We handle all of the complexities of crypto, ultimately just give fiat out at the back end to the merchant or to the payments company. And this simplifies their journey in crypto completely.
Where are some of the more stable coin-centric places in the world so we can use those as a shining example? Similarly, I assume how we want this flow to work for WalletConnect Pay is either with a QR or a tap with a crypto card.
Welcome back to another episode of Stabled Up, our premier weekly show covering digital dollars, stablecoins, and DeFi. Made possible by FRA. Today we have Jess Houlgrave. We'll be talking about stablecoin payments at scale. WalletConnect Pay has been big news. Crypto payments are scaling. Massive cryptocard volumes. Revolut and neobanks are issuing wallets. Traditional banks enabling retail stablecoins. WalletConnect Pay offering cashback rewards. Jess, first of all, how are you? Big week.
It has been a big week, one we've been working towards for a long time. I've been thinking about crypto and payments for many years now, so very excited by it all.
Great. WalletConnect has been in the stablecoin and wallet signing space. But this feels like a one-sided jump into where you believe the future is headed: payments for stablecoins at scale. Let's start with the thesis. Why are you so bullish on B2B stablecoin payments? Why is this going to happen? Talk to us about why this niche is set to grow big time this year and into the end of the decade.
We see people moving onchain across various vectors. Businesses are moving their treasury onchain. As a result, people will want to pay suppliers, pay employees with onchain assets. We saw the zero hash Gusto announcement for contractor payouts. With WalletConnect Pay, we're building on our network that accesses about 700 wallets and many thousands of applications. This creates a seamless payments flow for consumers, so when they go in-store with an Inenico partnership or online, they can pay with the assets they hold.
The Inenico partnership caught a lot of people off guard. I go into restaurants and see this point-of-sale provider. Associating that with WalletConnect was a big eye-opener. Give us a deeper sense of how it works under the hood. When I tap my normal card, what is the process for businesses to onboard WalletConnect Pay? Are all Inenico ones available by default? Are you going to businesses one by one? Tell us about the ins and outs.
Instead of a traditional crypto experience where you connect your wallet and sign a transaction, it feels like a payments experience. You choose to pay with an asset, click pay, one and done. On the merchant side, unfortunately it's not on all Inenico devices tomorrow. It will be a gradual rollout with their direct merchant partners and acquiring bank partners. Inenico covers about 40 million terminals worldwide. A merchant can opt in directly or ask their PSP. We hope more payment companies will switch this on because merchants demand it for lower fees, faster settlement, higher basket value.
You've argued that for consumers to be interested, cashback rewards are interesting. For B2B, when explaining to enterprises what you've built, is it as easy as saying faster settlement times, cheaper fees, instant payments, more profits? What is that conversation like?
For most merchants, it's unlikely they will only accept crypto. This needs to sit alongside existing payment methods like card, cash, buy now pay later, open banking. WalletConnect Pay sits alongside all of those. When talking to a payment company, we speak their language. They shouldn't need to understand crypto underneath. We plug into their existing systems, provide reconciliation data, handle all crypto complexities, and give fiat out at the back end. This simplifies their journey. Our goal is to put it in language they understand: cheaper, faster, additional benefits, global, easy to launch.
Do you see a world where this evolves? Give us a before and after. Fiat comes out when it hits the merchant. For consumers at point of sale, are we expecting them to come with stablecoins, or bring fiat to point of sale? Will we integrate stablecoins in the middle to improve settlement times and costs, so it looks like fiat in, fiat out, but we move money with stablecoins in between? Is that one of the end states?
The ultimate end state is all pieces of the economy onchain. People get paid in stablecoins, they want to pay with stablecoins, companies pay employees and suppliers in stablecoins. Today, most people paying with stablecoins already have them. Many merchants want fiat out at the back end because they don't have the setup to accept stablecoins directly. But they are moving their treasury management onchain. Over time, we can remove the fiat offramp and payments go end to end in stablecoins. The long-term game is to not need traditional rails. A meaningful proportion of payments will shift onchain.
Not your keys, not your coins. Trezor has released its new cold storage wallet. Secure your coins at treasure.io.
Holiday is a unified crypto payments platform. Give your users more. Go to holiday.xyz to never write a smart contract again.
Looking for yield? Infinifi gives you that. Deposit stablecoins and earn more than current savings rate. Battle-tested reliable DeFi. Go to infinifi.xyz.
A study by McKinsey and Artemis says the stablecoin industry is upwards of $380 billion. Most is in B2B transactions ($226 billion). Remittances $90 billion. Capital markets $8 billion. True stablecoin payments represent only 0.02% of the $2 quadrillion global payments market. You guys are sitting where the bulk of activity is in B2B. But as we look at payments as a whole, where do you see the puck moving next? How do we get to 100%? Is it more growth in B2B, remittances, or retail? How does the stablecoin market start to cannibalize more of the global payments market?
All of these things are symbiotic. You need all the pieces in place. Does it make sense to receive salary in stablecoin if you have to offramp all? Probably not for many. But if you can pay for everything, it makes more sense. For businesses, moving treasury onchain without paying suppliers onchain doesn't help. So you need this to come together. Also need the right incentives and user experience. Until now, crypto payments are arguably worse than tap to pay. We focus on making user experience great. Incentives like cashback and rewards experiments are trying to change consumer behavior. Merchants offering discounts for crypto payments can help. That's a challenge for crypto payments in coming years.
Incentives are a great way to do that. Could you give us a sense of the incentives that are out there and how businesses and users can take part?
