Deel + MoonPay: Enabling Stablecoin Payroll for 40,000 Businesses

Nice. Thanks for joining us. How's it going? Excellent. Very good. Another full circle moment. I think you were another one from season season one. I think that's six out of every every bit matters. So many one was that. Man, I where's my hat? I can get it, but then I'm gonna exit the screen for a bit. So it's it's usually right next to my my computer. I use it like in every call.

Yeah. Well, it's been it's been fun, Max, to really see this journey. I think when when we first connected, you were just iron. We kinda we had you on the pod, saw the the acquisition with MoonPay. That was really exciting. I think we when we were in person together at our founder Liberty City Ventures founder event, that was, like, fresh fresh out of the acquisition and kind of thinking about the future. You're now well into this role and and into this kind of new season of iron and within MoonPay.

There's some exciting stuff that happened this week with Deal. Just give us give us the kind of high level of of how things have gone post acquisition, and we can dive into this partnership specifically, but maybe we start a little bit macro with how's it been being a part of MoonPay, and and

what's the journey been like so far? I'm I'm adding something new from MoonPay each week into our

GTM and SocialSteam is on fire. They're very good at their jobs. I love working with this with them. But maybe I give a quick intro of what Iron is. Maybe not all people know what we do, or maybe you'd made the intro before I came on. Know, Iron, you is know, a stablecoin infrastructure company. We do all things on ramp, off ramps, payments, virtual accounts, powering TSPs, fintechs, wallets with fiat infrastructure for their for their stablecoin needs.

So Iron started about two years ago, got acquired by MoonPay April last year, so it was pretty quick. And since then, like, it's been a hell of a ride. Obviously, spent quite a bit of time integrating, you know, now running fully under MoonPay's licensing. We're now basically a MoonPay brand. And now it's all things enterprise. Right? So we're entering really this enterprise cycle for stablecoins.

You know, every every week, I'm reading, a new big name adopting stablecoins, and that's really the battleground right now. And that's why I'm glad, like, to kinda have a a big partner like MoonPay in the back to have a actually, a right to just sit at this table. Right? Because if you speak to large enterprises, they they really wanna know, like, you have all the licensing in order, and you're up to the you know, the the they're the right stack to actually play in their enterprise league.

So, yeah, pretty happy and happy to tell about more more recent announcements.

How should people think about the difference bet even though Iron's a MoonPay company, the difference between Iron and MoonPay?

Yes. So, I mean, Iron is a MoonPay brand, if you will, and does everything and anything stablecoin infrastructure related. So MoonPay most people will know MoonPay as a on ramp widget, which you can see in most, like, wallets and more and more DeFi platforms where MoonPay provides the on ramp, off ramp capabilities.

We also launched, I think today, MoonPay deposits, which is basically any to any deposits, and it becomes a huge it's a huge market, right, to actually be able to deposit any chain, any asset, and the platform receives whatever they need given just the explosion of different kinds of stablecoins and assets out there. And that's our main big core. Right? Like, when it really comes to powering deposit rails for a lot of, like, b to b to c retail platforms. Iron is enterprise stablecoin infrastructure.

Think of us in an invisible API layer powering cross border money movements, fiat into stablecoins, and back. You won't you will see the Iron name and brand. For regulatory reasons, you have to see it to see, like, which provider vendor you're using. But in the end, Iron is a a product that is embedded very deeply in the partner platform. Right? Where with the MoonPay brand, you're actually interacting with MoonPay almost like an app inside an app, right, via widgets, and that's kind of the main distinction.

We also power retail platforms in terms of kind of just these all these new banks that pop up, but less so by Widget, but by the native experiences. What's been the when you know, thinking about the existing

experience of operating iron within MoonPay, being at the bare metal, being at that infrastructure layer, what surprised you? I mean, it's been such an it's such such a wild year in the world of building in stablecoins and growing, and there's so much opportunity, which, you know, makes sense as as you were, I'm I'm imagining considering the idea of going within another firm and, you know, company like MoonPay that's been around for so long. They have licensing. They're incredibly strong in that front.

But, yeah, what's what surprised you since since entering the fold there? What what have you seen that's been really maybe unexpected in this stablecoin craze that we've been in? I mean, in general, how complex

building fiat infrastructure is. Really, like, highly resilient enterprise grade fiat infrastructure. It's not like you just hook up to a bank or an EMI and just gonna get these rails. That's the easy part. Right? Like, the hard part is then to process transactions, deal with stock transactions, AML, all things that lead up until money is on chain. That's the hard part. Right? Like, once money is on chain, things get a lot easier. But this fiat stack is really something that's very, very complex.

And everyone announces or, you know, says they have the same thing. We have virtual accounts. We have, like, global currency coverage, and we do anything and everything. Right? Well, you might on paper, but then when it comes to really transacting, you know, you need your own licenses. You need to go direct to bank. You need to have as few layers in between the end customer and the bank to you know, as possible to be able to provide a good service.

So it really surprised me how few companies actually have this stack, and and I think that's the only way to go. Because the more layers and vendors you use, like and the enterprise pitches we do, it's the first question. Right? Like, what's your stack? Who do you use? How are you set up? You know? And these things come up, like, much more so with, these serious larger players.

Whereas with, like, kind of the smaller ones is all about features because they don't know at the time you know, they just care about all the feature breadth and depth, but, like, they they don't really know that it actually is all about resilience and, you know, how how good your operating flow is. So that really surprised me how hard that building out that rail is.

Yeah. Where where would you it's such a it's such a difficult thing as a buyer to actually evaluate. Like, who is actually owning the licensing, holding the funds, touching the money? A lot of to your point, I think we've talked about this directly. Like, a lot of companies are saying, we do all this stuff, but it's really just wrapped kind of, we're building on top of other people. What would you would you tell buyers to ask when they're in these conversations with infrastructure providers?

Sounds like they're asking this to you guys. What would be those kind of core questions or core discovery items that you would recommend people looking into this stack to ask to make sure that they're this stuff safely and not not going with something they don't realize is actually something else wrapped? I can go for a long time here. I mean,

let let let's take a very simple example. Do you have MTLs in The US, like money transmission licenses? The answer to that is many companies will say yes, but the actual answer is do you have your own MTLs, or do you have bank sponsored MTLs? You can go to Cross River or lead and say, like, hey. Can you know, you have MTLs. Like, can I can I work with your platform? Like, where are bank sponsored MTLs? And then the the answer is, know, when someone asks you, do you have MTLs?

You can say yes, but you actually don't have your own. Right? Like, you just oh, yeah. I kinda omitted bank sponsored piece. Right? What bank sponsored MTLs basically does is that still you rely on the bank. Right? Like and you cannot really do fully kinda control the onboarding piece. And, you know so the right question to ask is, like, how are you licensed? Right? Do you own them yourself? You know, who is between you and the bank, if any?

How do you deal with, you know, to walk me through the full life cycle of, like, fiat entering the system into stablecoins popping out? But the the honest feedback is it's very hard to ask these questions if you don't know, and most buyers don't know. And I think that's still, like, the problem that we face in this industry. Right? That, like, there's a a strong incentive by the the vendor and the platform to obscure the fact that you actually don't own everything in the full stack. Right? So you know?

But people find out on the way, it's also recommendations. You ask around, hey. Have you used them? What's your experience been? And I think that you'll find out pretty quickly. And you realize that most enterprise players that mean very serious or want to do very serious flow, they ask the right questions. So so

going into the deal conversation, what what questions did they start asking? How how did that start come to fruition, and and what drove this partnership?

With Deal, I mean, the deal with the two e's. Right? Not the MoonPay, Iron deal. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've always been we we know Deal for a long time as MoonPay and, you know, we as Iron as well. So it's been a longer relationship. We had with Deal, and, yeah, we we started talking.

And for them, obviously, you know, they have this notion of deal speed, which the founders always said, like, you know, shipping speed is the most important thing, and it's been very amazing to see to work with them, like, terms of the speed they operate and how how professional they are with regards to, like, picking the stock and, like, kind of the vision they built out with regards to cryptos. So they're making a really big bet in crypto, as we all know, building up a big unit there.

And when it comes to global payroll, and it becomes much more global, like, increasingly, stablecoins are sort of this inevitable next step, right, where if you want to offer the best service, you know, in the fastest way possible, there's no way to get around Stablecoins. Right?

So we started talking, and for the for them, obviously, it's very important to have an enterprise grade partner to my point, right, that, you know, obviously, a licensed partner that knows what they're doing, and MoonPay has a long standing history in the industry. Like, we're the I don't know whether we're the world's largest crypto payment processor, but we're certainly up there. I need to, like, get my stats right.

But, you know, they're very sizable, and they're you know, we take compliance regulation and enterprise grade SLAs, etcetera, very seriously. Right? So that was really critical when it when we entered this discussion. So when it comes to payroll, there's absolutely zero margin for error. Right? People rely on these on these flows to work. Yeah. So that's why it's super critical. For

HX late.

Yes. Like, this is not something you can't afford that. Right? Like, this needs to work, and this is really critical. So that's why the air gets very thin with regards to the partners you can choose. You know, that's why we've been very happy that, like, we've been we've been chosen as a partner to work with them on this on this vision. And, obviously, Deal has big plans. I mean, I can't comment, obviously, on a road map and what they're what they're up to, but we're very excited to partner with with this company.

And so with Deal, is this primarily with their EOR product? Is this with contractors?

Does it kind of cover all of it? Yes. It's from it's it's basically employees. Right? Like, full full deal employees. So Okay. And it's deal employees, you can, like, talk about these two things. Right? Deal employees being people employed by deal as as the company. That's not what I mean, but I'm talking more about, like, EURs. Like, you're you're getting your paycheck and salary from them. Right? So that's people that are that's what I do. Clear, how would you define EOR? Sorry.

Employee of employer of record, it's called. Right? So for people who don't know how works, they're basically a company that enables very simple hire like, basically, hiring people across the world. You want to hire someone in Spain and you're a US company, it's very difficult. And DIO makes that easy in a sense that they have local entities that employ these people, and they do all of the, you know, admin admin work, the tax and finance.

And they're technically the employer of said individual, and they're processing the paychecks, etcetera. And and that's why that's how that's why it's called employee employer of record. I'm I'm not, like, you know, expert on on on the on the how it exactly works, but that's that's the concept behind it. And so is this for is this mostly for their internal treasury to manage

funds going through all these entities worldwide? Is this the stablecoin sandwich of of using stablecoins to get to the local currencies? Or I guess what I'm trying to understand

This is I I know where you're getting at. Like, this is basically powering the flow from fiat on the deal side to stablecoins on the employee side. Right? So this is not about an internal internal treasury movements.

No. That's interesting. So when I mean, maybe this is more just an an anecdotal question or what you've what you've seen. What what does the transition you think look like for these employees going from, you know, maybe I'd used to paying for all my bills in euro to now it's now it's in Stablecoins? Are they they're do you think they're using just stablecoin cards that are converting at point of sale? Are they actually spending in stablecoins?

Is do think it's a mix? That's a very good question. I think it's it's probably both, right, where people are more and more happy to receive, you know, part of their salary or their full salary in Stablecoins and then do something with it. You know, earn yield on it, you know, in on their own terms. Like, you know, most obviously, people manage their own wallets.

And this is now a huge ecosystem and very easy for people to use mainly in emerging markets, right, where your volatile currencies, that's where kind of stablecoins really shine. But it also kinda comes more and more into stable stablecoin powered neo banks. I mean, even I think in Europe now, Revolut, right, you know, enabled stablecoins, this really opens up the use.

And the more this becomes a kind of a a prime like, prime instrument where people hold their funds in, it becomes more like a just a regular currency. Right? Where in the end, probably won't even see a stablecoins under the hood. You just see a balance. And then there's, you know, a custom stablecoin. At Moonby, we also issue custom stablecoins. So and that's yet another topic. Right? But we can talk about that as well.

But I think stablecoins will kind of move to the back just to become money, like, better money in the future. And, obviously, paycheck is a, you know, is a very vital part of this.

It's interesting that you brought up going and getting the yield. I think that's something that Drew and I mentioned when we were covering this story briefly. And the daily yield was when you do get paid in stablecoins, I feel like I'm much more likely to go and say, okay. Do I wanna use something like like Axle or Nook or, you know, go deposit into a Camino Hall versus, like, sort of just kinda laying through my bank account. I'm like, oh, just kinda leave it there.

You know, I don't wanna go through the on and off ramp and and go through all all that hassle. Well, I think the crazy statistic is

is it, like, 86% of US retail bank accounts are nondeposit bearing or something. It's really insane. Now and you see this on bank balance sheets. Right? That's the business model of the JPMorgan's or the Chase's that are that are set of the world. So I think people will stop at some point to accept the fact that you just don't get yield on your dollars from your your your banks.

And I think that's sort of the the next big battleground, like, how do you know, where people expect to be paid, right, to hold funds, you know, on on a on a certain platform. What stablecoins also do is they allow you to move money very fast between platforms. I mean, it's I always say they're transfer agents, either between countries for cross border, but also increasingly between platforms. Right?

And once you have tokenized assets, tokenized stocks, I can easily swap between my Robinhood portfolio and my Schwab portfolio in the future. You know, now it's very complex. I don't know in The US, but in Europe, it'll take six to eight weeks to even move a broker portfolio, and that's crazy complex.

I I actually think of this years ago at a previous employer. I have, like, an IRA, you know, retirement account, And then I got an email one day that, okay. The funds are available. And even just the interface to send a wire from the bank to Netlr to initiate that transfer. I think I eventually just gave up, and I said, okay. It's at Fidelity. Let's I'll just leave it at Fidelity because at this point, it's Yeah. Yeah. He said it's it's it's a horrible user experience. You mentioned custom stablecoins.

I know correct me if I'm wrong. MoonPay was issuing from the Bitcoin stablecoins. Yeah. Citria. Yeah. Getting into into that business. So,

I mean, it's it's it's customer demand. Let's put it that way. Right? So MoonPay is powering, you know, a large part of, like, a DeFi universe with ramps, as I mentioned before. And now every platform that has a lot of users and hence also a lot of TBL. Right? And we saw this, the the prime one was sort of the Hyperliquid ecosystem. They had a full tender out for their stablecoin. I think it was an absurd amount of of TBL, like a billion plus or something. Right?

Like, where I think even the Circle stock pricing price moved on these news. Right? Because, you know, they were losing this revenue. Right? Greatly. Right? So and and that's sort of you know, it's an easy pitch. Right? Like, any app that has users and and AUM, they don't want to give up the yield to someone else, you know, like Circle or Tether. They where they say, you know, why not just launch your own stablecoin. Right? So and we got this request over and over again.

And at some point, we're like, we're in the prime position from a license perspective, from an operational perspective to and we've built all the hard parts. Right? Obviously, licensing the hardest part, then the truck rails with iron, another hard part, as I mentioned before. So we got all the things in place to then launch an issuance business, and that is really taking off. There's a lot of demand for this.

I think interoperability layers are now so good that and people always say, oh, won't you have all this liquidity, like, splintered across all these and a little that hard user experience if you have hundreds of stablecoins? I don't think so. Because bridging and kinda universal deposit addresses becomes so becomes so good that moving funds across platforms,

even even though they're, like, in, like, different stablecoins will be very seamless. So we'll see. And I've I've almost always thought about it, you know, and I've I've used this with to talk to the people that aren't familiar with stablecoins that, in a way, if you have a Bank of America and you have a SoFi account, yes, that's the US dollar, but it it's almost like its own currency in a way because it's in its own siloed ecosystem.

Mhmm.

So that that's at least how I've I've kind of

at least thought about that that paradigm. Yeah. Very true. I mean, they're priced the same, you know, also in the in the in the in the sort of fungibility of dollars and of euros across banks. But, technically, you're holding a claim on on kind of the the the bank itself. Right? And if you're above a certain insurance limit, US FDIC, I think, is 250 k. Right? In Europe, I don't know exactly what it is. I think it's a 100 k.

Then, I mean, technically, you're also, like, running exposure risk against the bank, right, where you hold your funds. So, absolutely, it's it's very interesting actually that, like, what what actually is a euro? What is a dollar? You'd never hold this really. Like, you have someone else there's always a custodian for it. Right?

Do you work with m zero on the on the issuance? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. This is maybe, like I think it was in season four of Sable-minded with with Luca and Greg. They really they really dove into, you know, what is money? How how do you think about it? And they think, oh, at least their approach is interesting to to how they're kind of solving that base liquidity interoperability issue.

Yeah. Luca, I mean, the team is great. Like, we are we're working very closely with them. Building, like, the on chain part here is actually quite complex. It's my contract layer of issuing stablecoins where we said, yes. We can build this in house, but it would take a long time. It will not be as resilient as what MZero has built. I mean, they raised, I don't know, like, 50,000,000 or something just to build the smart contract and issuance layer on top. Basically, we're we're kind of powering we're a issuer. Right?

They have obviously more partners. But we see this as a very close partnership, and it's been a really nice way to work with them. And, you know, it's just very symbiotic

what we bring and what they offer. Awesome. That's awesome. Well, Max, thank you. We gotta kick you out now. Connors have been in the green room patiently waiting. Max, thank you so much for trusting us and just coming on here as, really, this is the first first of many, many stable Ash lives we can we can check-in with you and hear what's up. Any future news, announcements, stuff that you're excited about, keep us in mind.

We'd love for the show to be a really valuable extension of the awesome social media team that you guys have over there that wants to spread the the news about what you guys are building and launching. So just like you were the first season of the pod, wanted to bring you in here and and just thank you for the time. It's fun to fun to watch the journey. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I'm excited to be here and to do more of these. Awesome. Thanks, Max.