Redefining Everyday Payments

In a world where you can access almost anything instantly, the way money moves across borders looks outdated. On traditional rails, sending and receiving remittances can take days to settle. Integrating blockchain technology into traditional financial infrastructure has the ability to completely reshape cross-border payments through instant settlement.

That’s why, at Stellar House Miami, the Stellar Development Foundation hosted a conversation on “Redefining Everyday Payments” with Crossmint’s founder Rodri Fernández Touza, chief marketing officer of Airtm Sarah Frese, and MoneyGram’s executive vice president and general manager Josh Gordon-Blake. Crossmint, Airtm, and MoneyGram are working together to revolutionize the way money moves globally.

SDF recently hosted the second Stellar House, a series of pop-up events that allows leaders in blockchain, finance, and culture to collaborate and learn from each other through firesides, panels, networking, and more.

Here’s what you missed from our Redefining Everyday Payments session in Miami.

In the modern economy, companies pay workers globally, and those workers expect to receive payments instantly. But the technology behind remittances in traditional finance is often outdated. Josh mentioned that after years in the industry, he still gets surprised by how long the settlement timeline is for wire payments.

On the other hand, blockchain allows payments to settle instantly. “The money is just sent, and then it’s there. No one is waiting to see if it’s there,” Josh said. That’s why MoneyGram works with Crossmint and Stellar to incorporate blockchain rails into their settlement processes. Josh urged that for MoneyGram, leveraging stablecoins isn’t about hype, saying “ It’s less about any other market and what they’re doing, but rather the actual technology use case for us.” Because the technology makes payments faster and cheaper, it’s a no-brainer for MoneyGram.

During the session, SDF’s Raja Chakravorti asked the panel for their take on the most important component to building trust with users. The panel circled around a recipe for building trust and a compelling user experience that includes speed, predictability, and security. Users and institutions alike need to trust that money is moving securely, and quickly.

The goal of blockchain technology is to give people more control over their money and enable them to hold and move it more easily. “I mean, to me, it comes down to the empowerment. I mean, giving [users] the power back of this is their money and that they own it and own their money,” Sarah shared. “And that’s our mission, that anybody anywhere in the world can earn globally, participate in the global economy, can hold their money, move it, and be the boss that they should be for their money.” That empowerment must start from a place of speed, predictability, and security.

Rodri and Josh discussed how Crossmint and MoneyGram worked together to develop MoneyGram’s new cross-border payment system. With the integration of Crossmint’s stablecoin payment infrastructure, MoneyGram users can send, receive, and spend USDC on the Stellar network, through the MoneyGram app. MoneyGram then makes it easy for users to on- and off-ramp USDC.

When asked why Crossmint chose to build on Stellar, Rodri said: “Number one, [Stellar is] built in a way that allows these folks that may not be super crypto-native to be able to talk to some of these primitives via traditional APIs that don’t require so much knowledge of crypto. It’s fast, low fees, and in addition to the technology, there’s also the component of expertise.” Developers can easily build on the Stellar network, without sacrificing the sophistication of the technology.

According to Rodri, when you build on Stellar, you build with “the whole package.”

Check out the full recording of the panel on YouTube.