Revolut's Big Bet: The Institutional Sales Playbook with Jamal Raees Polygon CPO

Transcript

So number one, it's to create set of standards for the blockchains across all different chains to make payments a really good experience. Similar things happen in the credit card space. There's a foundation called the EMV foundation which created chip cards, right? So like they created standards for how those chip cards and those data those data transfers happen and it led to a better card experience for all of us. >> Mastercard, Visa, the these payment networks that are entrenched and and the incumbents. How do you think about this competitive landscape? >> If you don't have an institutional arm to your company as a blockchain uh company today, you're pretty much cooked. Um like you're like you're screwed because Polygon's going out and getting onboarded to Revolute and you don't even have an institutional sales guy. Like you're screwed.

[music] >> Welcome back to the Rowup. This is your home to learn from the biggest guests, the brightest minds at the tip of innovation. >> Our goal is to help spread the collective knowledge of everyone in our community. We are breaking crypto out of its echo chamber and taking it to the real world. Sit back, relax, and enjoy it. >> All right, guys. We are discuss episode 11. We're here with Jamal, the head of US payments at Polygon Mods. Jamal, welcome to the show.

>> Thank you. Thanks for having me. No, you don't revolution in the world. >> Yes. >> I mean, there's only one question. How did you pull this off? >> Uh hard work and dedication. A couple of them beat us makes the partnerships happen, but we're excited. They're obviously supporting a number of chains, but we we really like working with them. We think they're vision aligned with our payments thesis and uh yeah, super bullish. I've been a longtime Revolute user, so I'm just happy to see our name in that app, which is great.

>> Love it. Yeah, that's awesome. Tell us a little bit about the story. How did you guys first get acquainted with the Revolute team? Um I I we had Sam on in New York just a couple weeks ago and he he told us how a lot of times these institutions will bring you in to almost in a consulting format because they're just curious. They're just trying to learn about the space and was that how this started and then it gradually morphed into what the partnership is now today. Um tell us a little bit just off a couple of these facts here. Revolute integrates Polygon for payments, trading, and staking, processing $690 million to date. How? So, so take us from from zero to 690, and then we'll we'll take it from there.

>> Uh, Deb, you are right. I think most of these enterprises, they they know that they want to do something in the space, but they just they don't know what, right? They have some mandate from their CEO or some, you know, some some sort of like high board member, and they're like, we just need to get into the space. Like, what do we do? and they uh they come to us and we're obviously in a in a favorable position for them considering we don't sell financial services or anything like that. So they come to us first and they ask like what do we do? How do we architect it? Who do we talk to? Who are the right players? And we actually spend hours and hours and hours with them giving them like a lay of the land, not even pitching them, just a lay of the land of like this is

this, this is what a stable coin is, this is what like is predominant use cases, whatever. Uh general stuff happened with Revolute. I mean, it's a long time relationship like over a year and they're super fintech forward. They're super super bullish on on crypto. They're really excited about like the crossber payments applications and whatnot. But yeah, it's just it's huge that like someone who's moving the fintech space so forward is now jumping into crypto because they see the the value of some of these rail the value of some of these these stable coins which is great. Um I mean they they integrated trading in their exchange mostly in Europe a while back. So that's been live for a while. So, a couple chains, a couple different uh assets, and a lot of volume on the trading side. But the cool part about this partnership is that

they're actually >> validating the thesis behind stable coins. They're actually validating that stable coins are are not just a trading mechanism. They're actually very very useful for crossber payments, for remittances, especially people who don't have access to Revolute, right? And the the integration is that Revolute now gets to tap into like the whole African market, the whole Latin American market, which is really tough to tap into, right? like you got to go get regulated, licensed, whatever. One integration, you turn on the whole world, which is pretty powerful. >> And so what they have probably almost a billion users or customers, a couple million >> 65 million.

>> Yeah, it sounds right. Sounds right. Yeah. Casual 8 billion people in the world is so big that it's, you know, a billion is Yeah. So across 38 countries and 14 million crypto users. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty such a large crypto representation already. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> I mean, Revolute's always had this like fintech forward crowd, you know, people who are are open to challenger banks and people who are open to like, you know, better experiences on the financial system don't need to know or don't need to use one of those like old school names or whatever. So, just it makes sense to me that all those guys who are like naturally dipping their toe in crypto.

>> Yeah. So maybe we can talk a bit about what the actual like road map is to get this you know now that now that the headlines hit hit the newswire you know what is the implementation look like for uh polygon and for what kind of traction do you expect to >> I think the big focus here is that we want to do remittances right so I think the really exciting part is that like this will start being used for like overseas payments crossber payments and whatnot I think that they've had a ton of traction on the exchange stuff. So, it's just kind of now like uh now us getting getting our feet wet with other stuff. I think um you know longterm I think they're looking at a whole bunch of stuff. Uh in the beginning it started with just like regular stable coin

remittances and stable coin payments. There's like interesting conversations happening about like onchain FX like how do we do like crossber payments with some of our other stable coins like we have a ton of stable coins in in Latin America specifically. uh they have a ton of users that are asking for uh crossber payments and reminces internally in the app as well. The implementation is actually already done. [clears throat] Uh so this announcement was kind of just like telling everyone that this is like going live soon. Um I actually don't know what the official launch date is. I don't even know if we have one yet. Uh but I know it's soon. Um and I know that they're pretty excited about it and we've spent a lot of time working with them uh to try to get them up to speed, you know, tighten up the product for

that. But really almost all the plumbing was already built. But the beauty of blockchain is you integrate it once and like you don't have to like reshape it or do anything crazy for it. >> And that's where the 690 million uh dollars of volume already comes from is the stable coins that are already being processed on Revolute have gone through Polygon to the tune of $690 million. >> Oh, they have a they have a lot of like so they have a trading exchange on the Revolute app in like uh Europe and other countries. So like not available for me in the US unfortunately yet. Uh but they do have an exchange where you can trade like pole and a bunch of other tokens as well. So that exchange has already done around 690 million. Now they're taking that plumbing which is the same plumbing that you need for remittances or like

B2B payments or whatever. They're taking that plumbing and building the product to be more payments focused and that requires much more stable coin integrations and much more like of that crossber payment stuff. >> And so I'm I'm starting to see Polygon become ubiquitous in payments. uh to your credit, US the head of US payments. Um and so Mastercard, Stripe, Flutterwave Dcard. Now, Revolute joins all of these other teams, right? I'm curious about the network effects as you start to build this coalition, right? It it starts, you have to go out, you have to do the outbound to go get these projects. But once you have that critical mass of teams, now I'd imagine you're going to start to see inbound. Oh, Revolute partnered with these guys. Now, Cat

Shap, BVNK, all these other ones are going to start coming to you to start to join that same network. What has that been like now that this has been live? It's been, you know, happening. Uh, have you seen some inbound? What are you expecting to come next into Polygon? >> Yeah, tons of inbound. Uh, big names for sure. Like names that we all know and love. So, we're excited to see some some more announcements come out, especially in Q1. Um I think the interesting thing here is that like there is a massive distribution play to be had with some of these guys as this like network effect expands. You kind of look at Polygon as like the payments place, right? If you want to come to do blockchain payments, you want to tap into this market, then you have to come to Polygon and use that

ecosystem. So it is an ecosystem play for sure. As we expand with more partnerships and partnerships and partnerships, there's a flywheel effect of like users lead to more partnerships which lead to more partnerships and which leads to more users. >> So, so that is what's happening in kind of like the institutional like sales side you could say like in the business development pipeline, right? So, it's just going to keep happening, right? Because now you've got the Lindy, right? Like, oh, you know, we're working with X Y and Z. We call this like like the Clooney effect. So, Oceans 11, they were trying to get uh Brad Pitt and George Clooney, right? But neither of them were interested. So they told Clooney that Pit was in and they told Pit that Clooney was in and then then they got them both, right? You guys have Stripe,

you guys have Revolute and also you have this recent announcement with uh Mastercard and Mercury. So that's on the BD side. Now on the onchain side, Mastercard is has chosen Polygon to launch username based transfers for self-custody wallets. It's a lot of words. Like what the hell does that mean? What is a username based transfer for self-custody wallets? Um, how does that affect my daily life? How is that going to uh affect Mastercard's uh kind of customer base? >> So, I mean, it's it's it's no like secret that sometimes transacting the blockchain can be rough, right? Like, so 100% I think that like you know 0x 559 blah blah blah like can be kind of complicated, especially as I'm trying to get like my mom into crypto for sure.

So, I think this is like it's a huge step to just make the user experience better, but there's also like another layer in where this like makes transactions safer, right? You actually have heard there's probably a good number of stories of like, oh, someone like Crypto.com accidentally send like, you know, a couple million dollars to the wrong address or something like that. So, there's a lot of examples of these and that is just a poor experience if we want to get this to like the next level. So, um I think the partnership is is bigger than just the naming service, but I am actually the most excited about the naming service. Just the fact that everyone's going to have this like super super human readable address or address and we'll all just be able to share that and Mastercard, which is like the connective tissue for so much of our

financial world already, is going to have this like infrastructure available for everyone, which is really exciting. The cool part about credential that's like really not like teased enough in the presser is that there's a whole credential stack underneath that, right? And it's just starting with identity, right? identity is one of the most difficult problems on the blockchain, especially in financial services, hands down. But there's a lot of stuff beyond that, right? Like credit scores or like your mortgages or other, you know, data that can be put on chain and tied to that credential that can just make your entire onchain experience tremendously better.

>> So, it's that whole architecture that I think is really exciting. >> Trade on anything, economics, weather, [music] sports, crypto, and more. All on couchy.com 24/7 for the world's biggest prediction market. Looking for yield that stands out? Infinify gives you just that. Deposit stable coins and earn far more than the current savings rate. Infinify is a battle tested, reliable DeFi platform that is ready to go. Head to infinifi.xyz. Holiday is unified crypto payments. Give your users more wherever they are. Go to holiday.xyz to never write a smart contract again.

>> Is there an ecosystem project that you guys are using for identity? We we know that there's a couple decentralized identity world coin humanity. >> Yeah, we actually humanity just announced >> their Mastercard integration. >> Mastercard's human ID is going to be powered by them. This is like another step here. It seems like they're entering the space pretty heavily. >> 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I think uh >> Visa came in aggressive earlier in the space. Oh yeah. So like it's well known that Visa came out with USDC settlement really really early which was very forward thinking. They hired a bunch of people in the crypto space which are really sharp and you know built some cool stuff for sure. Um but like Mastercard's a sleeper people people don't talk about it enough. I mean they uh you know much love to the Master Mastercard folks but admittedly they

moved a little bit slower but when they moved they moved way more methodical. They came out with something called MTN which is like a robust uh tokenization framework which like really really good for banks and it's like becoming a gold standard. This crypto credential is another good example. So I think they're being more creative. They're going to do the same stuff right. They're going to do USDC settlement. They're going to do all the other USDC stuff because that's obvious, but this like credentiing stuff, this more onchain frameworks, I think it's like a really really interesting way that they're entering the space and I think it's going to be really really important as we go on because they are like I said earlier the connective tissue for so much of our world. So for them to hold this infrastructure really makes it powerful.

>> How do you look at the competitive landscape of not not the blockchain competitive landscape? We talked about that at Nausea, but the Mastercard, Visa, the these payment networks that are entrenched and and the incumbents, how do you think about this competitive landscape? You've done a partnership with Mastercard. Can you also go and do a partnership with Visa? >> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. >> Really care, do they? Well, I mean, uh I think there are some feelings here and there, competitive spirit, but honestly, like, uh what I love about crypto is that there there's this like decentralized ethos, like we're all winning together and like you know, like I'm very close with all the different payments leads at all different blockchains. We're all joking around.

We're all really good friends, right? And I don't think there's this mentality of like one person is going to win. There's so much business to be had. There's so much like uh like traction to be made because like the opportunity is massive. Our traditional financial system is a dinosaur, right? and to chip away slowly at these pieces is like it's going to take some time. So, I think that yeah, well, number one, we love Visa. I think there's a very important relationship there and I think we're going to see you're going to see a lot more coming out hopefully at the top of next year. We're already in in motion with a couple things. U but yeah, I don't think that there's any sort of like negative spirit between the two of them. Um I tried to get Visa and Mastercard on the same panel yesterday,

but I don't know why that didn't happen. That would have been funny. Um but yeah, I don't think that there's any like competitive spirit. There's a lot of love between them for them for each other and there's a lot of love between us and and all of them. I think there's there's interoperability that needs to happen and I like kind of the competitive spirit of keeping each other in line and delivering fast. >> Not your keys, not your [music] coins. From the team that pioneered cold storage, Treasure has just released its new wallet. Guys, if you are still using hot wallets in 2025, 2026, you are missing [music] the entire point. Secure your coins. Get a Treasure at treasure.io. go anywhere onchain instantly with relay.link. Relay is closing in on 10 billion dollars transferred. Go to relay.link to [music] bridge your assets. Now,

>> um on that note, kind of flipping that more into the crypto uh verse, how how you guys, you know, have established Polygon as this payments chain. Uh there's obviously like this whole sleuth of of stable coin chains that have came out. But I think, you know, one thing that has been pressing on my mind here in Dev Connect has been this and really following from SmartCon last week, man, is is just or two weeks ago is like the the the seats at the table are being are being set like the table is being set. There's like really a one or two year kind of phase here that's already started probably six to 12 months ago.

So, you probably only have one year left of like this really true institutional kind of like adoption phase. meaning like you know uh if the if JP Morgan decides on a blockchain provider to like launch their own chain or to build all on like chances that they stick are like pretty like they're probably a pretty sticky like you know client or customer right um the the vendor lockin maybe isn't as intense as it can be with traditional uh you know software but it's still pretty like intense and so that being said I have this thought and and Robbie does too where if you don't have an institutional arm to your company as a blockchain uh company today, you're pretty much cooked. Like you're like you're screwed

because Polygon's going out and getting onboarded to Revolute and like you don't even have an institutional sales guy like you're screwed. Talk to about kind of this like how this shift in the crypto landscape is is happening and do you agree that like you know you have to earn your seat at the table now and you know that this time period is going to be fleeting. Is it g is it more positive sum? Is it more longer term? you know, h how do you feel generally about this kind of uh phase that we're in? >> Um, you totally have to like live and breathe it to be able to like properly penetrate to to you guys's earlier point, like there is a consultative game to it, right? A lot of these guys, the phase that we're in right now, a lot of these guys are like, we we need to do

something. We just don't know what that is. And I think we're on a very very long journey of a lot of interesting stuff, but we're just entering fa phase one where they need these type of like enterprise handholding, whatever you want to call it, right? So, yes, you're right. If you're not doing that >> and you haven't started already, there's a race and you like you should get on it 100%. >> Just so so many teams are asking us like what do we do like like you know our product is X and our our token is Y and like here's where we're at. No one cares and it's just like well have you thought about like going and getting institutional adoption and it's like yeah of course but it's a slow process >> but it's like how do we do it right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. people are like teams are really like confused right now because they see the likes of Polygon and others going and doing it and they don't really know what to do about it. >> I mean enterprise sales is a tough game. It is enterprise just BD in general. Um I think you there's an art to like just being everywhere and talking to the right people. I mean the language you use, the types of calls you schedule, who you introduce them to, all of that stuff matters and there very much so is an art to it. So, you do need someone who I think knows that art and can can kind of penetrate into it. Network is like a huge thing here. I've been in the the crypto space for almost about nine years now, right? And like having met all these people and building a really

good network, everyone works together like we're really close with a team at like Fireblocks. We're really close with a team at I don't know like Rain and like with those they're going out and getting enterprises. We're co-pitching right a lot of the time. So, uh, I think working with people like you guys, getting the good word out there, getting a lot of people like interested in the space and teasing them to to kind of learn more, then they approach people or we find a way to get connected with them. Then there's a long consultative cycle of like, you know, educating them. A lot of the time we're not even pitching them. We're just like simply educating them. We've done like so many workshops, multi-hour workshops where the word like polygon is like barely written in the presentation, which is good. Like which is good. We want them

to just like feel comfortable to explore the space, not feel like they're getting pitched or whatever. And then you slowly become that consultant for them. And then when they do something, they call you or they think of you immediately and they get your advice on it. And that's how you like shape them to go the direction you want. Like I love when people like when like Tradfi executives will go to an airport and they'll see a Bitcoin ATM. They'll text me like, "Ah, look, I see a crypto thing." And like then they think of me, which is like what I want them to think about, right? >> Shoot you a text message. >> My crypto guy. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Like that's who I want to be. I want to be the crypto guy for >> for JP Morgan. I want to be the [clears throat] crypto guy for Bank of

America. >> Older people, >> less experience. They come to you for advice. They they may even ask you for like stock picks. [laughter] >> Yeah. Not financial >> advice though, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. 100% 100%. Yeah. >> Yet is built for big moments. The most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. Havachi is fast and private [music] per trading secured by ZK with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz to start [music] trading today. >> We have we have a similar approach. It's an abundance mindset to share information without the uh the forward thinking that you're going to get something back from it.

>> Agreed. >> We do believe in this principle of economic karma where you you put good uh ideas, good thoughts, good knowledge into the world. >> I love that. Economic karma is amazing. Yes, that's a good one. Um, I wanted to ask you before before we let you go about uh this blockchain payments consortium that has some incredible founding members of which Polygon is one of them. And the stat that sticks out here is $10 trillion of stable coins uh transferred. I believe that's this year. Um, wow. Annually, right? So, uh, 10 trillion dollars of annual stable coin volume by the founding members of the blockchain payments consortium.

Generally, this feels like the table. This feels like the founding members, Monad uh Stellar Salana Polygon Fireblocks, these are the companies that currently have a seat at the table. Is it closed? Like, is this what what is the blockchain payments consortium? And how do you anticipate that this will help bolster the stable coin industry? >> So, that was born out of just like an amazing group of people who we all like love each other and we hang out at all these conferences. We go we go have much babidas together. We're we're having a good time. And and while we were there, we were like, look, we're all going through the same struggles when we're talking to large financial institutions.

They don't feel comfortable with XYZ. And on top of that, like a lot of enterprises pick multiple chains. Most of the time, they pick multiple chains, right? So like we're all working together in some way, shape, or form. And each chain has their own niche and advantage. So like, you know, it's all love at the end of the day. But there needs to be kind of a unified front to work with these large enterprises, right? As you said, enterprise sales is like tough and a lot of people haven't figured it out, right? So there is an art to it and we need to have like this like robust experience for those enterprises that are coming into the space. So number one it's to create set of standards for the blockchains across all different chains to make payments a really good experience.

>> Similar things happen in the credit card space. There's a foundation called the EMV foundation which created chip cards, right? So like they created standards for how those chip cards and those data those data transfers happen and it led to a better card experience for all of us and it's actually a joint consortium with Visa, Mastercard and a bunch of other card networks. So similarly in that same spirit we thought like why don't we get together and create a set of standards of what does a payment look like on a blockchain? What needs to be included? What data needs to be there? Do we need to optimize the blockchain for that? Do we need to add like more fields or do we need a technical upgrade? Like whatever. But we need to create a set of standards and we will come out with a set of standards soon

hopefully by like Q1. U but we're going to create a set of standards that makes people more comfortable to rely on blockchain transactions as payments. So imagine like [clears throat] Bank of America getting into the space and they're like oh I don't know if this transaction is like actually from someone legit or whatever and because of that I'm just not going to do anything in the crypto space, right? But now they can look at this like new transaction standard and say, "Oh, I at least know that like this is a KYC transaction or I at least know that this is this and I don't need to know the KYC or whatever." Or maybe I do, but at least I know that this transaction is legit. >> Y >> and when you have that, you have just a lot more comfortability for enterprises, large financial institutions, even

regulators, even regulators will like that and feel more comfortable with it. On top of that, it's going to lead to a better experience for the users, right? So users using different wallets [clears throat] across chain swapping and all this stuff that's happening, they're going to need to see the same kind of standards and the same data fields and the same experience across all those different chains. And this type of like layer, whatever we're going to call it or wherever we're going to come out with, but this type of infrastructure is key to providing that crosschain experience as well. >> Plus, we just love hanging out with each other. It's super fun. >> Yeah. >> You know, you become the uh kind of like dictator of the uh of the standard or of the idea. you become the uh creator of it. So, >> yeah. Yeah. Well,

>> it's been great to have you on, man. Before we get you out of here, >> payments is the most fundamental use case of the block. >> Oh, I like it. >> Return to fundamentals, buddy. >> Yeah, I love it. This is sick. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. >> Leading the way. >> We're here for it 100%. >> All right, guys. We'll be right back. See you in just a second and we will up guys. Thank you. >> That was sick. >> Awesome. >> That was awesome. size