How Stablecoins Could Cut Remittance Costs and Expand Financial Access Worldwide

And welcome back.

Stablecoins are moving crypto conversation piece to actual payment infrastructures, and one company that is quietly building the railroads is the application NOAA.

Now, the app provides stablecoin payments infrastructure to businesses across more than 70 countries.

And right now I'm joined by Shah Ramezani, the founder and CEO of Noah.

Shah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

So, let's start with the beginning because not everyone watching right now has a crypto wallet.

So in the simplest possible terms, what is the stablecoin and why should people in the UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai care about it?

So a stablecoin is a digital dollar that moves at the speed of the internet.

So you can imagine it being a dollar that sits in a bank, but then is issued on a on a digital asset rail, but compared to a Bitcoin, it's not volatile.

It moves in seconds.

So imagine you want to make a payment from the UAE to Pakistan, it will happen in seconds and cost cents.

So, so it's really like the internet natives currency.

And so we're speaking about the UAE specifically, and it has one of the highest concentrations of expat workers in the world.

People sending money to all over the places like South Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia.

So how does Stablecoin change the experience for moving money across borders compared to those workers that are doing that today?

So, uh, the biggest adoption of stablecoins right now in the world is in emerging markets.

So, uh, countries like Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, uh, have seen an increased, uh, adoption of stablecoin.

In some countries it's over like 30%, and it's no surprise to us because a lot of these countries have highly inflationary currencies, so the dollar, uh, is much more, uh, uh, uh, uh, a better, a better solution for them.

So, given that the UAE is becoming more and more uh the financial capital of the, uh, let's say the the uh the emerging markets, uh, where trade is happening from Africa to UAE or from Southeast Asia to UAE, Pakistan to UAE, including the migrant.

Workers who actually are using UA as a kind of a labor hub, um, it, it, it is one of the most interesting things that could happen to the UAE is the enablement and empowerment of the digital dollar to move more freely, uh, could benefit uh the UAE massively.

And let's talk a little bit about the UAE how it has moved aggressively on crypto regulation.

How does the clear regulatory environment change the risk profile for everyday users, or, uh, is there still gaps that the industry needs to address specifically when it comes to stablecoins?

Um, so the UAE was one of the jurisdictions that actually moved quite quickly on, uh, uh, on that topic, um, and, uh, together with Europe.

So there is a number of regulatory bodies in the UAE, some of them in in basic terms, you know, UAE runs on two legal systems.

One is the onshore offshore.

Um, so you have, uh, uh, uh, specific licenses that basically regulate how, uh, digital assets have to behave in, uh, onshore and, uh, local market, and then obviously you also have specific licenses and regulation for how we govern it, uh, on an international level.

And on both sides it's very clear and how this helps adoption is really um for, for it makes it easier for international banks actually to work with stablecoin because it sets clear rules on AML KYC and also gives um.

Um, you know, more and more prominence from, from the government.

So as more banks come and settle with stablecoin, it makes the experience and the user interface much better for the average user.

Therefore, you'll see automatically more adoption and obviously with more adoption comes, uh, it has its own virtual cycle, plus, you know, you also see that the more people use it, more people trust it.

So it's really the, the regulation helps to kind of kickstart the entire process.

So I think And and we're wrapping up, so really quick in, in about one or two sentences, um, let's go ahead and talk about Noah's vision and, and how this is helping this, this environment in the UAE.

Yeah, so, really the, the, the biggest unlock we're seeing is stablecoins.

I mean, let's make, give us some stats.

So right now we are at $330 billion market cap for stablecoins.

Scott Besson and Citi are predicting it to be uh growing to $4 trillion so more than 10fold by 2030.

Um, the main reason is that, uh, we are able to, uh, bring dollars everywhere to the world much faster, um, and, and previously in, in all of these markets like emerging markets, uh, or even, uh, Latin American markets, you had a lack of access to dollar, and the reason was not that you could not get dollars there, it was just like through the banking system and corresponding banking system, it was pretty much impossible.

So Noah's vision is really to enable, uh, the rest of the world to access the dollar easily, to be able to make payments in dollars as, as, as.

Fastest seconds, um, and also reduce the cost.

I mean, the World Bank has published a report where the average migrant or even user around the world pays 6.5% uh to make a cross-border payment, and that should go to pretty much sense with stablecoin.

So really our vision is to put a, put dollars in the hands of every user around the world to give them a much more inflationary protected currency, plus also make remittance much more cheaper and faster, and with that we will bring more financial freedom.

Well, thank you so much for your time, Noah.

I appreciate it.

And now this is where we leave it for today from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

And Ragda, it's been a pleasure being with you today and obviously we're going to be doing this every day.