Six years into the stablecoin wave, this is the nascent form of the future of payments he sees.

This year is poised to be remembered in financial history as the “Year of Stablecoins,” and today’s excitement is likely just the visible tip of a much larger trend that has been building for six years beneath the surface.

Back in 2019, when Facebook’s Libra stablecoin project sent shockwaves through traditional finance, Raj Parekh was in the thick of it at Visa.

As Visa’s head of crypto, Raj experienced firsthand the psychological shift as this legacy financial giant moved from cautious observation to active engagement—a moment when consensus was anything but certain.

At the time, traditional finance’s arrogance coexisted with the immaturity of blockchain. Raj’s tenure at Visa exposed him to the industry’s invisible ceiling—not because financial institutions lacked the will to innovate, but because the infrastructure simply couldn’t support true global payments.

Motivated by this challenge, he founded Portal Finance to build better middleware for crypto payments. Yet, after working with countless clients, he realized that no matter how much the application layer improved, the underlying performance bottleneck remained an insurmountable barrier.

Ultimately, Monad Foundation acquired the Portal team, with Raj leading the payments ecosystem.

In our view, Raj is uniquely positioned to analyze this efficiency experiment. He understands both the business logic of stablecoin applications and the technical foundations of crypto payments—making him the ideal person to review this journey.

We recently spoke with Raj about the evolution of stablecoins in recent years. We wanted to clarify what’s fueling the current stablecoin boom: is it regulatory clarity, the entry of industry giants, or simply the pursuit of profit and efficiency?

More importantly, a new industry consensus is forming—stablecoins are not just crypto assets; they could become the next generation of infrastructure for settlement and capital movement.

Yet, key questions remain: how long will this momentum last? Which narratives will be disproven, and which will become the foundation for the long term? Raj’s perspective is invaluable because he’s been an active participant, not just an observer.

In Raj’s words, the rise of stablecoins is the “email moment” for money—a future where moving funds is as cheap and instant as sending information. Still, he admits he’s not entirely sure what new possibilities this will unlock.

The following is Raj’s account, as compiled and published by Beating:

Problems Before Technology

If I had to choose a starting point, I’d say it was 2019.

I was at Visa then, and the mood in finance was tense. Facebook’s sudden launch of the Libra stablecoin project changed everything. Before Libra, most traditional financial institutions dismissed crypto as either a geek’s toy or a speculative asset. Libra changed that. Suddenly, everyone realized that if you didn’t claim a seat at the table, you might not have a future in this industry.

Visa was among the first public partners in the Libra project. Libra was special—an early, large-scale, and ambitious effort that brought together companies from across industries to collaborate on blockchain and crypto for the first time.

While Libra didn’t turn out as expected, it was a pivotal moment. It forced many traditional institutions to take crypto seriously for the first time, elevating it from a fringe experiment to a topic that demanded real attention.

Regulatory pressure soon followed. By October 2019, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and others had withdrawn from the project.

But after Libra, Visa, Mastercard, and other members began to formalize their crypto teams. The goal was both to better manage partnerships and networks, and to develop real products as part of a broader strategy.

My career began at the intersection of cybersecurity and payments. Early at Visa, I built security platforms to help banks manage risks from data breaches, exploits, and hacking.

This experience led me to see blockchain through the lens of payments and fintech—as an open-source payment system. What struck me most was that I’d never seen technology enable value to move globally, 24/7, at such speed.

But I also saw that Visa’s infrastructure still relied on banks, mainframes, and old-school wire transfers.

To me, open-source systems that could move value were incredibly attractive. My intuition was that the infrastructure behind systems like Visa would eventually be rewritten by blockchain-based networks.

When Visa’s crypto team launched, we didn’t rush to push new tech. The team was one of the smartest, most hands-on groups I’ve worked with, equally versed in traditional finance and crypto, and deeply respectful of the crypto ecosystem.

Crypto is fundamentally about community. To succeed, you have to understand and integrate into it.

Visa is a payments network, so we focused heavily on empowering partners—payment providers, banks, fintechs—and identifying efficiency gaps in cross-border settlement.

Our approach wasn’t to force new technology on Visa. Instead, we started by identifying real internal problems and then evaluated whether blockchain could solve them.

Looking at settlement, an obvious question emerged: if payments settle T+1 or T+2, why not aim for real-time? What would instant settlement mean for treasury and finance teams? For example, banks close at 5 p.m.—what if treasury could settle at night? What if settlement could happen seven days a week, not just on business days?

This is why Visa eventually adopted USDC as a new settlement mechanism, integrating it into our existing systems. Many questioned why Visa would test settlements on Ethereum. In 2020 and 2021, it sounded radical.

Take Crypto.com, a major Visa client. Traditionally, Crypto.com had to sell crypto for fiat daily, then send it to Visa via SWIFT or ACH.

This was painful. SWIFT isn’t real-time—settlement could take two days or more. To avoid default, Crypto.com had to post large collateral in the bank—so-called “pre-funding.”

That capital could have generated returns, but instead it sat idle to support slow settlement cycles. We asked: if Crypto.com’s business runs on USDC, why not settle directly in USDC?

We partnered with Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered digital asset bank, and ran our first test transaction on Ethereum. When USDC moved from Crypto.com’s address to Visa’s address at Anchorage and the settlement finalized in seconds, it was a remarkable moment.

The Infrastructure Divide

Visa’s stablecoin settlement experience made me realize just how immature the industry’s infrastructure was.

I’ve always believed payments and capital flows should be a “fully abstracted experience.” When you buy coffee, you swipe your card, pay, and get your drink—the merchant receives the money. The user never sees the underlying steps—bank communication, network interaction, transaction confirmation, clearing, settlement. All of that should be invisible.

I see blockchain the same way. It’s a powerful settlement technology, but it should be abstracted by infrastructure and application-layer services so users never face its complexity.

That’s why I left Visa to start Portal—a developer platform that lets any fintech company integrate stablecoin payments as easily as plugging into an API.

To be honest, I never planned for Portal to be acquired. For me, it was about mission—building open-source payment systems is my life’s work.

If I could make on-chain transactions easier and help open-source systems become part of daily life, even in a small way, that would be a huge win.

Our clients ranged from traditional remittance giants like WorldRemit to emerging neobanks. But as our business grew, we hit a paradox.

Some might ask why we didn’t focus on applications instead of infrastructure. Many complain, “Too much infrastructure, not enough apps.” But this is really cyclical.

Better infrastructure enables new applications, which then drive the next wave of infrastructure. It’s an “application-infrastructure” loop.

At the time, we saw infrastructure as immature, so it made sense to start there. Our goal was twofold: partner with large apps with existing ecosystems and volume, and make it easy for early-stage companies and developers to get started.

To maximize performance, Portal supported Solana, Polygon, Tron, and more. But we always came back to the same conclusion: the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) ecosystem has overwhelming network effects—developers and liquidity are there.

This created a paradox: EVM is the strongest ecosystem but too slow and expensive; other chains are faster but fragmented. We wondered: if a system could be EVM-compatible while delivering high performance and sub-second finality, that would be the ultimate payment solution.

So in July, we accepted Monad Foundation’s acquisition of Portal, and I took over payments at Monad.

People often ask: aren’t there already too many public chains? Why do we need new ones? That’s the wrong question—it’s not “why more chains,” but “have current chains solved payments’ core problems?”

If you talk to those moving large sums, they’ll tell you they care less about how new a chain is and more about the unit economics. What’s the cost per transaction? Is confirmation time fast enough for business? Is liquidity deep enough across FX corridors? These are the real issues.

Sub-second finality sounds technical, but it’s about real money. If a payment takes 15 minutes to confirm, it’s commercially useless.

But that alone isn’t enough. You need a robust ecosystem: stablecoin issuers, on/off-ramps, market makers, liquidity providers—every role is essential.

I often say we’re at the “email moment” for money. When email appeared, it didn’t just speed up letters—it made information travel worldwide in seconds, transforming communication.

Stablecoins and blockchain represent the same leap for value transfer—an internet-speed capability never seen before. We haven’t even imagined all the possibilities: global supply chain finance could be reinvented, remittance costs could drop to zero.

The real breakthrough is when this technology is seamlessly integrated into platforms like YouTube or every app on your phone. When users don’t even notice the blockchain, but enjoy instant, internet-speed money movement, that’s when mass adoption begins.

Yield in Motion: The Next Stablecoin Business Model

This July, the US signed the GENIUS Act, subtly shifting the industry landscape. Circle’s once-formidable moat is fading, driven by a fundamental change in business models.

Early stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle followed a simple logic: users deposit funds, issuers buy US Treasuries, and keep all the interest. That was phase one.

Now, with projects like Paxos and M0, the game has changed. These new players pass the interest from underlying assets directly to users and recipients. This isn’t just a profit split—it’s a new financial primitive, a new form of money supply.

In traditional finance, money earns interest only when idle in a bank. Once you transfer or spend it, that yield disappears.

Stablecoins break this rule. Even as funds move and transact at high speed, the underlying assets keep generating yield. This unlocks a new possibility: earning yield not just at rest, but also in motion.

We’re still in the early days of this model. Some teams are taking it further, managing US Treasuries at scale and planning to pass 100% of the interest to users.

You might wonder, how do they profit? Their model is to build value-added products and services around stablecoins, not to profit from the interest spread.

So while this is just the start, the trend post-GENIUS Act is clear: every major bank and fintech is seriously considering how to get involved. The future stablecoin business model won’t stop at earning interest on deposits.

Beyond stablecoins, new crypto banks are drawing attention. With my payments background, I see a key difference between traditional and crypto fintech.

First-generation fintechs like Nubank (Brazil) and Chime (US) were built on local banking infrastructure, limiting them to domestic markets.

But with stablecoins and blockchain, you’re building on global rails—something unprecedented in finance. You don’t have to be a single-country fintech. From day one, you can build a global bank for users everywhere.

This is the biggest unlock in fintech history—launching with a global footprint. This model is spawning a new generation of founders and products that aren’t bound by geography. From the first line of code, they’re targeting the global market.

Agent Payments and the Future of High-Frequency Finance

Looking ahead three to five years, what excites me most is the convergence of AI Agents (Agentic Payments) and high-frequency finance.

Recently, we held a hackathon in San Francisco focused on AI and crypto. Developers flocked in—one team integrated DoorDash (a US food delivery platform) with on-chain payments. We’re already seeing the trend: agents are no longer limited by human speed.

On high-throughput systems, agents move funds and execute trades faster than human brains can process in real time. This isn’t just about speed; it’s a fundamental workflow shift—from “human efficiency” to “algorithmic efficiency,” and ultimately “agent efficiency.”

To enable this leap from milliseconds to microseconds, blockchain performance must be world-class.

Meanwhile, user accounts are converging. Investment and payment accounts used to be separate, but that line is fading.

This is a natural evolution—and exactly what giants like Coinbase are aiming for. They want to be your “everything app”—savings, crypto, stocks, prediction markets—all in one account. This keeps users loyal and all their data in one ecosystem.

This is why infrastructure still matters. Only by abstracting away the crypto plumbing can DeFi, payments, and yield stack into a unified experience—users never feel the complexity beneath.

Some of my colleagues come from high-frequency trading, used to executing massive trades on CME or stock exchanges with ultra-low latency. But what excites me isn’t more trading—it’s bringing that engineering rigor and algorithmic decision-making into everyday financial workflows.

Imagine a corporate treasurer managing funds across multiple banks and currencies. This used to require heavy manual work. In the future, with LLMs and high-performance blockchains, systems will automate large-scale trading and fund management behind the scenes, maximizing returns on every dollar.

Abstracting high-frequency trading for real-world workflows is no longer Wall Street’s exclusive domain. Algorithms can now optimize enterprise finances at unprecedented speed and scale. That’s the next big thing in finance.

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