# Alfred survived on $400K in Stellar grants before turning profitable and raising a Series A

Stableminded, a Stabledash show. Jul 16, 2026. Diego Yanez.
https://live.stabledash.com/shows/stableminded/episodes/latin-america-has-been-ready-for-stablecoins-for-20-years-0mkXqvkD5aw

Founder Diego Yanez describes how a family-run stablecoin payments company moved from a consumer wallet to regional B2B infrastructure, with Western Union as a partner.

Alfred, a stablecoin payments company working across Latin America, got through its early years on about $400K in grants from Stellar, founder Diego Yanez said in an interview. He says the company had to turn profitable before raising a penny from investors, and it later raised a Series A in October backed by F-Prime, Brevan Howard and White Star Capital.

## From wallet to infrastructure

Alfred started as a non-custodial wallet using USDC to send remittances into Latin America, modeled on Cash App. Yanez says the team spent so much time on the pipes and infrastructure that it pivoted to B2B stablecoin payments infrastructure in 2023. The name comes from Batman: the company wants its fintech and merchant customers to be Batman while it works on the back end.

Its biggest early customer was Worldcoin, introduced by Circle Ventures, which first turned down an investment and later became an investor. Yanez says Worldcoin ran two to three million unique transactions on the platform.

## Western Union and cross-border growth

Alfred signed with Western Union at the end of last year and is part of its digital asset network across LATAM. Yanez cites the Western Union CEO saying the company holds north of $2 billion in treasury, capital he says it can put to work by settling via stablecoins.

Over the last eight plus months, Yanez says, Alfred has become a cross-border payments company, with north of 60% of its flow cross-border. He credits regulation and more serious players, including banks and multinationals, using the technology as a settlement layer.

## Local currencies and ARSA

Alfred operates as a regulated PSP in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, and holds a PSAV license in Argentina. It disclosed ARSA, a tokenized Argentine peso it began building in 2021. Yanez says customers need local balances, but the company does not want to be an issuer and is looking at a partnership with EtherFuse. He believes agents will execute payments and will need tokenized local currencies to exchange value in the region.

## A family business

Yanez's father is GM of Mexico and, he says, drives about 60% of Alfred's revenue. His mother is head of treasury, and cousins handle business operations.

Yanez argues Latin America has had product-market fit for stablecoins for 20 plus years, pointing to dollarized economies like Venezuela and Argentina. In his account, Alfred has built on that demand by staying lean and building regulated local operations, in a business he describes as one of trust, not just money movement.

## Key takeaways

1. Alfred lived on about $400K in Stellar grants and turned profitable before raising investor money, then closed a Series A from F-Prime, Brevan Howard and White Star Capital.
2. Yanez says more than 60% of Alfred's flow is now cross-border payments, a shift that took place over the last eight months.
3. Alfred revealed ARSA, a tokenized Argentine peso, though Yanez says the company does not want to be a stablecoin issuer.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Preview of themes and a Venezuelan founder's path to Miami
- 3:44 Family members set Alfred's culture of trust and accountability
- 7:39 Alfred pivoted from consumer wallet to B2B infrastructure in 2023
- 10:14 WorldCoin became the anchor customer through a Circle introduction
- 14:12 Profitability and Stellar grants came before a Series A
- 15:50 Latin America's dollarization and cash economy make remittances about trust
- 22:05 Stablecoin settlement frees incumbents' pre-funded liquidity
- 26:13 Alfred is going deeper into the stack with virtual accounts and ARSA
- 30:54 Latin American markets differ and need local teams
- 34:28 Local stablecoins as a product need, not an issuer business
- 39:33 Cross-border flows now exceed 60% and partners cover other regions
- 43:45 Payments run on trust, and institutions are now adopting stablecoins

## Transcript

**Diego Yanez** (0:00)

The name Alfred comes from Batman, meaning the fintechs, the businesses, the merchants of the world, we want them to be Batman. And we're just on the back end, just making their life easier and providing infrastructure.

**Drew Rogers** (0:10)

The reality is that when you look at Latin America,

**Diego Yanez** (0:13)

it's been product market fit for stablecoins for 20 plus years. You have countries like Venezuela, countries like Argentina that are already dollarized. There is a secondary market for access to dollars. How do you expect somebody to have access to dollars when they don't have access to a bank account? This is not just money movement. This is a business of trust. We heard Western Union CEO speak recently. It's north of $2 billion that they have in treasury.

Now, they're going to be able to put that capital to work because they're doing settlements via stablecoins. The reality is that Latin America is not a one-shoe-fits-all solution. But we've been able to build something that makes it feel that way. How are you going to exchange value in Latin America if you don't have a tokenized version of the local currency? And the way that we win this, obviously, is distribution, and distribution is built on trust and scale.

**Drew Rogers** (1:00)

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.

Diego, thanks for being on Stableminded.

**Diego Yanez** (1:30)

Absolutely, man. I've been looking forward to this. Thank you for having us.

**Drew Rogers** (1:32)

So we're in your city. We're here in Miami. Yup. Best city in the world. Best city in the world.

**Diego Yanez** (1:38)

I will say it. Best city. And the people who are here are feeling it and they're denying it at the same time.

**Drew Rogers** (1:45)

How long have you lived

**Diego Yanez** (1:46)

here? 25 years. So born in Venezuela, moved here at the age of six and been here now for 25 plus years.

**Drew Rogers** (1:54)

Amazing. So I'm really excited for, you know, this podcast, our community is really focused, especially right now on what's being built at the frontier of money and really sitting down with the people who are a part of that and building businesses that are helping money move forward and thinking about what's around the corner with things like stablecoins and really excited to hear about how you've been thinking about that. I want to start though with Where you've been so far and what you've built so far.

You said you were born in Venezuela and you moved to the US 25 years ago. When did the idea of starting a company come into your head? What's the journey of being a founder?

**Diego Yanez** (2:33)

In all reality, we never started out for wanting to build a company. It was just, it turned into like a school project that just evolved into a business. School

**Drew Rogers** (2:44)

project.

**Diego Yanez** (2:45)

Not literally school, but something that we were passionate about that we wanted to solve and quite literally went from a project and evolved in the stages of a project into a real business, right?

And I think being from Venezuela, a ton of exposure to inflation, a ton of exposure to remittances, And I think one of the things that for me really inspired me to build Alfred was seeing applications here like Cash App, Venmo, how seamless it was to move money peer-to-peer from me and my friends and pretty much all up until now, you know, sending cross-border remittances back into Latin America, whether it's family, friends, Stabledash Global, Stabledash Live, Stabledash Live, Stabledash Live, Stabledash Live,

**Drew Rogers** (3:44)

The way that the company feels like a family. I think a lot of people were like, this isn't a family, this is a championship team. And we've heard that, like when I was at Coinbase, that was like something that they would say proudly, like, we're not a family, we're a team. What do you think about that? Because I know that Alfred, what seems so special about it culturally is some of the people at the company are family.

It really feels like when you even work with Alfred externally, it feels like you're working with a family, which I have personally loved. What do you think about that?

**Diego Yanez** (4:16)

Yeah so I mean just to give deeper context on it we scaled from like eight employees to 40 in a matter of like four months and it was just like hyper scale mode uh we needed people to put out fires in different areas and the first people I can count on was my family um so I mean kind of to what you're saying cousins are in the business mom is in the business dad is in the business and truthfully I mean we got so lucky because it happened by accident And without even knowing, we were actually setting the foundation of what the culture at our company is today.

So pretty much everybody that comes from the outside in comes into that culture of, not only do we care about you, but we're gonna get things done, we're gonna be efficient, and we're gonna hold each other accountable. And I always say I love it because obviously we're in tech and we're Hispanic. My family's Hispanic and Hispanics are very much like hugs. I love you. Let's grab a drink together. And again, seeing engineers come into that space, that might seem uncomfortable.

You'll see them at like our end of the year parties a little bit you know tipsy and they'll be like I love you and it's just like you start you start seeing some of that and and it's amazing and again I think that the biggest thing is when you're building something with someone you need trust and you need accountability and for us we guarantee you that some of the folks that we have today that our family at our company You know, they're setting the bar for folks that are coming in, right?

And I think that that's something that again, it happened by accident, but we've been really blessed in the way that it's happened.

**Drew Rogers** (5:49)

Yeah. What are some of the roles that your family plays in the business? Your mom, dad, cousins? What

**Diego Yanez** (5:54)

are they doing? So my dad is the GM of Mexico. My dad is actually our number one sales guy in the company. Let's go. Shout out to dad.

**Drew Rogers** (6:01)

Old man is driving like

**Diego Yanez** (6:03)

60% of revenue in the company and he makes sure he's letting everybody know. What's

**Drew Rogers** (6:11)

his background? What did he do before this?

**Diego Yanez** (6:12)

My dad has been a true salesman his whole life. He used to be in alcohol and in the wine business. He used to be in the tobacco business. Just a Miami salesman. And once we started really growing and we wanted to open up an office in Mexico, I wanted somebody to go down there and be with my partner Ernesto. And I'm like, dad, I think this is a good time for you to go down there and help me really build this office from the ground up. My parents are in a later stage in their life and super willing to do things.

Obviously, no one's at home and he sent it. And I tell people now, my dad is more Mexican than he is Venezuelan. He loves it down there. And anyways, he's leading the initiative down there. My mom is in the business too. My mom is actually our head of treasury. So she's handling all money movement within the platform. Who better to trust with your money than your mother? Come on. It's a fair point. And then you have some of my cousins who are handling more of like the biz ops and day-to-day operations.

And it's funny because I, whenever we have to You know, have hard conversations with partners. I just send the girls and the girls will get it done. Like Anna and team will get it done. And they build a good reputation within the ecosystem. It's funny because people talk to me like, you know, Anna and Isa are, they're killers, yada, yada. Some of them know that they're family, some of them don't. And it's just like, yeah, man, you better behave, because... Oh,

**Drew Rogers** (7:39)

man. That's good. That's really sweet. So it sounds like you've found a way to make that really special and work. About a year ago, I guess now, we were going back to Mexico City this June, next month, probably around the time this comes out. And it was really cool to go to the office and do that with you guys and co-host that party with WorldCoin and meet your family. It was such a sweet spirit.

Give us, as we kind of kick off this conversation, what is Alfred and what does the business look like now versus maybe what you thought it was going to be when you started?

**Diego Yanez** (8:14)

So Alfred focused on B2B stablecoin payments infrastructure across Latin America. And we just help businesses move money cross-border between local currencies and stables. And the reality is that that's not how we started. Going back to the remittance piece, we started wanting to do something similar to Cash App into the region. So a wallet, non-custodial wallet that uses USDC to send payments into LATAM.

And I would say in our early years, we spent probably a year and a half, two years in licenses, liquidity, compliance, and...

**Drew Rogers** (8:46)

Retail focused. You wanted to build an individual product.

**Diego Yanez** (8:49)

We quickly realized that we were spending so much time on the pipes, the infrastructure, and we had the conviction that there would exist a future where stablecoins would start to overtake over the payments industry and much more talented and well-funded and bigger companies would want to come into the region. And leverage this technology as a medium of exchange and use these settlement rails. And that's pretty much what we pivoted Alfred to be in 2023.

So the name Alfred comes from Batman, meaning the fintechs, the businesses, the merchants of the world, we want them to be Batman. And we're just on the back end, just making their life easier and providing infrastructure that's just going to help them scale and be successful in LATAM.

**Drew Rogers** (9:31)

I didn't know that. I had never asked that question, but I absolutely love that. But the A, it's not capitalized, it's

**Diego Yanez** (9:38)

lowercase. We like to keep it clean. Tima's done a great job.

**Diego Yanez** (9:51)

For those who don't know, we used Stable Studios to actually do our last rebrand and check it out, alfredpay.io. These guys did an awesome job. Thank you a ton.

**Drew Rogers** (10:02)

I think that was the last rebrand site we did before we went all in. We've done a lot of things, but I think that was the last one we did. It was a clean site. So you make this decision to go from the cash app retail mindset to B2B. When we were grabbing coffee, you were telling me about some of these kind of pivotal landmark moments. Talk a little bit about the customer base and those kind of deflection points for the business.

**Diego Yanez** (10:32)

For us, I mean, again, we focused on building infrastructure. And one of the cool things about how we landed our biggest early customer, which was WorldCoin, was through taking calls with investors, trying to fundraise. And one of the investors who told us no, which was Circle Ventures, who's now an investor today. Shout out to Circle. They're like, hey, I have a portfolio company. I need services in Argentina. Can you guys help them out? And truthfully, I mean, it's super impressive what they've done in the region.

The growth that they've had across LATAM has been humongous. I believe a ton in their mission and what they're set out to build. And again, that really goes to what Alfred's core mission is, is to help other companies be successful across the region. And we always have had early customers that were wallets, customers like MetaMask, customers like SafePal. Those were some of our really early customers. But in terms of traction and actually like heavy volume in transactions, it was really WorldCoin, right?

**Drew Rogers** (11:30)

What were they doing specifically? What is and was their business at that time? And what did they leverage Alfred to solve?

**Diego Yanez** (11:38)

Just getting funds in and out of the wallet, right? So obviously, WorldCoin is a non-custodial wallet that supports Stablecoins, WLD. And for us, we're helping their users either go from local currency into stables into the app or stables or WLD into local fiat into their bank accounts. And for us, again, I think with WorldCoin in total, we probably ran like a total of two to three million total transactions on our platform.

**Drew Rogers** (12:00)

Unique transactions?

**Diego Yanez** (12:01)

Unique transactions,

**Drew Rogers** (12:02)

yeah. What is a typical on and off ramp size-wise for them?

**Diego Yanez** (12:07)

It depends. Unfortunately, they're also pretty tied to the market with some customers in terms of WLD and where the price is trading.

**Drew Rogers** (12:14)

That's an interesting problem because, you know, you have, I'm thinking about going from fiat to stablecoin versus WLD to fiat. Was that one of the unique things that you provided was like both sides of that where you guys, mom was also managing the WLD to off? Was that kind of a unique part of that?

**Diego Yanez** (12:31)

I mean, part of our stock, we're connected to both LPs, exchanges. We're sourcing liquidity from all sorts of places. And that was a core solution that we gave them, right? But I think like one of the, going back to like our journey, it's like one of the cool things about that. And I think that every company needs that, right? Was like an anchor customer. And pretty much what the story that I gave our team is you take a look at a customer, like a company like DLocal. And D-Local's biggest customer was Uber.

That's how they really went zero to one. And now D-Local is a publicly traded company that covers infrastructure globally and obviously they do tremendously well. And that was really the narrative in that point in time for our team was, hey guys, we have this customer that's giving us this scale and this opportunity to really showcase our product in the wild. Now we gotta go out and grow beyond that, right?

And I think that that's one of the things that I'm most proud of is seeing how we've taken advantage of the moment to really expand our business way beyond that. And I would say that today, I mean, most of the flows that we do are B2B based. Anything from banks needing stablecoin infrastructure to import exporters to fintechs. And yeah, and again, I mean, I think that there's two things that play in our favor really well.

One is stablecoins are booming and we took the right bet five years ago, which I take zero credit for. What was that

**Drew Rogers** (13:53)

bet?

**Diego Yanez** (13:54)

That stablecoins were going to roll payments and that this was the future of money movement. And then two, that Latin America is just a region that is growing so, so, so much and there would be companies that want to go into the region to really extract value from it.

**Drew Rogers** (14:12)

Yeah, so last couple years, you guys, even just a couple months ago now, you have, was it Series A? What's the kind of core funding journey so far? What was the Series A

**Diego Yanez** (14:24)

and where are you at? We had to turn the company profitable before raising a penny from investors. I'm a first time founder and it was really hard. It was really, really hard to raise money in our early days. I was telling you earlier on our walk that one of the reasons why our company is alive today is because of Stellar.

They gave us our first bit of grant and funding and we kind of went through that whole blockchain grant process and All sincerity though, we have been very faithful to them and we have committed to build on their stack. But they really helped us in that process to get us to build a product that was product market fit, right? You said

**Drew Rogers** (15:01)

without them, you wouldn't be here.

**Diego Yanez** (15:03)

Yeah, I mean, honestly, like it's

**Drew Rogers** (15:05)

shout out to them.

**Diego Yanez** (15:05)

Yeah, complete shout out to them. And we make sure to let them know how grateful we are for them. But the reality is that every business needs that, right? You need somebody to believe in you in your early days to really get you going. And, and that was, you know, we went through the grant process, it was about 400k in total grants throughout a few years. And then we raised, yeah, we ended up raising our Series A in October of last year, backed by F Prime, Brevin Howard, and White Star Capital.

And we're just so blessed, man. We have some of the best investors in the world, people who are really for us, supporting us, and yeah, really lean into the process, right? And something that I always tell them, I tell them, I'm like, listen, we would have taken money from anyone. And we got so lucky that it was actually those investors, right? So, yeah.

**Drew Rogers** (15:50)

What has it been like seeing, through the process of building the business, seeing stablecoins erupt in prominence, especially in the region? For people who aren't living in this part of the world, help explain what you have seen and why these things are so popular and why stablecoins in the last couple of years are really, really finding a sense of product market fit in this part of the world.

**Diego Yanez** (16:15)

Yeah, the reality is that when you look at Latin America, it's been product market fit for stablecoins for 20 plus years, right? Why? Because you have countries like Venezuela, countries like Argentina that are already dollarized. That's the number one mindset that you need to change in a consumer and in a business. I need access to dollars. Again, an example of Venezuela and Argentina, countries that deal with tons of hyperinflation, there is a secondary market for access to dollars.

And I think what stablecoins have done right bring stablecoins in they've made us more accessible to everybody and I think that that's one of the reasons why we're so passionate about building this right it's you know everybody deserves access to safe haven and savings right and that's really the way that we've used stablecoins and And why we're so focused, not only on building certain payment methods, but all payment methods that really cater to everybody in the country, right?

Not just your business, but also consumers, from business owners to folks that are running mom and pop shops to grandmas that are picking up remittances.

**Drew Rogers** (17:25)

What do you think about the... I think lately we're starting to see these really big partnerships come to life with some of the traditional incumbents who are now starting to adopt things like stablecoins. Thinking about Western Union's announcement earlier this week and all that stuff that they've been doing. What do you think about...

How do you think that's going to shake out in terms of new kids on the block, the neobanks and the apps who are coming in and maybe doing what a Lemon Cash was doing or things like this within certain markets versus the incumbents who are updating their rails with things like stablecoins? How does Alfred think about going to market with those different use cases? Are you spending more time thinking about empowering the incumbent use cases or more so We're

**Diego Yanez** (18:14)

building infrastructure for everyone. So we're working with both the incumbents. We signed with Western Union to finish last year. So we're part of the digital asset network for them across LATAM.

**Drew Rogers** (18:26)

What does that look like practically?

**Diego Yanez** (18:28)

Yeah, so Digital Asset Network is basically giving access to folks to cash, basically trading stablecoins into cash or cash into stablecoins, right? So to what I mentioned about building for everyone, you need to understand that there's a massive cash economy in Latin America, right? And how do you expect somebody to have access to dollars when they don't have access to a bank account? And now with Western Union and both MoneyGram, they're both doing this.

You have given the ability for someone who's unbanked to fight hyperinflation via different wallets and apps that they can access through this network that Western Union and MoneyGram has spent many, many years building that are networks of tremendous high trust in this region. And I'll give you an example. This is the most Hispanic thing ever. So when I say my nanny, it's the lady who raised me. So we brought her from Venezuela. She's actually raising my kids now here in Miami. She's still with me. That's awesome.

This woman though, she sends money every... What's her name? We call her Nana. Nana. This woman sends money every single week to Colombia. Okay. And for her, she needs to go to a mom and pop shop here in Miami to send money. And I'm like, nana, you know that that's what I do for a living. That's how we pay you. Like, what do you need? And I'll send money. She's like, no, he picks up Vianeki, yada, yada.

I'm like, I can open my laptop and send your son a payment Vianeki in one second at the best effects rate you're gonna get in the market. And she's like, no, I need to do it with Giovanni because Giovanni gives me the best. And long story short, it's like this is not just money movement. This is a business of trust. And this remittance network of people that send remittances have built trust with the agencies that they send with and the agencies that they collect, right?

So on the other side of it, there's another component of trust. It's like, hey, when I need to go pick up my money, Don't you dare send it to me on this application because I need to go see X, Y, and Z person at the shop that I buy my coffee and my sugar from to get my money. Again.

**Drew Rogers** (20:41)

Where do you think the trust comes in? Because when I think about trust being required, That typically comes with like a sense of risk or a sense of downside, like downside potential. What does that look like? The relationship there to your point seems like it's really emphasized. Is it like these people have really come to trust that They're going to have the money. They're going to deliver it. How do

**Diego Yanez** (21:07)

you... It's a relationship that they build with the other person on the other side. It's a human relationship. And they don't want to lose

**Drew Rogers** (21:13)

that.

**Diego Yanez** (21:13)

Yeah. It's like I trust Giovanni or I trust Pedro that he's going to have my money because I've been sending money via these channels my whole life. Fortunately, those things are changing, right? But if we want adoption today, we need to cater to everybody who's in this ecosystem, right? And that is core people who are in this ecosystem.

And I think that that's what the incumbents like MoneyGram and Western Union are really aiming to do via digital asset network and MoneyGram access is making sure that everybody's included in this process. And I think that that's super, super important. Although I have to say I'm also tremendously excited to see companies like Felix having tremendous growth by, you know, doing digital remittances and obviously they still support cash method in countries.

But I do think that our generation is going to slowly start changing this and, you know, payments will become more digitalized.

**Drew Rogers** (22:05)

Yeah. So rounding out the Nana use case, what is happening for her right now if she's doing it the traditional way? And maybe we can break down some of the downsides of that from a time or cost or efficiency standpoint versus now what is possible with partnerships like you guys have with Western Union. And where do you guys fit into that?

**Diego Yanez** (22:29)

So the reality is that nena nor nena's son suffer any of the pain. I mean, they suffer the pain of the fees, but again, la nena rather pay fees for trust than, you know, have that trust be removed, right? And again, I've been living with this woman for 30 years and she still wants to do it with homeboy. She's not changing. She's not changing.

But where this technology changes things is the only reason why her son is able to collect that remittance in real time is because Western Union has agreements with all these agents globally where they're able to have money pools globally. And I think we heard Western Union CEO speak recently that it's a tremendous amount of money. I think it's north of $2 billion that they have in treasury.

All that money now, they're going to be able to put that capital to work because they're doing settlements via stablecoins versus actually having pre-funded pools of liquidity globally. I think that that's just simply going to empower these companies to be better and provide better solutions. We're working with them to see how we can help them improve their liquidity on that side. And we're going to start seeing that across the board with, I think, every single money transfer operator.

That's exactly how Felix operates their business today. They settle payments into USDC, into these local currencies. And I think that that's super, super powerful.

**Drew Rogers** (23:51)

I'd love your insights on the relationship between physical cash versus what it looks like some of these players are starting to do with digital wallets. And when I think about maybe what they might be doing historically with cash sitting in these accounts that then has to be liquidated into physical form, And then they kind of lose the economics of that or they lose the relationship to the end customer versus what it seems like is now starting to happen more and more is like maybe these things are stablecoins.

Maybe the transfer of value is happening with the digital wallet and that Western Union dollar issued by Anchorage is like actually now something that exists and it's still issued and it's not burnt and like That is really good for everyone, especially the one who's tied to that stablecoin. Do you see, you know, because it sounds like nanas of the world are kind of set in their ways. Do you see that type of flow becoming more popular over time, or what do you think about that?

**Diego Yanez** (24:51)

For sure. Unfortunately, I don't think nana will ever change her ways. Unfortunately, nana is also 75, so she's going to go see the Lord one day. But the reality is that our generation is changing that, right? And you're seeing tremendous adoption. I mean, shout out to Rain. They're doing a great job with stable back cards. You're seeing tremendous adoption from companies like Cass, companies like Big Get Wallet, companies like Redot Pay.

Because of this, it makes it so easy to transfer value from stablecoin wallet to another wallet real time. And it's spendable directly on a card or you can withdraw that money into your bank account, right? And I think that that's more of what we're going to see in the future. But again, unfortunately, I think the folks who have been, you know, raised by the legacy system are going to remain operating in the legacy system. But we are seeing those numbers change, right? And I think that Brazil is a great example.

You take a look at Brazil. It was a heavy cash-based economy. And then you introduce pigs about five, six years ago. I think it's like 90% plus banked country now, right? And I think that that's what we're going to start seeing across the board, not just because of stablecoins, but also because of improvement on the domestic rails aspect of things, right? And that gets us really, really excited because that caters directly into exactly what we're building at Alfred.

**Drew Rogers** (26:13)

So yeah, exactly what you're building in Alfred, you're thinking about in the example you used prior is like, we're going to help functionally and build economics into the process of asset conversion, transfer, movement. That's your business. Is that like bring us into the example now here with where Alfred sits in when someone's going and they might be getting a stablecoin or converting from a stablecoin.

How do you guys and especially as this stuff remains on chain more and maybe these spreads or as we go toward that reality, how are you guys thinking about building economics and building where you want to play as things become more stablecoin native and sit there it makes very clear sense to me how a business like rain sells into this because you know someone's got to issue that card and do that thing and western union is like not be in that business directly and so that is a very clear value add help me understand where you see alfred winning in this like recipe i guess

**Diego Yanez** (27:20)

So for us, again, like we're offered as a regulated PSP across all the top four markets in Latin America. So Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia. And for us, the biggest goal is to build a deep payment stack, right? And what does that mean? If you take a look at our evolution, we started just like your MoonPays doing on and off ramps, right? So helping folks get in and out of digital assets.

But we realized that for us to grow our value proposition and improve, you know, economics and You know, make folks actually understand that there's stickiness behind our product. We needed to go deeper into the payment stack. So what does that look like today? One of our most popular offerings is our virtual accounts, right? So we offer virtual accounts to both resident and non-resident individuals across the top four countries.

And again, like for us, it's how do we get closer to what a bank actually offers, right? And what does the bank offer you?

account for deposits accounts for payouts and balances right and now that third part of the evolution for us is is balances and we deployed a ARS on chain and and we're going to be deploying local stables across latam So we can give our customers who are interacting with stablecoins the ways to collect funds via virtual accounts, hold those balances, trigger FX whenever they need into both LATAM currencies, dollars, or other foreign currencies. And that's pretty much what our product offering looks like today.

And I would say that you have...

**Drew Rogers** (28:47)

Is that the ARS is the first? That's the first of potentially many that you guys are starting with? Yeah, exactly. When did you start? When was that announced or started?

**Diego Yanez** (28:56)

Right now. Right now. Let's

**Drew Rogers** (28:58)

go. Let's go. You heard it here first. I was like, I didn't hear about that. So

**Diego Yanez** (29:02)

actually, when we started on Stellar, we built an ARS. This was in 2021. It was called ARS-X. Pedro wasn't here with us yet, so the name was ugly. So forgive us. What is it called now? Just ARS? ARSA. ARSA. But basically, for us, the biggest thing was, again, giving our customers the balance, potential yield on the assets that they're holding with us was super, super important. And I'll pin it to you in a very practical way.

For the wallets, it's as simple as a wallet like a CAS can issue their customers VAs across LATAM. And those customers can hold local currency balances and do effects directly on the application from that local currency into USDC. And this is very optimal for getting paid on local currency, transferring money in local currency, and so on. And then for foreign businesses, what we're seeing is foreign businesses love non-resident accounts. Why?

Because you have a business that operates across all of Latin America and they need a scale, but they don't want to have a local subsidiary in every single market. So what they do is that they reach out to an Alfred and say, hey, Alfred, can you open up a bank account for me in Colombia? Can you open one for me in Mexico? Can you open one for me in Argentina? And I want to collect local currency from my merchants who are buying goods and services from me. So those individuals will start collecting funds.

Since Alfred is not a bank, we tokenize that local currency into a local stablecoin. They're collecting those funds into that account. And then once or twice a day, they'll hit our FX API and convert that into dollars. And we'll settle directly with them. So again, that's really where we're providing value today. And again, the biggest thing is how do we help both companies that are operating locally and from outside coming in, bring the most value and extract the most value out of the region?

**Drew Rogers** (30:54)

Yeah, speak a little bit about, this is really interesting, the specific dynamics and the pain points that you're calling out I think are, I just want to tease this more, is like the difficulty of operating a business globally and being able to service things like stablecoins and crypto and stuff. foundationally work globally, but that doesn't mean that businesses can use them effectively, easily globally.

It's like there's a difference between what's possible versus what's compliant or speak a little bit to the difficulty or even I've heard even like damages that certain countries will put on businesses for like holding capital in certain parts of the world for certain periods of time or like We're taking fees on things like this. For those, especially Americans, I think most of our audience right now is American, who aren't familiar with these rules, bring us into that a little bit. What do you...

Capital control, I guess, is the term for this.

**Diego Yanez** (31:53)

The simplest way to put it is that an import-export job is not to be a payment company. It's not to juggle payment providers and banks. It's to trade goods and services, right? And when you take a look at these companies that actually have real customers and real value that they're moving in and out of these countries, they're spending more time actually dealing with payment issues than they are operating their business. And that brings tremendous amount of friction.

And then on the other side, it's or they juggle five, six different banks and payment providers, or they connect to a company like Alfred that can actually help open up these local accounts for them and remove a lot of that friction from the process. And that's really where we've seen the most amount of value. I think It happened by accident, but we're a regional company. Again, we hold licenses in the top four countries across the region.

And what we see a lot is these companies want a one-shoe-fits-all solution for Latin America. And the reality is that Latin America is not a one-shoe-fits-all solution. But we've been able to build something that makes it feel that way. So my co-founder is from Argentina. Again, I'm from Venezuela. Our third co-founder is Mexican. We have, again, like we have boots on the ground in Colombia, boots on the ground in Argentina, boots on the ground in Brazil, boots on the ground in Mexico.

And that is the only way to build a deep product in the region that makes it seamless for these foreign businesses to operate efficiently across the region. Right? It's having people there. Exactly. Because again, like every single country operates differently. There's capital controls in every single country. There's regulation looks different. Nothing looks the same. And that's why it is very difficult for these foreign businesses to scale properly without proper infrastructure.

Because of what you're mentioning, right? It's like, you know, maybe they have bottlenecks in X, Y, and Z country because they just think that it's EU and they can just plug in and operate

**Drew Rogers** (33:56)

Yeah, I've heard certain companies that we've talked to or other providers who've shared things with us where certain countries will say like, you can't withdraw value. You have like a cap on how fast you can take payments out of the country.

You're like really limiting businesses in terms of what they can and can't do with capital flight, which is just in my personal view, like I can see why especially more emerging markets would want to I don't know if I can control that, but it seems so unideal and so not fair, something I just foundationally disagree with. Speak a little bit to the process of getting something like ARSA up and running.

It seems like, one, a really interesting look into the future of the business, and also something that when paired with other markets that you guys are in could really become a bundled, powerful thing. What did you guys have to go do to get that off the ground, practically speaking?

**Diego Yanez** (34:54)

Again, we started before our time. Again, we started building this in 2021, had pretty much no demand for it. How did you

**Drew Rogers** (35:00)

build it? What does

**Diego Yanez** (35:01)

that even mean? My co-founder built it. He's a smart one. I just do the talking. But yeah, again, like we wanted a tokenized version of the local currency. And one thing that I'm very clear on is like, Alfred does not want to be a stablecoin issuer, right? We just need to provide our customers the best product possible. And them having local balances is extremely important, right? So about a year and a half coming up on two years, regulation in Argentina came about, which regulates digital asset companies.

We went out and we got our license. So we're a regulated PSAV in Argentina and also a regulated PSP.

**Drew Rogers** (35:40)

What does a PSAV mean?

**Diego Yanez** (35:42)

Proveedor de Servicios Ejecutivos Virtuales, so a virtual asset service provider. And through that, we were able to proceed with the start of this project. And that's pretty much, I mean, it's a regulatory thing, right? From there on, everything is just shipping technology and tokenizing balances that we already have because we're a PSP.

**Drew Rogers** (36:01)

So what's the difference in your mind between tokenizing balances in this way versus issuing stablecoins? How do you differentiate those two things? Because they seem very similar.

**Diego Yanez** (36:11)

At the end of the day, they're the same. But again,

**Drew Rogers** (36:16)

the

**Diego Yanez** (36:17)

focus of our business is not to go and do circles business model, right? The focus of our business is we're a payments company. And again, how can we get deeper into the banking stack as possible? And this is really what created the path for us. And then I genuinely believe that, you know, you're seeing initiatives like Tempo, Arc, eventually FX is going to come on chain and at scale, especially with AI and AI agents coming about.

And I definitely believe that these local stablecoins are going to be a tremendous part of making this possible, right? Because if we really believe that agents are going to be executing payments in the future, which I surely believe that, how are you going to exchange value in Latin America if you don't have a tokenized version of the local currency, right? And I've heard it said, it's like what fiat is to humans is what digital assets are for AI. And those are things that get me excited.

And our job at Alfred is to put ourselves in front of those opportunities.

**Drew Rogers** (37:15)

When you guys were thinking about this, or as you are still thinking about this in other markets, what is the benefit or downside of, I saw Dave Taylor walking the hall yesterday. We've met with him. Help me think through, I see a company like EtherFuse doing local stablecoins and stablebonds as they call them. Why not go integrate something like that versus do something yourself?

**Diego Yanez** (37:42)

I want to be clear. We're actually amusing a partnership with EtherFuse as well because, again, we don't want to be a stablecoin this year. This is just an important part of our product offering and something that we need to support on our stack. Obviously, we want to share some of the yield and what the business model lends itself to be. So we are looking at opportunities with EtherFuse. I think we're going to do something with them. Comarkets like Mexico and I think their set this product is unbelievable.

Dave is a great, great leader and founder as well. So again, back to that point, like we need to support this on the product side and yeah, wherever it makes sense for us to build it ourselves, we will. Wherever it makes sense for us to partner with others, we will as well.

**Drew Rogers** (38:20)

Cool. Do you see that category as you're evaluating now? You're the buyer in this situation. As you're evaluating build versus buy, are there an abundance of options for doing something like this well? Or is EtherFuse, at least right now, one of the few that are up to par? I know Mento Labs may be doing stuff like this. Who else is on your radar as you're evaluating this?

**Diego Yanez** (38:45)

I think you're going to see a lot of PSP folks go for building these out. And I think that you've seen companies like Bitso do it with their Juno project. You've seen companies like Transferral do it in Brazil. Avenia do it in Brazil as well. Trace Finance is doing some cool stuff. Trace Finance. I didn't know they were doing a stablecoin, but it doesn't surprise me.

I know of a few others that I don't want to mention because I don't know if it's public yet, but I do think that EtherFuse is building something that is agnostic to cater to the region, right? So I think that indifference of us partnering with somebody like Juno, and for full disclosure, I respect and admire deeply the team at Bitso, we would prefer to do something with a player that's more agnostic like EtherFuse.

**Drew Rogers** (39:33)

Yeah, that totally makes sense. When you think about the future, we got these four markets that are strategically important. It's exciting you're talking and engaging these types of companies to bring these types of products to market. What are you getting most excited about on the product side or on the business side with what you think needs to be built next? You've built four or five years now. You guys have been building products, waking up every day and building things.

What do you think is the most strategically important thing for the company to ship in the next six to 12 months?

**Diego Yanez** (40:11)

Right now, our business has changed drastically in the sense that I would say most of our flow over the course of the last three years have really been focused on domestic payments. And if you take a look at our business over the last eight plus months, it's completely shifted to being a cross-border payments company. So I would say like north of 60% of our flow is cross-border payments. We're doing payments from Mexico to China, Brazil, China, Argentina, US.

And that's really where I want to see our business going more and more. Because again, like that's really how we were born, right? We were born with the concept of wanting to fix cross-border payments. And now we get to do it on the institutional side of things. And for us, it's very important to build not only good rails outside of Latin America, which today we fully leverage partners. And I see us leveraging partners outside of Latin America for the next, you know, two, three years.

So settlement partners who are good at

**Drew Rogers** (41:08)

that, at those regions.

**Diego Yanez** (41:10)

Exactly. Like we believe in something essential in Latin America. There's a saying in Spanish called Zapatero su Zapato, which means like, basically like whatever you're good at, we're going to focus at that. Right. So an example that I would give investors when, when we were raising our Series A, We're Hispanic at our core. We're Latinos and we know our market really well. And I think that's what makes Alfred a good company and that's what makes our product a good product.

I would tell investors, I'm like, they were like, oh, talk to me about this company, this company. I'm like, have you seen that man Dan Salsa before? Put some salsa music and I'll show you who's from Latin America and who's not.

**Drew Rogers** (41:49)

Yeah, you'll know pretty quick.

**Diego Yanez** (41:50)

Exactly. And to that point, how can you expect me to be successful in Asia when there's a team that's been building Asia rails for four or five plus years? I'm not interested in building those rails because that's not where I'm from. What would you say to someone who thinks that they can come into these parts of the world and just build and take over? Let's dance salsa, let's see.

**Drew Rogers** (42:32)

A lot of people think they can just come into new markets and grow fast and everything's kind of a copy and paste.

**Diego Yanez** (42:40)

There's two approaches here, right? One is a partner-driven approach, right? That we get a foreign company that wants to leverage somebody like Alfred and there ultimately is another partner that is there who has the deepness and the rails and the relationships and all that good stuff. I think that that's a lot more accessible for folks that are coming outside in. Folks that are building direct are finding out real quick what I said. Argentina is not the same as Mexico. Mexico is not the same as Colombia.

And it takes a long time to build one market. It takes even longer to build four, right? And I think that you see that a lot in Latin America. You have very successful companies in Brazil. I think Avenida and Trace are smashing it. And again, I admire those companies deeply, but it's not the same to go from Brazil to go to Colombia. It's not the same to go from Brazil. And the reason is because you have Spanish-speaking Latam and Portuguese-speaking Latam.

Now, imagine somebody going from English-speaking America into LATAM. It's a completely different environment. And I think that it's very, very important to know these markets before you get involved in them.

**Drew Rogers** (43:45)

Yeah, man, as we attempt to round the corner of this, it's such a beautiful business. I mean, just knowing kind of going back to where we started in the first place of just family and roots and focus on where you're from and like who you trust and what you know.

It's it's a really cool kind of ethos that you have is like we're gonna we're gonna build this business with the people that we trust and the family we have and we're gonna do it in the parts of the world that we can be human and understand and like resonate with and do it do it in a true way we're not going to try to Drew Rogers, Stabledash Live, Stabledash Live, Stabledash Live.

**Drew Rogers** (44:37)

But that is limited in terms of like the, what do you say to like a VC or just a growth? For someone who's only thinking about growth with that, like growth at all costs, are you worried that mindset's going to inherently limit the business or you don't think that's a problem?

**Diego Yanez** (44:56)

No, I don't think that's a problem. And to go back to like the family stuff is great. And you know, the culture stuff is great. But at our core, we're selling trust, right? We're building a payments company. And payments is all about trust. And I think where we spend a ton of time on is building deep relationships with our customers and with our partners. And again, you've been to our office. Our office, every single Friday, pull up to Mexico City. Yeah.

And you'll be in our office and there's a happy hour and it's open bar. Customers can come in, have drinks. And that is the culture that we're building, right? It's a culture of trust. And to the point of the salsa joke, we're building relationships everywhere we go, right? And we're making sure that we have the right team on the grounds That are also mirroring that culture that we want to give up to our customers because at the end of the day at our core payments is all about trust.

It's all about you know who's on the other side of the service that they're giving you and it's why we've been very adamant at building direct because we don't want to tell our customer be in the middle of us in a provider or a third-party provider because it's something that is out of our control right. And if you look at LATAM as a region, it is 100% a trust-based culture and ecosystem, right?

And for us, far beyond what we're building, which is obviously tremendously valuable, we want to make sure that people know who they're building with. And I think that that's ultimately what wins the long game. And it's also protects our marches, right? Because our customers are relationship buyers, right? They're not really going out and shopping because they understand that they can trust us for what we're doing. And if they need anything, they can call us.

And I'm very proud of our team because again, like we're not only building this in Mexico, but we're building this across the region as a whole. Yeah.

**Drew Rogers** (46:42)

Yeah. Last kind of question, going back to one thing you mentioned around six months ago, you started seeing a difference in like the flows and where they were coming from and where they were going and going from domestic to global. What do you think drove that? Like, what do you think was behind that shift?

**Diego Yanez** (46:58)

Regulation, you know, more serious players coming in and wanting to use this technology as a settlement layer.

**Drew Rogers** (47:04)

Like multinational companies, global companies.

**Diego Yanez** (47:07)

Exactly. Banks, multinational companies, traditional businesses, right? And I think that's really what our ICP is and what we're pursuing actively at Alfred, is businesses who've been operating not for as long as stablecoins have been alive, but businesses who've been operating for 25, 30 plus years. Who have needs to move capital globally and are looking for better ways to do so. And obviously the acceleration in stablecoin adoption and regulation has helped our business tremendously.

And that's where we're seeing a lot more cross-border payments because of that. You're having a lot more of like the traditional players come on-chain.

**Drew Rogers** (47:39)

So you're having these happy hours. I want to come to one of these, by the way.

I got to pull up to one of these because I remember we had it before we even I think we're doing the live show I was like trying to explore different formats of what we wanted to do and I was like you don't be really great it's just like once a week just find a way to like pull up a stream at the Alfred office and just like kind of do the cheeky pint model of getting your customers and talking about it yeah because one that would just be awesome content to get but two I think the where my mind is going is like I think people really and I'm one of these people want to understand more of What builders right now, what are the questions they're asking?

The bankers you're talking with, the multinational CFO you're talking to, what are they feeling reserved about? What are their core questions? What is making them feel finally comfortable to go use stuff like this? I think we want to be a business that helps surface those things and helps facilitate those conversations. So maybe we can do a podcast on that, a little mini show or something, but what are some of those right now as you're having these conversations in real time?

What are some of those key, both like core questions that you're hearing from these leaders and also what are the things that you find are getting them over the edge of commitment right now?

**Diego Yanez** (48:58)

So one big thing, again, going back to trust is huge. I think one thing that we've been super focused on, especially myself, over the course of the last six plus months has been the talent that we're deploying locally. So the people that we actually have sitting in these chairs interacting with these different CFOs, and obviously that is what creates the trust level and some of the background that some of these guys come from is super important.

**Drew Rogers** (49:21)

So the sales team is actually kind of localized and focused in that way? Exactly.

**Diego Yanez** (49:25)

100%. And then two, it's these businesses have been working with a broken system for very long. It's finally gotten to that inflection point where they're willing to try new technology that is going to bring them better solutions, right? And I think that's the opportunity that Alfred has along with all the other companies that have sat on this podcast. How fast is your company growing? Who else do you support? And who am I doing business with?

So for us, being in that intersection at this moment is extremely important.

**Diego Yanez** (50:06)

And where we've been able to win a lot of business. And I honestly see the next two years being extremely busy because I still think that there's so much business at Sideline that is still doing things via the TradFi way. And it's really cool to think that, you know, in a market like Latin America, Alfred has positioned themselves as one of the players where businesses are going to for these solutions.

**Drew Rogers** (50:29)

Yeah, excited to continue to follow the journey, man. Thank

**Diego Yanez** (50:32)

you, brother. I gotta say, I love what you're doing here. I'm a big fan of you and your team. You guys are amazing people. And I think that everyone who's been here, everybody who knows you, feels that way about you guys. So I'm excited to follow your journey and what you guys are doing. Appreciate

**Drew Rogers** (50:47)

that. Appreciate that, man. Thanks for coming on. Of course.