Exclusive Interview with Walapay CEO Tom Borgers: The Ultimate Goal of Stablecoin Payments is Not to Replace Banks

*Author: [Charlie Little Sun](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MyWVKS7COdvpQL76ldCK0Q), The Loop Lion on Dune Road*

In the past two years, the stablecoin payment industry has been undergoing a very interesting transformation.

Initially, startups promoted stablecoins to customers by highlighting faster, cheaper cross-border transfers and 24/7 settlement.

However, with Stripe acquiring Bridge, Mastercard acquiring BVNK, and companies like Rain and HIFI receiving significant funding, the competition in stablecoin payments has gradually extended from merely being a payment channel to global fund management and next-generation financial infrastructure.

At this year's Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, I conducted this interview with Tom Borgers, co-founder and CEO of Walapay.

Earlier this month, Walapay announced the completion of a $4.6 million seed round led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Polygon, Verda Ventures, NGC Ventures, FGV Capital, and others.

Compared to many startups still emphasizing the technical concepts of stablecoins, Walapay has disclosed a considerable business scale: an annualized payment transaction volume (TPV) of $2.5 billion, covering over 180 countries and regions, supporting more than 60 currencies, with clients including Kast, Nuvei, and Bastion.

However, these numbers are not the most interesting part of this interview for me.

Walapay was co-founded by Tom and his brother Dimitri Borgers. Tom worked at ConsenSys for four years, closely involved in the early development of the Ethereum ecosystem, with deep connections to infrastructure projects like MetaMask and Infura.

But today, what he has built is not a purely Crypto technology company.

On the contrary, Walapay invests a significant amount of energy into the most traditional and hardest-to-digitize financial systems: local banking networks, regulatory licenses, and payment clearing infrastructures in emerging markets like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Central America.

In Tom's view, these traditional financial aspects, often seen as troublesome by tech startups, may actually become the true moat for the next generation of cross-border payment companies.

In the latter part of the interview, we discussed a bigger topic:

In the future, will the center of corporate financial operations still be bank accounts, or will it be stablecoin wallets?

The following is a compilation of the interview. For readability, some colloquial expressions have been streamlined and adjusted, while retaining the main content and viewpoints of the original dialogue.

### 1. From Mexico to Pakistan: What are the real challenges of stablecoin cross-border payments?

Charlie: Your recent expansion in global markets has been rapid. Which regions is Walapay prioritizing now?

Tom: We have a lot of business in Latin America and are increasingly establishing direct partnerships with local banks in emerging markets.

Mexico is one of the key areas. We have obtained local licenses and are currently advancing towards full operations.

Another important market is South Asia. We have direct partnerships with banks in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, which allows us to support cross-border remittances and commercial payments in these markets.

Southeast Asia is also a focus moving forward. We already have direct bank connections in the Philippines, while Indonesia and Vietnam are two markets I am particularly focused on right now.

Of course, B2B cross-border payments related to China and Hong Kong have always been a very important part of our business.

Charlie: Pakistan is interesting. I encountered this market when I was involved in cross-border payments and know that the local regulatory and banking system is quite complex. How did you manage to establish operations in Pakistan?

Tom: The key is still our banking partners.

We have direct partnerships with banks locally. Pakistan has been quite cautious about stablecoins and digital assets, so much of the business we handle locally is still completed through traditional banking payment channels.

The local market is also developing new regulatory and licensing systems for digital assets, and we will continue to monitor and participate in the relevant processes.

But at this stage, what is most important for us is that we have established a banking network that can actually support payment operations.

Charlie observes:

This statement highlights a point that is often overlooked in stablecoin payment startups: on-chain transfers are easy, but the real challenge is the last mile.

Suppose a U.S. company pays a supplier in Pakistan using USDC.

Sending USDC from one U.S. wallet to another may only take a few seconds. But what the supplier ultimately needs is Pakistani Rupees in a local bank account. This process involves local banks, currency exchange, regulatory compliance, liquidity, and ultimately settlement and posting.

Moreover, in different countries, whether stablecoins can be used directly, how funds should be settled, and which financial institutions are qualified can vary greatly.

Even if a global payment platform covers hundreds of countries, it does not mean it has the same depth of direct bank connections in those countries.

Walapay's choice is to delve deeply into local banks and regulatory infrastructures, rather than simply wrapping another API on top of existing aggregators.

This is also highly consistent with the logic emphasized in its latest funding announcement: Own the Last Mile.

### 2. The next step is not just to increase transaction volume, but to layer more financial products on the payment network

Charlie: Now that the funding has been announced, what is your most important goal for the next phase?

Tom: Over the past year, we have invested a lot of time in establishing banking partnerships and obtaining licenses, and we will continue to do so in the future.

I believe Walapay's uniqueness lies in the relationships we have built with many long-tail market banks.

There are not many competitors that truly have such extensive connections with emerging market banks.

But once the basic fund flow network is established, we can add more products on top of it.

For example, Treasury management, Card Issuance, and in the future, we can extend to Credit products.

We have previously invested a lot of energy into infrastructure and transaction scale, and now we have the opportunity to launch higher-margin financial services.

Charlie: So you are not just trying to become another cross-border payment API company?

Tom: We are still very focused on the infrastructure layer and hope to gain more underlying financial connectivity capabilities in the markets we cover.

Once we have these foundations, we can build more products on top of them.

This is worth discussing further.

As the stablecoin payment industry has developed to this point, many companies that appear very similar have emerged: everyone can provide wallets, virtual accounts, fiat deposits and withdrawals, USDC/USDT conversions, and global payment APIs.

If we only compare API functionalities, it is actually difficult to form true long-term differentiation.

However, if a startup can accumulate independent banking relationships, local operational experience, and compliance capabilities in different markets like Mexico, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the competitive barrier becomes not just code, but a financial network built up over many years.

Of course, this is also a significantly heavier business model.

Every time we enter a new country, we need to deal with local regulations, banking partnerships, transaction monitoring, and operational issues. Compared to pure software companies, such expansion cannot rely solely on adding servers.

Therefore, whether Walapay's business model can succeed hinges on whether the fixed investment in establishing a banking network can achieve sufficient operational leverage through continuously growing payment volumes and subsequent products.

### 3. With Bridge acquired by Stripe and BVNK by Mastercard, how many opportunities are left for independent companies?

Charlie: Recently, funding for stablecoin payment startups has been very active. Rain has raised a lot of money, and HIFI just announced a new round of funding.

Do you think this is because the overall Total Addressable Market (TAM) is growing rapidly, or has the industry begun to enter a phase of concentrated competition?

Tom: This is a very large market, so it's not surprising that many companies are doing well.

Moreover, I believe that everyone is actually taking different development paths.

For example, Rain's positioning is very different from ours, leaning more towards providing stablecoin-driven financial products and payment card applications for enterprises.

HIFI is also interesting, especially their work in Tokenized Assets and institutional financial infrastructure.

But this is not our main focus right now.

Our emphasis is on making the flow of funds between the U.S. and emerging markets, as well as among emerging markets themselves, as seamless as possible.

We believe that the U.S. banking system and stablecoins will become one of the most important infrastructures for global fund flows in the future.

Our goal is to connect these infrastructures with local banks around the world.

Charlie: I also listened to presentations from Rain and several other stablecoin companies today. Bridge and BVNK have been acquired by Stripe and Mastercard, respectively, while Rain is still developing independently.

What is your view on the current competitive landscape of the industry?

Tom: I have great respect for Bridge, BVNK, and Rain; they are all true pioneers in this industry.

At the same time, I believe that no single company has fully realized the vision that stablecoin financial infrastructure could ultimately achieve.

Some companies have been acquired before reaching that endpoint. Of course, companies like Stripe are still vigorously advancing the development of stablecoin infrastructure.

This is an extremely large market.

I think it is still very early, and everyone is gradually moving toward that future through different paths.

Charlie observes:

Putting together the recent changes in the industry is quite interesting. In February 2025, Stripe officially completed its acquisition of Bridge.

In August 2026, Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK, and in October of this year, it officially launched the Global Money Platform, integrating fiat accounts, stablecoins, treasury, and local payment capabilities.

On the other hand, HIFI announced in September that it had raised $37 million in Series A funding, beginning to more clearly extend towards tokenized capital markets, institutional settlement, card issuance, and other financial infrastructures.

Rain announced in January this year that it had completed a $250 million Series C funding round, reaching a valuation of $1.95 billion, still focusing on stablecoin payment cards, wallets, and enterprise financial products. On the surface, these companies are all working on stablecoin infrastructure, but there are significant differences in long-term positioning.

Bridge and BVNK have entered large payment group systems and will be able to leverage the channels and customer networks of Stripe and Mastercard in the future.

HIFI emphasizes the interoperability of tokenized funds and assets.

Rain's commercialization focus revolves more around enterprise wallets, card issuance, and stablecoin payment products.

Walapay's current choice is to connect with local banks in emerging markets and build a cross-border fund network.

These positions are certainly not going to be permanently distinct. In fact, as everyone continues to launch new financial products, the competitive boundaries will inevitably become more blurred.

For this reason, the long-term value of independent companies cannot be solely based on a product feature that seems novel today.

### 4. The Judgment That Interests Me Most: Will Wallets Replace Bank Accounts and Become the Center of Financial Operations?

Charlie: What do you think the ultimate form of stablecoin financial infrastructure development will look like?

Tom: If we look at our long-term vision for the entire industry, I believe we may have only achieved about 5% to 10% of it today.

In the future, an entire financial operating system for a business, or even an individual's financial life, may revolve around a Wallet. The wallet becomes the center, with public blockchains and stablecoins forming its underlying foundation, and then connecting to various local payment networks in different countries and regions through a connection layer.

The entire structure will actually be reversed.

Today, traditional financial institutions think of the bank account as the central position, with stablecoins merely as a new payment channel attached to the banking system.

But what we see in the future is exactly the opposite.

Wallets and stablecoins become the core, with traditional banks and local payment systems providing connectivity around them.

This will be a completely different financial architecture.

And I believe that currently, no company has truly reached this point.

Charlie observes:

This is the part of the interview that I find most thought-provoking.

What many people understand today about stablecoin payments is essentially still using new technology to optimize old financial processes.

A company's funds are held in a bank, and when a payment is needed, they convert it to USDC, send it via blockchain, and then convert it to the recipient's local fiat currency.

In this process, stablecoins are just an intermediate channel from A to B.

However, the future described by Tom actually reverses the center of the entire financial system.

Businesses can view wallets or on-chain financial accounts as the most core interface for fund management.

In this interface, funds can be held, exchanged, invested, scheduled, and paid. Bank accounts, local clearing networks, payment cards, and even different types of financial assets are merely functional modules that connect to this financial operating system.

Of course, this does not mean that banks will disappear.

On the contrary, Walapay is investing a lot of effort into establishing deeper partnerships with traditional banks.

What may truly change is the position of banks in the value chain.

Banks still provide irreplaceable compliance, clearing, deposit, and local funding services, but they may not continue to be the sole center for all financial activities of business organizations.

However, this is still a long-term vision, not a commercial reality that has been widely realized today.

### 5. The Next Wave of Cross-Border Payment Increment: Fund Flows Between Emerging Markets

Charlie: When you choose markets and obtain licenses, do you mainly consider payment corridors from the U.S. to other countries, or do you also consider payment needs between emerging markets?

Tom: We currently place great importance on licenses and banking partnerships outside the U.S.

Connecting the U.S. with Mexico, China, Europe, and other regions is a very natural demand.

But when you start providing services for a business in Mexico, it not only needs to do business with the U.S. but may also need to make payments to suppliers in Asia.

This is also a scenario we hope to support.

Charlie: I come from China and have been paying attention to cross-border payments in emerging markets.

For payment corridors like China to Nigeria and China to Brazil, there is a clear trade demand.

But in the past, when I researched the Latin American market, I found that cross-border fund flows between countries like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile were not as active as one might imagine.

Have you seen any new trends?

Tom: In terms of remittance business, we have indeed started to see more internal regional fund flows, such as between Mexico and Central American countries.

Some payment corridors with very high demand are actually not in the same region, such as between Gulf countries and South Asia.

We are also starting to facilitate more fund flows within Asia, such as between markets like Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam.

For Walapay, this is a relatively new business, but we are very interested and are thinking about what kind of licenses and banking relationships we need to support these demands.

Charlie: When I worked at Strike, I was deeply involved in the implementation of Bitcoin payments in El Salvador.

One issue that impressed me was that the banking infrastructure in Central America is quite underdeveloped, especially the APIs and payment systems of some banks.

Is there any improvement now?

Tom: To be honest, some of the banks we have encountered have technology systems that are so poor it might surprise you. But that is precisely where our value lies.

What we need to do is allow customers to use these banking services through the Walapay API without needing to perceive the underlying complexity.

We can connect very traditional local banking systems with modern payment infrastructure.

We also have banking partners in markets like Guatemala and El Salvador.

The technological conditions in these markets may not be that good, but that also means opportunity.

For example, Félix Pago has already performed excellently in the remittance corridor from the U.S. to Mexico.

We also hope to establish similar capabilities between the U.S. and Central America, as well as between Central America and other markets.

This part resonates with me.

From my experience in implementing Bitcoin payments in El Salvador, what often truly hinders financial innovation is not that the underlying technology is not advanced enough, but that the entire local banking system is not yet prepared.

You can settle a value using blockchain in seconds, but if the local bank system of the recipient is unstable and compliance processes cannot be automated, the end user still cannot receive smooth financial services.

For cross-border payment infrastructure companies, packaging outdated systems into reliable, standardized, and easy-to-use financial services is itself a capability that can create commercial value.

### 6. From Money Movement to Money Management: Opportunities for the Next Generation of Treasury

Charlie: Besides global fund flows, what do you think are the most noteworthy developments in the next one to three years?

Tom: I think the most exciting thing is that Money Movement and Money Management are gradually merging.

Because these two types of financial activities can be completed on the same underlying infrastructure in the future.

We are now seeing more and more financial products being tokenized, including U.S. Treasury bonds, money market funds, stocks, ETFs, and so on.

These financial assets are starting to exist on on-chain ledgers similar to stablecoins.

This will create many scenarios that were previously difficult to achieve.

For example, a company holds a tokenized money market fund. Now it needs to make a payment to an overseas supplier.

In the background, we can first convert the tokenized money market fund into USDC, then complete the fund exchange through a counterparty, and finally pay the local fiat currency to the supplier's bank account.

But for corporate clients, the entire process can become a very simple, almost seamless operation.

In the past, within the traditional banking system, finance personnel might need to first transfer funds from the Treasury Account to the Checking Account.

This process could take a business day.

Then they would pay the overseas supplier via SWIFT, which could take another day or two.

In the future, we have the opportunity to compress the entire process from treasury management to supplier payment into a single operation.

I find that very exciting.

Of course, the liquidity of on-chain tokenized financial assets is still far from that of traditional financial markets.

But in the next one to three years, we hope to integrate more and more of these products into our API system to truly provide end-to-end financial services.

Charlie observes:

This may be the direction of the next phase of commercial value for stablecoin payment infrastructure that is most worth paying attention to.

Traditional payment companies primarily monetize through transaction fees, foreign exchange spreads, and payment processing services.

But if payment companies can also manage clients' fund balances, liquidity scheduling, short-term investments, and payment execution, they are no longer just Transaction Processors.

They begin to participate in the ongoing financial operations of businesses.

Operations that were previously scattered across different bank accounts, different financial institutions, and different fund management software have the opportunity to be integrated onto the same platform.

For example, a cross-border e-commerce platform may have previously needed to pre-fund in multiple countries to ensure timely payments to merchants.

If its funds can be managed uniformly through more efficient on-chain financial infrastructure, there is an opportunity to reduce the dispersed pre-funding and improve fund utilization efficiency.

Of course, such a vision still faces many practical limitations, including the market liquidity of tokenized assets, regulatory oversight of investment products, redemption mechanisms, credit risks, custody arrangements, and last-mile bank settlement times.

But from a business model perspective, this means that stablecoin infrastructure companies may gradually extend from charging for one-time payments to higher-value treasury and financial services.

### 7. The Real Adoption Barrier: Not Technology, But CFO Understanding and Trust

Charlie: I have recently been helping some corporate management teams deal with global finance and asset management issues.

One case that particularly impressed me was a multinational company's finance team, which had a large number of bank accounts in different countries, and sometimes it was even difficult to determine which account should be used for a payment.

But when I introduced stablecoins and related financial tools to them, they were actually still very unfamiliar.

What do you think can help corporate CFOs or Controllers truly understand and be willing to adopt stablecoin financial infrastructure? What would that Aha Moment be?

Tom: I think the vast majority of people's first reaction is almost always to perceive this as risky.

They feel that they need to understand many new compliance procedures, technologies, and operational processes, and the adoption costs are very high.

However, if you tell a Controller that they may no longer need to disperse funds across 20 countries and 40 different bank accounts, but can manage a large portion of those funds in one place.

At that point, they might start to realize: maybe it’s really worth spending time to understand this technology.

Of course, the entire process will not be smooth sailing.

There are still many uncertainties in regulation, such as the progress of the CLARITY Act is not going smoothly.

So this still requires time.

But the value proposition is already very clear.

The key is to let financial management personnel see how much complexity the new infrastructure can help them eliminate from traditional operational processes.

At that point, it is no longer an abstract Crypto concept, but a tangible financial management tool.

My thoughts: The real competition of stablecoin infrastructure has just begun

After talking with Tom, I feel there are three issues worth continuous attention.

First, the real barrier to stablecoin payments may increasingly not lie in the stablecoins themselves.

As on-chain settlement protocols, wallet technologies, stablecoin liquidity, and basic payment capabilities gradually standardize, simply doing a layer of API encapsulation may easily face competition from large payment platforms and other infrastructure companies.

However, local bank partnerships, regulatory licenses, clearing channels, and operational experience in long-tail markets still present a high barrier to entry. Walapay chooses to start from these challenging financial infrastructures and attempts to gradually add more products on top of them.

This road is heavy and carries execution risks, but if it can achieve scale, its barriers may be more enduring than simple software integration.

Second, the integration of Money Movement and Money Management may create greater business opportunities than cross-border payments themselves.

In the traditional financial system, corporate payments, treasury management, investment, and financing are usually handled by different institutions, different systems, or even different departments.

Tokenized financial assets and stablecoins make it possible for these activities to gradually share a set of programmable settlement infrastructure.

In the future, companies may not need to first transfer funds from an investment account to a cash account before initiating another payment process.

The boundaries between financial products and payment tools may be much blurrier than today.

However, whether this integration can form a sustainable business model still depends on regulation, liquidity, and customer trust, and will not be automatically realized just because all assets are on-chain.

Third, will wallets replace bank accounts and become the center of corporate financial operations?

This is the most interesting long-term judgment that I think Tom raised during the interview.

It does not mean that traditional banks will be eliminated by blockchain.

More accurately, banks may still perform key functions such as deposits, regulation, fund clearing, and local financial services, but companies may no longer need to center all financial activities around a specific bank and its account system.

A unified wallet or financial operation platform can call upon banks, stablecoin networks, and financial products from different countries in the background.

If this judgment holds, then the competition among today's stablecoin payment infrastructure companies is not just about competing for payment transaction volumes.

They are also competing for a core position in the next generation of corporate financial operating systems.

From this perspective, companies like Stripe, Mastercard, Visa, as well as Bridge, BVNK, Rain, HIFI, Walapay, etc., are all participating in this competition in different directions. But which company will ultimately become the indispensable financial infrastructure for enterprises is still far from being answered.

Perhaps the greatest significance of stablecoins in the future is not to reduce a cross-border payment from two days to two seconds, but to allow companies to organize their fund management without adhering to the boundaries of the traditional banking system.

This is the real change that the next generation of financial infrastructure may bring.

This article is compiled based on the on-site interview at Money20/20 USA in October 2026. The interview content has been moderately edited and condensed, and the expressions regarding future products and market layouts reflect the interviewee's plans or judgments at that time and do not represent that the relevant services have officially launched.

Disclosure of interest: The author has a cooperative relationship with the lead investor of this round of financing, Generative Ventures.