Experts: Stablecoins target global payments bottleneck
Stablecoins and blockchain-based payments are poised to address one of the financial system’s most persistent problems: slow, costly cross-border transactions.
Speaking during the “Scaling the Future of Finance: Payments, Stablecoins & Global Adoption” panel at the Philippine Blockchain Week 2026 in Pasay City, industry leaders argued that while the technology is ready, trust, education and regulatory clarity remain critical to mass adoption.
Raj Nandwani, Global Head of Business Development and Institutional Market Access at Binance, said consumers are increasingly questioning who truly controls their money.
“One day, everyone is going to start questioning where they actually keep their value,” Nandwani said. “I have a very decent thesis where if you cannot access your money within one minute, it probably isn’t your money.”
He argued that even modern financial platforms often fail to give users immediate access to their funds. “We are working towards putting value back to the ownership of the individual and allowing them to really do whatever they need to do within the regulated space,” he said.
Chengyi Ong, Director of APAC Policy at Circle, said payment inefficiencies remain a global challenge despite years of efforts by regulators and policymakers.
“The financial infrastructure, generally speaking, is fairly good, particularly when it comes to domestic payments,” Ong said. “But it is still slow and expensive depending on how much money you’re sending.”
She pointed to ongoing international efforts to improve payment systems. “The G20 has a whole roadmap that’s aimed at making payments more efficient, and it has not been doing very well,” she said. “Every year, progress is slow, particularly in the small value transfers.”
According to Ong, remittances and smaller business-to-business transactions remain among the most difficult payment categories to improve.
Education remains the biggest hurdle
While blockchain and stablecoins can solve payment challenges, panellists agreed that user education remains one of the sector’s biggest obstacles. Alice Truong, Vice President at Nuvei, said technology alone cannot guarantee adoption.
“The reason why we started with blockchain, cryptos and also stablecoins was to resolve all of that pain,” Truong said. “However, in order for us to embrace a new technology, it is extremely hard.”
She argued that users need to understand both the opportunities and the risks.
“They need to know how to use it first,” she said. “Not only do they need to know how to use it, but they also need to know what the downside of using it will be.”
For Truong, education, trust and security must develop alongside technological innovation. “Education is very important in terms of new technology, and also trust and security as well,” she said.
Nandwani said financial literacy should be treated as a broader challenge rather than a crypto-specific issue. “Financial literacy is a problem that we’re still trying to fix in the traditional world,” he said. “We need to be investing in education that teaches people why KYC works, why privacy exists within that KYC scenario, why having knowledge about your financial position is important.”
“Crypto just happens to be one wrapper for value within that financial literacy concept,” he said.
Compliance and crypto are no longer opposites
The discussion also addressed one of the industry’s long-running debates: whether compliance requirements undermine the original ideals of cryptocurrency. Nandwani rejected the notion that regulation and decentralisation are incompatible.
“There is still this remnant of black or white. If we do KYC, we are going against the ethos of crypto,” he said. “That is no longer the case.”
He argued that as the industry seeks institutional investment and mainstream adoption, compliance has become unavoidable. “We asked for institutional investment in this space. We asked to become formal,” he said. “A part of the burden is doing KYC.”
Truong agreed that regulation is necessary given the risks facing the financial sector. “The finance and payment industry is the most heavily regulated industry ever,” she said. “We must talk about money laundering. We must talk about a lot of illicit funding.”
She stressed that compliance measures are designed to protect users rather than collect unnecessary information. “Every single step that they are doing in KYC and due diligence is to protect them, not to exploit information from them,” she said.
However, she also warned that excessive bureaucracy can create friction.
“The compliance procedures need to protect the end user and the business. But also, they need to be flexible and adopt the new technology,” she said.
B2B gaming payments a growth engine
The themes discussed at Philippine Blockchain Week mirror a wider shift taking place across the gaming industry, where payments are no longer viewed as a back-office function but as a driver of growth. During a payments panel at SiGMA Central Europe 2025 in Rome, industry executives argued that payment infrastructure now directly affects acquisition, retention and revenue.
Karolis Dula, Head of Payments at Alea, said operators must rethink how they view payments. “Payments are the continuum of acquisition and the start of player retention,” Dula said. “You need to think about how you implement payments within your operations.”
Gil Tal, Founder and CEO of PayConsult, highlighted the commercial impact of payment optimisation. “If a player can’t deposit the first time, they’ll go to another brand,” Tal said. “Payments done right unlock opportunities far beyond the payment aspect.”
Industry leaders also pointed to instant settlements, stablecoin rails and operator-owned wallets as emerging trends. “Cross-border stablecoin settlements are rapidly growing,” Dula said, predicting that instant payments will soon become a standard expectation rather than a premium service.
Rob Reid, Founder and CEO of Everest, argued that operators increasingly need control over their own payment infrastructure. “The bigger ones get it,” Reid said. “They want their own wallets, their own monitoring, their own identity stack. That’s where the world is going.”
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