From Visa and Circle to Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments for Banks

I went and spoke to a lot of the big PSPs, and they were all lukewarm about Stapocons. They were like, our entire life is managing our treasury. We really know exactly how to do it extremely efficiently. I talked to Remitley. They literally laughed me out of the room. And then literally in the last six to eight months, people have realized, oh, wait a minute.

Like, it's not just that, okay, I manage my treasury in all these places, but even that treasury management can be significantly more efficient if I can move the funds there immediately. If the value transfer happens right away, but they're gonna go hire 10 blockchain people and build everything from the ground up. Some of them will. A lot of the big ones are all the GSIBs are doing that, but there are, 45,000 banks and PSBs of the world. Right? And not all of them are gonna go out and do this.

What is the role that Tester plays in this conversation? So in a way, what we set out to do was really to say, look. You need to do this yourself, but you don't need to go build the whole thing yourself. We have the technology. We have the payment processing know how and capabilities so we can work very well with you. So my job is, again, to be your processor, work your needs.

Hey. It's Drew. Quick thank you to Altitude for making this episode possible. Altitude is rebuilding business banking for teams on the frontier. They offer the full stack for the modern CFO and founder, a beautifully designed platform for payouts, bill pay, corporate cards, enterprise controls, and so much more. Move money with speed, yield, and total control all from your stablecoin balance. Operate at Altitude. If your business is on the frontier, your finances should be too. You can learn more at altitude.xyz.

Hello. Hello. Itha, thanks for thanks for joining us today. Really excited to have you on Stable Minded. Thanks for joining us. So much. I am so thrilled to be here. Very, very excited. So we're gonna dive into a lot of things on the in this conversation. I'm excited to hear about your experience and just the journey of the amazing career in payments and and financial technology you've had, the learnings along the way, where stablecoins start to fit into the the to the picture, what you're building now.

There's so much to talk about. Why don't we start with today? Give us the intro. If you if I were to meet you for the first time and you were to give me the the elevator pitch of what you're building, how would you describe Tesser and and and what you're building today? And then we'll we'll we'll dial back the tape. Absolutely.

So we are building basically technology that would allow a traditional financial institution to plug in and start using, you know, the offering stablecoin based payments. I believe much to the chagrin of a lot of the core DeFi community, stablecoin community is that large financial institutions, banks, PSPs, etcetera, they move trillions of dollars today. We're not gonna take that away from them significantly. Ultimately, it's gonna fold into them.

So why not get ahead of that and get them the infrastructure they need to get up and running with stablecoin payments? So what we decided to do was to kind of become a payments processor for large financial institutions, regulated financial institutions. Don't get in the flow of funds, but really give them everything else they need. Because when I started this thing, you know, eight months ago, banks were still asking me, yeah. I know this stablecoin is supposed to be one to one, but how do you know?

And what is it really? And we were like, okay. You guys have a long way to go. We'll take care of it. So that's kinda how it started. What has the experience

been like going from an operator within some of these large financial organization that you were at before, which we'll dive into in a second? What's that transition been like going from representing some of the largest financial brands on the planet to now representing your own business? What's that transition into

founder mode been like in the last eight months? It's actually a very good question because especially having been at these large companies for long enough, you get used to people wanting to talk to you. And now suddenly, you're like, no. No. No. Wait. Yeah. I know I know you've not heard of my company, but you know me. Right? They're like, yeah. But you're not with Visa or Circle or Mastercard anymore. So Credibility those names bring immediately will, like, earn you a lot of time with with people.

Eyebrows go up immediately. You you have kind of earned the right to be heard off the bat. Yes. But with a startup, it's Yes. That's that's that's exactly the that's that's exactly right. I have conversations right now going with pretty much every big name you can think of out there because I have the relationships because even at Circle, etcetera, I was directly working with a lot of the very senior folks in these large companies also having been there. But it's still there like, Kita, we we believe you.

We trust you. But you guys are just building, and there are these guys over there who've been doing this for three years. And so it does it does take and, you know, when you're with Visa and Circle, people do actually actively want to work with you because they're you know, if you're if you're a bank that wants to start looking at stablecoins, like, where do I start? Oh, let me talk to Circle because that's the thing you know and that's that's that's where you go.

It is a little bit harder to get my name in front of somebody and say, wait, like, I can be that layer between you and Circle because Circle can only give you so much. I can give you all these things that will also get you what Circle will give you and more. Yeah. Building building a brand that can do that to to like,

being a Coinbase, that was something that was so powerful. Was just like, where do where do we start on this journey? Let's just go talk to the Coinbase institutional team and the amount of, like, trust that brands bring to a lot of the financial institutions that are still we're just still scratching the surface of the involvement of their their, you know, getting off of zero is still that's still happening. We're still we were kind of talking on our walk, like, we are still in the first inning of this transition.

And in some ways, it's like, why isn't this happening as fast as we want to? But the the power of a brand like a Visa or Mastercard or Circle, MoneyGram, the longevity of that, the trust that that brings, it's how can you within the experience of describing the startup, how do you build credibility when you when you're talking to these counterparties quickly? Unlike those brands who haven't been around for that long, you haven't built up a ton of track record.

How do you, yeah, how do you solve for that as a founder right now? Yeah.

And to be quite honest, you solve for it by being credible, by sounding credible, by knowing what you're talking about. I have hired, you know, my kind of, like, very my senior leadership team is very much also from either kind of my my head of product is deep payments, knows the space really, really well. My head of engineering is deep crypto, so I have the perfect people to go with me to have the conversation. So, you know, as they start digging into but wait. Like, how is KYC done?

And, you know, if you have a KYC request from this, how are you handling the RFP? And we're like, don't worry. We've done this a few times. Maybe not here, but we know exactly what it is. So that is shamelessly what I'm doing is himping out my team to get to get credibility and myself to the best that we can because that's what we have to build on right now, and so we are absolutely using that. Tell tell us about the team. So you said chief product officer, chief technology officer. What are the names?

How'd you meet them? What's the story of what they're doing? So chief product is the easier one because she and I worked together at Visa Direct. Her name is Dana Weinstein. Visa at that point, Visa Direct actually acquired Earthport, which was like a big kind of similar to Tunes and Payoneer and all of these. They were a big kind of payouts. And Dana was the product person responsible for actually literally connecting the Visa side with the Earthport side, and she knew all the details around FX.

And how do you you know, what what does a bank on the other side need in order to make a transfer? And, you know, she helped build the APIs and all of that. So perfect kind of, you know, person to bring into this. My CTO, literally, I got a resume, looked at it. I like, alright. Let's let's talk. I spoke to him. He's been brilliant. His name is Marvin Arnold. He's been a degen for most of his life. So the corporate side is a little bit weird to him, but, you know, we've got that taken care of.

But he is very disciplined, very organized, knows how to think and build and, you know, engineer this in a way that, okay, think about scale upfront. Think about what a large organization would need upfront. So it's been extremely, extremely

brilliant. Yep. So we're gonna dive into what you're building now. But before we do, I want to go back into your story. Give us maybe high level some of the institutions you've worked for and the the roles that you've played in that multi decade journey, like the learnings you've had. When did you first really get get your foot in the door with some of these big companies? How did that happen to begin with? Yeah. I mean, as always, the first step was accidental.

So I landed at Mastercard, and I was in the prepaid card team.

And, you know, that it was the word of the day was financial inclusion. So prepaid was supposed to be a way in which people who could not get credit cards and debit cards and, you know, could not get a credit history actually had a way that they could use cards. Really Mastercard's way of saying, I need to make sure these people can also, you know, feed my engine so they Yeah. Prepaid is like I will prefund a card. Prefund the cards. Exactly.

It's like a gift card, for example, is one type of prepaid card, but a lot of people actually use branded prepaid cards to pay their bills and everything. Right? So, it was it was very it was very interesting exposure. So there is a world in which we're trying to bring people that don't have access to standard financial services into what everybody else just takes for granted. But then the flip side of that is, you know, the fees were really high. It was very expensive and that's natural, right?

Because there's a risk element to it. And so the fees were high and it did feel sometimes it felt like it was predatory. Apologies in advance to anybody, you know? What felt predatory about it? The Because it was expensive a product. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know payday lending. A lot of people actually live and die on payday lending, but payday lending is extremely high interest, extremely high,

you know, cost sample of, like, a typical payday financial situation for for those who may have not done that before. Just expose

what a typical scenario would be like for a payday loan or something like that. Yeah. So you you live paycheck to paycheck. Your paycheck's coming in at on Friday, but your landlord says if you don't give me your my rent by Monday, you'll be evicted. So you basically go in and take a loan against what is going to come. So you are going to get a paycheck on Friday. You get the money in advance on Monday.

Between Monday and Friday, you're probably paying 35%, even much, much higher than that at times to get the money in advance. You know, over the last ten years, there have been companies like Earnin and all that that make it much more structured and standardized.

It's still expensive, but not as not as expensive as what it was what used to be, where you walked into one of these payday lenders and, you know, you There's still I mean, in communities all over the world, there are, like, very, very common, like, merchant facing storefronts

just for this particular card. Exactly. So you so you at at Mastercard sort of in in the early days got a sense of, okay. There's a lot of complexity around these financial systems that are being built that actually can really put people who are in desperate need in situations that are very vulnerable for them. It sounds like you you got a lot of exposure to that. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And, you know, that kind of continued when I joined MoneyGram. MoneyGram was I mean, like, it's many ways one of my favorite jobs because it made so much sense to me fundamentally where you know, who come to other countries so they can get a better life, you know, have to make money, send it back home. And so every new kind of connection I made from The US outbound to some country, you know, it felt very real to me. Like, okay.

Now I have enabled a bunch of people to do something more than what they could or was really expensive to do before. So I was hired at MoneyGram to expand from their cash to cash business. They're primarily they used to be primarily a cash to cash business. So you go in and give cash at, a CVS store. And on the other side in India, my mom would go get cash somewhere at some local store. But by the way, was instant money movement. It was, like, I think thirty minutes.

In fact, at the time that I was there, just just before that was when the Durbin amendment had come out and they were like then they started putting requirements that said people should have the option to cancel the transaction within half an hour of when they initiated it. But prior to that, you could actually pick up the money instantly on the other side. And so they were expanding from a cash to cash business because they were the of the world.

The wises of the world were starting to come up and do everything digitally. So they were starting to look at how do how do I enable direct payments into somebody's bank account. You know, at that time, also, like, mobile wallets were becoming a big thing. So how do I enable money going directly into that rather than me having to go go get cash from somewhere? This is, like, around like, what what year roughly was this? Like This was this was early twenty tens, twenty Okay.

'20 So, like, mobile financial services are starting to really pick up steam. M Pesa was, I think, like, just before that. M Pesa, which was the first big mobile wallet in Kenya, was around 2009, 2010, I think, is when it when it came up. And so since then, like, the digital, you know, enablement of being able to receive money even if you don't necessarily have a bank account had become was starting to become a thing. So so at MoneyGram, what was your day to day role focused on? What was your mandate there?

It was like first identifying where we should start building the digital capabilities. So which are the top markets? Which ones actually make sense? Because you could build digital to Mexico, which we did, but Mexico is a very cash market. It's a very cash headed method. Digital. You're saying instead of someone in Mexico receiving physical cash That's exactly right. They're gonna be getting a digital deposit into it and a mobile app experience. Exactly right.

We are now in today's 2026 world, like, there that that sounds very normal. It sounds very normal. But that was not that was not was just beginning. Yeah. A huge shift. Okay. It was it was definitely a huge shift. I mean, their countries, I think, specifically Dominican Republic and Vietnam are two countries where you send the money, and actually somebody puts it in a backpack and drives it over in a motorbike and drops it off at somebody's house in cash. So, like, home delivery of cash was, like, a real thing.

And by the way It's funny how we're, like, back to that. If you've seen what Robinhood is trying to do again with that, they're, like, doing cash courier deliveries, like, private banking clients. Have you seen that? It's like a funny, like, whole circle moment. Exactly. Exactly. It still doesn't happen. Everything comes back. Everything comes back. That's exactly right. Exactly right. I think the you know, of course, Robinhood is going after one end of the Absolutely.

You know, economic spectrum, whereas these guys but home delivery is is still a thing in, the Doctor, for example. So, anyway, the idea was where like, India is a country where, you know, because of UPI and all of that, there was very quick growth of digital payments in general. And so that was one where we should, you know, where we we absolutely wanted to prioritize that as a market where we would be able to do direct to bank, direct to mobile wallet, etcetera.

So we did, you know, India, Philippines, Mexico, Nigeria. These were all some of the markets that that I that I had built out while I was there. But, yeah, that was a it was a great Yeah. So experience. The infrastructure that was built during this time gave people a relationship to money that was digital.

And it in some ways, it paved, I think, a very clear technical and probably psychological connection to some of the things that we now experience with stablecoins. What were some of those deposits of inspiration, I'll say, you're now thinking back to? Like, I'm imagining you're in relationship with a lot of those counterparties in each of these regions.

You're working with them to you know, you weren't maybe talking about stablecoin liquidity or, like, local on and off ramping for a stablecoin specifically, but what were some of those relationships or structural part that part of the stack is such an important part of the stack today with stablecoins is, like, how you get from a stablecoin back into a local currency Yeah. That people really need to do their daily life or daily business.

I'm imagining that there were some moments in that part of your journey or things that you saw that were really impactful. Anything come to mind there around

the time at MoneyGram with that that part of the stack on a local site. That last mile. Last mile is a good way to put it. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the last mile is the is the price. Like, that's what you are trying to optimize for. Like, how does that become, you know, real time? How does that become cheap? How does that become, you know, easily accessible for everybody? That's fundamentally the focus. Why do you say prize? That's a good word. But what why is that?

Because, again, you can get money somewhere, but if they can't use it, what's the point of it? No one's gonna use you as a service provider if you can't get them what they need, which is that last mile. Right? And so, like, when I was at MoneyGram initially, you know, like I said, the the cash to cash was instant. So people were used to the idea of receiving them their money right away. But then digital depended on the local payments network, whereas MoneyGram could do whatever they wanted with cash.

They basically took so the way MoneyGram operates is there are agents on both sides, and an agent who's technically a franchisee of MoneyGram fundamentally as you know, to sign up to become a franchisee, you have to say, I will keep this cash with me at all times so that when someone comes, they can actually get it right away. I'm not waiting for you to send me the money. Right?

So there was an instant payment, which was really not instant on the back end because MoneyGram was taking a big risk that their agents wouldn't just, you know, kind of not pay out. But the agents were taking a risk that, okay, MoneyGram would send them the money eventually. So but, you know, and there was obviously a cost of cash that when the last mile payout was happening before they received the money, they were getting credit from somewhere.

There was, you know, a cost there, and ultimately, those costs got passed to the consumer. But then when you're doing real time payments to somebody, you know, through digital means, you're dependent on what that last mile network is. You know, in India, I think 2015 is when UPI was created and there was the whole you know, basically, everything became instant. They created, you know, IMPS, which was like a local mobile network. Mexico, you know, Spain.

So in these markets where they realized that there was a need for financial services to be easily accessible, it came top down. The government basically pushed all these last mile real time payment systems. So getting funds into the country, MoneyGram had to figure out. But then once, you know, it got into the country, it got paid out instantly. So that that became, you know, a real thing.

Now where to answer the question that you asked me, where it got interesting was, how did MoneyGram get money to the country instantly? Because then, yes, then there's the last mile. But to get money to the country instantly, there was no way. The only So so the problem was less so on the last mile piece In where there's a real time payment system, the problem was yes. Okay. Which the the governments and countries that you mentioned?

Where there's a lot of remittances coming in and stuff, governments figured it out for in a lot of the countries. So so what was how did how did MoneyGram do the what was the the solution to that problem getting The solution to that problem is open up our balance sheet, go to every key partner in every market and say, hold these funds in an account for me. When I tell you to pay out to somebody, pay it out so that they could tell, you know, like, the partner bank in Mexico, in India, whatever, to say, hey.

I'm sending you a message that Geeta's mother needs a payout, you know, at this point because there is an instant him and method. Technically, that whole thing could be done quickly, but MoneyGram was taking a big risk. MoneyGram actually had yeah. Exactly. So MoneyGram had to go formalize relationships in the banking network for each of those places for that to work. Pain in the ass. Yes. Very big. Very big. I did so much of that. So you were what was your involvement at that point?

Were you the one working with I had to I had to basically so, you know, MoneyGram was big enough that they had, like, regional teams who had the relationships regionally. But from the you know, there's always this same thing happened at Visa. There's a global team. There's a regional team. And, you know, like, the teams have to work together. So I was head of product for, you know, this this whole account money movement thing.

And so I had to work with the regional teams to find the right partner and then negotiate with the partner to hold a certain amount of money with them. They wouldn't give us interest. The money just sat there in order for us to make a payout, how quickly the money had to be, you know, topped up, refilled in order to continuously make make payouts. Like, treasure MoneyGram was a treasury company.

Like, ultimately, it was all about how did they manage their treasury in order to make sure that there was enough money everywhere so you're competitive and you can actually get payouts done instantly. Tons of learnings from MoneyGram. You're getting a front row seat to

how before stable things like stablecoins existed, how a business like that could operate at global scale to solve instant payments or near instant payments. What happens next? So so what were the learnings, and what did you what was the next stop on the journey? Was this Visa after that? No. No. I had I had many stops along the way. Look. Maybe we go high level. Give us Yeah. The stops, all of the stops,

one by one. I mean, basically, I was also trying to understand more of the payments landscape. I I had to stop at PayPal where I, you know, it was also again financial inclusion because we were focused on trying to get cash into the PayPal system. So if you're a florist who has an online presence and a local presence and you knew you were getting cash from people, PayPal became your single account. The fraud in that was pretty high, so they actually got rid of that. I don't think that exists anymore.

Then and then from there, I went to Fiserv where I did commercial payments for a little while to kind of try and understand that as well. And then, you know, realized, yeah, commercial payments are fun and it's great, but really there's nothing as much fun as cross border payments. So I came back to cross border payments, and I joined Visa Direct as their head of, Visa Direct cross border. They had What is fun about cross border? What do mean?

I mean, payments, otherwise, is just operational stuff, but it's just really okay. You know, timing of of money landing and, you know, when is this settlement window and, you know, where is ACH? Are you an ODFI and IR? I mean, like, it's just it's operational. Cross border payments, I mean, it's fundamentally like it's been exactly the same for how many years? Like, so many years. And every country is different. Every, you know, jurisdictional regulatory requirement is different. It's just fun.

That's where the pain that's where the pain is because every every single country is different. That's which is exactly right. Around the time like, while I was at Visa Visa Direct, I joined The US asked the payments council as the Visa representative. And the whole idea was how do you make cross border payments faster? And they hadn't really they they weren't looking at blockchain at that point.

And really what we kept coming down to is that all the governments need to talk to each other and be happy working together in order to get cross border payments to be real time. And really, like so it in fact, I I'm kind of jumping ahead. But while I was at Visa, Visa did a deal with Circle, and I started looking into Circle, and I realized what stablecoins were and what blockchain was. And I was like, this is it. This is how this problem is really going to be solved.

Five years later, we're still trying to get there, but that is that was the There was a landmark deal between Visa and Circle. What what was that deal? What was the what was the breakdown? The deal itself at that time, the first deal that they did because after I joined Circle, we did kind of the real deal with Visa, and I'll kind of talk about that. But the first time, it was basically Visa trying to, you know, incorporate USDC.

And they were still trying to figure out exactly what to do with it, But, they were doing a deal with Anchorage and Circle, and in fact, I'm not even sure exactly what it did, but it didn't do very much at that time. And then that was in, I think, 2020, 2019, 2020, something like that.

And then when I moved to Circle in '21, that's when, like, understanding of stablecoins, the value of stablecoins, the potential of stablecoins was continuing to be, you know, kind of understood by the broader payments community that which is one of the reasons I was actually hired in is to kind of push into TradFi. But the deal that I basically worked on when I was at Circle was the settlement deal with Visa where Visa opened an account with Circle and started to settle stablecoins between

interested parties on either side. That that seems like if we're looking at the if if this was, a book of history of stablecoin adoption, I feel like that would be a big landmark moment. That was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant. Breakdown, yeah, break down what that was. Because now now you see what's happening on the Visa network with things like stablecoins and the settlements and business models like RAIN that now exist, like, the, you know, $1,950,000,000 valuation of a company like that.

Like, that deal opened up that entire kind of business model to exist. Like and there will be so many more, and there are so many more businesses built on top of that landmark kind of deal. Break down what that means. I'd love to use this part of the conversation as, like, a maybe an ex explainer on the role that Visa plays or or played and still plays in that time as it relates to stablecoins like USDC maybe to begin with. But we'll break that down for us.

Yeah. Absolutely. So, I mean, listen. Big kudos to Visa, right, to have taken the big step forward. They knew there was value to Stablecoin. Actually, I have to specifically call out Kai Sheffield because, I mean, the man was relentless. He believed in it, and he pushed, and he pushed hard because it's not easy to move the Visa machine. It is not. But he got the right people in, and what How did he do it? How was he I think he was guy is cool. He he he I don't know. He's genuinely relentless.

Like, I have really, I have seen how he has slowly kept pushing the Visa machine where it was, okay. Let's do a small POC. Let's do a little more because Visa is very risk averse. They're not only risk averse from a, you know, broad regulatory brand you know, regulatory perspective, brand perspective, but also they are a well operating, well oiled machine, they don't wanna interrupt it. They don't want something to come in and and actually change that.

So when I was there and we did the deal with Visa when I was at Circle, what we started with was, okay, How can Visa allow for, you know, work with because Visa cards were being issued by Coinbase, by crypto.com, by other issuers who are like, we operate on stablecoins on the back end. It would be a lot easier if we could just pay you in those stables. You know? Right?

When when an issuer settles with an acquirer, which is the the card issuing side with the acquiring side, which is the merchant side, which is whoever is actually being paid. It's really the two banks on either side. Visa sits in the middle. There's a bank that works with the cardholder. There's a bank that works with the merchant. And, ultimately, the two banks have to huddle with each other. All Visa technically does is does all the pluses and minuses and goes, you bank. You owe so much.

This had to come back to you, so you're netting so much. This is how much Chase owns Wells Fargo, etcetera. And, a lot of the issuing side companies that came to Visa that were crypto native, you know, through their banks basically said, hey. We would like to potentially just give you stable coins to pay out to the acquiring bank. Similarly, on the acquiring side, there were acquirers like Worldpay, for example, who are like, I'm working with a lot of crypto native merchants.

Can you help me figure out how you, Visa, give me Sablecoins, I can give it to them? Because, ultimately, if they want Sablecoins, the only way to do it is you give me USD, then I go convert it, and then and then I pay them. But if you can just give me USDC, it makes my life a lot easier. Visa was like, let me try that. That actually makes sense. Okay. So let's define

what Visa did. What what was the deal that they struck with Circle? And then how how did that solve those kind of fragmented problems?

Yeah. So, basically, what Visa had to do was where whereas till then, if Coinbase was to, you know, pay Visa out of you know, for the

for whatever their cardholders were doing. We're specifically talking about, like, the Coinbase debit card at this time. Yes. So, like, Coinbase had a card program. I had one of these cards. It was the first time I actually think I used I received USDC as, like, a almost like a cashback equivalent, and this was on a debit card that Coinbase and we're using the the term issuer here, which is used in different contexts in the world of stablecoins, but you're talking specifically about

cards. Card issuer that's that's available cards. In

Okay. So so that's defined. They're getting things like USDC as rewards.

They're getting things like USDC as as rewards, but also the cards are tied to a crypto wallet. And the crypto wallet has crypto funds in it, tokens in it. And so Coinbase was like, you know, I can I can basically collect those funds from their account?

I can take that USDC, and I can send it to Visa now rather than taking it, converting it back to US dollars, and paying Visa for everything that I would have to because, ultimately, the funds have to go from the cards, from the issue from the user's accounts and wallets to wherever they're paying. That merchant has to get paid, right, ultimately. So you use the card somewhere that merchant has to get paid. And Visa is in the middle collecting on one side and paying out to the other.

So instead of Coinbase going fine, I'm collecting from all of my people. I'm converting to US Dollar, and then I'm giving you US dollar for you to pay out. Coinbase, like, can I just give you USDC? Yeah. Yeah. Because these accounts and I maybe this is the unique part of this is, like, if I'm now remembering this this was the case, these accounts weren't fiat accounts. These were They they they could they crypto. That's exactly right. Okay. It's exactly right. It's a debit card. It's in stablecoin land.

Why are you making me go back into fiat land? Yeah. Okay. So so now now you have really, in some ways, like, the first kind of emergence of stablecoin Sablecoin settlement. Yeah. That's strip Sablecoin backed, which is which is exactly right. Sablecoin backed card programs, which was starting to become a real thing around that time because they were a few issuer till RAIN became as big as they did. There were a few of them that were actually trying to do some of that. Yeah.

Marquetta did the Coinbase card at that time. At that time. Right. Right. Right. Right. I do remember you. Right? And I don't know what what happened, but speaking for myself, it sounds like they were sitting on, like, a rain sized opportunity. They didn't. They didn't pick it up. Missed it. I don't know pick it up. But They didn't they didn't didn't pick it up. So so, basically, Visa, like I said, was taking it one step at a time. And they said, look.

We don't know what the government treatment of of stablecoins is. So but we're opening an account with you, Circle. We're gonna receive the stablecoins in that account. The thing is we cannot hold those funds overnight. Before 05:00 in the evening, you gotta convert those back to fiat for me so that I can pay it out. I don't wanna sit on this overnight because I don't know what the regulations are. Genius didn't exist. There was no even even with Genius, people still don't know how those funds are treated.

I think that will come in clarity, maybe. So, Visa was like, I need to get it out of the at the at the end of every night. But then they've since then, they have continued to kind of expand the services where at that time, it was it was nice to have. They were they were able to serve the crypto native issuers and acquirers, but they had, like, this limited time where they would receive the funds and then they would pay it out. But they have expanded that to now.

So weekends, they couldn't do anything because if if if you have to do it by the time the market closes, that is weekdays up to whatever time in the day. But now they actually do weekend settlement. They've expanded their treasury capabilities to be able to do weekend settlement, which was it was a big deal for Visa. It's taking a very old, you know, long time built system and now adding capabilities that they just did not have before. So I give them a lot of credit for everything that they that they've done. Yes.

So and and it had to

go back to fiat at the end of the day due to there are, like, certain rules or regulations around, like, getting like, if you I I remember my my job at Coinbase was helping merchants, commercial partners accept crypto, and that was always the priority is, like, we can accept it, but we need to get this off our books before That's right. That's right. Why is that? Is there, like, a certain rule or, like, time of of custody that, like, grace period you have? Is there, like what what is the reason there?

There is no What happens overnight? That's I know the right answer.

It's held overnight, it has to be recorded in your books. If it is in the process, like, the day of being converted, whatever, then it doesn't need to be recorded just yet. The moment it's held over and it has to be recorded. And there was also lack of clarity. It becomes cemented. That's exactly what it is. By sundown. It's like That's exactly right. But I will tell you, it is up to it is there there is an interpretation element there because Visa was willing to do that. There were others that were not.

They were they they were, like, even for others, even the fact that it flowed through them during the day, they were like, no. I don't want There's a spectrum of risk Exactly.

Right. Okay. So it starts where, like, you know, they're accepting USDC, still moving it back into fiat. How has that evolved to, you know, whether this is this might be, like, getting past your time when you were there. But the Visa business, just while we're on the topic, is now such a pivotal player. Like, how have you seen the Visa business since that moment continue to, like, go down this path of being more open to things like USDC and now other stablecoins?

Like, finish finish the, like, Visa evolution, and where is that how do you see that business today in in the context of Sablecoins?

I mean, the the the Visa evolution was very much demand driven. They started because they had a couple of customers who wanted to do this, and they were like, alright. And, you know, Kai believed in it and was able to get the company around it. But at the time that I was there I'm trying to decide how much I can say without getting into trouble. But, anyway, the the time that I was there, we were just, like, you know, barely hitting a few $100,000 worth of settlement.

I think I read that they're at a $10,000,000,000 run rate or something like that now. $1,010,000,000,000. 10,000,000,000. So which means that the settlement demand continued to grow. And when they saw that, it made sense for them to start saying, okay. There's actually real value to this. And that's how they've they've been able to expand. So cool.

I think I've heard I don't know if Kai told me this or who who specifically was describing Visa in this, but I've heard Visa described as just a massive messaging protocol. Yeah.

A lot of people like, values, valuable information is throwing through flowing through it, but the idea of Visa being a messaging company is, like, actually a really interesting way to think about it. And it's almost like opening up an entirely new language. It's almost like saying, yeah, we're in the business of speaking, and stablecoins is like a whole new language that we now have the ability to translate and and engage with.

And it sounds like such a cool moment that you were there around the time where that language of USDC metaphorically

was for the first time able to be spoken and and accepted in the Visa network, which has now turned into a massive, massive thing. It is it is totally I mean, you have no idea how happy it makes me because when I was there, it was it was still an uphill battle. I mean, there was obviously, you know, we wanted to do things with with Visa, but there was still, a sense of, like, is this really gonna go anywhere? How big is it gonna be? You know, early stage. Everyone is skeptical about these these things.

But, like, where it is now, it is I feel very validated. You know what I mean? So Where do you see because you you spent time at Mastercard as well. You said Mastercard are still just dominating the this layer of the payment world. Where do you see those businesses as we move into, like, more of a stablecoin native landscape? Are you still very optimistic on the role that they play?

I've heard very, like, different diff very different opinions on this question lately, so I'm just curious, like, how you see the future of those types of business models being so card heavy. Any thoughts on on that? Obviously, they've been so inclusive of things like stablecoins.

Are are there parts of that business that you see consolidating or or collapsing down, or or how how are you thinking about those business models? I mean, you know, again, would be great if I could if I could kind of see into the future, but my sense is that they are going to coexist. And I think they're gonna coexist in different ways. So I think because Mastercard and Visa are also very, very good business companies.

They got into the game early on in different ways, but they knew that if they didn't, they could be completely disintermediated. So they figured out ways in which to incorporate it as a rail. Cards are not going anywhere anytime soon. We we just talked about RAIN, and the whole business is built on that. And so they've they've found ways in which they can they can enable the blockchain ecosystem with cards.

Is there a world in which, you know, you know, interchange is expensive and everybody is gonna just start sending each other, you know, wallet to wallet? I think to some extent, there will be some, kind of eating into the eating into the card spend, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, I don't think I don't think it's going to be significant anytime soon. So at least that's that's kind of my thing. And again, you're talking to somebody who's going after traditional financial institutions.

So just maybe the the way I think. I know that there are people who I talk to regularly who actually believe that this whole thing's gonna blow up and it's gonna be all great and different, but it's not what I've seen, and it's not what I expect to happen. You you mean people who are saying, like, everything's moving on chain. These Exactly. Okay. And you think that we're we're living in more of a world where, like, both sides are gonna win and coexistence is gonna probably be more likely.

This is this is the other thing where I was I was on a panel once where we got into a pretty heated discussion about. I thought my my opinion is SIBER coins will be rails. They will not become ubiquitous in terms of the way people hold and pay for things. It will be a back end system for the most part. I think there are markets where there's a there's a need for stablecoins, for more stable stablecoins, you know, US dollar backed stablecoins or euro backed stablecoins. But that's a very niche and unique case.

It's not the general case, and I think more spend, more consumer spend is going to be card related or, you know, bank related, but stablecoins will will be powering the rails on the back end. Yep. What what was the opposing side of that heated debate? That everybody was gonna be using stablecoins to pay for things, and everybody was gonna be using stablecoins to pay for each other. Ultimately, that came from a belief that blockchain will disintermediate

anything else that exists today. Any any things about the space that you think that you opinions that you find are deeply felt in terms of how you are now building the company, strongly held convictions that you have around what you do believe to be true about the future of this space based on the history that you've gone through.

Any anything come to mind there, like deeply deep convictions that you have around certain things? I mean, what I just said about stablecoins becoming the rails, I'll tell you, it's it's been interesting to see some of the some of the shifts in the thinking, like, as I've literally seen it happen. Even back in, like, July when I had started the company and I knew who I was going after and I would go talk to these people. I I went and spoke to a lot of the big PSPs. Right?

Like, you know, the Worldpays and the Terra pays and the Tunes and all these guys. And they were all lukewarm about stablecoins. They were like, our entire life is managing our treasury. We really know exactly how to do it extremely efficiently. I remember I talked to Remitly. They literally laughed me out of the room. They were like, I don't know. Like, what is the what is the point really? Like, we know how to how to move money cross border. That's what we do for a living.

And then literally in the last six to eight months, people have started going, yeah, like, you know, this one very large PSP who who were one of the early ones to say, Geeta, I don't see the point. I don't see the point. Told me last week that they now settle 6% of their cross border payments with partners and stablecoins.

And so, you know, that that transition has happened quickly and I've seen it happen and people have realized, wait a minute, like it's not just that, okay, I manage my treasury in all these places, but even that treasury management can be significantly more efficient if I can move the funds there immediately. If the value transfer happens right away, I'm not prefunding. I'm not working with 10 different banks. I'm not asking people to hold money in accounts.

I'm not, you know, I'm not like upstream asking my customer to prefund. And, you know, everybody has everyone's taking big risks. Suddenly, can top up a prefund. If I can give you a story. I've actually told the story on another podcast, but it was so real to me. It just made so much sense. Right? After I left MoneyGram, one of my friends took over the role that I was doing. And I was using MoneyGram to send money to my in laws in India. And so one it usually was instant, like I told you.

The reason why it's instant, it was it was instant. This one time I sent the money, day one, day two, day three, day four, day seven, they didn't receive it. No. And I called the help desk and all that and they were like, you know, we don't know. It'll it'll be there. Don't worry. Whatever. It just was not very so then I called my friend. I was like, dude, what the heck is going on? She was like, Geeta, we ran out of prefund, and it's taking us a while to get the money there. Wow. It was so real to me.

I was like, oh my god. And I would never know that, like, a customer would never actually get that information. They would be like, okay. Money stuck somewhere. Something's going on, whatever. But they wouldn't understand prefund. They wouldn't know any of those things. I happen to know the right person, and I understood what the issue was. But those are real, real things. Right? Is that these companies, these PSPs that are, like, holding money in various places are like, shit. Now my life says shit. Shit.

Now there is you know, like, I ran out. The the flow was more than I expected. And now suddenly, somebody that needed to get paid is not getting paid because I wasn't able to move the next lot of money there fast enough. These are real things that people are realizing, oh, I can solve it with stablecoin. So so simply said, going back to what you were saying in the beginning, whatever account

MoneyGram had set up in that local region just didn't have enough funds. Didn't have enough funds. There was too much coming out. Yeah. And, yeah, issues like that can be created. I I go back to what you shared about Remitly. You're just, like, asking specifically about some of the moments earlier on where you I mean, the term you used was laughed out of the room. What were the things that those teams or even operators still today may be missing?

If you could go back and kind of, like, have a part two to that conversation, what were the things that teams in that position who weren't taking this seriously but now are, what were they missing at that time? What are they now realizing to be true? I spoke to one CEO of a large PSP

who told me, I don't need to be first, Kita. I'm gonna wait for a couple of years. We'll see if this goes anywhere, and then we'll do. Now they actually very recently released some big stablecoin news. If I tell you what it is, you know who it is, so I won't say it. But but the CEO told me in May, he told me, I'm not interested. Don't wanna do anything with stablecoins right now. I don't need to be early. It's too much of a risk for me. Less than a year ago. Less than May May, Rascal.

And I think it went from there to a lot of people going, okay, this is a thing. If I miss out, I will be left out. I could be left behind. Let me let me at least announce something. Let me have a partnership with somebody and just and just announce something. They stop there, and they're like, okay. Me do a small POC. There's usually usually there's an innovation team. The the the, you know, kind of digital forward thinking team. They're like, go figure something. The Kai Sheffield. That's exactly the Kai Sheffield.

They go they'll go do, like, a little POC with something, and then they realize, shit. This stuff actually makes sense. And then it starts expanding from there where they're at. This point where there's actually a lot of real moments happening,

and it's it's like we're at this beginning of, hey. We are engaged. The volumes aren't crazy, but we actually realize that we're onto something really big here. But we're still not, like, experiencing liftoff in the in ways that feel extremely notable from a volume standpoint. I guess if you were to look macro, where do you think we're at in the adoption curve of all of these relationships,

these teams you've spoken with, past employers that you've had who are now finally in the position where they're like, hey, we we wanna adopt this. We think that this is this this is the best. We're not laughing you out of the room anymore. Like, you were right. Where are we at in relation to chip to what is now possible? Are we still are we are we, like, halfway there? Where would you say we're at in that in that?

I think I honestly think we're at that beginning of the hockey stick at this point because I have seen that shift in literally the last eight months since Genius. Everyone thought we were at the beginning of the hockey stick at various points in the last few years, but I think we've we're we're actually there now because I am actually seeing real real real adoption, meaningful adoption. There are there were a few companies doing that little innovation POC thing.

There are many companies doing the innovation POC thing now. And so I think it's going to ramp, and then it's going to go like, I think year from now, most banks, most PSPs will be both either involved in it in some way. And PSPs work a lot faster than the banks. I think PSPs will be running their business on stablecoins. Yep.

What is typically we said it in the top of the conversation, like, the journey that these companies take to implement these proof of concepts, scale up these systems, the the trusted brand partners that they go to first to actually get these things off the ground. What where do you think a lot of the the traditional financial teams like, how do they where are they going first right now? What would where would you recommend they go first if if they're wanting to get something like this off the ground?

I feel like there's such a gap in education and gap in understanding. What is the recommended steps to take? Maybe specifically have a little proof of concept going. What now? Is it just scaling that proof of concept out? What are you seeing work well with some of these more scaled use cases that are starting to take flight? What's the recommended playbook there? I think first off, from a use case perspective,

depending on the kind of financial institution, they need to identify the right use cases for them even to do the POC. So me and my team, we've generally believe that right now, the product market fit is cross border payment. If you're involved in cross border payments, like I've talked to domestic banks in The US, I cannot give them a solution because there's nothing the stablecoins don't necessarily solve something for them when they literally only do domestic traffic.

So So where this cross border payments involved and we work with a lot of emerging markets. Where this cross border payments involved, we recommend that they start with one corridor, whether they're on the send side or the receive side, and then start building out from there to multiple corridors. The one thing that and to your question about where do they go first, talk to me, I would say. But but, depending on whether you're on the send side and you're seeing demand where people are like, hey.

I'd like to pay out these places in stablecoins because I have contractors in Argentina. I have, you know, payroll in Venezuela. Then, you know, you have demand where you actually need to get on the sense side of stablecoins. That that part's easy. If you're managing cross border rails today where they're you know, it's a difficult rail because there are multiple banks in the middle of that. And by the time it gets to the other end, it takes time. You're doing t plus six settlement.

Obvious need to start looking at stablecoin as a rail. Your customer does not need to know at that point that you're using stablecoin as a rail, but that's a that's a good place to start a POC. But I really think me and my team have really put a lot of thought into the receive side.

So what we really feel is that banks in receive countries and in emerging markets with this net inflow, ultimately, whether it's remittance, whether it's b to b, whatever it might be, that receive side banks actually need to start actively getting into this so they can receive stablecoins and become that center point of stablecoin to fiat conversion in their country. This goes back to whereas in the past, was like, hey. Come and open a an account with me prefunded. Sounds good. And I'll pay out locally.

It's like, I will receive stablecoins. I will do all the things required that I am obligated to do as a financial institution. And I will, you know, whatever compliance checks I need to run, you know, customer obligations I have to make sure that they are paid out exactly what their ex you know, they they they have to be paid out. I will make sure that I can do all of that, but I will become the center point of receiving Snapple coins in the country. That is a whole new business model.

That's a whole new business for these banks. Right? And some of the smaller banks in many countries are starting to say, you're right. There's actually value in this. I'm missing out on FX. I'm losing deposits to others who are actually taking these customers away from me. And now they're starting to look at, okay, what would it take for me to become? And I think that will also drive adoption on the sense side because on the sense side, banks are like, wait.

I'm sending this to some small crypto company who's gonna off ramp it for me. That I don't know about that. But now it's like, oh, I'm sending it to a bank who's the hastard party on the other side. So they are also willing to make that leap and actually send

you use the stablecoin rails. What what do banks in these emerging markets right now, what are they feeling like? Are they excited about this idea? Are they like, okay. Finally, we've been, you know, wanting to figure this out. Are they just now getting on base with things like stablecoins? Bring us into some of those conversations with some of these emerging banks in these markets. What are they confused by? What are they excited by? What is that like right now? I think in general, there's a lot of excitement.

I think there's a lot of something new that we can now try to figure out.

I think the fear of losing deposits is becoming real. So people leaving the bank and going to Coinbase and, you know, getting an account there. And so now they receive all their money there, the bank has lost the deposits altogether. Actually, there was an art there was very interesting to me and the team. There was, a study done of community banks in The US who were, like, they're not really gonna be doing a lot of cross border.

But community banks are actually losing a lot of their deposits to the con bases of the world. And they've done the research, they've realized that this is like, it's it's happening at a 100 times the rate in emerging markets. So lot a of these banks are definitely starting to feel the pressure of that, and they're starting to see, oh, not only can I keep the deposits, but I have a whole new line of business where I now get effects on these flows that actually come in?

Where the, I wouldn't say confusion, where the little bit of hesitation comes is in many countries, the regulation is not clear. It's not don't do it. It's not do it. It's a gray area. Some banks are willing to say, okay. You know what? The way to get around that gray area, I'm gonna create a subsidiary that does all the crypto related things so that it's not directly associated with the bank in case the regulators come calling. Bancolombia, for example, has a subsidiary called Venia.

Banco Azteca in Mexico has one called Coinpro where they've broken out and said, alright. I'm just going to focus on crypto here because I know there's value. I don't want to lose deposits. But at the same time, don't want it to be directly related to the bank, so I'm gonna do it this way. But a lot of banks are still trying to figure out what is the way that they can actually do that. Some some countries, you know, emerging markets have very clear regulations.

Brazil, for example, is one of kind of the most, like, the best regulated markets. So people know what can they do, what can't they do. That's basically all they need to know. Right? And if they don't know that, they're like, how do I get around it? What risk am I willing to take? That's the hesitation.

Compare and contrast this difference of, like, the belief you have around the cross border payments need, the emerging market bank use case, what that unlocks with this domestic use case. I my mind is going to, like, the businesses that, you know, recently have been getting some attention, like StableCore, Omnia. These are companies that are really focused on, like, Stablecoin enabled functionality for, I think, mainly domestic US banks. Yep. Like,

what are we missing about like, do you just fundamentally disagree or not see the opportunity there, Or what is the kind of side by side here of the opportunity in your mind? It that's a it's a it's a it's a very good question. And very honestly, I have struggled to see the opportunity on the domestic side.

This research that came out about community banks actually seeing high net worth, high yield, you know, kind of people looking for high yield moving over to stablecoin providers or crypto providers was was an interesting thing. Okay. Yeah. So now I I I can see kind of the value there.

But outside of that, to me, the instant flow of funds to places where that couldn't happen was to me the real value of stablecoins today, you know, till it becomes more entrenched in the systems and p and people start using it and holding it. I did not see the value on the domestic side. And it's again, I may be being shortsighted, but it is something that we as a team have still our thesis is very much around cross border. Yeah. Yeah. And and maybe, you know, there's a distinct focus for each of them.

Given your background, it makes sense why the pain that you've seen in the cross border side is so felt and so real. Think we would be missing a lot if we didn't just talk specifically about what you're building now. So what have we missed? What have we not covered? What specifically do you wanna call out around how what you're building now relates to this conversation around cross border?

I'm sure a lot of it is like, we've kind of danced around it a little bit, but like, what does what is the role that TESR plays in this conversation? What are some of the early maybe case studies or wins that you're excited about to share that help can help people

maybe wrap their head around, practically speaking, how people work with you guys today? Yeah. No. Absolutely. Thank you for that. That is that is obviously important for me to talk wanna end the podcast off that. Very important for me to talk about. They they there are there are multiple stablecoin payment orchestrators. There are the you know, obviously, Bridge and BBNK now incredibly, you know, well known. All host of others that do similar things that actually can move money for you on stablecoins.

What they fundamentally do is they go kind of around a financial institution and they go directly to the merchants and say, I'm licensed. I can move the money for you and I can move it cheaper, faster, etcetera. Again, going back to what I started the conversation with my thesis is that, ultimately, these financial institutions as we've seen with Brazilian BB and K, they got absorbed into larger financial institutions.

So it's you know, I do believe these these larger financial institutions will will get into it and want to do this on their own. If they wanna do this on their own, they don't wanna rely on another third party who is licensed, which means that they're trusting that this licensed third party's kind of regulatory framework is good enough for them. And that when the regulators come knocking, they won't just be like, well well, he did it. Like, I don't know. They can't do that. Banks especially.

PSPs, some of them, you know, a little bit poor. And I think PSP's motivations are different. It's much more commercially motivated than it is regulatory. But for banks, I think there's definitely the regulatory, you know, kind of element of it, which is that I can't give it up to somebody else. So but what? I mean, are they gonna go hire 10 blockchain people and build everything from the ground up? Some of them will. Lot of the big ones are. All the the, you know, the GSIBs are doing that.

But there are, like, 45,000 banks and PSBs in the world. Right? And not all of them are gonna go out and do this on their own. In fact, many of them, you know, still have to understand the space enough to know what it is that they want to build. So in a way, what we set out to do was really to say, look. You need to do this yourself, but you don't need to go build the whole thing yourself. We have the technology. We have the payment processing know how and capabilities so we can work very well with you.

Not to diss anybody else, but there are a lot of similar providers in the space who come from crypto and who come from not necessarily from payments processing. So people who've been through the pain of payments processing really understand what needs to be built to make it easy for a bank to then absorb and reconcile. And, like, reconciliation is something that people just relegate to the background. It is bloody painful to do, especially people processing large amounts of payments.

So we make sure that all of those things are incorporated into the stack. So we provide not only the blockchain technology, which is the wallets and the cross chain and, you know, multi token and, you know, anything fiat backed will do. But then we also help with, like, the treasury management of those coins and, like, cross chain swapping, which they don't wanna deal with and gas management. You know how painful that is. And then, you know, what what do you need from a compliance perspective?

You can establish your own compliance. Like, take your compliance requirements and put it into the blockchain world as well rather than depending on somebody else to do it. And then make the payments and ensure that you're fully able to reconcile every single dime that went out of your bank because you owe somebody else. This is not your money. You're moving money on behalf of somebody else. So we have set our platform allows a financial institution to perform all of their obligations but through blockchain.

And that is that's fundamental. And so if you flip that to the receive side, same thing. What are your obligations as a receiver? How do you want to handle the, you know, management of the stablecoins that actually flow in? All of that, we will we will help you do. Amazing.

Just so I can mentally model this a little bit, what are some of the key pieces of that that you will rely or, like, trusted partners, maybe on the wallet side or compliance side or whatever? Like, what are some of the things that you have you you have built in partnership with others versus the things that maybe seem like core Yeah. Proprietary tech? Like, what's the difference there? I'm thinking, like, like, the wallet side. Are you doing that in house? Are you partnering? What what does that look like? Yeah. No.

Absolutely. On the wallet side, we are partnering. We have a wallet as a service provider who actually provides us the wallet. But to be honest, we're looking at actually having a menu of those so that we're not just doing one. The other thing is a couple of the

customers we've we've spoken with are like, I don't know. Like, I have to hold the private key, self custody, not really sure. I'm scared. So then they want a third party custodian. So we actually have scenarios where we work with a third party holder of the funds as well. And then, on and off ramps, like, you know, it has to be it's it's embedded within within the platform, and we, are, you know, are integrated with a number of on and off ramps, you know, throughout, like, globally.

But at the same time, we're not locally licensed, so it's not stuff that we can do. And there is, like, a process of onboarding our customer over to the on or off ramp provider. But because we're integrated with them once the onboarding is done, all of the, you know, the payment calls are all handled by us. Again, that allows us to get into the reconciliation flow, etcetera. So, yeah, so we do have a couple of partners that we actually work with to do that. And it's all embedded within within the platform.

Like, white label is kinda behind the scenes. Yes. Exactly. Like, a defense borderless Yes. Relationship with these kind the kinds of partners that you would be working with or some folks like Absolutely. So, you know, again, when I when I talk to a lot of banks, I'm like, look. My superpower is being your payments processor. It's not building the network. There are people building the network. And I will connect into all the networks that there are so I can get you the best service possible.

But maybe you as a bank are only sending to, I don't know, Nigeria and Malaysia, then we don't need a network. I will connect to those off ramp providers. But if you do need a network, I will work with Borderless. I will work with CPN. I will work with whoever there is. There are a few right now, to to make sure that I can get you the best service.

And over time, the vision is that, you know, I will plug into the networks and get you the best price service, the the fastest service, the way you can get the best liquidity, all of those things. Right? So my job is, again, to be your processor, what are your needs, and to make sure that those are addressed on the platform. What do you think you do better than anyone else right now in the market? I mean, I'll be honest with you.

Like like I said, I don't think there are a lot of people in the market that actually understand these large financial institutions and what their needs are. So what we're building is so purpose built for them to either send or receive cross border payments. So that is what we do, and that is what we do really, really, really well. And just from my own vantage point, to confirm that and amplify that, you there are there are many builders who are very smart,

are very well funded, who are gonna go build great things. More power to them. Yeah. But there's something really special about you and your ability to relate and to to connect and and see specifically that that those who you're serving are going through and say, like, I'm not just listening to you say this to me and kind of diagnosing some, like, solution that I think makes sense. It's like you are building everything from first principles knowing that experience very, very, very closely.

I think that there's this really special place in in building something that matters when you actually can have that level of

understanding for who you're building for. I think that's a really We believe that. We absolutely believe that. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for

saying it that way. Yeah. We would love to, you know, continue doing stuff like this and helping, I think, expose something we're trying to think through is, like, how can we really amplify the expertise of people like you and the story that you have, the the perspective you have? Because there are there are so many ways that even me a conversation like this can scale and be consumable by maybe someone all over the world who's in a leadership position of a bank.

Hopefully, if this podcast does what it's supposed to do, there there are executives and leaders in business all over the world who are trying to solve these problems when it comes to modernizing their own bank or their own thing and using media as a way to scale the expertise and the the value that someone like you can bring. So I really appreciate your com your your time here in this conversation. Is there anything that we missed?

Anything that you feel like we didn't cover or that you wanted to go back to that before we close here? I know this has been a a long one. Anything we missed that you would feel bad that we didn't cover? No. I don't think so. I think you got through a lot of it. The space is obviously, you know, huge, and we can go on forever. But I think you got through all of it. So thank you. It was great. Well, you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for being in it. Excellent. Thank you so much.