Businesses have always cared about the cost and speed of payments. What has changed is that the infrastructure to act on it now exists. Joining me is Jack Tang, Co-Founder and CEO of BoomFi. Jack, welcome to Capital Markets.
Thank you. My pleasure.
For a business owner who has never used stablecoins — what is actually different about how money moves through them compared to a card network?
Think of it this way. Traditional payment methods are like roads. Stablecoins are like a highway — faster, cheaper, and open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can use both to get somewhere, but the highway is more efficient. The key difference is that with fiat rails you are using centralised databases, whereas blockchain rails are decentralised. With stablecoins, settlement is near instant. The clearing is instant. It is open 24 over 7. That is the fundamental difference.
How does stablecoin actually compare to card networks on speed, cost, and reliability?
When you think about card payments, merchants are paying a few percent for the transaction itself, and then it takes several days for the money to land back into their account. For cross-border payments, if a customer is paying from abroad, that can incur quite expensive foreign exchange charges as well. Whereas with stablecoins, settlement is near instant, it is open 24 over 7, and the clearing is instant. Economically it is better. There are still things to develop — safeguards around chargebacks and dispute resolution — but the fundamental direction is clear.
Why are businesses only now starting to pay attention to this?
Businesses have always cared about cost and speed — faster, better, cheaper. What has changed in the past few years is really the enablement. Regulation has come into force. We have seen a lot of progress globally on this topic. We have seen institutions adopting stablecoin payment rails, making it far more available to the market. Those fundamental needs for businesses have always been the same. But the enablement has recently become possible.
If you can give us a real number — what does a business actually save moving from cards to stablecoins?
By and large, as an industry, the economics are different because we are tapping into public blockchains. The toll booths are much cheaper. The roads are always on. There are fewer intermediaries in the middle. The fundamental cost of using blockchain rails to move value globally is, from a bare metal cost perspective, far cheaper. And many payment service providers and banks do pass on those savings to customers. You can collapse fees to very nominal amounts to move value globally.
What still needs to happen before stablecoins go truly mainstream?
We are already seeing that ramp up happen very quickly. With the GENIUS Act, with VARA here in Dubai, with MiCA regulation that came into force in Europe on 1st of July — we are seeing that ramp up being very steady. The current stablecoin payments market is around $300 billion today. UBS recently projected that it will exceed $1.3 trillion by 2031. The annual rate of growth is quite astonishing.
Is Dubai moving faster than Europe on stablecoins?
The UAE has a very interesting characteristic. The expat community here is 88%. The UAE is the second biggest corridor for global remittance payments. And the regulation has been one of the first movers — establishing certainty for fintechs, businesses, and entrepreneurs to build within the space. I believe there are now five dirham-backed stablecoins from regulated banks here and one from a non-bank. UAE has a very interesting first mover advantage on the stablecoin market.
Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Thank you. Thanks.
