WEBVTT
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One year ago,
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we stood on this stage and shared why every business needs a stablecoin
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strategy. Here's the gist.
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Traditional financial infrastructure was designed decades ago for a pre-internet
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world, let alone the AI age that we live in now.
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The result has been that traditional financial rails are often slow, expensive,
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and just not available everywhere or every time that modern commerce needs
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to take place. Stablecoins, on the other hand,
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were designed for a global internet-driven economy.
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They directly address the pain points of traditional money movement.
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They're fast, cheap, borderless, fully programmable,
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and they run 24x7, 365 days a year.
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In the last few years,
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we've seen businesses worldwide take advantage of stablecoins across three key
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use cases, reaching customers everywhere,
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paying out globally,
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and building global-by-default financial services.
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Today,
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we'll review how businesses on Stripe are driving growth and efficiencies across
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these use cases.
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And we'll take a look at a new use case that's emerging alongside the AI boom,
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unlocking agentic revenue.
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Let's start with reaching customers everywhere. At Stripe,
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we often like to say that today's companies are global from day one,
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but the data are really striking. On average,
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the top hundred AI companies on Stripe sold to customers in 69 countries
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in just their first year,
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and that's before they do any proactive marketing or localization.
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At the same time, taking payments from all these customers can be hard.
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Card authorization rates outside major markets are 27% lower,
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and customers in many countries might not have a card in the first place.
But
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here's the really cool part.
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Our data also show that the same buyers who struggle to pay with cards are more
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than twice as likely to have a stablecoin wallet,
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which means accepting stablecoin payments can help you to capture motivated
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buyers that are otherwise slipping through the cracks. And the kicker,
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stablecoin payments save you over 60% in processing fees.
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Next, sending payments globally.
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If you are in the US and you try to send money to someone in the UK or in
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Europe, it might be pretty fast and cost effective.
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But if you're trying to move money somewhere in the Global South,
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the picture changes. Depending on the destination,
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the median end-to-end settlement time can jump from minutes to over 22
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hours, and that's if everything goes smoothly.
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And the average cost of sending just $200?
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6.5%.
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That's all because these payments are bouncing around a web of intermediaries,
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all with their own processing schedules, opening hours, holidays, and fees.
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But with stablecoins,
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cross-border payments arrive near instant and at a fraction of the cost.
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It's no wonder that remittances were one of the first use cases where
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stablecoins got traction. In fact,
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more than 10% of remittances from the US to Mexico each year are already going
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over stablecoin rails.
That's more than $6 billion a year.
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So clearly, this is an increasingly popular way to send money.
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And that's why today,
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we've made it easy for anyone on Stripe to use Treasury to send money with
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stablecoins to over 160 countries right from your Stripe Dashboard.
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But we know not everyone in the world has a stablecoin wallet to receive these
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payments. And honestly, setting one up can be complex. So this year,
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we're also making it possible for consumers to receive dollar-denominated
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payouts directly into Link. No wallet set-up required.
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Once consumers receive their funds on Link, they can hold them,
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cash them out to a bank account locally, or spend them on a Stripe-issued card.
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Enterprises like Meta are already partnering with Stripe today to pay creators
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in the Philippines and Colombia with Link.
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But what if a user does prefer to receive their local currency?
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Staplecoins help with that too.
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Through what's often called a stablecoin sandwich.
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By combining a fast cross-border stablecoin transfer under the hood with a local
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offramp,
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businesses can send people their preferred currency much faster and more
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cost-effectively than before.
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Companies like Félix use this method to accelerate remittances.
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And even within Stripe,
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we're using the stablecoin sandwich model to cut settlement times and cost for
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fiat-to-fiat payouts worldwide. Third,
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launching financial services globally. Historically,
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to offer even basic financial services for users,
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like an account that can hold a local currency balance,
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you'd have to go through a multiyear licensing process in each country.
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And for customers and countries with unstable currencies like Argentina,
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they'd much rather hold that value in dollars anyway. With stablecoins,
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businesses can instead build dollar-backed global-by-default financial services,
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and this is arguably the most transformative use case we're seeing. Now,
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one place this is becoming very apparent is stablecoin-backed card issuing.
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Just this morning, you heard that by using stablecoins,
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we were able to expand our issuing capabilities to 30 new countries and will
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expand to a hundred new countries by the end of this year.
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This is the type of geo coverage that you just couldn't do without stablecoins.
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But how does this work in practice? Let's take Gigbanc as an example.
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They use stablecoins to launch a dollar-backed neobank in over 50 African
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countries in just a few years,
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and now they support over 150,000 customers.
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Here at Stripe,
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we're also using stablecoins to increase access to dollar-backed financial
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services. Just last month,
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we rolled out Treasury to all global founders incorporating with Atlas and
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already have businesses from over 70 countries worldwide managing their finances
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in stablecoins right out of the Stripe Dashboard. What's more,
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mainstream platforms are also getting in on the game. Think about it this way:
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Payouts have traditionally been a cost center for platforms like X.
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You're paying all this money just to send funds out of your ecosystem.
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That's kind of crazy. With stablecoins,
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payouts can become a powerful lever for monetization and retention instead.
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Here's how.
Say you're a marketplace with buyers and sellers all over the
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world. Rather than paying sellers into an external bank account,
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you can pay them instantly into a dollar-backed financial account that you can
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provision and white label, which now earns yield for
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you.
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And then, this is maybe the best part,
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you can give them a card so they can spend those funds locally and every time
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they swipe, you earn. But of course,
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they may also want to cash those funds out into a local currency bank account,
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and that's okay. They can. In which case, you're earning on FX.
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The point is that you can monetize engagement throughout,
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all while providing value for your users.
Last,
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our newest use case: unlocking agentic revenue.
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Agents are quickly emerging as new economic actors on the internet,
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and those agents need ways to pay. Cards are one way.
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That's why we launched Issuing for agents,
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so you can create cards with detailed spend controls.
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But some of the most interesting emerging use cases for agents are the ones
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where cards don't really make sense.
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Think agents buying small datasets for fractions of a cent,
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or securing compute reasons paid for a token by token.
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Stablecoins are a natural fit.
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You can charge a fraction of cent and still make it work economically.
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Together with Tempo,
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we built the Machine Payments Protocol to make this easy to do.
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You can now accept programmatic payments on Stripe with just a few lines of
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code. And using the Machine Payments Protocol,
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agents have already spun up headless browsers and paid per session with
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BrowserBase. They've sent letters in the mail using PostalForm, and of course,
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perhaps most virally, they've ordered sandwiches through Prospect Butcher Co.
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Now,
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this is an exciting range of early use cases from the high tech and abstract to
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snail mail and sandwiches that points to how ubiquitous
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stablecoin-paying agents could become in our
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lives.
So let's recap. Last year,
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we told you how companies were using stablecoins to reach more users,
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pay out globally,
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and offer financial services all over the world. This year,
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we've seen usage skyrocket among mainstream platforms, marketplaces,
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and fintechs. Companies like Gusto, Payoneer, Klarna, Ramp,
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they're all building with stablecoins.
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And now you can get started too right from your Stripe Dashboard.
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To tell you more, please join me in welcoming Adam Sommer from Ramp,
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Luke Tuttle from MoneyGram, and our own Ravi Adusumilli.
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Thank you for joining me. Thank you, Sophie, for setting it up for us.
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So we thought we'd be bringing a good mix of discussion here.
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Ramp obviously has more than 50,000 businesses,
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and MoneyGram obviously has 50 million+ consumers in
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200+ countries.
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Territories and countries.
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Territories and countries.
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So we get a good mix of answers between the two of them. So just to kick off,
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Adam, you're building stablecoin-backed spend management for businesses.
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And look,
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you're reimagining how money is sent for consumers across the borders
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all over the world. So with that context in mind,
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how are you thinking about using stablecoins today and what are your plans?
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So maybe we'll start with you, Luke.
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Right. So at MoneyGram, if you're not familiar with us,
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we've been in business for about 85 years. As you said,
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we serve 50 million customers, 200 territories and countries.
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So we move a lot of money.
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Nearly $200 billion are moving around our network to
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serve our customers to send about $40 billion point to point.
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And a really important aspect of MoneyGram is we send money instantly today.
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So somebody here could go to a local shop and send money to a
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loved one in Bangladesh. And in minutes,
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it's going to be in your loved one's wallet in Bangladesh.
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It already works today from a user experience perspective in many cases.
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There was actually a talk about the fees being 6%, ours are under 3%.
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So from a customer perspective,
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many aspects of the experience they feel are good.
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The challenge to that though is that the cost to operate the network,
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to make this all work,
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requires well over a billion dollars of float positioned down around the world
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to enable us to do those instant transfers.
So something like stablecoin allows
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us to much more efficiently trade with our counterparties and to
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then provide a better service to our customers that can be lower cost.
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It can be instant or more quickly sent in more areas.
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And then it also allows us to provide additional services around the globe in a
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consistent way without having to rely on things like sponsor banks.
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Got it. You want to go next?
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Yeah. So at Ramp, our mission is to save companies time and money.
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In many ways, we've been building programmable money from the start,
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take a business's policies and automate the payments that need to run their
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business. And so for us,
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a big part of the payment flows that we support are reimbursements to employees
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or invoice payments to vendors, and often those payments are cross-border.
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And so stablecoins for us have really been an unlock in two ways.
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The first is faster, cheaper cross-border payments.
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You'll hear that theme to anyone you talk to about stablecoins,
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but they also give us a way to reach customers that we wouldn't otherwise be
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able to reach in new markets. And that's extremely exciting.
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Awesome. In terms of the demand, is this something,
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are you building ahead of time? Customers are actually asking you,
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or someone like Stripe is telling you,
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what is the pull for why you guys are thinking of doing this?
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Yeah. For us, it's a bit of both. I mean,
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we work with a number of large crypto native companies, Kalshi, Polymarket,
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Circle,
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who have been asking us for crypto payments and stablecoins for some time.
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But really stablecoins are an accelerant to our global vision that we've had for
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a long time. Sometimes I think about, what are we going to be doing in 2035?
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Who are we going to be serving? What are we going to be building?
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And then how can we do that in 12 to 18 months instead of 10 years?
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And stablecoins provide an avenue for us to accelerate our roadmap and get to
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new markets a lot faster than we would with traditional rails.
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And for us, MoneyGram,
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we've been using stablecoin and blockchain for several years.
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We have a close partnership with Stellar as an example,
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and have had a stablecoin wallet.
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A key part of using stablecoins is you need to trade with somebody.
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So that's been evolving. It needs the ecosystem to adopt stablecoin,
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understand its use. For those of you that work in larger banks and institutions,
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that compliance is a piece of
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the puzzle to get going. The GENIUS Act helped accelerate things.
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So we have definitely seen a dramatic increase in the willingness for our
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counterparties in our trading to want to use stablecoin.
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We ourselves are now trading at about a $1 billion annual run rate on
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some FX trades. So we're using it heavily internally. We're prefunding with it.
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We're settling with it as well. But from the customer's perspective,
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the real demand that we see from them is more about we'd like access to US
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dollars.
And from an infrastructure perspective,
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stablecoin and blockchain allows us to deliver a service nearly in any country.
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There's countries that, of course,
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that have blanket blockchain and crypto restrictions, but outside of that,
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it really enables us to have one infrastructure that allows us to provide this
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differentiated service to consumers, which is,
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I want to hold a US dollar and have the protection that that provides
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in a consistent way within our experience everywhere that we offer our service.
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Got it.
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And let's bring it to how customer pain points may be solved,
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maybe for you, Adam, to begin with.
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So Ramp let's use hold stablecoins and to power spend based on that, right?
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Can you talk to an example of how a business may be changing their behavior,
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how the finance team's world has been transformed before and
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after?
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And are there any still pain points remaining in that experience from one of
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your customer's perspective?
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Yeah. So maybe I'll actually give you two quick examples.
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Ostium is a global trading platform and they have
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payments that they need to make in fiat,
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which is a product that we've supported since the beginning,
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but they also have a significant portion of their payments that they make on
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stablecoin rails. Their vendors want to get paid in stables,
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they want to fund their payments in stables.
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And even though the majority of their payments historically have been fiat and
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Ramp has been able to automate those and make them extremely hands off,
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the small portion of stablecoin payments take a significantly outsized amount of
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their time because they don't have the tooling to make those payments with the
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same sort of workflows and automations that Ramp has historically offered,
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but now Ramp supports all of that.
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And so by bringing fiat payments and stablecoin payments under the same set of
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automations, the same set of Ramp workflows,
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they're able to fully automate their AP process.
And quick plug to go watch
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Andrew speak tomorrow with Asta from Privy as they unpack much more deeply how
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that product works.
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But I think it's not just about the businesses that are holding stablecoins on
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Ramp. Really,
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stables are powering a lot of what we do completely transparently to our
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customers. And so you heard the name ElevenLabs earlier,
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very fast-growing AI voice business,
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and they make a significant portion of their payments cross-border to voice
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actors. They pay for compute cross border,
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and we are able to power their payments in real time 24x7.
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So their mission-critical payments don't fail. And candidly,
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they don't even know that those payments are running on stablecoin rails.
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So whether you are asking for stablecoins or whether we are using them to power
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your business invisibly,
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we're able to sort of bring customers real value and they really care about
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where their payments are landing, and that's the important part.
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I got two examples. Thank you. And sorry,
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are there any pain points you still continue to solve?
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Yes. So stablecoin rails are instant, but fiat rails are not,
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and there is still an interoperability challenge there.
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You heard Sophie mention the stablecoin sandwich earlier.
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If I want to make an instant payment to Brazil and you want to get paid out in
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BRL and not hold USDC, for example,
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there's still an interoperability layer there where we are still constrained by
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fiat rails. And so there's still some work to be done here.
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And I think the more we can make the fiat world and the stablecoin world play
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together, the better it will be for everyone.
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Yeah. Sophie mentioned two kinds of sandwiches. So on the consumer side,
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Luke,
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how do you think stablecoins will change the remittance experience for consumers
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and for folks in the room who may still be using traditional banking rails to
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send money to wherever their loved ones are or whatever use cases,
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like how should the experience ... Should we reimagine?
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Yeah. So the first thing of remittance is trust.
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So a key thing when a consumer goes to send money cross-border
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is that they're wondering what's going to happen to my money because they're
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handing it over to somebody, whether it's in our app or it's at a retail store.
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So the trust needs to remain unchanged.
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And that's kind of a cornerstone of our business.
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So stablecoin doesn't change this trust,
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but it can improve the ability to deliver the service. So that consumer,
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particularly who's receiving the money and an experience that we just launched
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in Colombia and El Salvador is that consumer that used to only receive their
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money in cash now has the opportunity to choose to receive that money into a
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stablecoin wallet. And now that receiver has control over their money.
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And one of the surprising things that I learned when I came to MoneyGram,
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I joined about 15 months ago,
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was that the receiver traditionally in remittance wasn't really considered to be
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the customer of the remittance company,
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which as a in product that was mind blowing,
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is that was half of the experience not considered.
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So now that receiving customer can be part of the transaction
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and it can be done efficiently.
So if you're using a sponsor
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bank infrastructure that's expensive, it's difficult to deploy.
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It also means that as a provider to us,
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you have to consider the risk and compliance policy of that sponsor bank without
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limits your rollout. Suddenly you're in less countries.
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So stablecoin allows us to present this consistent service in all countries,
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which is important for any company with a single marketing message.
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But then now that receiver can have a balance,
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it can be of almost any amount because the cost of service is so
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significantly low and then we can add utility to the product.
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So now within those countries, they can have a stablecoin connected card,
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they can choose to cash out when they wish,
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they can choose based on the FX conditions,
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whether they want to get the cash today or not.
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So it provides this underbanked consumer an
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opportunity to have a digital wallet that was completely impossible
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for cost or other onboarding reasons that existed in so many countries
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on the globe.
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Got it. Yeah.
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I think one of the things Sophie mentioned is stablecoins kind of makes you
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global by default global from day one. So from that perspective,
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we heard 50 million customers, 200+ countries, territories as well.
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Ramp started in the US to begin with and Europe and Asia and Africa expansion
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coming. From that perspective,
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how do you see stablecoins as a global business accelerant?
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And when I look at the Stripe world,
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some of the businesses used to take a long time to go global.
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Now a lot of the businesses we see more than 30% or 40% of revenues coming from
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the global mix of customers within no time.
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So these amazing times to be like global from day one.
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So how do you guys see it stablecoins as a global extra?
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And maybe you're already global, but is it any trending?
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Yeah, it's an accelerant in providing additional services.
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So to have contemplated a company like MoneyGram adding on the ability to store
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a balance with every receiver, that would've been a country-by-country slog.
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There's still challenges. Regulation varies around the world, of course,
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but you're going to see from us many rollouts coming out
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precisely because the infrastructure's the same.
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Some of the regulations are relatively in common, right?
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So the experience can be reused country by country,
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but this just would not have been possible before.
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And it's the ecosystem as well. So the connected cards,
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the ramping that's changing, the liquidity exchanges,
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there's much more of these coming to market that provides you the ecosystem that
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you need to deliver, particularly as Adam said, in that last mile,
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because there is a bit of a mismatch between stablecoin and fiat.
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Even if that's made faster, it will be.
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There's also an extremely important role in this around compliance.
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So I always like to point out monetary policy and
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financial regulation is not going to be lessened.
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That does not mean we don't need to continue to find ways working with
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regulators, working with our customer to provide a friction-free service,
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but the more, particularly with AI and other tooling,
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we can improve that experience for the customer and to deliver an efficient
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product as well.
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Got it. How about from you?
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Yeah. So when we think about global expansion,
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we largely think about our customers in two cohorts,
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and these cohorts come together over time,
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but the first is our US multinationals.
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Our first customer many years ago was a US startup.
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Today we serve large multinationals like Uber, Airbnb, Stripe.
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And these companies operate in many countries.
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And so we can't serve those businesses if we're only operating in the US.
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And so the sort of first part of international expansion for us is how can we
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serve our largest customers with the wider and wider footprints that they have?
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And then more recently, we've started to serve customers outside of the US.
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About a year ago,
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we started serving small and medium-sized businesses in Canada,
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and that motion is really picking up steam. And if you read recently,
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we'll be starting to serve businesses in the UK and Europe this summer,
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and we have plenty of ambition. We're certainly not going to stop there.
385
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So glad you mentioned UK and Europe.
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Obviously there is a strategy to expand into UK and Europe with the recent
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acquisition you guys made.
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How do you see that comparing with stablecoins in the ... I mean,
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not asking you to tell us which companies you're going to buy next,
390
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but in terms of expansion, how do you see that strategy over stablecoins?
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Yeah, it's a good question. Our customers,
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they care about a few things.
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They care that their employees get reimbursed and that the payments land on
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time. They care that their vendors are paid on time for critical services.
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They care that their cards work wherever they need to transact,
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and they care that their cash is getting the best yield possible.
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They don't really care how the money moves. They care about outcomes,
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and we obsess about those outcomes. And so when we think about expansion,
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we think about how can we serve customers for the things that they care about in
400
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the easiest and best way possible.
401
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And so we have a number of tools in our arsenal, right?
402
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We have bank relationships, we can acquire licenses,
403
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we can use stablecoins,
404
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and these are all different tools that we can deploy in the markets that need
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them. And so when we look at a market where we want to serve customers,
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we think about what is the best mix of tools to serve those customers and how
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can we most seamlessly and most efficiently serve those customers?
408
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Yeah, they're not all mutually exclusive.
409
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Obviously. Correct, correct.
410
00:25:19.050 --> 00:25:22.050
Got it. In terms of a little bit more forward looking,
411
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at least Sophie talked about some use cases on card issuing, Treasury,
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and Link agents and all these amazing things we could do with stablecoins.
413
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Are there trends that we're missing?
414
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Are there things that you're seeing that hasn't been covered?
415
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What else could be great use cases for stablecoins to be able to provide more
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utility?
417
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So I think it's a great question,
418
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but it leaps ahead of the fact that stablecoins work
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today.
420
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And it'd be great to poll the audience and know how many are using stablecoins
421
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in your operations? So look around the room.
422
00:26:01.070 --> 00:26:01.903
A few hands, yeah.
423
00:26:01.970 --> 00:26:06.730
Right? So I think there's some... I don't know what those are going to be,
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but 90% of you aren't using stablecoins today.
425
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And as I tell my team,
426
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I'm not going to have a debate on the value of AI tooling to do programming and
427
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development. We can debate on how well it can help with that.
428
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I'm also not going to debate the utility of stablecoin because Adam's proved it
429
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at his business. We're proving it at our business. We know it works,
430
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but people need to get started. And my concern,
431
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I think it's a great question to be clear,
432
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but my concern is when you're thinking too far ahead is the basics can help you
433
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today. It's an ecosystem play, your trading partner,
434
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so you need to have conversations with your vendor.
435
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So we are outreaching to all of the people we pay and say,
436
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"We want to pay you in stablecoin on what chain, what asset.
437
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If you can't do it,
438
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why can we help?" And the same with our agents.
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And our agents are the very largest,
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I think now the second largest company in the world,
441
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to the bodega on the corner. We're having conversations now with them.
442
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Can you settle or can we prefund you in stablecoin?
443
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But you've got to get moving on it or it will pass you.
444
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Stripe's tooling is here, Ramp's is here, we provide it.
445
00:27:22.590 --> 00:27:24.770
Sorry, I'm not answering your question,
446
00:27:24.830 --> 00:27:27.470
but I just want to emphasize you need to get going.
447
00:27:28.130 --> 00:27:31.930
Why weren't 90% of your hands up? That's the question I want to leave you with.
448
00:27:32.030 --> 00:27:33.990
It's funny, only a few hands rose up here,
449
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but we also saw the stat that 10% of the largest remittance
450
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border, US, Mexico, is already happening on stablecoins, 10%.
451
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It works. Absolutely works.
452
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It works. And yet several of you are on the sidelines,
453
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but what's your perspective on this?
454
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Yeah, I might take a somewhat sidestep answer as well.
455
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I don't know about blind spots or things that we're not thinking about,
456
00:27:55.650 --> 00:27:59.070
but it would be crazy for me to be sitting up here and not mention agentic
457
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payments. We're spending a lot of time thinking about things.
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And if stablecoins are the digital money that is allowing us to
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move cross border faster, well, machines can think now.
460
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And so they're going to need to be able to spend money.
461
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And so we're spending a lot of time thinking about what does that mean for our
462
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customers today? What will that mean for our customers in the future?
463
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And how can we bring these technologies together to help our customers do what
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they care most about, which is run their business?
465
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Got it. Last question before we run out of time.
466
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Before Sophie comes back here next year and talks about all the amazing trends
467
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we've seen from this year to the next year,
468
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what's the one ask to the audience before we head out here?
469
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What does one ask for you to advise them to do, start building today?
470
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Or if they don't, what are they missing out by the time we meet again next year?
471
00:28:47.730 --> 00:28:52.390
Yeah, it should be 50% of the hands go up or more next year, but A,
472
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you need to start, accept that it works, and also do some of the boring work.
473
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So one of the kind of quote boring things we did is we got software to manage
474
00:29:01.750 --> 00:29:04.090
our stablecoin treasury internally. Well,
475
00:29:04.170 --> 00:29:08.370
we integrated it with our ERP system, with our cash management system,
476
00:29:08.910 --> 00:29:13.430
so that finance has one view of cash. It's not a separate rail.
477
00:29:13.570 --> 00:29:17.230
It's just we have currencies, some are USD,
478
00:29:17.590 --> 00:29:22.090
some are USDC as an example, but we don't operate in two worlds,
479
00:29:22.170 --> 00:29:23.230
we operate in one world.
480
00:29:23.310 --> 00:29:27.670
So that's like an important way because then it's not a different team,
481
00:29:27.730 --> 00:29:30.110
it's not a different initiative.
482
00:29:30.230 --> 00:29:34.950
It's just finance taking payments and you should be
483
00:29:35.410 --> 00:29:37.030
able to work in both.
484
00:29:37.130 --> 00:29:41.150
So that's my main get started today with it works.
485
00:29:41.770 --> 00:29:42.603
You heard him.
486
00:29:43.090 --> 00:29:45.830
Yeah. And I guess for those of you that are building companies,
487
00:29:45.890 --> 00:29:47.790
which I'm assuming is many of you,
488
00:29:48.650 --> 00:29:52.670
we spend all of our time thinking about how can we automate the finance workflow
489
00:29:52.750 --> 00:29:56.730
so that people can spend less time on their operations and more time doing the
490
00:29:56.750 --> 00:29:57.490
work that matters,
491
00:29:57.490 --> 00:30:01.630
the strategic work and the things that run their business and so we announced
492
00:30:01.650 --> 00:30:05.030
our procurement agent earlier today. We're automating one workflow at a time.
493
00:30:05.230 --> 00:30:09.100
And so my ask to you would be stop spending time on the things that don't matter
494
00:30:09.180 --> 00:30:13.420
and do spend time on the things that do matter. And yeah,
495
00:30:13.700 --> 00:30:16.700
it's an incredible time to be building. So go build.
496
00:30:17.100 --> 00:30:21.080
Awesome. Thanks for stopping by here today. Have a great rest of the Sessions.