$8M to Build the Visa for Crypto: Checker's Jack Chong on Unifying Stablecoin Liquidity

Welcome to the show. We're gonna celebrate your your appearance. First off, congrats on the fundraise. How long has it been now? This isn't super new. How long ago is this was the race? The round was closed end of twenty five, early twenty twenty six. So it's it's still pretty recent. So yeah. We're about six months in. How has it been in the last you know, since that news? That's, like, obviously a huge moment for you guys. How is it I guess, two part question. I don't wanna get too deep.

How has it been since then? And then bring us back to the a little bit of the intro on Checkr and and what you're building. Yeah. So, look, you know, we announced around roughly two weeks ago. I know we've very

fortunate of global global media pickup and, you know, across Spanish speaking media, Chinese, English in Africa, Portuguese, and, you know, we all where our customers are. Right? That's our that's the first motto. And then by way of introduction, by way of background, you know, I'm Jack. I'm building Checkr. And what Checkr is is the world's fastest growing and largest liquidity network for stablecoins.

So we empower regulated financial institutions from b two b payments companies to FX banks to remittances and neobanks. We give them a single plug in, and now they can launch financial products on top of our infrastructure. So they can launch things like FX trading, things like international payments, send and receive, and named accounts. And then they can also use credit. They can also access credit as well.

And, you know, as part of the fundraise announcement, you know, we've been able to share with the world our story of, you know, why we're building Checkr and how far we've come along. And, you know, we've launched just around twelve months ago, up to more than 3,000,000,000 of cumulative volume across the network. And right now, on an annual basis, doing around 8 to 10,000,000,000. And, actually, as of today, I think we just announced we're doing around 1% of the global b 2 b stablecoin payments volume.

So we're just in the beginning, but from 0% to 1% in twelve months, you know, super, super lucky to have the support of our customers and investors and excited to be on. So thank you, guys. That's huge. Where where is the majority on the stablecoin side

from a volume standpoint? What are you seeing? Is it mostly USDT, USDC?

How does that break down high level? Yeah. We're stablecoin agnostic. We partner with incumbent issuers, and we also work with new stablecoin issuers. As of this moment, our key markets are emerging markets. So Latin America, Africa, you know, are some of the fastest growing regions of stablecoin adoption and also for Checker as well.

And over there, what we see generally is more of an adoption of USDT, but we do see USDC volume and adoption growing very rapidly now, especially among asset managers, sort of more institutional FX brokers,

you know, who have direct relationship with Circle. And then there are also, you know, other new issuers that we're observing very closely as well. That's really interesting. Okay. So you have a network that you're building both on the there are a lot of networks happening. You have the asset network, the regulated financial institutions network. Talk us through a little bit of how you've built in the last you know, since you started this this company, where have you really been focusing your time and effort?

I'd imagine there's, like, some really key, like, key key pieces to this working out. Maybe you could break down those those key pieces of how you've built Checkr so far on the regulated financial institution side, the asset side. Like, how do you think about the the different pieces there that you're trying to fit together? Yeah. So the way I think about it is, ultimately, digital asset and stablecoin market is very fragmented.

The supply and demand of stablecoins is fragmented by region, fragmented by the stablecoin they're using, by currencies, by use cases. And what we're here to do is to unify that fragmentation. So, specifically, we how the head of treasury, head of trading, head of FX, head of expansion at these financial institutions who's now looking to use stablecoins as part of the treasury stack and also part of how they think about offering the end customers international payments, FX trading, remittances, etcetera.

And, you know, we focus narrowly in the beginning of serving fiat and stablecoin conversion because we believe that is the biggest impact we can drive for our customers. If you're a fintech builder in Brazil, if you're a traditional bank in South Africa, when you look at stablecoins, you're thinking about how can this move the needle for my business. Right?

So it ultimately needs to drive p and l, whether that is improving your profit margin, improving your capital velocity, reducing collateral requirement, being able to scale into new markets and upsell your existing customers. So we focus on stablecoins, but we're not limited by that. Right? Ultimately, we're here to fill the gap in the market and to become the visa for crypto, to be the international network for finance in general. So, you know, we started with conversion or trading.

You know, we're now enabling also send and receive as part of our international network. And then we have a very, you know, ambitious road map based on customer feedback. Right? Borrow and lend, consumer credit, and assessment financing for our financial institution customers, things like enabling tokenized stocks, enabling overnight trading for for our customers as well, tapping into multiple venue.

So think of us as whenever there is a demand and supply fragmentation, we are the network that connects the different nodes globally, connects venues,

and we enable workflows to be built on top so that our financial institution customers can meet their end business, you know, customers, merchants, or consumers where they are. And, you know, it's funny. The last part of it was is nice segue into where I was was gonna start diving into is kind of, like, what what are what can you sense the market wants to be built that isn't built yet? I think especially a lot of our conversations have revolved around credit in in some way, shape, or form.

But you mentioned consumer credits specifically.

So what what would that look like maybe with some of your current customers? I think when we think consumer credit, most people immediately go to credit cards. Is that the lane that you're thinking and hearing, or is it something completely different? Yeah. So when it comes to credit, we're thinking about credit for financial institutions who have assessment financing need.

And I think one of the one of the unique distribution we've built is we have insights into the treasury movement, into the transaction behavior of our financial institution customers because they're using us to convert a trade to different currencies. Ultimately, they're lucky to make payments, to receiving payments from abroad, sending payments abroad, managing the treasury purposes, and that gives us very unique insights.

And I think that's you know, if you look at the emerging markets where we're very active in Latin America, Africa, that's where the most demand is, Right? Which is there is a new class of financial services firms that is now challenging the incumbents. And with that, they need new types of infrastructure. They need a new way to think about the balance sheet. A traditional, you know, bank, a traditional remittance firm might have a 100,000,000 laying around to prefund.

You know, I think Western Union came on the show. Right? And also folks from MoneyGram, you know, they've shared about their pain points of prefunding liquidity, and that is something and that is a that that that that's a scaling pain that many of the stepcoin native fintechs are gonna face as well. So, you know, we're here ready to serve these customers who need infrastructure for them to, you know, facilitate and benefit from credit, you know, in order to reduce the flow requirement.

Just a question on on how this works. And, like, right now, there's we have a Stripe account for our business, and we've had other accounts like this where we will be actually directly using a financial platform. And then that same financial platform will do what they do. They get to know a business. They they they're doing exactly what you're talking about, and then they'll surface, like, loan opportunities or credit opportunities for us in our business to take credit.

I think right now, our business today has an active Stripe loan that they're constantly annoying me about. Like, hey. Like, your loan has increased. And it's like, that that makes sense to me because we are directly giving them access as a customer, and so they're able to surface those types of things.

How does it work with Checkr or these other models where, like, you know, you can actually start building awareness from a network standpoint where I may not be directly if I'm if I'm understanding this right, I may not be directly banking or using or interfacing with Checkr, but maybe someone in the network. How are you thinking about what you're able to kind of orchestrate or see based on those the nodes that you're connected to?

I don't know if that's the best way to ask it, but I'm imagining, like, maybe let's say you power part of the checkers or the Stripe stack or there's a partner like them, you're able to have that sort of information access even though does that make sense what I'm kind of getting at? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So let's take a step back, and let me share what types of customers we work with and and what are we focused on.

So as part of the fundraise announcements that we did recently, we've also shared to the world a a story of Checkr, and, you know, and we're very proud to serve different categories of financial institutions from traditional banks like Branco Brasa in Brazil, which is one of the leading FX banks who's now leaning in into the crypto space, to b to b payments companies like Rare, which is acquired by Ripple recently for $200,000,000,

to consumer neo banks like Velo in Argentina or Airtm, which is a customer and an investor in Checker as well. And, you know, these are and and and what we provide them and what our what our infrastructure has visibility into is basically their money movement behind the scenes. The way that they use a balance sheet, the way that they have local fiat inventory and stablecoin inventory, and how they juggle between the two, converting it back and forth, setting it to different counterparties.

And whenever there's a mismatch in incoming and outgoing, it creates a need of credit. Because currently, this mismatch in incoming and outgoing payments or flow of capital is met by float. If you think about if you think about a a remittance business, the way that they enable people to send money home over the weekend is that they just prefund. They just prefund three days in advance, five days in advance. So they just brute force it by having capital.

And so that's that's an opportunity for lending where I think it's

it's it's very overlooked. So there's a sense of, like, visibility based on the relationships that you'll have with some of these customers. Like, let's say that I'm a user with we we're familiar with Bellow, for example. Maybe I use that platform and whether as a business or do they have a b to b, or is it just consumer product for Bello? I think they're they're a consumer neo bank. Yeah. Okay.

So if I'm a consumer, I may not be like, you at Checker would work with Bello to then and Bello would would grant access or give visibility to some of the transaction details that will give you guys the ability to get involved in that way where you could have visibility. Like, maybe we just double click into that relationship as an example.

Like, what what is the way that Checkr would work with Bello, and what kind of opportunities or products would that be able to allow them to offer or value to give to their cons their customers because of their relationship with you guys? Yeah. So,

again, let's take a step back in a way here to build infrastructure that helps financial institutions launch new products on top of. You know, we've been focusing a lot on on on and off ramps, and that's where we serve our customers who who are financial institutions. They have a treasury desk. They have someone running the treasury, and they need to convert from stablecoins to fiat or vice versa. And if you know? And I think different types of financial institution customers focus on different things.

Like consumer neobank, most of them are now emerging towards everything app. Right? The sort of Robinhood style. You can have prediction markets. You can have crypto. You can have, you know, you can send money abroad. That's kinda also the Revolut roadmap as well. So I think as infrastructure, we'll follow that. And, you know, whenever our consumer, neobank customers have demand, we'll be there to meet them.

If they want to enable hyper liquid trading or if they want to enable tokenized stocks, you know, these are some exciting trends that we're observing. And that's different from a b to b PSP. Right?

If you're b to b PSP like rail, the way that they think about international expansion, you know, they're dealing with more wholesale level clients, dealing with large merchants who need to move money around, who have you know, they want to have a million dollars converting into a million USDT within, you know, ten minutes. That type of need is requires a different type of build and different things that are optimizing for.

Ultimately, all the infrastructure we provide is the same, right, which is a single asset to the global state of call liquidity, but the way that they use it can be pretty different. And by the way, a I think, you know, we we are very local in the markets that we operate in. You know, I I personally grew up in Hong Kong. I've, you know, used to want to be a diplomat before. I, you know, learned Arabic in the in The Middle East, and then I spent a couple of years in The UK, moved to New York now.

I'm gonna favor the opportunity to pursue the American dream and, you know, and start a checker. But one one of the biggest lessons we've learned is not all customers are the same, and not all markets are the same. You know, I've I've crashed on couches with my at my customer's apartment in Lagos just to absorb everything that they do, all the Excel spreadsheet, and all the way that they you know, their their traders are dealing with USDT, USDC liquidity.

That is the way that they treat the way that they run their business is very different from a b two b PSP in Brazil or in The US who might be using things like Anchorage or BitGo or Coinbase, etcetera, for custody. I think folks in the emerging market probably don't even know that those execs they just use Binance as almost as the custodian. So there's a different language they speak, different workflow they have, hence, things that they optimize for.

So across these different use cases, has there any been anything that maybe has surprised you that the market is heading in this direction? You kinda mentioned, like, integrating Hyperliquid.

We've seen the rise of, you know, the poly market and the of the world. Is there anything particularly that, like, jumps out?

I mean, I think I think even when we're seeing this rise of neobanks, how neobanks are taking these similar but different form factors to either server not even a particular, you know, geographic region, but even, like, a certain persona, like you said, the person that, you know, maybe wants to spend while also trading on call sheet while also, you know, going 10 x long on a on a meme coin versus the guy who's like, I just want yield on Bitcoin and, you know, give me a give me a checking account.

Is there any, like has anybody come with you with a use case that you're just like, woah. We I didn't think about this. I think there's two trends I'm observing. One is on the consumer fintech side. Definitely, you know, as you mentioned, every fintech

every consumer fintech is racing to be the major bank for customers. So whether that's for deposit taking for payroll, getting paid, or spending, right, working with card issuers like RAIN, REAP, and many others, or enabling trading use cases, right, plugging into different venues. And they might differentiate themselves by having unique access to assets. You know? Here, you can buy SpaceX pre IPO, or here, you can, you know, earn yield on gold. Right? Different markets appeal.

Different audience find different appeals, different products. You know, in Turkey, a consumer might like a particular feature very different from in Singapore and Hong Kong. So I think that's the consumer trend that I think is is happening, which is a lot of experimentation about what consumers want and iterating on that.

And then on the other side where we see institutional adoption is people who run trading, people who are CFO are getting more and more sophisticated about the way that they run their their stablecoin and local fiat on an offering. So they want to lower the conversion rate of converting one fiat currency to stablecoins. They want to be able to settle very fast. They want to be almost treating it like an FX trading sophistication, which comes with it. You know, they need access to more liquidity.

They need workflows across the middle and back office. They need a whole playbook around it. And we've seen a lot of those different use cases, whether that's a b to b PSP. How can they increase margin while meeting their customer's SLA? You know, if a PSP, the average transaction size is a $100, the way that they think about the back end liquidity infrastructure would be pretty different from a PSP that average transaction size is, you know, $10,000 less. What on the going back to what you said about the consumers,

and what do you think consumers want right now out of a neo banking app? Like, if I'm a consumer, it's a little daunting to say, like, I just want a stable coin app. What what do you think they want? Sorry. Do you mind repeating? I said, you know, you mentioned that build building apps for what consumers want. I said, what what do you think is important most important right now to consumers?

I know this is a little bit down downstream from the exact persona, you know, in what you may exactly be building for since you're serving the neo banks, and the neo banks are serving their customers. But if you just kinda zoom out and you I think Jack's getting kicked from a are you getting kicked from a meeting room right now? The show is going mobile.

Yeah. Mobile the first mobile stable dash live guest. Jack, are you in a Yeah. I am. Are you at the office or workspace right now? I am at WeWork.

I'm running around town during during meetings today, and the system WeWork booking system didn't work. And so my booking didn't show up in the system, and someone or someone over overbooked it. So WeWork, please fix. No worries. You we were in touch. You were in Amsterdam last week. Are you still there? No. No. I'm in New York right now. I'm in the amazing

part of the town, which is Downtown Woolsey Street. Work. Yeah. Love it. Well, maybe we can we can we can wrap here. I know we're we're we're on the move now, but I wanted to just pop this up one one final one final thing we we can touch on. I was just looking through your Axe account, and it looks like Checkr just has accumulated a really meaningful group of partners on the liquidity side.

Any any thoughts on, like, the early partners that we're seeing here or or companies that have, you know, been involved in helping bring to life some of this this network so far? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So this was announced maybe a year ago or

at least eight months ago, and, obviously, you know, our network has grown and has evolved. Yeah. So super fortunate to, you know, scale the company together with these partners. Some of them the founders of some of these companies actually have become investors in us. So for example, Justin at GCWay. Shout out to you, Justin. You know, he's become an angel investor in us. You know, one of the best African fintech founders I know. And then there are many others that, know, we partner very closely as well. Awesome.

Well, Jack, thank you for the time today. Excited to continue