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Jess Houlgrave

Chief Executive Officer, WalletConnect (WalletConnect Foundation / Reown)

Search every verified Jess Houlgrave interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In an interview published on August 14, 2026, Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect, discussed the company's expansion into payments with WalletConnect Pay and the competitive dynamics between stablecoins and traditional card networks. She stated that stablecoins are unlikely to replace card networks like Visa and Mastercard, but will instead pressure them to evolve. Houlgrave argued that successful stablecoin adoption depends on finding use cases that benefit both merchants and consumers, citing examples such as avoiding high cross-border fees when traveling and circumventing card failures for large transactions. Houlgrave also described WalletConnect's scale, noting its network of approximately 700 wallets and 80,000 applications, reaching about 800 million end users, with roughly $400 billion in value moved through the network in the past year. She characterized stablecoins as more global than local payment methods, eliminating the need for different payment systems in each country and reducing cross-border fees. Houlgrave advised merchants to integrate stablecoin payments as an addition to existing methods rather than an either-or choice, and emphasized the importance of opting for flexible payment solutions that can adapt to new chains and assets over time.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“Stable coins are global so I don't have to have a new payment method every country that I travel to or when I make crossborder payments I don't get hit with really big fees. The second thing is that I don't really think of it as an either or. Yes, as a merchant, you don't want to offer probably every type of payment method, but if you want to be able to attract the most consumers, give them the best experience, addin”

“I don't think that stable coins is going to be what kills the card networks. I think it forces them to evolve. It's not just about whether the end user wants it or whether the merchant wants it. You have to find these use cases where it makes sense both for the end user and for the merchant. And that might not be in all payments, but it makes sense for me when I travel to Africa and I get charged 10%. It also makes s”

“Our goal with Wallet Connect Pay is that because it's fully on chain, we can really compress that pricing and we don't need a Visa or a Mastercard to be part of that flow. The transaction effectively will work with any wallet on our network. depending on things like off-ramp, some of the compliance processes, those variable costs that sit in that, but that's really that that like 50 60 basis points that we can get fo”

“My expectation is that our payments partners in Europe may elect to not accept USDT as a payment method. Now, of course, there are things that we can do from a consumer perspective in terms of onchain swaps and things like that that abstract some of that and may still enable it enable users to use USDT even if the recipient i.e. the payments company, which is the regulated entity, never touches USDT.”

“I really believe that all value movement is going to move onchain at some point. It's going to take us a while because there's so much existing infrastructure. I think it's a kind of an inevitability. This technology just makes sense. It is so efficient. It is so quick. It's so useful actually from a compliance perspective.”

“I think the place that it is perhaps misunderstood is this notion that there's no compliance, it's very very hard to build compliant payment flows, you don't know where coins are coming from. And I think that's sometimes enhanced by, you know, media misrepresentation of how crypto is used, for example. And we've built a lot of things at WalletConnect that actually enhance and support compliant payment flows.”

Other executives at WalletConnect (WalletConnect Foundation / Reown)

  • Pedro Gomes, Founder and Director, WalletConnect Foundation

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