billion if my numbers are correct. >> Okay. I think I think that payment systems I don't think in a in a like in an only way that the payment industry will evolve. I think different countries will evolve with different systems and um in order to get those numbers or those figures we I think we have two challenges here. The first of all is to

deliver product that doesn't need users to understand crypto and I can check that in regards to Kami Pay. We are doing that. The users of our clients are paying in another country using their local currency paying the merchant of Brazil receives RII and none the payer or the merchant know anything about crypto and an onchain transaction is happening in the background. So that I think it's like something that must need to be addressed and solved. And the second way that the second thing is to adapt to these different methods that we have I think in different countries. So

if a country have a CDBC, you need to to have the technology that can connect to that CDBC and in another country are going to have something like PICSS that it's completely public and then you have private uh infrastructure in other countries and the the possibility to adapting to every type of of uh payment system is as and also complying with um regulations in different countries. No, I think there's a a big a big yeah something that we need to address.

>> Awesome. Super super interesting. Uh and then as we are running out of time, I'm making the last question for Rotho. Um and basically erh rot as as you are working for dlocal which is you know a more traditional payments company that is evolving into you know integrating onchain payments on on your flows and on your stack like how how is that process h being so far? Like do you find more challenges like internally at the local because you have an already super successful company um that maybe you could take the different route like hey we stay as as we are or you find more challenges on upgrading your existing

clients or finding new ones like what's the what's the mode internally and also externally for for the local to go aggressive on stable coins. >> That's a very good question. Um the local is a very big company. we were like 1,200 people um and has been for the past 10 years a traditional company. So I think that adopting stable coins is and has been of course a challenge but there are so many things in the outside world that have have helped us to do so. For example, you're talking about regulation ever since this genius act passed more and more traditional companies are entering the space. Uh and that for us is is key. So we're seeing both merchant demand uh e ecosystem

demand and we are like in the we have the best rails to power everything like no no no compan is in 45 markets and can do on and off ramps. So for us not doing crypto not doing stable coins doesn't make any sense. >> Absolutely. Thank you for for sharing that. Okay so Roio Seas Manu Eduardo thank you very much for sharing this time with me. It was fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed your your on the field insights and hopefully we keep sharing more stories together. Thank you so much.

>> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you.