The Altitude Card: Visa Spend Straight from Stablecoins in 150 Countries

Stefan, welcome back. Again, congrats on yesterday. What happened yesterday? This was this was big. Altitude cards now live. Tell us about it.

First of all, thanks for having me again. It's my it's my second time, I think. I'm excited to excited to be here today. It was, like, the seventh time. I feel like we I know. Feel like a yeah, man. Thanks for coming back. Yeah. We announced AltuCard yesterday. I mean, we announced it actually, I think, about three weeks before that it's coming. And as of as of yesterday, it's finally live.

We're obviously starting to roll it out to everybody who's already on platform, and we also have a lot of inbounds after the announcement yesterday. The the pitch is very simple. You can create virtual cards for your business, and it's available for businesses in a 150 countries. And as we're developing Altitude into this global operating accounts, obviously, card spend is is a giant vertical that that's really important to get right, and it's a it's a core pillar. Right?

But at the end of the day, for us, it's it's a core component of a kinda larger system. Right? So, like, the card alone is not the product. The the system is and the account is. And we're finally, you know, at the stage where we're able to to solve that major pain point for a lot of a lot of businesses. We launched the card with Rain. I know they're also friends of the friends of the show.

And so, yeah, we're very excited to finally get it out. Talk to us about, like, in this in this, you know, fight on chain financial operating system. I think there's this tendency, whether it's a business or personal neobank to think, like, it all it all starts with a card, and you could took kind of a very different approach with laying this foundational layer with Altitude. So kinda walk us through that logic of, you know, why build this strong foundation,

bring customers on, and then and then bring a card to market versus, you know, just going all in with a card. I think it's it's, for the most part, path dependence with our history. You know, we started with very secure account infrastructure that today, you know, secures a lot of value for companies that are very, you know, in crypto. And the original idea was, can we bring that to a much larger market, right, and essentially build all these workflows and experiences around the same primitive.

And so we started from a place of, you know, security and programmability and how we design, essentially, this account that will scale globally, but that will feel, you know, like it's a traditional bank account in all the good ways, right, where essentially you can always recover it. You can program it in a way that kinda matches your enterprise controls. And so that's that's where we started. We wanted to make sure we get that right first.

And then, obviously, you know, the payments vertical was was important to get right. And we're still you know, it's an external quest, like, expanding coverage and adding more partners and, essentially, adding more rails and allowing for payouts and more currencies. But cards are obviously the second biggest vertical for us.

I think from a from a kinda consumer neo banking perspective in in in crypto, cards are obviously very big because it's a straightforward product to get out and kind of customers will sort of come in, and you can also do some incentives. And it it all kinda makes sense as our customer position strategy. But for us, we're we're positioning Altitude as a as a larger system. Right? And so for us, it was very important to to start from the foundation and now kinda build up from there.

And that approach will honestly scale to, you know, other verticals within the experience. Right? Like, you know, today, have payments and some basic bill pay functionality, but the idea is that over time, you know, accounts payable, accounts receivable, ERP syncs, and sort of the accounting workflows, like, all of that builds on top of payments. Right? And so we get to to sort of build up from the core foundation, which is, you know, a programmable and chain account that secures secures your money as a business.

Have you seen this step? I'm gonna pull it up really quick. This was a neobank

dot build. This was floating around Twitter, And it's it's again, they're going, and they're doing full breakdowns of of all these different neobanks, and they're they're full stacks. And, you know, it is interesting to think about how there's there's people going out there now, and they're vibing and vibe coding vibe coding a a neobank in a in a weekend and going live.

But what do you but but but what do you actually think about that? Because if I'm you He's saying that's that. I'm just like, yeah. Right. Like You're like, it's definitely not that easy. Like, you're Yeah. What is that when you see that, what is that what goes through your head?

I think these are great, you know, proof of concepts, and now you can kinda speed around to to that state pretty quickly. If you're serious about it, though, there's a lot of aspects, you know, particularly when it touches security, when it touches compliance. There's a lot of kind of elements to get right that definitely you want to spend time on and figure out. I think a lot of the kind of products we see out there are also the kinda, like, single provider. Right?

Like, you essentially take a wallet management system, I don't know, like a like a preview or a turnkey, and then you build a simple app. You plug in a card, and and that's really the extent of of the offering. I think if you're if you're serious about getting it right, you have to build global coverage. You have to build redundancy. Right?

Like, for example, if you're, know, you from a payments perspective, if you want to support, you know, multiple rails, you need to have primary rail, secondary rail partner, right, that essentially you can fall back to in case something goes wrong. And so building that coverage, for example, is is a giant undertaking that is tied to compliance and and kind of figuring out how you orchestrate those systems in a way that the customers are able to, you know, get the best experience.

So I think it really depends on how deep you want to go. Right? Like, I think if the if your vision is is relatively straightforward, you can you can get there pretty fast. But, again, like, the building up the right foundations and and thinking about, you know, the hard things before they become a problem is is obviously, you know, a big advantage, but you have to invest upfront.

But on the other hand, like, I'm very bullish on just the explosion of software more broadly and the fact that we have a lot more know, financial services companies, financial services being delivered to more customers globally. I think it's great. Like, we'll see how that consolidates. Like, it always happens. Right? Like, there's an expansion. There's consolidation. But the fact that people are experimenting, there's new models. There's, you know, really, like, vertical neobanks. There is

kind of new banks that are focusing on specific workflows. So I think all of that is is great and should be out there. We'll just see how how the market source it all up. We've been earlier in the show, we were reporting you mentioned you you're building the card stuff with Rain, and and they're a key partner here. We were reporting earlier. We we've been seeing them move closer to this, like I'm forgetting exactly what the name that they're calling it, but, like, agent controls agent control layer.

Is is that like, how how when you were thinking about the the partner that you wanted to go with on this, how were you thinking about you know, what what what was it about Rain that was attractive? Any thoughts? I know as you guys think about you mentioned, like, future features that you wanna see native to Altitude, AgenTek wise. What is now possible with these cards? It seems like cards is, like, a really great first step in that direction for people, at least in my in my own head, it seems like that.

How how does this bring you guys more closer to that, like, agentic agent powered commerce vision? So first of all, you know, RAIN is is very battle tested. They power majority of the crypto cards out there, they're they're powered by RAIN. I would say we've known the team for a very long time. I think before before it was kind of focused on APIs, and it was kinda more first party. So I've known I've known for for a while. Yeah.

Big fans of the team for for a very long time, and we always kind of understood that they're gonna be one of the, you know, first partners for us to to get the card product out. I would say, you know, their developer experience is fantastic. The team is obviously, you know, super valuable, and it's it's very remarkable to see at that scale. Right?

Because, like, they serve a lot of customers, and having that level of care for, you know, all of them is is actually a very big unlock and, you know, a great testament to what they're building. I would say from an agentic perspective, we we're kind of because we own a lot more of our own infrastructure. Right? We we don't kinda rely on a single key management provider to power the accounts. We kind of own the protocol layer. Right?

We're able to play around with agents in in very different ways because we're kind of not bottlenecked by somebody else's infrastructure layer. We're from an agentic perspective, I think what we're we're starting to explore internally right now is actually agents that sort of directly control your your kind of stablecoins on chain and are able to settle in stablecoins with counterparties.

Sort of again, like, cards are fantastic, but if you can bypass, you know, merchant fees and and kinda do it in a instant settlement kinda way, it's always, you know, more interesting product to to explore. And so we've been looking a lot more at, you know, the the Tempo guys have launched MPP. Right? They essentially allow you to now settle on Stablecoins for certain, for example, like, AI spend. Right? Like, Entropic and OpenAI actually accept the Stablecoins through Tempo and MPP on chain.

So experimenting with those models is definitely something we're we're we're starting to do a lot more. And the unique capability here is that we can give an agent, you know, some limited signing rights on your programmable on chain account, and, you can really be sure that, essentially, the the the network that is Solana, right, is providing the guarantee, which for us is, like, a very interesting primitive to to play around with.

And that will kinda scale for like, when we think about agents at Altitude, there's kinda three major verticals. Like, one is essentially how other agents will interact with your Altitude account. Right? So it's exposing those agentic interfaces. The second vertical is essentially internal agents. Right? That, like, you you deploy within the Altitude workspace for automating different actions and workflows. Right?

So for example, accounts payable, accounts receivable is a is a good example which we're working towards. And then there's external. Right? Like, can I go, like, services procurement is, I think, the most interesting use case today, which is, like to me, that's how I think about the Gen Tech Commerce? Right?

Like, if I have an agent that's building stuff for me and I'm trusting the agent to make some decisions downstream about what software to buy to to actually, you know, build the thing I wanna build, giving that agent control of a, you know, stablecoin balance and allowing it to, you know, make decisions on how they're gonna pay for it. I think that's probably the the the most interesting capability we're seeing today. So those are kind of the three verticals.

I think we'll we'll definitely kinda dig into what what Frain's doing on the agentic side, but we also want to see how how we can do this in a kinda purely end to end stablecoin, simple way. Yeah. We were able just talk go ahead, Drew. I I was wondering, like, if you were to recommend,

like, our business. Like, we're, you know, like, we're in a position where we u we use Altitude. Would love to get going with this card product. Very open to building more of, like, integrated commerce powered by agents into our own business. Like, how do you how do you recommend existing Altitude users who may be just thinking about this product as a traditional, like, banking experience?

Like, how would you recommend reframing or opening people's minds to what is now possible so that we can really start, like, using altitude to its full extent. I think sometimes people are thinking about maybe what like, they're going to altitude or they're going to these other, like you know, what they think of is I'm just I need a place to hold treasury, but there's so much now more foundationally that you're able to do.

Help how how do we need to start thinking about this, or how would you recommend us to get started?

First of all, you know, we like to we like to show, don't tell. So let us ship, and then we'll we'll actually show you what what's possible. Right? But I would say from a vision perspective, the the idea is that we we subscribe to a world where the the kind of the changes that are coming will actually happen pretty gradually. Right? And we want to showcase that on the product level.

So for example, we we really think that agents will be hyper focused and vertical rather than kinda, like, general general purpose AGI that just knows everything and does everything on your behalf. Our job is to deploy the right agents for the right workflows, guard them with the right parameters, and essentially allow them to automate a lot of the aspects of what you do as a, you know, as a founder, as a controller, as a CFO within the workspace experience.

Like, that's probably gonna be the the the the next thing we we go after. And from from that perspective, the the way you will see it, right, is there's certain actions that Altitude will offer to you to automate completely. Right? For example, if we're seeing that in the last six months, you receive the same invoice from the same counterparty, the amounts you usually pay are exactly the same.

We will offer to say, do you want an agent to settle that payment for you whenever this same invoice hits your email inbox next time? And that's kind of an example of of where this is gonna go. Same goes for, like, accounts receivable. Right? Sounds lovely. Sending invoices out. So I think that's where that would go. Man. Oh my gosh. Invoices are the worst, especially manual invoices. It's like, that sounds lovely. That sounds lovely. That's an example of where we think this will go.

But, of course, we'll we'll kinda reveal more in into time. But, again, to the point of how we do things, like, we want to set the foundation, you know, right before we move on to the next step. And so that's definitely coming.

Sure. Zach, what do got? I'm not gonna cut you off anymore. No. In this I was just where I'm just thinking about where this where this space is going, and I think a big focus of this has been non USD stablecoins. Are you guys seeing, like, any surge in demand in, you know, in these emerging markets that you're serving? Like, do they only care right now about USD banking, or are you starting to get more of these whispers of, like, hey. I actually wanna hold, you know, MXN or BRL in my account.

What's your experience been in in that realm, and and how are you seeing that space develop?

That's a great question. I I wanna use this platform to kinda do an open call that, you know, we really need multicurrency stablecoins across the board. I think the, you know, people that are saying it's just all gonna be dollars, I think they're wrong. I think we need stablecoins basically for every currency. And the reason is that dollars today, it's kinda like it's a good ramp to a place where we we spread, you know, the technology, right, and and kinda lure the kinda early early customers in.

But at the end of the day, the vision is that we're gonna move to a very different system in terms of how, you know, businesses and consumers actually manage their money. And things like FX hedging, FX forwarding are entire like, are very important for for majority of the businesses. Right? Because, like, if you're doing anything cross border, you're dealing with different currencies, you don't want to just get your kind of FX rate just in time.

You want to do a proper treasury management, hedge yourself from any kind of FX risk, hold different currencies on your balance sheet. We it's it's completely normal. Same goes, by the way, for cards. Right? Like, majority of the crypto sort of stablecoin backed cards are all dollar dollar backed. Right? And the issue is obviously that if you're not, you know, buying something in dollars, you you bear the FX fee. Sometimes the providers can take it on themselves, but very rarely. Right?

And so we want multicurrency cards. Like, that's one of the bigger and if you go to the Airwallex website or Wise, like, they give you full multicurrency cards where you can, you know, load it up with the other currencies you want, and then whenever you spend, you you bear zero FX rate. So I think that is, you know, hugely important both from a card perspective, from payment perspective.

And so today, the I think the issue we're seeing is, like, there's a lot of very promising projects and a lot of teams are going after, like, different local currency stablecoins, but they're all very early, and there's zero interoperability. Right? So, like, I can only mint and burn that stablecoins through their own platform. You know, we're today connecting about, like, seven orchestrators for for Stablecoins within the Altitude experience. We're gonna have, you know, a lot more by the end of the year.

We need the Stablecoins we use for the accounts to actually be interoperable with all these providers. And so today, that's, like, you know, big fragmentation problem, somewhat similar to what we had with, like, you know, having multiple chains and and doing bridging. Like, it it's somewhat connected to sort of same energy. So that is still unsolved. And, yeah, I would love to talk to anybody who's trying to figure out how to do this efficiently. What what is so difficult

about about this problem in your in your view from what you've seen? It seems like there's and and whose responsibility do you believe it is to solve it? Is this the, you know, the network of partners that you guys have have mentioned that you're working with? I'm I'm trying to remember back on that original announcement, like, the Infinites of the world, the, I believe, Moon Pays, Bridge.

Like, is it that layer that's that's on the hook for going to, like, do that work, or is this something that the app layer or the, you know, the altitude layer is supposed to be doing? Like, how do you see that, and what what partners or existing companies are you tracking right now who you think are leading the way or, like, in the in the potential pole position to to build things like that?

Because they're we're we're trying to do our best of covering who those players might be, like the ether fuses of the world, mental labs, like, you know, we had Hop Now on earlier talking a ton about, like, FX and this this conversation. Like, two part question. Who is doing that? Like, whose responsibility is that, and who's actually on your radar right now?

So I think the the majority of the local stablecoins we're seeing today, they're being built by kind of startups and and smaller companies. Like, Etherfuse was my kind of primary example. Like, they've been grinding for the last couple of years and actually did amazing work. I I think the the way it's gonna play out, some of these stablecoins are gonna get somewhat meaningful traction, but nowhere near what we expect today from, like, a, you know, highly adopted stablecoin, like a USDC or USDT.

And then some of the stablecoin orchestrators will figure out that we might just acquire the the smaller players and kind of internalize the stack. Right? Because I think the orchestrators are in the best position to to own that because I think we're gonna see more interoperability between different providers. Like, I think it's in the interest of everybody.

Right right now, it's pretty fragmented, but I think over time, it will kind of there will be shared liquidity and kind of shared layers to to move money through. And so I I expect some of them to actually go and acquire a bunch of these smaller companies and and give us a lot more local stablecoins with the shared liquidity pool and the because all of them are building, like, incredible FX infrastructure as well, either it's, you know, stablecoin to stablecoin or, obviously, stablecoin to fiat.

And so that maps really well to saying, okay. Now we can actually have a tokenized version of MXM, tokenized version of BR. Or maybe, you know, Circle wants to expand beyond UTC and UREC because, you know, we love Euroc. I I don't know if I I can also kind of I should talk about this more. I think Euroc is a fantastic product because we have incredible liquidity for Euroc on Solana.

All of our customers who want to do SEPA payments, they're just going through a purely, you know, on chain effects through Jupiter on Solana live today. Right? And you do use this. You're getting market rate. Like, it's it's basically Google rate. It's not even, like, Revolut or or Wise level. And so it it's even better. Right? And so I think we want that, but for every single currency. Right? And so whoever solves that problem, I think, will do really, really well. And then we would love to use it.

I gotta hit you with one more euro c cannon here just to just to prove the point back. But, yeah, it's an interesting it it seems like a really foundational,

potentially last mile and first mile layer. Like, there's definitely, like, an offboarding and, like, you need that that layer. Without that layer, people aren't going to have the functionality that they need, but they're also not gonna get in the game because it's not gonna serve their needs. It's, like, such a crucial missing piece that we're just starting to open the open the aperture of.

Open call for us, we have a upcoming research series that we're doing that's gonna really try to dive into some of this stuff, like the complexity and the current state of things when it comes to cross border remittances, FX. And so we're September, we're gonna be exploring this more on the show, and that's gonna be a big focus for us in the coming months.

But, yeah, really interesting to hear your perspective as someone who's, like, actively trying to integrate this function into Altitude to actually serve more businesses and users. So really, really great. Anything we've missed? Anything you're excited about? I know the card we've covered the card stuff. Anything going into, you know, the summer that we need to be aware of or things that, you know, top of minds or things you wanna leave our very stablecoin focused audience with?

It's been a fun couple months for Altitude. I feel like you guys are just shipping a lot, fundraise announcements. The team is growing. What's up? Any any final thoughts here?

Okay. Think summers are historically for us a time when we ship. Like, that's when actually a majority of the, like, really like, high density of output happens. We don't actually announce everything in the summer, but we ship the most of the functionality at least for, like, that half of the year for sure. So it's gonna be a really busy summer for us. I think what I can tease is, obviously, we we also kinda talked about this publicly yesterday. You might have seen that Helios acquired Light Protocol and Solana.

Light Protocol was this very was an amazing team is an amazing team that's building a privacy infrastructure on top of the Solana blockchain. And so Helios now acquired them, and and they're essentially gonna build a privacy layer for Solana. And we are been working with the with them for a while on kind of figuring out what is the right design for for Altitude and potentially broader for Squad Multiseg. And so I guess privacy is coming. There's kind of a lot more work that needs to go into it.

But, yes, the the the standard is is gonna is gonna be on Solana, and we're gonna we're gonna pioneer it for, you know, b two b payments and b two b money management. So very excited to work with the team on that, and, yeah, congrats to them on on partnering together.

Congrats to Lite. That's awesome. I haven't heard of Lite, but I know privacy is such a key key top of mind focus. So congrats to that team. That's huge. Healy's just continues to dominate so many things. Mert Mert doesn't miss. Doesn't miss. Zach, any final thoughts from your side?

No. We're good, man. Congrats. It's fun to it's been fun to to chat each time, but also just to follow along the journey. And, Drew, I can't wait to get an Altitude card.

Yeah, man. And another shout out shout out to Altitude for powering stable minded. We we just had we were talking step top of the show. New new episode this morning with Keith talking about bunch of stuff with cross border payments and and things of this nature. So, again, if you're watching this slide on a few really great episodes. Yeah. We're sitting on some some powerful stable minded episodes. So thanks again to altitude for getting us getting us powered there. So it's been fun.

I'm halfway through the last episode, so I'm I'm still I'm I'm still I'm still getting there. But but it's great. You you guys are doing a fantastic job. Might be too. Were joking last time. It's it's sometimes even hard for us to watch everyone. Know? I'm caught up on stable minded. It's

no. It's definitely it it's actually been more

somehow now doing the livestream because I'm in most of the content. So That's true. It helps. That's true. We don't have to go back and rewatch these, which is fun. But, yeah, Steph, thanks for the time, man. Appreciate it. Can it's always fun to watch the journey, so just keep shipping. Thanks for coming, guys. Love the show. Well, hope to be back soon.