Stablecoin Banking for Businesses on the Frontier and Bill Pay on Solana

We're excited to have Altitude as a sponsor of the show. There's so many more things that we're gonna be sharing with Altitude in the coming weeks, but, thank you for the belief in this. We're excited to build a really, really amazing place on the Internet where people can learn about modern money and the the the human beings, the people behind some of these headlines. And you guys have been doing a ton of stuff.

Maybe we start with just the the quick background on this kind of really interesting squads altitude dynamic, and maybe we start with a little bit of positioning into how you came into this product to begin with. And I know there's some news that we'll like, some product features that we'll cover too.

Yep. For sure. So we actually started by focusing on very crypton nature of use cases. We built the biggest multisig and programmable walled infrastructure for Solana. We have the products plus multisig. Today, secure about $10,000,000,000 in value depending on sort of crypto prices, about 2,000,000,000 in stables. And we serve a lot of kind of largest protocols and crypto institutions, helping them secure and manage digital assets together. That's been really our journey for the last, you know, couple of years.

I would say somewhere along the way, we also discovered that a lot of our customers were already using stablecoins, essentially, as the default way to manage their corporate treasury. Right? And so that's how we were a little, I guess, earlier than than others, right, to to the stablecoin you know, to to actually forming a stablecoin thesis. Right? Because we we saw our customers embrace stablecoins much sooner than, I would say, the broader market.

Also, we never actually had a bank account to Squad, so we always use stablecoins as the default way for us to, you know, run our company. And that always also helped. Right? And so Altu was sort of this natural extension of of of Multisig where the way we think about it today is, like, we started from a very cryptologic place where, like, we build the crypt those cross protocol. Right?

Like, it was we pioneered a lot of things on the security side on Solana and did the first, you know, form of verified program and and did a lot of kind of a lot of complicated infrastructure development in in the early days. Then we build a bunch of APIs that abstract away the complexity of the protocol, but still are very developer centric. Then I built Squad's multisig, which is, you know, accessible to, obviously, humans and institutions, but it was still you have to know what you're doing. Right?

Like, you have to have you you need to understand how to to work with, you know, on chain primitives. You usually come to multisig because you want to interact with D file or you want to do more complex on chain kind of workflows. And then Altius is the furthest form of abstraction. Right? Like, it allows you to essentially run your entire financial operations as a business purely on stablecoin rails without really kinda thinking about the the underlying architecture. Right?

So it feels like it's a it's a normal business bank account with and we're gonna talk more about sort of the features we were launching. But the idea is that, you know, it's kinda like three three major layers to to the product. There's the the core, which is, you know, the payments. It's the yield. It's the the cards. And so you can hold on and spend. On top of that, you have the workflows. Right? So that's, you know, bill pay, accounting, invoicing.

And the third layer is the automation layer, the agentic layer, which we'll talk about more, I guess, down the line. But I would say that's that's roughly how we're thinking about the product, and it's been to us, it feels very natural. Right? Because, like, we've been essentially helping businesses bank on chain for a long time on multiseg, and Altitude is just a much more streamlined way for our customers to do that.

How have you seen those those needs shift from your customers? Because I imagine there was a some probably some even at multisig direct directly, some friction points when you're working with maybe certain vendors that maybe aren't stablecoin native. We you know, we've heard from other guests that stablecoins are great. On the on chain rails, you know, the developer tooling's there. Fios is the problem. Would you say that's been a similar experience going to the Altitude route?

I mean, launching bill pay recently, or talk to me about what that experience has been like.

So we we've been doing this for a while. So we're in year we just started year five of the company history. And so we actually have seen Circle back in, like, at the end of twenty twenty one do third party payouts. Right? So I could I could pay somebody else from my Circle account. Right? So I could do stablecoin to Fiat, essentially, from Circle. At some point, Circle sounds like that feature.

And for a while, they put a cap, essentially, on our capabilities to build an actual, you know, financial account for the world on top of this infrastructure. And then, actually, we we met Bridge pretty early days sort of before the Stripe acquisition, and they were one of the first companies to to to start doing that again. Right?

And for us, that unlock the capabilities of of being able to hold your stable current treasury in a self consolidated account, and then be able to do a payout to somebody else who's making account, you know, pay a, you know, vendor or an employee or a contractor. And so that was really, like, the big unlock in the in the early days. Since then, obviously, the orchestration ecosystem is is booming. There's a lot of different options. There's, you know, kind of local rail providers.

There's, you know, providers that just do Swift. There's providers that do, you know, US, Europe, whatever it is. Right? And so right now, I'd say, like, we we feel like we're with this new age of, like, the PSP ecosystem exploding. Right? Because you essentially have, like, stablecoin based PSPs starting to, like, you know, pop up in in different places.

And it feels great to be, I guess, in our position because we get to have because once you decouple the the bank account from the actual place where you you call your stablecoins. Right? So in our case, you call everything in a in a self custodial wallet. The the banks are actually used just for mining transmission. Right? They're they're essentially used for for settling payments.

And so from that perspective, you can have a stablecoin balance that gets connected to, you know, ten, twenty, 30 local rail providers that allow us to get the best price, allow us to settle at local rail fees and speeds as opposed to using, you know, Swift and and kind of systems that are you know, take longer and and actually are are much more costly. So I would say from that perspective, it's a great time to build in a stablecoin space. Right?

There's a lot of different players, and so we get to work with different providers and and figure out what makes the most sense for us from a dev x perspective, from a cost perspective, from a performance perspective.

Question question for you, Stephan. So, you know, you mentioned Bridge. Bridge was you picked the right horse, I guess, as they say, in terms of who you chose to build with and incredible incredible story and what what's continuing to unfold with that business. I'm curious for you when you think about Altitude right now as as you're building you're building this business banking stable the Stablecoin powered business banking product.

And and, specifically, I'm curious around what pieces of that you need to really build with companies like Bridge versus maybe things that you have had to really build natively and architect completely custom on your end. And maybe bill pay or or things like that fall into this or very, like, product focused things? Like, what are the differences there that you've experienced of, like, hey. Maybe we can we can use this provider, this infrastructure for this.

But over here, we have very clear, like, custom build needs. Like, what what are some of the differences there, and what have you what have you experienced so far as you guys build the platform? We use Altitude just to throw this out there too. It's been really fun to get to know that platform in recent months and begin to see it continue to get better over time. Just like our stream, we're gonna be continuing to we're both building products that get better over time.

So, yeah, what are some of those things that you see?

I would say we see one of our biggest advantages is that we own a lot of the stack. Right? And if you think about, like, app down, we own everything. I guess, other than the chain. Like, we're built on Solana, but then above the chain and between sort of we own the protocol layer, we own the API layer, We own the product layer itself. Right?

So it's really important for us to own that part of the stack vertically because, for example, if you want to do an agent workflow where you have an agent automate certain transactions for you because you want those transactions to be recurring, You want to actually, you know, make the necessary protocol changes. You want this to be abstracted on the API layer, and then implement it on the products in a way that the customer actually, you know, wants to interact with.

And so being able not to rely on third parties for that part of the stack is is is highly important. I think everything above the app, so we're talking like the regulatory piece. Right? Should we you know, we've thinking about this a lot in terms of how do we kinda work with different partners to get max coverage. Right?

But in a way where it's redundant, in a way that is, you know, secure, and we're we're able to guarantee to our customers, you that their payments are gonna land, they're gonna land on time, and they're you know, that that is actually gonna happen. And so I would say, in that perspective, right now, we're still there's corridors that work great, where we feel really comfortable working with partners. There's corridors where we still you know, we would love to have better partners.

I would say today, we feel like our edge is definitely not in, you know, getting licenses and working with banks. It's actually continuing to advance the the part that nobody is really going that deep on. Right? Like, there's one thing we're working on that is not really developed at all is, like, how can you do ACH pool that actually pulls from a stablecoin balance. Right? Right now, there's a big need for if you're a company running on stablecoins in The US, you actually want to do payroll.

You want to do kind of payroll is probably the biggest use case. Right? Like, you wanna connect the deal to gusto. ACH pool is, like, the biggest use case, but how the how should that work, right, if you're actually managing your treasury for stablecoins? So it's it's an example of of of a problem. Like, the bill pay is another one. Right?

Like, how can you do bill pay that pulls from a stablecoin balance that allows you to kind of move at the stablecoin speed, but, you know, at a very different you know, connecting essentially the two architectures. Right? How can you do accounting? How can you do invoicing on top of that infrastructure?

And so we're much more excited about solving those problems and then improving the protocol to serve those use cases, right, than actually going out there and and trying to compete with, I guess, the sort of the orchestration ecosystem or or kind of any other ecosystem that exists on top of the, you know, the the the app in our case in the stack.

I I have two quick follow-up questions. Go ahead. And then, Zach, feel free. One, what are some of those corridors? I think just for the people listening who might be building in that area, would be curious to just have all those salespeople start hitting you guys up. What what are the corridors that you are looking into? And, specifically, what makes that ACH pull so so difficult? Those are just two of the follow ups I had.

I would say from from a corridor perspective, like, Swift is still like, doing Swift reliably is is still great. Like, we have a couple partners that we we really enjoy working with, and we we think we're gonna have a great experience. But still, if you're if you're building an orchestration platform, solving Swift in a way that allows, you know, us as a customer to understand where the payment actually is and when it's gonna land is is super useful, and so we'd love to see that.

I would say we're seeing a lot of demand for Singapore dollars and doing kind of local payouts in Singapore. Durham in UAE or where I'm at right now, also very viable and kind of having more more options there. I would say those probably are the two most burning ones. US, Europe, and and UK are pretty well covered, I would say, across kind of all the major all the major players. But going outside of that, obviously, Latin America, in some regions has discovered really well.

There's others that I think still being worked on. I think on ACH pool, it's just the complexity is you kinda have to the end state is, like, settled in fiat. Right? Because that's where, you know, your, like, deal or gusto, whatever platform of choice, they or are playing. Right? They will be using fiat to essentially pull the payments. So you need to settle with fiat. But the the the original balance isn't stablecoins.

So it's just you need to create a system where you can mirror, right, essentially, the the stablecoin balance and the fiat balance and somebody in the middle. Right? That that's kinda how stablecoin backed cars actually work. Right? Majority of them, where there's a fee at balance that gets settled, and then, you know, there's some settlement that happens in on chain, right, through through stablecoins. That that needs to be replicated, but still there there isn't much.

We haven't seen that actually done by by any of the providers. And maybe one of the reasons is because, like, nobody has has gone, I guess, that far in figuring out, okay. Because our one of our core tenants with Altitude is, like, we want to do everything with stablecoins. Right? And and for us Yeah.

Every workflow matters, and we're trying to go like, that's why the Altitude focus is so important for the company is because because we're we're really narrowing our focus of solving the, essentially, business outcomes for companies that want to run with stablecoins, or we expect a lot more of them to kind transition to that to that world. We want to go, you know, as far as possible to make sure that we have thought of every single kind of use case and workflow to to be able to cover through the platform.

So we've seen recently goose Gusto come back out with enabling payouts, you know, to, I think, to contractors and stablecoins. Do you and you mentioned having to do ACH pulls. Do you see us going towards a world with some of these payroll platforms where they will be doing recurring maybe recurring transactions in stablecoins in that full flow, and Endeavor has to touch dollars?

Or do you think right now we're just in a world where it may it may go stablecoins to fiat back out to stablecoins depending on the contractor?

I think that actually depends on the regulatory posture of, you know, a specific company. Like, there's a lot of different limitations that they face. So because there's, like, a lot of legacy infrastructure they need to maintain. They have a lot of licenses and and kind of partnerships they need to honor. Right? And and stablecoins are a big unlock for them, but they still have to kinda maintain all the legacy things.

I would say we're definitely gonna see kind of in in in in the middle, you're gonna see stablecoin settlement happen. At the end of the day, the the biggest question is more about the last mile. Right? Like, if I'm a contractor and I receive a stablecoin payment, I want to either spend it directly. And, right, I think that's a big opportunity for all these payout platforms where they can become the new bank of choice for those contractors. They're already getting paid for that platform. Why not just stay there?

Right? They can offer them a card. They can offer them yield. But I would say right now, it's still early days. Right? Like, right now, it's really about, can you receive your, you know, payment in in stablecoins? We'll we'll see where this goes. I am I would love to see a new platform appear that just goes stablecoin first from day one, right, and say, you know, we're gonna just embrace this reality. It's a great opportunity to also, like, bootstrap, you know, a new bank business as well.

Because, you know, payroll is all about or, like, payouts are all about compliance and solving a bunch of these regulatory things. That could be your way into I guess I'm encouraging them, you know, on this on this livestreams, you know, for builders to to to go and and kinda build build new platforms that are also global from day one. Right? Like, I think deal did an amazing job in in terms of, like, building a platform that is global. Right? And they're really focused on contractors.

But I would say, and Rippling are are still very, you know, EO centric. Same goes for a lot of the, like, business banking solutions overall. Right? Like, they're they're all very focused on specific geos.

Interesting. I wanted to switch gears a little bit going back to Altitude. You know, I'm I'm reading your tweet right now, and it says no more patchwork. One account. I mean, who right now would you say that you're building Altitude for? I know and and it's I actually used to work at a crypto fiat payroll company, Rise. And going into that role, this was two or three years ago, I thought this was gonna be very crypto native. I'd only be working with on chain orgs.

And, you know, month after month, I slowly started to see this shift. I'm I'm curious who in your mind right now, who is Altitude for? Who should people put us more on the side of a crypto neo banking solution? Is this an international neo banking solution? Is it a category of one right now? How do you think about Altitude?

So, actually, we really like to think about Altitude as a as the ultimate business account for for businesses on the frontier. Right? And the frontier can mean multiple things. I would say if you are, you know, pioneering new technology, if you're building the new technology, whether it's crypto, whether it's AI, quantum, biotech, defense, we definitely we we already assume that you're biased towards, you know, efficiency, you're biased towards new technologies that help you, you know, save time and money.

We definitely are excited about those kind of customers. Right? And then if you're an established business, if you're a Fortune 500 that is adopting stablecoins because you want to, you know, introduce much more efficiency to how you move money, right, across your company group, for example, we also think that you're on the frontier. Right? So I would say that's, like, a very broad way to think about the ICP.

To make it more specific, like, when we work with crypto companies, for example, right, they the the the patchwork in a quote that that that you said, right, it's it's really about as a as a crypto company today, you probably have a lot of different accounts. You have one for spend management and expenses. You have one for, like, your core banking and and, like, operating account. You maybe have most likely have one on chain to call the on chain treasury. And then maybe even have one more for the workflows.

And so we already, with Altitude, combine it all into a single place. So you don't need to worry about managing four different things, you can manage just one. Right? And so that is probably the biggest unlock for crypto teams specifically. From other types of customers, we're seeing a lot of demand for, obviously, settling transactions, you know, much cheaper when they need to do cross border transfers. Right?

So if you have global workforce, you have global contractors, you have suppliers that you need to pay, usually, I would say still we're seeing majority of the inflow of customers that recognize that on one side of the the payments, they actually need stablecoins. Right? So either their supplier is requiring to accept the payment of stables, or they want to pay somebody in stables. Right? And so that is still very much where we are today. And we're I would say we're gradually expanding the the ICP umbrella. Right?

But right now, there's still we feel like we want to do right by by the customers that are on platform and kinda grow in a in a much more steady way because we have great ambitions in terms of what the product actually needs to look like. Right? And as I described kind of three layers, there there's a lot of opportunities to to build, you know, an incredible product.

And so from that perspective, we're I I would say right now, we're probably, you know, 65 to 70 focused on companies like ourselves, which have been in the crypto space for a while, have been holding some kind of balance sheet in stablecoins for the last couple of years and gradually expanding to to to other types of customers.

Has there been anybody that, like, came inbound that just completely shocked you and, like, you're like, I would never have thought this this company was wanting to use stablecoins?

I would say it's just, like, a lot of merchants that are selling all kinds of physical goods Mhmm. That for for one reason or the other. Right? There there's a there's a payment that they need to make in stablecoins or they need to accept a payment on stablecoins. And then seeing some of them stay to, you know, earn yield on the capital or just actually, you know, retain ask some platform on stablecoins has been interesting.

But, yeah, I would say that's probably the most unexpected, right, where you have, like, merchants selling, like, leather goods in kind of strange regions of Europe and and all kinds of things. Right? So I'd say those probably are the most interesting. And then you have there's a lot of kinda, like, marketing and design agencies just kinda seeing seeing the the reach that they have, right, and, like, the the amount of of customers they have globally. And and I guess also contractors and employees need to pay.

That's also just been interesting for us to, you know, to evaluate. But I would say we do expect to as we kind of start branching out more to less stablecoin native businesses Yeah. We expect to collect a lot more interesting data in terms of who finds stablecoins valuable and and actually wants to use them. It's interesting how it's you know, adopting

some of these platforms is kind of born out of necessity where you have a vendor that says, I either want stablecoins or I wanna accept it, but then you go through and they're like, oh, this this is nice. I think I'm gonna actually they slowly start to shift, and it's it's really that notion that, you know, it's not until you use it. It's not until you kinda do that first Sablecoin transfer that your wheels start to turn a little bit.

And it's also our job to actually, you know, make it feel great. Right? And I think from a yext perspective, I think the the payments the the act of of payments for Stablecoins is already you know, it's instant, so it's it it feels great. I would say a lot of our like, the work we're doing right now is around how can you make self custody feel custodial. Right?

How can you make self custody feel not just secure, but from a UX perspective, you know, indistinguishable from using a traditional bank account in all the good ways, not not all the bad ways. And so I would say because that's also, like, a very core tenant of of how we think about a really scaling stablecoins to a lot of businesses globally is self custody is just it's it's a massive unlock. Right?

Allows us to go global from day one and then, you know, selectively figure out where we want to be connected to Fiat rails, right, and and facilitate that connectivity. And so it's just we also think that, again, talking about what what we discussed before. Right? Like, owning the stack from app down allows us to innovate in a way that, I guess, traditional players that are adopting stablecoins just can't.

Because the way, you know, they would probably scale their business would still be, you know, through finding local banking partners and local p p PSPs to work with. In our case, we were actually able to, you know, innovate on the self custodial element of the business and onboard a lot more customers much quicker.

Awesome. A lot to unpack, I'm sure, in the coming months. I'm just seeing OCR AI. I imagine AI is going to be a recurring topic that I'm sure we we'd love to have you back on the stream to to dive into.

I'm pumped to see how the Altitude product becomes more, like, natively agentic. It's something that we're just thinking lot about, and I know that you guys have kind of built it for success in that in that world. So yeah, man. Stepan, it's great great to have you on. It's great to yes, also just meet a lot of the other teammates and and people building Altitude with you. The team, everyone that we've met is just so so amazing as well.

And we've been delighted as we've started using Altitude for our business as well. So we're excited to excited to have you as a sponsor. We're excited to have more of these conversations.

Thanks for taking the time. Amazing. Thanks for having me. I love the show.

Thanks, Evan. See you later.